Event promotion is the process of marketing an event and spreading the word. It is vital for driving event awareness, attendance rates, and, most importantly, ensuring a positive return on investment.
If you’ve read our recent Guide to Event Marketing, you’ll know that organising an event is no small feat; it requires a significant investment of time and money! With a lot riding on the success, great event promotion is non-negotiable.
Successful event promotions take on the project from all angles – from email marketing campaigns and in-depth blogs to partnering with influencers and curating content for social media. In this guide, we discuss the ins and outs of event promotion, including its importance, strategies and platforms to consider, and a case study.
Why is Event Promotion Essential?
Event marketing may offer an invaluable opportunity to connect with audiences, but event promotion is the key to unlocking its potential.
Let’s look at the numbers:
87% of C-suite executives say live events are the most effective form of marketing (Bizzabo, 2024)
73% of event organisers believe hybrid and in-person events are crucial to their business success
81% of marketers use event marketing to generate leads and sales
47% of people in the UK say they hear about events primarily through social media (YouGov, 2024)
Event promotion:
Builds event awareness
Creates excitement & interest
Strengthens brand awareness
Generates ticket sales
Done right, it drives momentum before your event even begins – and helps ensure your audience isn’t just aware, but actually excited to show up.
At the concept stage of your event planning, you will have likely identified your target audience. This comes into play again at the promotion stage, as you tailor your strategy and materials to reach and attract the right crowd.
It is important not to assume who your audience might be, and instead to use real market research, consumer data, and a buyer persona. Over the years, many brands have learned this lesson the hard way. You only have to look as far as less successful ventures like Kellogg’s Pop-Tart World or the week-long rebrand of Gap to know that a strong understanding of the target audience is vital for success.
🎯 A quick tip: Use tools like YouGov Profiles, Meta Audience Insights, or GA4 to build an audience profile based on real interests, behaviours and demographics.
The target audience should influence:
Event branding & messaging
Content, tone & personality
Imagery, colour palettes & styles
Platforms for promotion – e.g. social media preferences by age demographics
Influencers, sponsors & collaborations
Strategic timing is paramount when it comes to successful event promotion. Too late, and you risk missing out on prospective customers; too early, and you risk audiences fatiguing and losing interest.
There is a lot of mixed messages online about when exactly to start promoting, and truthfully, the right answer will depend on your specific event goals. However, as a rule of thumb, your event promotion should begin at least 10–12 weeks before the event day.
📈 According to Eventbrite, 43% of event organisers say most of their ticket sales happen in the final two weeks – but early promotion is essential to build pipeline, retarget interest, and secure partnerships in advance.
By the time you reach the promotion stage, your event branding and content should be well-established. This allows you to use clear and impactful promotion from the get-go as you build excitement and awareness. From this point until the event day, continue posting, reminding and building excitement until the actual launch.
Launch (10–12 weeks) – Introduce the event through email marketing, social media, content marketing, sponsors, press and paid advertising.
Boost (6–8 weeks) – Offer early-bird discounts and send the next targeted email whilst creating excitement with social media, content, influencer marketing and paid advertising.
Create Urgency (2–4 weeks) – Establish a sense of urgency to register and start counting down to show day.
Event Arrival (final week) – In the days leading up to the event, remind guests of any important information.
Show Day – Welcome your visitors and share opening day content.
Post-Show (1–2 weeks) – Share your event highlights, show-day content and footage, and express gratitude to everyone who attended.
Successful events always have a strong landing page, including absolutely everything visitors might need to know about the event. Think about your who, what, why, where, and when.
You should include:
What the event is about
Your story, who you are and why you are qualified to host
Date & time
Location/address
Ticket pricing & booking info
Accessible registration
A call to action
Links to relevant social media channels
Imagery & videos from previous editions (where relevant)
The event timeline & itinerary
📊 Stat to know: 83% of attendees visit an event website before deciding whether to buy a ticket (Freeman Global Events Report). That’s why your page needs to convert at first glance.
Once you have communicated all the important information, focus on funnelling the page. This involves structuring the landing page so that it guides visitors to take the desired action, whether that’s purchasing tickets, increasing brand awareness, or registering.
After this, optimise the site for search engines to ensure you gain the highest visibility and reach. Utilise SEO research tools like SEMrush, Majestic or Answer the Public to identify popular search terms. Focus on strong content, long-tail keywords, meta descriptions and meta tags. If you have run previous editions, make sure to incorporate photos and videos, and tag these properly. People love to see an event in action.
Finally, don’t be afraid to draw inspiration from other successful events when creating your first landing page. They’re successful for a reason!
We recommend taking a look at the following:
BrightonSEO – Clear layout, strong messaging, and CTA
Southampton International Boat Show – Captivating visuals, clear messaging and clear CTA
Wake the Tiger Bristol – Great visuals and clear funnelling to ticket purchases
Listing sites are a valuable tool for event promotion and discovery, designed to generate traffic, awareness and make direct ticket sales.
The sites are pre-established and usually rank well on Google, which can immediately boost traffic. Also, they typically run their own ads and email marketing, which can help you gain additional viewership. Additionally, listing sites use tracking and target cookies, so they can recommend your event to relevant crowds.
These capabilities make listing sites a simple and low-effort way to gain great viewership, brand awareness and ticket sales. Not to mention, when listing on respected sites like Eventbrite, Evvnt, Facebook Events, and MeetUp, you gain trust and credibility merely by association.
It’s also worth exploring listing sites local to your event, or even the venue hosting. For example, the NEC Birmingham, Olympia, and ExCeL London serve as great listing sites for their event portfolios.
Similarly to landing pages, listing sites should be clear, captivating and informative, featuring all relevant event info. You may have a limited word count, so ensure messaging is both clear and captivating.
