Seasonal Event Marketing Guide and Template
With the festive season just around the corner, your event planning will already be well underway. But in a notoriously busy time of year, it’s important to think strategically about your marketing efforts—after all, tickets don’t sell themselves.
To truly stand out you have to plan ahead, think cross-channel, and be bold with your choices. Our in-house experts have provided their top tips and tactics to help you cut through the noise (and festive hangovers) to sell out your events this year.
Don’t forget to download your free event marketing template by inputting your details into the form on the right-hand side.
Want to learn more about how to stand out and maximise ticket sales this year? Watch our Seasonal Success On-Demand Webinar.
Embrace social media
Build buzz around your seasonal event by using social media. While you should stay true to your brand all year round, there’s nothing wrong with using calendar moments to have a bit of fun—why not introduce an advent-style countdown or drop in the odd seasonal pun? Give them pumpkin to talk about!
Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are fab for building consumer engagement, while LinkedIn is essential for B2B events. You should also choose a catchy event hashtag to use—and don’t forget to prompt attendees and partners to use it, too!
“Social media is a great place to thank and engage with your partners, vendors, and sponsors, no matter the season,” says Sophie Vershbow, Head of Social Media and Influencer Marketing at Eventbrite. “Whether it’s in the caption or through a photo tag, make sure your top contributors get a call out—it will increase the post’s engagement too!”
Top tips:
- The festive season is a great time to show gratitude. So give your partners, vendors and sponsors a shout out on social media. Don’t forget to tag them and ask them to reshare on their own feeds.
- Seeing as sharing is caring, why not build social media promotion into your contract when signing talent? This will help you to attract a crowd.
- Use trending seasonal hashtags to help get your content in front of a wider audience.
- Get creative with traditions, such as running 25 days of festive ticket giveaways on Instagram.
Download your free event marketing template by inputting your details into the form on the right-hand side.
Influencer marketing
Working with influencers is brilliant way of reaching new audiences looking to discover events. And while it would be tempting to focus on influencers with a huge following, smaller influencers often have higher engagement (and are cheaper to work with). Focus on influencers who align with your brand identity, that way the partnership feels authentic for your combined audiences.
“Influencers know what type of content resonates best with their audience,” says Natasha Fuentes, Influencer Marketing Manager at Eventbrite. “Trust their judgement and give them creative freedom when they are creating their content.”
Top tips:
- Follower count isn’t the most important metric. Reach out to micro-influencers who often have higher engagement rates.
- Spend time researching to identify the influencers that align with your brand and values.
- Check their current posts to see if their content style matches what you are looking for—but remember that the influencer understands their audience best.
- Share your social handles and hashtags so that they can tag you in any content.
- Remember to adhere to partnership disclosure rules.
- Why stop there? Aim to create longer-term partnerships across multiple events.
Harness the power of your mailing list to reach potential attendees. Emails can often feel like a chore, so break up the monotony of your recipients’ inbox with a catchy subject line they can’t ignore. Remember: people are busy (especially around the festive period), so keep your emails short and snappy. Once you’ve got your guest list sorted, you will need to send regular emails to build excitement—and make sure people remember to turn up!
“Have an understanding of what actions you want your audience to take,” explains Stacey Worrell, Campaign Marketing Manager at Eventbrite. “Whether directing traffic or securing bookings, the call to action must be clear and stand out against the rest of the content. Remember that not everyone scrolls to the bottom, so position a high and visible CTA button.”
Top tips:
- Make your subject line so irresistible, they can’t help but open your email—and remember take advantage of the preview line to add a bit more intrigue.
- Once you’ve got their attention, get to the point. Make your message snappy and full of energy. Make it clear your event is unmissable!
- Bring your event to life on the page with lots of images. GIFs are fun, too—just don’t overdo them!
- Remember to send regular emails to attendees before the event to build excitement, as well as provide important information. You could always encourage them to share the email with friends to drive more ticket sales!
Download your free event marketing template by inputting your details into the form on the right-hand side.
Website content and blogs
Spread the word and build relevancy with seasonal blog posts. Let people know about your seasonal events and activities by sharing updates and other informative, engaging content on your website. You can post a preview of your event, recap a prior seasonal event with photo evidence, and post other key seasonal trends and insights to entice your audience.
“Don’t overlook seasonal posts when setting your blog strategy,” Noelle Buhidar, Global Head of Content Marketing at Eventbrite. “Evergreen content is critical to your ongoing relevancy and traffic, but by generating seasonal content, you’ll tap into timely trends, and can drive a natural increase in traffic to your blog and site for topics like New Year’s, summer, and Halloween. Searches for seasonal events can start days or even months before, so get your content up early and update it as you near the moment.”
Top tips:
- To see when seasonal topics start to trend (e.g., when do people start searching for Halloween events?), use Google Trends. It’s easy to use and free. Type in search terms and adjust the time frame to the calendar moment. From there, you’ll see how often people Googled it, and how the term trends throughout the year.
- Write for people. Use your engaging, authentic voice, and answer the questions you know your audience has.
- Break your content up into smaller paragraphs (three to four sentences) — this helps with readability, especially for those viewing your content on mobile devices. Nothing is more off-putting than chunky paragraphs.
- Use subheadings throughout your piece to break the content up and make it easy for readers to scan and find the information most relevant to them.
- Use bullets or numbers for lists.
- Create actionable CTAs in your posts that make it easy for visitors to click through to your event.
- Include videos or photos in your blog posts to bring your experience to life and diversify your content.
- Make it easy for website visitors to find information about your upcoming events.
- Ensure your FAQ page is easy to find and up to date.
Event page
If there’s one page that matters more than most, it’s the event page. This is where event-goers will make the final decision of whether they purchase tickets or not. Use this as an opportunity to optimise it for sales and maximise user experience.
Writer’s block can be a major hurdle for time-strapped event organisers. Check out our new AI tools that help jump-start creativity, save time, and streamline the copywriting process.
Top tips:
- Keep it brief but include key event details, such as ticket price, date, and speakers or performers.
- Make sure your event page echoes your website and social media. Don’t be afraid to recycle content.
- Add images and video to show attendees what they can expect at the event.
- Outline the agenda and timings, if relevant.
- Include all of your relevant contact information.
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