The vendors are booked, the band is confirmed, the permits are approved and the food trucks are ready to go. You even have an Instagram graphic and more branded merchandise than anyone probably needs. People will show up, right? Not necessarily.
It’s easy to assume a great event will attract a crowd on its own. After months of planning a festival, neighborhood celebration, food event or art walk, you know exactly what makes it special. But the people you’re hoping to reach haven’t been part of those conversations.
They still need a reason to make plans, invite friends, figure out parking and spend part of their weekend there. An Instagram post or a press release alone usually won’t do it. Getting people through the door takes a PR and marketing approach that reaches them more than once and through more than one channel. Here’s where we focus our efforts:
Give People a Reason to Care
Before we promote an event, we ask a simple question: what would make someone want to attend? The event announcement itself isn’t always the story.
It could be the neighborhood’s first festival of its kind, 50 local artists taking over downtown or a chef with a loyal following. It might be an experience people can’t find elsewhere or a community tradition with a history worth sharing. Most events have several stories to tell.
Those stories won’t resonate with everyone in the same way. Parents looking for a family outing may care about the kids’ activities, while a group of friends planning their Saturday might be more interested in the live music and beer garden. The event is the same, but the reason to go isn’t.
Building Awareness and Credibility
Press releases have their place, but sending one announcement to a long media list isn’t much of a strategy. We look for several ways a journalist might cover an event, from calendar listings and weekend roundups to features about the people and businesses involved.
Maybe a local artist has an interesting story. Maybe a family-owned business is celebrating a milestone, or a nonprofit will benefit from the event. There could be a cultural connection worth exploring or a visual element that’s perfect for morning TV. The pitch should fit the outlet and the people who read or watch it. That’s more useful than sending everyone the same angle.
When people hear about an event on the morning news, read about it in a local publication and see it again in a weekend roundup, it starts to feel familiar. That repeated exposure can be the push they need to make plans.
Influencers Help People Picture Themselves There
Media coverage can explain what an event is and why it’s happening. Content creators can show people what it would actually be like to attend.
A list of restaurants, cocktails and live music tells you what’s on the schedule. A video of someone walking through the festival, trying the food and showing off the atmosphere gives you a much better sense of the experience. That’s why we put thought into which creators we invite.
Offering tickets to 100 people just because they have large followings isn’t necessarily effective. We’d rather work with creators whose audiences are likely to be interested and who have a genuine reason to share the event. That might involve a preview experience, a ticket giveaway, a hosted visit or a collaboration with a participating business. The point isn’t to collect as many posts as possible – it’s to reach people who see the content and think, ‘That looks fun. We should go.’
Direct Outreach is Still Valuable
Not everyone who can help promote an event has a large social following. Sometimes the most useful connections are the ones already rooted in the community. Depending on the event, we might reach out to neighborhood associations, visitor bureaus, hotels, concierges, universities, community newsletters, Facebook groups and local event calendars.
If an event is bringing thousands of visitors into a neighborhood, nearby restaurants and shops stand to benefit, too. Giving those businesses event details and ready-to-share materials makes it easier for them to spread the word.
Partnerships Let You Borrow Someone Else’s Audience
Partnerships can introduce an event to people who might never see its own social posts. The best ones also give both sides a clear reason to participate. A local business might feature the event in its newsletter. A restaurant could offer a weekend special, a hotel could create an event package or a local brand could contribute to a giveaway. A participating brewery might encourage regulars to stop by its booth.
Now the event is reaching people through several businesses, not just its own channels. And those messages carry more weight when they come from places people already know.
Why the Combination Matters
Media relations, creator partnerships, social media and community outreach all serve different purposes. They work best when they’re planned together, rather than treated as separate tasks.
Someone catches a TV segment on Tuesday, sees a local creator post about the event on Thursday and spots it in a newsletter on Friday. Then a friend sends the link in the group chat. By the weekend, going feels like an easy decision.
Getting the Right People to Show Up
At Olive Public Relations, we’ve worked on neighborhood festivals, art events, culinary experiences, hotel activations and community celebrations. For the La Jolla Art & Wine Festival, for example, that means pairing media outreach with creator relationships, community partnerships and direct outreach so people hear about the event in different ways.
A successful event campaign starts with knowing who you want to reach and what will get their attention. From there, it’s about giving them enough opportunities to hear about the event, see what makes it interesting and decide to attend.
Planning an event and want more people to know about it? Email info@olivepublicrelations.com to learn about Olive Public Relations’ event PR and marketing services or schedule an introductory call.
Image: Sold out inaugural event called The Feast in Little Italy San Diego hosted by the Busalacchi’s in celebration of the neighborhoods history and their 40th Anniversary.
