Most advice on promoting an event assumes you already have an audience to promote it to. This is written for the other case, which is more common: no list, a date in six weeks, and a genuine need to fill a room. There are nine surfaces, they run in a specific order, and only one of them leaves you anything afterwards.
Key takeaways
- Eight of the nine surfaces produce attention that expires with the date.
- One produces a contact record, and it has to be built before the promotion starts.
- The order matters more than the budget, because each surface feeds the next.
The sequence
Chart data
| 1 | 1. The page (One address that holds the date, price and line-up) |
|---|---|
| 2 | 2. The capture point (Built before any promotion, or it is too late) |
| 3 | 3. Structured listing (Machine-readable event data, plus the local listings) |
| 4 | 4. The people on stage (Their audience is the only one that already exists) |
| 5 | 5. Owned social (Yours, and smaller than you think) |
| 6 | 6. Partner audiences (Venue, sponsors, other promoters, co-collected) |
| 7 | 7. Paid, narrowly (Only after the free surfaces are exhausted) |
| 8 | 8. The week-of push (Urgency works, but only once) |
| 9 | 9. What you kept (The contacts, tagged with this event) |
Why the capture point comes second and not eighth
Because it can only be built before. Every visit that arrives at surface three or later either leaves a contact or leaves nothing, and that is decided by whether step two existed when they arrived.
An afternoon of work at step two changes the value of every subsequent step. The same six weeks of promotion, run without it, produces one full room and no audience. Run with it, it produces one full room and the beginning of a list, which is the entire difference between an event business and a series of events.
What each surface actually produces
| Surface | Produces | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| The event page | A sale, and possibly a contact | The contact does not, the sale does |
| Structured event data | Discovery by people already searching | With the date |
| The artists' audiences | Reach you do not own | Immediately |
| Your own social | Reach you partly own | Immediately |
| Partner and sponsor lists | Reach someone else owns | Immediately, unless co-collected |
| Paid | Reach you rent by the click | The second you stop paying |
| Local listings and press | Credibility and discovery | With the date |
| The week-of push | Urgency | On the day |
| Your capture point | A named, consented contact | Never |
Eight rows say "expires". That is not an argument against them, they are how the room gets full. It is an argument for making sure the ninth row exists before you spend six weeks feeding the first eight.
The three that are underused
Structured event data. A page that describes the event in a machine-readable way gets picked up by search experiences that you did not have to buy. Google publishes what the markup needs to contain, and it takes an hour once.
The people on stage. Their audience already exists and yours does not. Give them assets sized for their platforms, dated, with the ticket link and, if they will allow it, your capture link. Most artists will share something good and almost none will chase you for it.
Partner co-collection. The venue, the sponsor and the other promoter on the bill all have lists. Agreed properly in advance, a shared capture surface means one person signing up appears on both sides, each with its own consent. Agreed badly, it means an argument in February.
The one to be careful with
Paid, before the free surfaces are exhausted. It is the fastest way to see a number move and the fastest way to spend a marketing budget on people who would have come anyway. Run it narrowly, late, and against a list you have already built, rather than broadly and early against strangers.
The week of
Urgency is real and it works once. Two messages, not five: one at the start of the week, one on the day. To the capture list first, because they asked, and because the response from a list you own is what the social surfaces then react to.
If the event sells out, the page becomes a waiting list rather than a dead end. That list is the single best thing to come out of the whole exercise, for reasons set out in a landing page for events that leaves you a contact.
The six weeks, week by week
A schedule is not a strategy, but the absence of one is why the last week always turns into five messages in three days. This shape works for a single dated event and scales down for a smaller one.
| When | What goes out | Why then |
|---|---|---|
| Week six | The page goes live, with the capture point | Everything after this feeds something that keeps |
| Week five | Structured data, listings, and the artists get their assets | Discovery is slow, so it has to start first |
| Week four | Your own channels, once, properly | Early enough that a repost still has room to travel |
| Week three | Partner and sponsor surfaces | They need lead time, and they will forget without a nudge |
| Week two | Paid, narrowly, against your list | Late enough to be efficient, early enough to matter |
| Week one | Two messages: Monday and the day | Urgency works once. Twice is a habit people mute |
The two blank weeks in the middle are deliberate. A schedule with something every day is a schedule nobody follows past the second week.
The three mistakes that cost the most
Announcing before the page exists. The most enthusiastic response to any announcement arrives in the first two hours, and it lands on a link that does not work yet. That traffic does not come back, and it was the best traffic you were going to get.
Asking the artists too late. They will share something good if you give them something ready, sized correctly, a fortnight ahead. Asked on the day, most will post a screenshot of the poster, which performs a fraction as well.
Treating a sold-out page as an ending. It is the highest intent page you will ever run and it converts to a waiting list better than any other surface converts to anything. Leaving it as a dead end is the single most expensive habit in this whole sequence, and it is the easiest to fix.
What you have on the Monday after
If step two existed, you have a room that was full and a list of people tagged with this event, with a consent record, who can be told about the next one without paying anyone. That is what HIIPE calls a capture link and a campaign: any link live in ninety seconds returning a name and a channel, and one screen to message the resulting segment by email, SMS or RCS. The features are that, and nothing more elaborate.
If step two did not exist, you have a good memory and a number in a report, and in six weeks you will start this sequence again from zero. The way out of that loop is the subject of turning followers into a list you own.
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