How to do PR for your event effectively

PR tactics can get you fantastic promotion for your event - for free!

For the cost of some thoughtful effort, public or media relations tactics such as media releases can result in increased awareness of your event amongst your target markets - and inspire them to get in the car and travel to your event.

PR whiz, Anna Hayward, shares a couple of her top tips to make your effort worthwhile:

Hone in on your target markets

Hone in on just one (or two) of your event’s ideal attendees as the primary market for your media campaign.

Careful analysis and selection of your target markets will help you to design a highly targeted campaign.

Brainstorm story ideas that would appeal to your target market, such as these from Blackbutt Avocado Festival in southern QLD:

Families
How kids can ‘avo go at the Blackbutt Avocado Festival - all the kid-friendly fun at the event, such as games, a parachutist, the parade …as well as reasons for families to stay overnight and play in Blackbutt the following day, such as the town’s rail trail and where to hire bikes.

Foodies
A place where you can fulfill all your avocado dreams of eating avocado ice-cream, putting your best guac forward in a guacamole-making competition, learning to cook with avos from a celebrity chef, and even playing games with avocados!

Location, location, location

You should further refine your market by focusing your campaign on one or two key geographic locations where your target audience is located. This will allow you to channel your efforts and budget into a carefully selected city or town, to a specific audience or demographic, via multiple channels, with a coordinated, consistent and complementary message and call to action.

This approach allows you to reach the target audience many times via different channels and mediums – think social media, digital, radio, TV, outdoor, print, partnerships, direct mail – whatever mix your budget allows for.

Collaborate

Join forces with other businesses and operators in your region with similar target markets and develop a collaborative campaign where everyone benefits.

You can combine budgets to allow for a more significant campaign, cross promote each other via social media and on your websites, run a joint competition to boost social followings and drive traffic to websites, and benefit from the increased momentum your campaign will gather.

About the author PR guru, Anna Hayward

Anna Hayward is a PR whiz who regularly achieves over $1 million in advertising value for clients through media

Learn more about Anna at @anna_hayward_travels

Learn more

Learn from Anna directly in her Master Class on Free media: Big PR ideas for smaller festivals and events

Read Anna’s tips on how to effectively run a media familiarisation tour

Read tips on how to write a media release and keep re-purposing the content