An event, be it virtual or in-person, offers an excellent opportunity to attract your target audience and build a lasting relationship with them. Effective event marketing is important for small businesses that want to generate more leads and sales from their events.

In this guide, I will share 6 event marketing strategies a small business should try in 2025.

1. Have a compelling event concept

The concept is the backbone of any event. It’s all about an event idea that will capture attention and resonate with your target audience.

Creating a compelling event concept is simple. The first thing you want to do is understand your audience’s interests and needs. Then, identify a unique theme or message that aligns with your business that your audience will find valuable.

A simple way to do this is to host a webinar session with a few of your existing customers to get insights into their needs. Use what you learn in this webinar to develop an event concept. 

If you are a fashion brand, you can organize a fashion show to educate your audience on outfits for different occasions, and also how they can identify quality outfits. It could be an in-person event or streamed online to a larger audience that might be interested in your brand. 

Do you have a budget and a target audience who likes to travel? You might want to consider an exotic location for your in-person event. There are exclusive venues in Monaco that can add a feeling of luxury and prestige to your event, attracting high-profile attendees and enhancing your brand’s image.

2. Leverage social media 

Social media will help hype your event and increase its visibility so that your target audience will know about it. You can use social media for:

  • Pre-event promotion like teasers, countdowns, and sneak peeks
  • Event engagement activities like live coverage, real-time updates, and user-generated content during the live event
  • Highlights of the event and post-event content like recaps

Depending on your target audience, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn can be ideal social media platforms to focus on. 

3. Use event marketing tools

You should consider using event marketing tools to streamline the planning, promotion, and execution of your event. There are event marketing platforms that are ideal for virtual events and in-person events. 

Email marketing tools will help you launch email campaigns to promote it and event analytics tools will help you track engagement and overall performance of your event.

4. Collaborate with influencers

Influencers are role models to a lot of people who may be interested in your products and services. A single post on their platforms can get you potential attendees and customers. You might want to identify influencers in your industry and partner with them to promote your pre- and post-event content. 

5. Offer early-bird discounts 

People like early-bird discounts and offering them can boost signups because they create a sense of urgency and fear of missing out. With triggers like countdowns, you can have more people register and participate in your event.

Apart from increasing the registration rate for your event, early-bird discounts can build brand loyalty as your attendees feel honored and valued to have benefited from the discounts. 

This strengthens their connection to your business, which could result in word of-mouth referrals.

6. Collect feedback 

Feedback will help you understand how attendees felt about your event. This will tell you if your message was well received and also where to improve if you choose to do that event in the future. 

And if you sold products at your event, you can use feedback to gauge the satisfaction of your customers and also solicit their honest reviews. 

Surveys, polls, and social media listening are simple ways to collect feedback on your event. 

In conclusion, having a successful event requires a detailed plan on how to create awareness, boost attendance, get leads and sales, and generate interest in your small business.

I hope I have gotten you thinking about how events might help you grow your business. I have shared 6 event marketing strategies that work and now it’s up to you to implement them. 

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash