We all love fall and the festivity that it brings. With the season waiting for us right around the corner, it makes sense to plan ahead for the events you will be hosting and organizing.
Oktoberfest is full of joy, laughter, food, and of course, beer. An event so widely celebrated deserves to be marketed properly! In this article we’ve listed all the nifty marketing hacks you can implement to kickstart a successful and happening event.
Social media for the win
Your best bet at promoting anything these days is social media. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube, just pick your warrior and strategize according to your platform. If you’re new to social media marketing then don’t worry, we will start with the easy stuff. Line to add: Diving into the world of Real Estate Social Media Marketing can initially seem daunting, but with the right guidance, it can become your most powerful tool.
For Twitter, curate a couple of hashtags exclusive to your event and make sure you consistently use them in all your tweets. Post live updates, pre-hype one liners, event itineraries even. It’s important to create memorable hashtags so more people use them frequently (and correctly). Once these hashtags are established on Twitter, you can use the same ones for your Instagram content as well. This will help show consistency across platforms.
Your Instagram account not only has to look professional, but it also has to be pretty and relatable. Use free online resources to create posts ranging from Oktoberfest flyers to Instagram stories. As well as add some videos to your Instagram by using video makers. It’s super easy to make any changes in templates that are already designed and ready to go. This not only saves you from hiring a design team, but gets work done faster and for free. This gives you time to redirect focus on other strategies like influencer marketing.
Reach out to multiple influencers from your locality and invite them for a collaboration. Some may be willing to work on a barter system (event passes in exchange for content) while others will be more interested in paid promotions. Pick and choose who to work with based on your budget. But remember, don’t work with too many people with similar niches. You want to ensure diversity! At the same time, be wary of the age groups you’re targeting. Can’t market a beer festival to children of course.
Drive the Facebook audience to Instagram
You not only want people to be aware of Oktoberfest, but you also need to make sure they don’t forget about it. Fall is packed with one event after the other, making it a point to stand out. To send reminders without coming off as an annoying seller, simply create an event on Facebook. The event notification will make people aware, and naturally they will follow up for details on Instagram (people always want more visuals!).
Once they decide to ‘attend’ your event, Facebook will do most of the reminding for you. If you have footage from last year’s Oktoberfest then make a highlights reel and use that to boost interest. This is also a great way of predicting attendees – these details help a lot while making arrangements.
And make sure your event details have everything covered. Information gaps are annoying and tend to drive away customers. The date, time, venue, everything should be easily accessible. Let people know what to expect. If your event will have games, food, shows, and music, then tell everyone! These are your selling points and this is the information that matters.
Look into online ticketing
A common mistake people make is advertising an event and then creating an inconvenience that makes people lose interest… immediately.
Going to buy tickets in person is so 2010. Keep up with the times! Don’t create an inconvenience when it is so easily avoidable. If most of your marketing is online then naturally people will assume that tickets will also be available online. Turns out, 69% of customers are more likely to book with a company if they offer online ticketing. That’s too big of a chunk to ignore.
You have to market an experience, and this experience starts right when a customer decides to buy that event pass. The event experience needs to be seamless start to finish, and when we say start we mean the very start. You can even sell tickets directly from Instagram, it’s quite easy to set up. People will already be watching your reels and stories, how convenient would it be to just buy a ticket from the same site too?
Wrapping it up
Oktoberfest is already a very cherished time in itself. The festive fall spirit will naturally open doors for your business and it will be a full house before you know it.
Just remember to have fun and document everything!