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How to PR your next event

By June 20, 2012January 29th, 2019No Comments

promote-yourselfHow to PR your next event

How many events have you booked this year? I remember the day that Reed Exhibitions was so worried that face to face exhibitions were doomed and virtual exhibitions would take their place but they had nothing to fear because people still love an event.  There’s nothing more gratifying than meeting face to face, eye-balling the company you want to buy from and then moving onto the competition for the next best deal.  For most of my professional life I’ve been promoting every type of event you can imagine from gardening shows like the Chelsea Flower Show, the Sunday Times Food and Wine show, the Consumer Electronics Show, which was purported to be the most successful show for the last 40 years and of course for the last 17 years Reed Exhibitions portfolio of IT events.

 

So how do you maximise your involvement at an event?

Firstly make sure the PR agency promoting the show knows you’re exhibiting.  Contact and find out what PR they’re doing so that you can take advantage of every PR opportunity going. Ask them if you can do something exclusively with the event like a joint survey or an interview with your aspiring CEO or could you do a preview for them?

Remember to promote the event on the bottom of your emails and website.  Contact your entire database and make sure you invite them down to your stand. You’d be surprised how much extra work you’ll get from your present customer base just because you’ve met them again face to face.

Always put press releases in the event Press Office and make them just one page long with the number of your stand printed in huge print on the front page.  Print them off on luminous paper or something that will make them stand-out.

Sponsor the press office or offer to supply them with pens or a cheap give-away that the press will love and probably knowing them, will use forever.

Write regular press releases about all the exciting things you’re doing at the event.

Blog about what you’re doing at the show.

Tweet and use LinkedIn to spread the word about how you’re participating at the event – create some excitement and mystery so people become so intrigued that they keep following you.

At Infosecurity, the best PR we achieve for the show, apart from the weird and wacky survey’s we do are the original articles that we get from the exhibitors.  If they are well written we place in the pre-show publicity.  With a good title and a subject that’s not product pushy but alluring, topical and interesting you can sometimes get the article placed up to 15 times, and all its cost you is the time to write the article.

Special features and reports are always being written prior to the show, keep your eyes out for anything that’s being written that you can take advantage of and go get writing.

Content is king in my book – good quality content will always be in demand – don’t let your competitors use this trick – if you don’t have good writers in-house, use freelance writers who’ll only charge you about £350 for 1000 words – that’s money well spent and if you need us to recommend good writers we’d be happy to.

Think out of the box and it will reap dividends for you.

We produce dozens of surveys for our clients and they always get the most pick-up and are a great ways of getting people to your website.  Once they have come to your website make sure they stay and know what events you’re going to, so your prospects and clients know where and when you’ll be exhibiting.

Remember no-one is going to blow your own trumpet for you.  There are many companies at events vying for the visitors attention, so be sure to be the ones shouting louder than anyone else.

Feel free to get in touch to pick our brains on events, you can find me at Yvonne@eskenzipr.com or on +44 207 183 2832.