5 Biggest Mistakes Event Marketing PR Pros Make

5 Biggest Mistakes Event Marketing PR Pros Make

Event PR can attract attention, fill seats, add dimension, connect communities, AND spread news. To get the most out of your event marketing PR efforts, don’t make these top five event marketing mistakes.

1. Minimizing stories.

Isn’t one main event release enough? Not when you can stage releases to build up anticipation or customize the releases for each speaker or highlight each audience. One single release can’t propel an entire event’s marketing momentum.

Fix: Plan a series of releases that tell your event’s story, build attendee anticipation, and send traffic [and registrations!] back to your event site.

2. Downsizing details.

Ever been to an event and think “Wow! If I would’ve known how exciting this experience would be, I would’ve invited more people.” Instead, the event press release comes off as a ho-hum who, what, when, where and why. Boring promotions lead to low turnout.

Fix: Detail your release with speakers, sponsors, venue, and agenda highlights that add excitement and interest in exploring more.

3. Going retro.

Believe it or not, people are still sending old school double-spaced press releases as .pdf attachments via email – how retro!

Press releases with a video and pictures outperform the boring copied from Word documents that often appear on websites. Where are the people? What does the venue look like? Show, and tell, us!

Fix: Send a teaser email or tweet with a link to the event’s online newsroom with releases, images and videos.

4. Leading with headlines that don’t grab - anything.

A sure recipe for PR disaster starts with a headline that includes no keywords, no interest, and runs over 80 characters. Yes, people really do send these out every day. Because people pay attention to two things on the Internet, headlines and photos, the long and boring headline gets lost in a sea of more sparkly grabbers.

Fix: Write at least 50 sample headlines and test them with a focus group, along with the search engines, to see how they perform.

5. Ignoring PR’s event marketing potential.

Does PR really have a place in event marketing? After all, you may have emails, a registration site, ads, and direct mailings going out. What can a press release/influencer relations strategy do that all those tactics can’t? Is it really worth the effort?

Fix: Corporations know that PR is one of the best marketing investments they can make. Events with great PR outperform those with none. Going PR-less dramatically reduces visibility. That’s why it’s so important to integrate PR into your event marketing plan. Can’t do it yourself? Call in a professional PR team for a consultation or a campaign that will increase visibility, target media, showcase members/attendees, fill seats and position your event as a must attend for your exact target audience.

About the author:

Barbara Rozgonyi is a frequent MPI speaker / trainer, a strategic event marketing consultant who leads the CoryWest Media team, and a member of MPI-CAC’s MarComm committee. Visit Barbara’s top 50 marketing and PR blog, http://wiredPRworks.com, for tips, tools and tactics that will improve your event marketing and your results.

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