`You must’ve heard the famous saying, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to witness it, does it even matter?”
Well, the same goes for event promotions. If you organize an event and don’t promote it, will it even happen without attendees? But promoting events is no easy task if you have a limited budget. Fortunately, we have curated plenty of ways to market your event planning business for free.
While as simple as promoting an event planning business sounds in theory, actually planning and executing the whole strategy is not. Of course, we all have seen large-scale events marketing and selling but you’re probably thinking, I don’t have that kind of budget! With a guest list, decor, catering, venue, and millions of other details anything could go wrong. You should ensure before the event that the checklist is right on track and that everything is foolproof.
Approach And Ask
To market your event planning business for free get familiar with local event venue vendors in your area. Approach them and ask if you can interest them in any of your business ideas and leave some of your brochures with them. If you have already worked at the same venue and the owner was pleased with the decor you arranged for the client, you can go ahead and ask them to share photos of your work on their social media handles. Most of the time venue owners will do this gladly in order to get more bookings with prospective clients.
Volunteer Work
Almost every school sports team, science club, drama club, and other extracurricular activity has a separate organization, booster club. Booster clubs help in raising money for a particular activity to absorb the activity cost on behalf of the students. However, many times these clubs lack support and funding. And that’s where you swoop in as a planner!
This is the perfect opportunity to market your event planning business for free. Some people will even give your business an honorable mention on the back of a fundraiser program. Another way to get your name out in the volunteer work community is to contact local women’s organizations and charities. These organizations often celebrate yearly galas, by volunteering for such organizations you will be able to get more recognition for your brand and also you’re helping in the celebration of a worthy cause. And of course, there are celebration events for the less fortunate. When working in all these don’t be afraid and give your event planning business a shameful plug.
On a side note, remember to only offer services that you can afford. Avoid offerings that will cost you out-of-pocket expenses.
Get Digital
To market your event planning business for free, expand your footprints by ensuring that your business has an online presence. Create your business account on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram and add a link to your website. Always avoid posting anything personal on these handles. Engage your social media visitors with tips, photos, and videos of your previous events. You can also take help from online directory listings – Yelp, Google Local, Yahoo Local, and Bing Business. And of course, there is YouTube to have a little extra fun by creating and uploading videos. You can also host online fun contests for the attendees. Live tweet an event and create your own hashtags.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is effective and comparatively low cost when thinking of marketing your event planning business for free. Now the simple question here is, how you can obtain email addresses in order to promote your name? You can create a word document that requests email addresses, and have visitors fill them out in exchange for your brochure and other business information. With this, you can send invitations for your upcoming events and other exciting info about your event business. Some of the key points that you should keep in mind when sending out emails:
- Prepare a mailing list that should be segmented into perspectives, previous clients, and current clients. This will help determine the type of content you want to send out according to the ideal end goal.
- Put together tailored content for each segment of your mailing list.
- Try to keep the content short and informative with an engaging subject line.
- Make sure you’re not bombarding your consumers with multiple emails every day.
- Mails should be a mixture of promotional and informative content to avoid monotony.
Referrals
Referrals are mostly one of the best sources of warm leads. It’s like a closed mouth can never get fed, you have to ask for referrals to get higher sales. People are generally more open to employing a person they’ve received recommendations for. When asking for referrals you can also incentivize them by offering a discount or free service. With a strong online presence, you’ll get free word of mouth. Referrals are big in every business, people tend to trust the services more when it’s recommended by a known person. Over time you will get recognition in the industry, and there’s a good chance that you’ll get more references without even asking.
Do Trade-Offs
This is a trick for event planners who are looking for ways to market their event planning business for free or are tight on budget. Trade-off is promoting other businesses in return for more business and leads for you. For instance, hire a photographer to do the shoot for one of your events and in return, they will get to meet more potential clients. This saves you money and also leads to free word of mouth.
Content Marketing
From blog posts to sales video content marketing makes your event business visible and engaging. It’s one of the easiest ways to market your event planning business for free. You can craft blog posts that address the topics you deal with – conferences, company parties, seminars, social events, or festivals. A blog post is also a great way to add regular quality content to your website.
Free Event Business Listing Websites
A lot of people rely on online event guides, some of these business listing websites include the name of your event planning business for free. Besides using the right SEO schemes, email marketing, and social media listing websites can make it super Google-friendly with a regular ample amount of visitors. Some names to check out for website listings – Facebook events, 10Times, Evvnt, Eventbrite, Yelp, Eventcrazy, and Allconferences.
Bonus Tip
Promoting your event planning business for free is a lot like juggling. There are countless moving tasks to oversee. To save you from all these exhausting tasks we have a one-place solution for you. Picktime, an online event scheduling software rated the best in the industry as a leader, serving the happiest customers, and a trusted vendor by Capterra, G2, and Crozdesk. It’s a powerful software designed to handle your event reminders, payments, and staff and client management.
With Picktime you get a personalized booking page for your business which you can access from any location – all you need is the internet and a browser. You can easily manage all your event bookings in one place with a few clicks. Some other remarkable features of Picktime are:
- One-on-one & Group bookings
- 24×7 email support
- Payments & Invoice
- Real-time calendar (Google/Apple/Outlook)
- SMS & Email Reminders
- Detailed reports of revenue & other business activities
To know more, sign up today and start promoting your event planning business for free.
Event business promotion doesn’t have to break all your savings. With thorough and systematic planning marketing is a fun task to handle. Make sure to have centralized promotion tactics and start growing your profits.
