10 ways to make your restaurant video stand the fuck out!

Planning, promoting and managing an event is an exciting challenge to undertake. It might involve multiple teams and requires a lot of preparation to be successful. Promoting it can feel like you’re scaling a mountain but with the right tools and strategy you can climb your way to a successful event and pack the place out.

To help you calm those nerves, we’ve prepared a survival kit full of top event marketing strategies and tools you can use to create buzz at your next public event, before it, during it and after, so read on!

Pre-Event Marketing: Know What You’re Promoting

Before starting any promotion for an event, it is important you establish what your goals are. Whether that is driving ticket sales, creating a buzz on social media, but it’s probably going to be both! To create a successful event early on, goals need to be set in advance and made clear to the team.

First off we say, know who your target audience is! If you are attracting people to a local event you’ll want to know where they hang out. What different media do they consume? There is no point advertising a music festival in the magazine of Knitting Weekly. If you can understand your demographic then you have a better target to aim for and get your event noticed.

But HOW to promote your event?
There are many ways to promote your event, from email marketing, radio, to the magic of social media or the more tangible wizardry of printed promotions. Which you chose is up to you, however, we will look into a few different examples of both…

Cater Your Email Database
Let your email database take a load off! Simply send a tailored email to your contacts list, telling them why they need to attend, when and where it will be taking place. Include EVERYTHING in the email, essential information such as pricing and where to purchase tickets, add a ‘Share’ button to help forward the email on and spread the word. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool in itself.

Embrace Social Media
No how-to-guide would be complete without a mention of social media, like Marmite you either love it or hate it but we all embrace it and let’s just skip right to it and say that pretty much everyone uses it! Use them to your advantage because they’re free advertising space!

If you are in a small team, it might be wise to limit yourself to a few key channels rather than trying to be everywhere at once. Cover 1 or 2 channels well rather than spreading yourself too thin, Your target audience will most likely have a preferred platform, so that is a good place to start. You’ll need to have a content plan in place before you start and this applies to print as well!

The main social media platforms are:

• Facebook: Probably the best platform for promotions, you can create events, share updates about your event, include a ‘Find Tickets’ link and interact directly with your audience. Creating groups is now a core feature of Facebook and a great way to get your audience talking to each other. Because honestly, who likes a silent disco!
• Twitter: Twitter is great for sending out rapid updates and the best place to develop a communal hashtag for your event that people can use or search for.
• Instagram: A very visual channel, this is perfect for sharing teaser images, previous event images and behind-the-scenes shots. With live feeds now being popular on both Instagram and Facebook, it’s a great way to inject some video into your event, be that in the buildup or on the day.
• LinkedIn: The professional one of the bunch, if your event is focused on business and professionals, this is the one for you. There are communities interested in specific topics, so fit your promotions around these interests.