What kind of promotion does a public relations event need?
Though the many advantages of public relations (PR) are well-established, some doubt their effectiveness, as it is often not so easy to promote an event with maximum impact. To reap all the benefits of your PR event, it is essential to be able to communicate effectively. To illustrate:
- Associating your brand with the image and values conveyed by the event, and benefiting from its reputation and media fallout.
- Inviting, recruiting and retaining your customers by focusing on the human connection and customer experience.
- Creating a community of brand ambassadors, and taking advantage of their visibility on the social media.
- For your Hospitality Programme, keep your box seats filled all year long.
With a bit of good advice and some strategy, you will get the best from your PR events. You just need to clearly define the organisation, target and objective and adapt the communication and promotion for the event in accordance with the following 3 criteria. Stade de France, an events professional, shares its best tips with you!
How to you promote your PR event in-house
Above all, the prime factor for success is promoting your event in-house, by rallying your organising team and all the employees involved.
You will accomplish this by clearly defining the organisation of your event and each person’s part in it. Depending on the time available to you, your budget and internal know-how, you have several options. You will decide whether or not to outsource your event, in full or in part.
Once that organisation has been determined, inform all the stakeholders mobilised. Engage them and get them motivated by explaining the benefits of this public relations event. With your professionalism, you will support them all the way, by sharing your best practices and feedback.
How can you promote your event with your guests?
With your team rallied, recruit your guests! The best way is to create a consistent group with an interest in the event. Clearly determine your target: customers from a similar area of activity or the same region, for example.
Once you have decided on your guest list, all that remains to do is invite them! Put special care into designing the invitation, which will help you promote your event and make your guests want to attend. Invitation cards for your customers, emails for your in-house guests, a private event on Facebook for influencers, informally at a meeting for your partners… each target should have its own information format! Two weeks before the event, remember to send out a reminder notice to anyone who hasn’t responded, and a confirmation to participants, including all the details on logistics.
For further advice, before, during and after your event, view our White Paper entitled “Making your hospitality programme a success”.
How to promote post-event?
Often, companies imagine that a public relations programme ends on the big day, when in fact, post-event communication is also important!
Of course, this implies that you have determined your objectives in advance, along with the related follow-up and communication.
Get your messages out to each of your audiences: to your guests, with a thank you note; through a review of the targets in-house; and on your media (in particular digital), to your targets. The social media are an excellent tool for relaying news about an event through your posts, with tailored content and photos, live videos on your corporate accounts, a hashtag specially-created for the occasion, sharing of stories and visuals posted by your various influencer or customer communities, etc.
Don’t hesitate: join forces with Stade de France to create your public relations events and enjoy an original line-up of quality events! With our advice, you will get the best out of your experience, through effective promotion internally, with your guests, but also post-event.
