James Richardson

Promotion is one of the hardest parts of creating a successful event. You need to ensure you hit the right audience, at the right time, to ensure they buy a ticket and attend your event.

If you are low on budget, or looking for that competitive edge, the following are some great methods I have personally used with great success, that won’t cost you a cent (almost…)

Social Media
Social media is a no brainer. In this medium, the only cost is time, and the reach is amazing.
Social media allows you to target and interact with people who have interests relevant to your event, and allows current and potential attendees to spread and share your message, and there is nothing better than hands off marketing!
My preferred social media platforms for this purpose are Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter is great for building a great list of interested individuals, to which you can use 140 characters to connect with them.
By pushing out a variety of direct event promotions, insights on topic articles, and engaging banter with your followers or potential followers, you will start to build up a reputation as an authority figure within your community.

If you have a personal Twitter account and are involved in the industry, leverage that to push more followers towards your ‘event’ account.
Facebook is another great social media platform to reach the masses. Although it is a little dependent on the event type, it provides a wide variety of options including creating an event, and creating a page, both of which I recommend.

Email marketing
If you build it, they will come. Was Kevin Costner really talking about email lists in the classic movie ‘Field of Dreams’?
An email list is invaluable. If you don’t have one, build one. If you do have one, use it! With all the talk about social media, we often forget that email is a more personal form of communication, and let’s be honest, EVERYONE has email, and only a fraction have a Twitter account.
Use the emails to inform people about the event, but make sure you have a strong call to action.
Some great tips on email marketing can be found:

• 5 crucial Email marketing tips
• How to build a list
• Is Email Marketing worth your time?

Referrals
Anyone in business knows it’s expensive to get new customers. The same goes for targeting brand new potential attendees for your event.
By utilizing the contacts you already have, you will have an easier time reaching new people, and will not have to go to great lengths yourself, it just happens naturally.
The best referral techniques I have found are Linkedin and leveraging existing ticket holders.

Linkedin is an often overlooked online networking tool. It will help you find the right contacts within organisations, and give you the right people to ask for when you email, phone or contact these organisations.
Search for a business that might be relevant to your event, and find employees at that company. Go through and select those which you would like to contact and either a) Call them on the phone b) Buy an ‘In mail’ package form Linkedin which allows you to send them an email directly through the system.

Existing ticket holders should be contacted throughout the lead up to the event. By offering an incentive for referring their friends or colleagues, such discounted referral tickets, and prizes for the most referrals, you will get some great results.

Running an event is a stressful pursuit. It takes alot of careful planning, marketing, and budgeting. With some clever marketing efforts like I have mentioned, you will not only save time and money, you will go a along way to helping your event be just that little more successful.


Good luck!

It was a long and trying few months of planning, organisation, arguments, coffee, and good times – and now the first successful Digital Sport Summit has been and gone.

With some great and inspirational speakers, a truly amazing and iconic venue in the MCG, and a fantastic array of sports and social media minds, we created an event not to be missed, and a permanent fixture on the sport and technology calendar.

The day begin with a fantastic presentation from Jeramie McPeak, VP Digital Operations from the Phoenix Suns. He spoke of the importance social media plays in fan engagement of the team, how his players are universally embracing the technology, and how the Phoenix Suns leverage social media to increase ticket sales and drive merchandise sales.

Other highlights throughout the day included:

• Johnathan Simpson form Essendon FC who spoke about how his club is leading the way in the AFL in social media use
• Anthony Harrison from Cricket Victoria who spoke at length about how the Victorian Bushrangers used social media and iPhone applications to raise the profile of its players and promote games.
• Darren Rowse who spoke about how he successfully uses his blogs to generate a revenue stream and how sporting organisations can take a leaf out of his book and begin to show ROI from online mediums
• Nick Marvin, CEO of the Perth Wildcats spoke about social media from a management perspective. This was a fantastic presentation which spoke of sport as a business first.
• Alana Fischer from FFA who spoke about building and maintaining communities for the World Cup bid
• Peter Jankulovski from Vapour Media who gave some interesting insight into fantasy sports in Australia and its amazing growth over the past few years.
• Harry O’Brien giving us a great insight as to how players can use social media to build their profile and leverage their celebrity for the greater good.

The day was a great success for everyone involved (Including Anthony, Katherine, and myself).

We had over 160 attendees on the day, over 850 tweets using our #dss10 hashtag, and many happy people during and after the event.

The organisers (Jak Events) would like to thank our sponsors Lava, Slattery Media Group, BizCatalyst SEO, 3 Dots Studio, andEventOffice, as well as our fantastic volunteers Rhian and Tyson for their help throughout the day.

We cannot wait to see what we can arrange for Digital Sport 2011 – stay tuned for dates and more information, it’s going to be bigger and better!