If you’re hosting an upcoming writers’ conference, you need to make it stand out so that you get a large audience at the event. But for that, you’ll need to promote it with the right marketing mix. Here’s what that entails.
A writers’ conference is an event where aspiring writers come together and learn from successful authors, editors, and literary agents. For most, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that can offer them invaluable lessons on becoming a renowned author. You can only instill this fear of missing out (FOMO) if you’ve invited already-established and well-renowned authors. But more importantly, you need to have a marketing plan in place to expand your reach before the event. Here are our top hand-picked strategies.
Email marketing is more powerful than you think
Most people think email campaigns have become obsolete, but that’s not true. It’s certainly challenging to pull off since you only get one shot to convince the reader to open your email, let alone attend the conference. A great consists of a catchy and relevant subject line that piques a reader’s interest and compels them to open your email.
Next, avoid writing walls of paragraphs — no one reads paragraphs in emails anymore. Instead, use an online tool like PosterMyWall to pick a pre-built email template so that you don’t have to structure the email from scratch. And lastly, don’t forget to segment your target audience because you can’t send one email to everyone without personalizing it to their preferences.
A website and blog are instrumental
You can’t really promote your writers’ conference without a strong digital presence. The first step of creating that is having a stunning website and a blog. Make sure the website has an in-built form so that people interested in attending the conference can buy their tickets directly from your site or contact you if need be.
On the other hand, a website blog is a prerequisite to getting high traffic on your website. This is where you post articles that add value for aspiring writers. You could share tips and tricks for fiction writers or recommend a YouTube documentary on writing. Just make sure the content you put out is adding value to your readers.
Take advantage of social media
Social media marketing has become the core of all things digital marketing. That’s because almost everyone uses social media. Therefore, the first step is to identify which social platforms you should promote your conference on. We recommend Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. They’re the most widely-used platforms and would help you promote the conference to a sizable audience.
Keep in mind that social media marketing takes consistency. You need to put up catchy posts regularly to increase traction. Insert URLs of your blog articles or YouTube videos, followed by a relevant caption. Make sure your captions don’t exceed more than a line because people don’t bother reading long posts on social media.
Runs ads on social media
Once you’ve built a large following on your social media channels, you could run ads to accelerate ticket sales to your conference. Social media platforms track user interests and preferences, so it shows your ads to users who will most likely attend your writers’ conferences.
When you’re making an online video ad, make sure it’s not longer than 30 seconds and conveys the message at first glance. You could take the help of an online editor who has experience making video ads. There’s no one right way to craft an ad, so be sure to experiment with a number of things to make it stand out and memorable. You could take help of an online editor who has experience making video ads.
Don’t forget about SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most critical thing you can do to expand your conference’s digital outreach. It makes your website, YouTube videos, and social media pages rank higher on Google’s SERPs. The higher you rank on Google, the more traffic you’ll get, and the better your chances are to increase the number of attendees at your conference.
For starters, use Google Keyword Planner to hunt for the most-searched keywords on Google relevant to writing conferences. Then, incorporate those keywords in your blog articles, social media posts, YouTube video transcripts, and titles. It’s also important to include backlinks in your articles, which is another way of beating Google’s algorithms.
A final piece of advice
The above strategies have been tried and tested, but every writing conference is different. Maybe you’re hosting a conference just for fiction writers — in that case, your entire campaign should revolve around that specific target audience.
Also, the renowned writers you invite to the conference will build your credibility and attract more aspiring writers. Just make sure you tailor each strategy to satisfy the audience’s preferences. Don’t be afraid to throw more strategies into the mix — maybe promoting your conference via a local newspaper ad would work better than social media marketing.