Publicising your corporate event
The weekly clamour of award shows, product releases, conferences and exhibitions renders it harder than ever to make a target audience sit up and take notice of your corporate event. Good publicity can often be the difference between success and failure. The following is a simple step-by-step process to ensuring your event is preceded by a buzz of anticipatory excitement.
Preparation
Overseeing the organisation of a corporate event is difficult enough without also having to create a sufficient amount of effective publicity. For this reason, a team of workers is necessary for a successful event, with one team member delegated the role of publicity officer. This person should be able to absorb facts quickly and communicate a clear, concise message to your target audience.
Detailed research will help you to understand what event features will attract your target audience. The more feedback that you can gather from potential attendees, the more you can generate publicity that will entice your target audience. As ever with market research, try and avoid asking leading questions, as respondents will often give you the answers that they think you want to hear.
With this research carried out, it is possible to shape your marketing material to match the personality and level of expertise of your target audience. For instance, if your event is for well-informed participants alone, then it will be beneficial to include specific technical information in your marketing material. However, if you were looking to entice the general public also, then it would be wise to tone down the professional jargon when addressing a non-expert audience.
The marketing material for a corporate event often involves plenty of repetition; the same basic information is tweaked slightly over and over again. For this reason, it might well prove useful to prepare at the outset a short text that consists of the following (in order):
- an eye-catching headline
- an interesting and concise description of the event
- key information such as the venue, date, time and your contact details
- supplementary information
This standard text can then be adapted to fit the various promotional materials, such as invitations, newsletters, posters, and press releases. It is essential that all promotional texts consist of good quality writing and editing.
A comprehensive media list should be drawn up beforehand, so that the right people in the right media outlets are aware of your event. Possible contacts include press officers in other companies, trade journals, local and national press, etc. In each case it is important to identify the individuals who are most likely to be interested in covering the event, e.g. the science editor, news editor, or business editor.
Getting Your Message Across
It is important to select the promotional method that will best capture the interest of your target audience. Employing a scattergun publicity campaign that blindly utilises every form of promotion, in the hope that the right people hear your message, is a drain on your resources and finances. The research you conducted on your target audience ought to be of help in deciding which, if any, of the following examples of promotional methods are suitable.
By far the cheapest method of promoting your event is to network with personal and professional contacts, and special interest groups and associations. Creating a buzz about your event in the right circles, can involve just a few phone calls. Interested parties will often be happy to promote the event in their own publicity material.
Personalised invitations can prove effective if the target audience is small and easily definable, or there is a select group of influential individuals (e.g. media, political or business figures) whose attendance will boost the profile of the event.
Direct mailshots, comprising a letter and/or promotional material, can also be utilised if your target audience is easily identified. Using individual contact names if possible will obviously increase the effectiveness of a mailshot considerably. Do not overload your recipients with information by including thick information packs, unless a recipient specifically requests this.
E-marketing is an increasingly popular, and affordable, method of promoting an event. It can involve one-off promotional emails to your contact list or a regular emailed newsletter with news and previews about the forthcoming event. Always bear in mind when you are sending out emails to include the promotional text in the main body of the message, and not as an attachment, as many servers reject messages with attachments from unknown sources.
Besides emailing the people and organisations in your contact list, other e-marketing techniques that will inform a wider audience of an event include:
- setting up a website that is dedicated solely to a specific event. An excellent method of monitoring anticipated attendance at your event is by enabling visitors to the site to register for e-tickets, which will entitle them to a free gift or goodie bag on the day of the event.
- using email distribution groups
- including the event in a free listings website
- getting featured on websites that cover the same topic as your corporate event
If you are seeking to attract the general public, eye-catching and well designed flyers, posters and posters can prove very effective. You need to consider areas, such as public buildings, that your target audience is likely to attend on a regular basis.
Advertising is a sure way to guarantee exposure for an event. The primary consideration when deciding on the media outlet should be identifying the newspaper/website/radio station/magazine/etc that your target audience is most likely to use habitually. Other important factors include the overall readership/leadership figures and of course, the cost of the advertisement. The publicity officer should check whether the media outlet is prepared to put together an item (e.g. article, interview) about the event that is being advertised, as this is often possible.
Writing a Press Release
Press releases are key to grabbing the attention of journalists who, if they decide to cover the event, will in turn increase significantly a corporate event’s exposure.
The following are a few helpful tips when composing your press release:
The headline is the most important element of a press release. It needs to be eye-catching, drawing in the reader’s interest. A common mistake is the overlong headline that seeks to convey too much information; a subheading can be used to expand on your point and allow you to keep the headline short and punchy.
The body of a press release should adhere to the inverted pyramid structure. That is, with the most important questions – the what, why, who, where, when and how – addressed in the initial paragraphs.
The language in a press release should consist of short, concise sentences. Copywriters should avoid overly creative and flowery language, clichés, and unnecessary superlatives and exaggeration. The aim should be to convey the facts in a straightforward and easily understood style. Overly technical jargon should also be avoided unless the press release is aimed at specialist journalists (e.g. a business or science editor). Opinions and promotional language should be conveyed through quotes, and any claims should be backed up with evidence.
Press releases need to be kept brief (about 400 to 600 words generally), as journalists are often pressed for time and will only briefly scan a text in search of an interesting story. And it is essential that vital information such as contact information and a brief description of your company are also included at the end of the press release.
The publicity officer needs to ensure that press releases are distributed well in advance of the event, so that journalists have plenty of time to run a news story, seek an interview or compose a feature length article. It may prove useful to contact the media outlet or two or three days after the press release is sent, to ensure it was received, check whether the journalist is interested in covering the event, and provide any additional information or assistance that is required.
An event organiser need not confine himself or herself to one press release for all media contacts. Different versions can be tempered according to which aspect of an event will interest each type of journalist the most.
