You don’t need a lot of money to promote your event.

That sounds wrong. It’s not.

Think about some of the big events that happen:

• The Olympics
• The Super Bowl
• The Oscars

They all have millions of marketing dollars primed and ready to spread the word to every human being remotely interested in watching.

And they don’t just have deep pockets. They also have the advantage of name recognition.

This shouldn’t get you down. Because there are thousands of events getting serious marketing ROI on a bootstrapped budget.

While promoting on a small budget might seem challenging, it’s actually an incredible opportunity. Why? 

The smaller you are, the more nimble you are. And by using some 21st Century technology, you can look just as big as the marketing whales out there.

Between your speakers, attendees, email list, and social media followers, you have an ocean of people waiting to help you promote at a minimal cost to you. And it’s all thanks to user-generated video content. 

Let’s dive into how you can harness the power of your audience and promote your event like crazy.‍

Get promotional content from speakers

Your speakers make your event. Many people are attending just because of who’s presenting. So showcase your fantastic speakers in your marketing!

Create speaker topic teasers

Reach out to your speakers and ask them to record a quick video teaser about what they will discuss. This will get viewers interested in the speaker and the topic.

It could be as short as a quote or a jaw dropping fact. On social media, sometimes the shorter the video, the better.

Speakers are most likely super busy, so it’s much easier to ask them to record a 15 second video compared to a 5 minute one.

Teasers can still be persuasive even when they’re short!

Ask your speakers to share their videos

Your speakers have their own following (they wouldn’t be speaking at your event if they didn’t). 

Once a speaker records a video, get double the return from it and ask them to share the video with their own network. A speaker’s own audience is low hanging fruit for getting more attendees to your event. Get to that orchard and start picking.

Get promotional content from employees

Pull back your event curtain and showcase the unsung heroes: your employees.

They work your event for a reason. Let them share their passion by recording video testimonials about why they love your event or juicy “behind the scenes” stories.

Get promotional content from influencers

Tap into your event niche with relevant influencers. Their whole thing is talking about a specific topic. As long as that topic fits within your event wheelhouse, you just made a friend! 

Influencers come in all forms. They could be on:

• Blogs
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Twitter
• Email lists

Target your outreach depending on your event demographic. For example, an event about senior living facilities might not get as much traction on TikTok from the twelve year old on there.

If you’ve befriended the influencer, then they will spread the word to their tribe. Word of mouth marketing is huge, especially to capture the excitement that an event can bring. 

If the influencer won’t promote for free, sometimes it doesn’t cost much for them to post. And “microinfluencers” actually have a better ROI than bigger influencers, so you win twice.

Attract Video Shares with a Social Media Contest

People love saving money. It’s human nature. So why not embrace your humanity with a giveaway? Let the internet be your hype machine!

You have a couple ways you could go with the giveaway.

Free ticket

You could offer a free ticket to your event. All someone has to do to enter the giveaway is post a video saying why they want to go to your event. Maybe even throw in your unique event hashtag so you can easily track all the video submissions.

People will submit videos, their network will see those videos, and from there you could get shares and more submissions and more exposure to your event. It’s all organic promotion from passionate people. And all it costs you is one ticket!

Registration discount

If giving away a free ticket is too much for you, you could always offer a discount on registration. Maybe encourage people to post a video about how excited they are about your event and if they share the link with you, you’ll give them a discount on their ticket.

That way, everyone wins. Your fans save money, and you get affordable press. 

VIP experience

Who wouldn’t want exclusive access to speakers and green room munchies? The bigger the giveaway, the higher the engagement.

Figure out how much it would cost to roll out the red carpet for one lucky person. If the math works for you, then spread the word about your VIP giveaway. 

Offer swag

Totes. Water bottles. T-shirts. It’s a classic promotional approach, and maybe people would be willing to post a video for some.

But think about it: after reading about the VIP experience option, do you really only want to offer a free water bottle in exchange for posting a video?

This is your chance to show off how awesome your event is, so show your generosity (at the very least, throw in a water bottle koozie).

‍Showcase testimonials from last year’s attendees‍

You have last year’s attendees’ emails from when they bought a ticket. Why not reach out to them and ask for video testimonials?

Authentic marketing sells, and you can’t get more authentic than having a real person talk about how much they enjoyed your event.‍

Build an Online Event Community‍

A lot of people attend events in hopes of networking. Make it easy for them with an online community.

Networking is a whole lot easier when you can watch short videos of potential contacts. Allow attendees to upload an introduction video of themselves: 

• Name
• Company
• What field they specialize in
• What they want to get out of your event

It’s great for networking, but it’s also great research for you. You can learn about the exact kind of people attending and hyper target that market.

You could even encourage speakers to participate with video submissions. Set up video Q&As where the community can submit video questions and have your speakers answer them.

Once you build in referral incentives for community members, then suddenly you have the network effect working for you. The more referrals, the more exposure, and the more ticket sales.

Conclusion‍

These are all great ways to get high quality content you can use to promote your event. But the big question is, how do you produce and organize all the marketing videos?

Well wouldn’t you know, Capsule can help you out.

With Capsule, you can create incredible videos featuring your speakers, attendees, and influencers with your own branding and instant editing. And you get all the videos submitted to one place, so you don’t have to worry about one falling through the cracks somewhere.

A Capsule video campaign is the easiest way to capture the excitement for your event and broadcast it to the world. Use the videos in email campaigns, on social media, or your own event landing page.

However you use the videos, you can have confidence that you’re getting high engagement from passionate people.

So what are you waiting for? 

Try Capsule free for 14 days and supercharge your event promotion at an affordable price.

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