The Right Way to Market an Event

0:00We're going to talk about the right way to market an event. literally I'm in the midst of this right now got the next event coming up in Beverly Hills August 7th to the 9th and I was talking to the people that run the War Room Mastermind it's not called War Room anymore they got the Rise Mastermind, Traffic and Conversion Sienna and team is she running your next event? yeah her squad is running the next event I guess I can just go into what they've been telling me I'm curious on how you're marketing it because I've seen a big shift in your events the first few weren't bad the last one I was at, it's continually gotten better, but the last one I was at was really amazing.

0:40And I don't know if you remember, I wasn't necessarily hating, but you're just like, Hey, we're going to do three events a year. You're going to come to them. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know how many of these I'm going to come to. But after the last one, and even the one before I was like, Oh, they're getting really good. But the last one for sure, I was like, Hey dude, when are you going to do the next event? I'm at the point where I'm actually looking forward to the events you're hosting. I appreciate that. Well, by the way, the three, now I'm just going to do like one a year, I think moving forward.

1:09And that's it. It's a lot of work for these events. I'll say that. Like anybody that does events for a living, my God, hats off to you. You should just do it in LA. It's more convenient for you. Yeah, I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to keep doing it here, here in this area. So anyway, what they told me, so this is really coming from Deanna's team, Evolve Events. So I'm working with Ryan, her son, and also Heather, which is on her team. And they said what works really well is intuitively, I'm like, oh, duh, they run a lot of ads. So for traffic and conversion, they go to town on ads. It's mostly meta ads, so Facebook and Instagram.

1:38Are they the ones who run the ads? They don't run the ads. No, it's like the people that are throwing the event, they run the ads. So for us right now, what we're doing is literally we just turned on ads yesterday, but we're not going to run them for too long because we capped the event. But we are doing 75 % on meta and 25 % on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn has event ads too. Which ones are doing better? are the LinkedIn ads? Too early to say right now. But what is the early tracking showing when it comes to visitors and leads? Too early to say, like literally we just launched it. So I haven't looked yet.

2:06So I will, we'll come back to, Oh, Hey, come back and listen again because there will be data. But, but what else does she do to, so traffic and conversion, if they're running as I'm assuming a large chunk of their audience is repeat attendees. So there's retargeting for sure. Lookalike audiences makes a lot of sense too, because you already have past attendees and people that you've approved. And what, what also makes a lot of sense is email too. So we already have a list of people that have been there before. And so we send an email of like, Oh, these people are actually going to speak. These are the people that you can look forward to meeting.

2:40Here are the activities. Are you going to sneeze? No, he's going to yawn. I'm making him tired guys. So I'm just tired. My kids kept me up late last night. So anyway, that email is a big part of it because you want to keep building this excitement up to it. And here's another thing I'll tell you. I I learned this from Jason Lemkin and other conferences too. If you want to move ticket sales, the thing that moves it is email plus price going up. Price increases. I used to have an event called Twist Up back in the day. Didn't do well. When did you have an event? Yeah, we bought an event company for like a hundred and something thousand dollars.

3:11Yeah, what happened to that? Didn't work out. Mistake. Lost some money. And the easiest way we got sales was emails. Letting people know every time we had a really amazing speaker sending an email blast saying like, Like so-and-so speaker's coming, this is what I'm going to talk about, click here to register. And also constantly telling people the price is going to go up on this day. Make sure you register, get your ticket before the price goes up. Those two things help generate a lot of revenue. Yeah, it's about marketing the marketable moments. Because oftentimes if you're doing the event, like for example, we're going to have an activity.

3:43There's going to be a dinner and there's going to be different people coming. And for my events, to Neil's point, it's not so much about the speakers as it is about the attendees. I just want to make sure it's the highest caliber attendees. So there's great business people, media people, marketing people there. But also a lot of, I love talking about YPO and EO. There's a lot of people in these groups because they've been indoctrinated a certain way. And when we had dinner last time, Neil met a couple of these people. And yeah, that's why he liked it. It wasn't even about the events or it wasn't even about like the weather.

4:12It's not even about the food. It's not even about the speakers. It's just about the people at the end of the day. So I'm trying to think if there's anything else to add there. Those are the high levels. I think those are the main ways to market an event. People talk about a lot of different strategies, but these are the main ways. SMS too. SMS too. I would say most of the strategies that people use to market an event, like organic social posts or SEO, they're just not effective strategies for something that's happening at a specific date and then it ends. Yeah. Basically, you have to create the fanfare leading up to it.

4:45And oh, here's one more helpful thing I'll share before taking off. So what they told me was like, look in kind of recent years really last year or so the way it works now is people won't register ahead of time it's really the last 30 days that it's a blitz and everyone starts to come in the last 30 days and even the last seven days yeah yeah yeah yeah like everyone's like getting excited about it i'm making neil tired guys so we're gonna leave this episode five stars though make sure you give us a review rating and review five star reviews really appreciate it thank you guys very much