For many businesses and events, digital marketing is key. Online ads and social media marketing have become incredibly accurate and act as a measurable tool for reaching your event’s target audience.
But what if you want to create something real? Something more tangible?
To keep your event and its brand at the front of your audience’s mind, you can cover an entire spectrum of marketing techniques, including complimenting your digital marketing efforts with offline marketing campaigns.
There’s still an abundance of ways to engage with your local audience and regional fans in a tangible way. Here are a few great ways to start:
Be where your fans are
When creating a physical offline marketing campaign, it’s always important to think about not just how you’re going to reach your fans and audience but also where you’ll reach them.
For example, if you’re running a punk rock gig, are there any shops or bars you think your audience might go to? You could consider targeting tattoo parlours or skate shops or anywhere that might play music similar to yours. It’s about hitting the locations that suit your niche.
By doing a bit of research, you’ll be able to get in front of your potential audience organically. You won’t just be reaching out to their existing customers; they’ll also be reaching yours.
Great design creates excitement
Creating posters and flyers has always been an essential part of event promotion, and they can still be incredibly effective alongside a digital campaign. Having a well-designed poster can set the tone of your event and is a great tool to communicate with your potential audience visually.
They can inform and motivate ticket buyers and become a part of your event’s physical history.
There are 2 things you’ll need to consider when creating your flyers and posters:
- Design: What kind of emotion and message do you want to convey? Punk? Corporate? Professional? Handmade? You can use this design on all your physical marketing materials as well as your online campaigns. This ensures your event branding is consistent and instantly recognisable.
- Distribution: Posting your flyers on telephones poles won’t quite be enough. It would be best to have your posters and flyers exactly where your potential audience will be.
You can even use social media to reach out to brands or businesses that share an audience with you and ask if they’d be happy sharing your posters and flyers on your behalf, creating a partnership with them.
Offer meet and greets
If you have a well-known speaker or artist performing at your event, you have the potential to hold VIP meet and greet experiences at your venue. It’s great to do this in advance of your event, as it acts as an effective way to reach and engage your audience and generate excitement for your event. It’s also a great opportunity to sell tickets!
If you manage to secure a partnership with any local businesses, you could reach out to them and see if they’d be interested in holding the meet and greet at their location. This way, you’re where your fans are, and it’s mutually beneficial to both you and your partner.
Create a contest with ticket giveaways
Nothing gets people quite as excited as a freebie does! Contests are a great way to promote your event and act as a great way to engage with your audience.
- You can use your potential partners by doing ticket giveaways that require visiting their place of business. Or create a prize that’s a combination of your tickets and maybe a gift card (or similar) prize from your partner. Once again, creating a mutually beneficial deal.
- Offer tickets to your local radio station for giveaways. Radios may charge for the promotional privilege, but if you choose a station whose audience would match yours, it can be a great way to reach that specific audience in your local area. Spending that money could be a great investment to increase your ticket sales.
- You can combine physical and offline promotions. Create a social media contest where they have the opportunity to win tickets by posting a photo of themselves with your physical poster in the wild.
In an increasingly digital world, there are still plenty of options when it comes to marketing your event offline. All of the best marketing strategies combine multiple marketing techniques, advertising your event online and in the real world.
