Boost Your Event’s Attendance Through Facebook Promotion & Offline Marketing

Facebook’s events tool is a quick and easy way for any organization to reach a large number of people about an event in a short amount of time. However, an estimated 700 million people use Facebook each month to market their events — meaning a lot of digital clutter and competition for your event’s attention. With so many events promoted on the platform, it can be easy for yours to get lost. Therefore, it’s wise to couple Facebook promotion with offline marketing when promoting your next event.

An Important Point

Before you get started with any event marketing strategy, however, consider your audience. Are you inviting a known, existing audience to your event? Or is this a new, prospective audience? What do you know about how they like to be communicated with? All of this information will help you determine where and how to promote your event and the relevant marketing messages to use to attract attendance.

Below, you’ll find a few ideas for promoting an event on Facebook in combination with offline methods. Feel free to customize for your business or organization’s audience.

Offline: Send “Save the Date” direct mail postcards to your audience about two months before the event’s date. People are incredibly busy, and many need time to plan out their schedule months in advance to see what they can fit in. If you are charging for the event, as an incentive for people to attend, include a discount code exclusively for people who received the “Save the Date” postcard. Need a printing and mailing service for your direct mail postcards? We’ve got you covered at QuantumPostcards.

Online: Create a Facebook event through your business or organization’s Facebook page (as opposed to your personal page). Check out a roundup of best practices here: Create a visually appealing, brand-relevant cover photo for the event. This is the first thing people will see in relation to the event page, so it’s important that it grabs attention.

• Be sure to include all specifics about the date, time, wardrobe and other necessary notes and details in the event’s description. Be thorough so no important details are left out and your attendees know what to expect. Include photos to provide some color to your event’s page and boost engagement — photos could be from a previous event of the same kind, the venue, staff preparing for the event, etc.
• Boost the event page with Facebook’s advertising platform. This will promote your event to a much wider audience. However, it’s important to note that not all events need advertising. Facebook advertising is best for those events in which you are trying to boost awareness among an audience of unknown prospects. Events created for an existing audience (such as an appreciation dinner for your nonprofit’s donors) may not require advertising as the audience is already engaged with your organization.
• If your event requires tickets, use a platform like Eventbrite for ticket registration. You can easily sync an Eventbrite page to Facebook if your event qualifies. Syncing Facebook with Eventbrite makes it easy and seamless for people to purchase tickets to your event through Facebook without leaving the platform.
• Don’t forget to share the Facebook event page on your business page and encourage others to share it with their networks, as well, if applicable.

Offline: With your event all set up on Facebook, it’s time to send a printed invitation to your audience as the event draws near. Send another round of marketing postcards with all of the specifics and event information and include a URL to the Facebook event page so people can learn more and RSVP online.

Offline & Online: Send another postcard thanking your guests, follow up with an email thank-you, and draft a Facebook post thanking the audience for their attendance. It’s important to let all of your guests know that you appreciate the time they made to attend your business or organization’s event.

That’s it. Use these offline and Facebook strategies to elevate your event and achieve the attendance you desire. We wish you the best of luck in all your event planning endeavors!