As a culturally diverse and vibrant country, Australia is home to all kinds of events, from community events, business events, conventions and festivals. They all provide a rich experience for a whole range of potential attendees. 

If you are planning on holding an event in the new year, ensuring that your event stands out and strikes a chord with its visitors will be a main factor to its success. 

On any given day, multiple events are competing for consumer attention and importantly, attendance. The event marketing strategy must actively sell the experience, present a compelling reason to attend, and create a sense of excitement. Put simply, the ‘buzz’ absolutely must deliver a call to action and translate into ticket sales and attendance numbers. 

The BBS team has helped to promote everything from community and cultural events to major conferences and awards programs. To help build awareness and boost your event publicity before, during and after, we suggest the following: 

Time is of the essence

When planning an event, it’s critical to consider its timing in relation to other events and holidays, in order to help maximise opportunities for media coverage. Settling on your date well in advance will enable your brand or organisation plenty of time to plan logistics and the media program, while also checking for potential conflicts on the calendar. 

If your event is planned to launch around other important events, like the Christmas or Easter holidays, you’ll need to think of clever ways to cut through the festive noise. 

Likewise, if your event falls around the same time as other major happenings, such as elections and major sporting events, you may have difficulty securing media coverage unless you can make your event really stand out and grab attention.

Finding an interesting media angle for your launch can be a great way to get journalists interested. For example, if you’re launching a music festival right before Christmas, why not invite Santa along for a Christmas surprise?

In a world where everyone has access to social media at their fingertips, creating a fun stunt can be a great way to boost your early event publicity. Your attendees might even snap a fun video for their social media following, spreading the word about your event to a wide variety of viewers. 

Research early

It is absolutely critical to prepare and research well in advance to make sure your event campaign gets off on the right foot. 

In event media planning, it’s important to really understand the specific community, industry or group that you are hoping to attract. You’ll need to do some deep research into your target demographic to understand their wants and needs and find out how your event can be relevant to them. 

Knowing your target demographic well is especially important when developing your media strategy, to determine where potential attendees receive their news and information and the most relevant outlets and platforms to engage with.

Doing this will give you a clear idea of what needs to be delivered and will also enable you to plan media tactics that will resonate and boost engagement for your brand or organisation. 

Harnessing the perfect talent 

As part of the research and planning process for your event, you should pay particular attention to who will be involved in the promotion and how to best prepare them for this role. 

Whether an organiser, competitor, performer, exhibitor or event partner, it’s important to gather as much information about those who might be interviewed or profiled, in order to tailor the best spokesperson for each media outlet or opportunity and to ensure they feel confidant and comfortable in doing so. 

In recent years, many brands and events have also engaged official ambassadors or influencers to help build event awareness and publicity. With careful consideration of their relevance to and potential reach of your potential attendees, this can be a great way to reach new audiences, boost attendance and help grow your fanbase. 

To make sure each media opportunity is a successful one, you must devote a good amount of time to crafting the messaging and critical event information that will be shared by your selected talent. 

BBS has extensive experience in media relations and publicity, please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss how we can help you with your event today.