It has been a while since I have wrote in this blog, so I
thought I would give an update on how my first 2 events went and big and little
things I have picked up. I have read and listened to a lot of different
business people about what to expect when starting a business, and how you
REALLY learn about starting a business once you have started. I have read a lot
about event promotion and things to try and endless blog posts from so called
experts on how to really create a buzz about your event. I am going to share a
few insights I have since starting this venture. I want to be clear that being
a start up, I am certainly no expert and I am still learning the ropes, so
please feel free to share your insights with me too!
Facebook ads
– great tool if used correctly
As we all know, Facebook is a big part of modern day society
and we are all guilty of maybe spending too much time strolling through our
feeds. Facebook make BILLIONS through advertising revenue, so when you see
these groups which say ‘sign here to keep Facebook free’, pay no attention to
them. Why would Facebook cut their user base, which they make so much revenue
advertising to via big brands? And even if they did start charging people, a
competitor would snap all the users that would refuse to pay. You probably
notice all sorts of stuff coming up on our feeds, such as an exciting event
happening near you or the new pair of Adidas trainers or even showing you that
a cool new indie band are playing a gig near you. Facebook have a wealth of
information on every single user, such as things they ‘like’, things they
‘share’ and even pages you look at. We used Facebook ads to promote the event
with an Olympic gymnast Beth Tweddle. To set up your advert, you choose your
audience, this includes: location, age, pages you like and things you have
shown interest in. Our advert targeting all ages in the Manchester area who are
interested in gymnastics, sports and the Olympics. In theory it is a marketers
dream, unlike the old days where you would have to put in a great deal of
research to find this market it is literally at your fingertips with Facebook.
Facebook are very good at budgeting, you can set a budget (as little as £10 )
and put the amount of days you want it to run within that budget. I ran quite a
few different campaigns and got some good response as you pay per clicks. I did
find that you can exhaust the advert a bit; I mean you may notice that you get
the same ad in your feed every day so it isn’t the set if new people you are
advertising to. To counter that, there is a theory that people on average need
3 interactions with a brand before purchasing from them, so maybe repeating the
ad to the same people eventually will lead to ticket sales. I found the key
thing about a Facebook ad is that your ad needs to stand out from the rest. We
are in a situation where we can be overwhelmed with information through the
internet so some things do get lost in translation. For future events, I think
I will look at doing shorter bursts leading up to the event to create
awareness.
Google
Adwords
You have probably noticed when you google things, you get
suggestions at the top and on the side. This is Google Adwords, where companies
basically pay Google to show people their businesses when putting in keywords.
It is clever business, if you google ‘Italian restaurants in Cambridge’, then
it is in the interest of an Italian restaurant in Cambridge to have their ad on
show. It really helps if your website isn’t very high up at rankings in Google.
It shows that 91.25% of Google traffic goes to first page results, so it imperative
to get your website to the first page, so Google Adwords is a good idea to
assist with that. You do pay per click, which naturally doesn’t always equal to
sales so doesn’t guarantee sales. It is very important to make sure your ad
sticks out though, as just like Facebook ads will get lost with all the other
ads. If copyrighting isn’t your thing, may be worth trying out FIVER, to see if
someone with more experience can write something up for you.
Press releases
A great way to get information about your event is sending
press releases to local, regional and even national ( depending on size) newspapers,
news websites and radio stations. A few pointers I have from my experience with
dealing with the press. So you work hard writing up a well worded press
release, ready to send out to all sorts of publications. Here are a few things
to bear in mind:
Don’t send an attachment, put the press release
in the body of the email. Seems simple, however something I didn’t think of.
When you think about it, some editors may not like to open an attachment from
an email address they don’t recognise.
Make it stand out. Stats show that 1,759 press
releases are distributed daily, that is a lot of information to get through for
editors. Make yours stand out, maybe put an image in the flyer too.
F Follow up with a phone call. Emails are great of
course, however are easily ignored. I also found that my emails were going into
people junk boxes, even if you have interacted with them previously. It is worth picking up the phone to check if
they received the press release or offer them more information. You may get response
along the lines of ‘we aren’t interested’, which happens. Don’t take it
personally, just a part of it!
So just a few pointers for you, again not an expert and
always learning but if any of it helps you on your venture then it’s a good
thing!
Will upload some more later this week too!
No comments:
Post a Comment