How far in advance should you begin marketing a virtual event?

This question was asked during the March 31 roundtable on "Tips and Strategies for Marketing Your Virtual Event" with Cece Salomon-Lee, Michelle Bruno and Shannon Ryan. FocusMarketingRT

Topics

Marketing

Virtual Event

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Cece Salomon-Lee

asked on April 1, 2011

Bobby Bateman

Posted on April 1, 2011

We usually start marketing our events about a month before they happen. We hold monthly webinars, and post the webinars to both Webinar listing sites, as well as craft a PR to post to PR sites. This combination usually gets picked up by a number of different sites. (not to hijack your question, but) I would be interested in learning more strategies to advertise webinars.

Christopher Jablonski Replied on April 1, 2011

Bobby,

You can add registrants by the following promotion techniques beyond email blasts:

1. Media property/vendor host along with webinar speaker(s) and moderator should tweet about the event 2 weeks, 1 week, 1 day, day of, 15 minutes, and 0 minutes before the event.

2. Create a Facebook and LinkedIn event listing and promote to interested and involved users within each of those communities.

3. Provide links on related content on your blog, website, and partner sites. Use display/text units in ad rotations if needed.

Hope this helps.

Chris Jablonski

Shannon Ryan

CEO, ArchetypeDNA

Posted on April 2, 2011

It is dependent on a few things, target audience, if it is a hybrid event to name a few, but I always recommend as far in advance as possible, with a minimum of a month out and a general recommendation of 8-10 weeks out. The longer time frame allows for you to refine your strategy based on results, it reduces scheduling conflicts by getting into registrant schedules early on and it also enables your audience to provide input on the objectives they have for attending the event, which can help you shape the event experience and/or content.