Don’t forget to build an email marketing campaign for your event. We touched on email marketing in the event promotion timeline, as it is vital for awareness. Refer back to this as a timing guide.
📧 According to Campaign Monitor, email marketing delivers an ROI of £36 for every £1 spent — and when personalised, emails drive 6x higher transaction rates.
Before launching your campaign, you need an email marketing platform such as Campaign Master, Mailchimp or DotDigital. You should also have a relevant, established email list. If you use a generic list, you risk the content falling flat, so it is important to filter your contacts for the event.
Once you have an established platform and contact list, it’s time to begin. You don’t want your communications to feel spammy or annoying, so focus on curating high-quality content and forging meaningful connections with your audience.
Across your 10–12 week lead-up, schedule the following emails:
Introducing the event
Sharing event details & info
Driving ticket sales with early bird discount & ticket offers
Creating urgency, near kickoff
Event day announcement
Reflections & follow-ups
Focus on making each of these emails well-structured, compelling, and personalised. People can sense a generic email from a mile off, and simple details like a name can significantly enhance authenticity.
Social media will be your best friend when promoting your event. It’s budget-friendly, offers brilliant reach capabilities, provides real-time engagement statistics and has long-term value.
📱 47% of UK consumers discover events through social media (YouGov). And TikTok is fast becoming the go-to for Gen Z event discovery, with viral clips now directly driving ticket sales.
Use your target audience when deciding which channels to use. When you’re promoting on the right platforms to the right people, your ads are not an inconvenience falling on deaf ears – they’re useful, relevant content.
Make sure your social media content is high-quality and perfect the messaging. Tone, personality and language styles should be consistent across posts and platforms. Moreover, ensure the content is engaging. Use a combination of video content, graphics and photography to maintain interest and share valuable information.
Influencer marketing has been all the rage in event promotion, as it can produce powerful results. People love to be like their idols – from their dress sense and hobbies to the events they attend. When you partner with influencers, you can earn trust and favour among their audiences, accessing a new market.
Before selecting an influencer, it’s important to conduct thorough research. The face you put to your brand is only as good as their most recent behaviour. You don’t need a huge name to be successful, but the influencer should be relevant to the target audience.
If you have someone reputable and relevant in mind, here are a few ways you can use influencer marketing:
Build excitement on social media through sponsored posts
Make an event appearance that can be used to gain press attention and inspire attendance
Convert serious leads at the event through one-to-one demos or conversations
Serve as a keynote speaker
🎤 Example: Toy Fair London partnered with Michael McIntyre to promote a new collectable. The campaign went viral, with crowds gathering around the stand and the brand gaining extensive press coverage and ROI.
Sponsors also bring great value, as they often provide financial support, expertise and access to valuable customer bases. For the best chance of securing a partnership, contact your prospective sponsors early, with a detailed event plan and profit projections.
Content marketing is arguably one of the most exciting aspects of event promotion, as you get to write all about the event you’ve worked so hard to create.
Use your blog section to share more in-depth and insightful updates on your event and optimise this content to rank well on search engines. A little SEO research beforehand can help you select relevant long-tail keywords. These can be used to optimise the blog for search engines, which improves ranking and traffic. The blogs can then be shared across social media!
🎥 Reminder: Video is 12x more likely to be shared than text and images combined (Insivia). So pair blogs with visuals for best results.
Variety is key to engagement. Make sure, alongside written content, you incorporate videos and photography in the format your audiences will relate to most! It can be useful to shoot both short and longer videos, to keep all audiences hooked.
Everybody loves a good deal, and events are no exception. Giveaways and ticket offers are a practical way to make ticket sales and gain traction for the event.
Here are some giveaway ideas with tickets as the prize:
Organise a post that viewers share to enter
Create a hashtag contest where viewers share their photos and videos across social media, using the hashtag to enter
Use a tag-a-friend post to gain traction
Many organisers also use ticket tiers or early bird discounts to encourage earlier registrations. This is a great way to secure initial ticket sales, and you can share the deals across social media and within your email marketing.
First, develop a timeline with key deadlines. From this point, you can schedule welcome emails and automate reminders and follow-ups based on certain triggers or dates.
Introduce potential attendees with a welcome email that includes event details. Following your initial contact, automate reminder emails and send additional information to keep audiences engaged and informed.
Many buyers can spot an automated email from a mile off, so it is worth personalising the content where possible. Even small details like a person’s name can make a difference, though greater personalisation usually warrants greater open and click-through rates.
The London Marathon, organised by London Marathon Events, is one of the greatest examples of a successful event in the UK.
Thanks to great event promotion, the London Marathon has seen exponential growth and has evolved from a standard race to an annual set date across the globe. It’s now surpassed just running. The application process for the London Marathon is more comparable to securing tickets at Glastonbury Festival than your average running event. In fact, in 2025, the event broke the Guinness World Record for the largest number of finishers in a marathon.
Though some of the London Marathon’s success is organic, much of it is high-quality event promotion, prioritising title sponsorship, memorable experiences and a community-driven approach.
Sponsors – Works with TCS, New Balance, Shokz, Lucozade, HubSpot, Ford and more to fund and promote the event
Charity Focus – Drives positive press and mass community involvement
Social Media – Leveraged by 57,000 runners and millions of viewers – each sharing their stories online
Influencers & Celebs – From Olympians to influencers, the event draws major names each year
Consistency – Since 1981, it’s been promoted annually with high standards and growing visibility
Successful event marketing requires a multi-faceted approach, tailored to your specific event and goals. By incorporating elements like email campaigns, listing sites, content marketing, influencers and sponsors, you can create great event visibility, traction and attendance rates, maximising your return on investment.
Don’t forget, if you feel you need more expertise or support, we have a range of event marketing courses to help you reach your goals.
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