Last year, we ran Ahrefs Evolve: a sold-out, 2-day, 500-person league astatine Pan Pacific Orchard successful Singapore.

I interviewed Shermin Lim, our events marketer, to find retired however we marketed the league and sold retired each our tickets.

Here’s everything we did to beforehand the conference. You tin usage these aforesaid strategies (or beryllium inspired by them) for your ain event—big or small.

Event participants are notoriously last-minute buyers. Running early-stage discounts is simply a bully mode to get them to perpetrate earlier and halt your events squad from panicking.

For Ahrefs Evolve, we ran 2 types of discounts:

• Early vertebrate pricing — We ran an aboriginal vertebrate discount until a circumstantial day (1 August 2024 to beryllium exact). This clearly-stated deadline encouraged radical to buy early.
• Group discounts — We offered deals for bulk buys (up to 20%). This is particularly utile if your people assemblage is from agencies oregon companies that typically nonstop aggregate employees (which is the lawsuit for our industry.)

You tin spot our early-stage Evolve pricing here:

• Regular summons astatine $650; aboriginal vertebrate pricing of $570 (20% discount for bulk purchases)
• VIP summons astatine $980; aboriginal vertebrate pricing astatine $840

What discount should you give? There’s nary exact answer—it each comes down to your gut, budget, competitory analysis, and a pinch of experimentation.

Your lawsuit landing leafage volition beryllium 1 of your astir important selling assets.

After all, it is simply a one-stop spot for imaginable attendees to spot each portion of lawsuit info and besides the spot for them to click ‘buy’. You besides privation to make this leafage aboriginal truthful it tin fertile precocious connected Google erstwhile radical perceive of your lawsuit sanction and hunt for it.

Here’s what we included successful ours:

• Event description
• Value proposition
• Speaker lineup with bios
• Event agenda
• Pricing and summons tiers
• Information astir pre-event workshops (speakers, bio, pricing, agenda)
• Sponsor information
• Venue accusation with photos and videos
• FAQs
• Why be conferences (with explanations from 2 highly recognizable experts successful the industry)
• Local attractions and question tips

Make this leafage early. Don’t interest if you person yet to finalize immoderate details. Just permission them arsenic “TBD”, past update the leafage gradually arsenic you corroborate the venue, speakers, and sponsors.

Starting from your assemblage is the astir straightforward mode to summation consciousness for your event.

We posted regular announcements and updates connected LinkedIn and X, including our squad members’ ain accounts:

We sent targeted in-app messages to our customers, announcing our lawsuit and letting them cognize tickets were on sale:

We scheduled aggregate emails to our 260,000-strong newsletter audience:

We placed show banners connected high-traffic blog pages to thrust postulation to our lawsuit landing page:

It’s good to nonstop aggregate emails oregon station often connected societal media. Just due to the fact that you’ve posted erstwhile doesn’t mean everyone has seen it. However, don’t spam. Space them retired and support your messaging fresh.

So, nary repeated “buy tickets!” call-to-actions and usage each types of messages—speaker teasers, caller discounts, FOMO (e.g., “tickets are selling out!”), venue instauration (like our video below), and more.

Speakers are a massive part of immoderate event. Many radical will be a league conscionable to perceive an influential speaker.

Most of the time, their power is owed to their following. So, you’d privation to pat into that assemblage to thrust consciousness for your event.

For example, we did this by creating individualized talker “promo cards” for societal media. We shared these mini-videos with each talker and asked them to beforehand the lawsuit to their followers. We besides shared them connected our ain societal channels:

Aleyda Solis mentioned Ahrefs Evolve successful her play newsletter, SEOFOMO

We besides gave each talker peculiar discount codes to incentivize their assemblage to travel for our conference:

Your venue—the metropolis it’s successful and the nonstop location—plays a immense portion successful whether your lawsuit volition beryllium palmy oregon not. Most lawsuit marketers cognize this; that’s wherefore they walk truthful overmuch clip connected venue selection.

Yet, astir nary of them ever beforehand oregon diagnostic the venue successful their lawsuit promotions. Weird, right? That’s wherefore we decided to flip the publication and item our venue, Pan Pacific Orchard successful Singapore. After all, it wasn’t immoderate venue. It was a beautiful, award-winning one—one that was crowned the world’s champion caller skyscraper.

We promoted our venue by producing a abbreviated video touring it, highlighting its precocious ceilings, modern architecture, and unfastened networking spaces:

While you privation to rank your lawsuit leafage connected Google, it isn’t the lone leafage you should beryllium ranking. There are plentifulness of different opportunities wherever you tin fertile precocious connected Google and insert mentions of your own event.

For example, successful bid to summation visibility for Evolve, we published 2 blog posts targeted astatine “conference”-related keywords:

• 7 SEO Conferences to Attend in 2024
• 5 Content Marketing Conferences to Attend in 2024

Here’s however to find specified keywords:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
2. Enter keywords applicable to your lawsuit (e.g., marketing, SEO)
3. Go to the Matching presumption report
4. Use the Include filter to look for words similar “conferences”, “events”, “meetups”, etc.

Look done the database and find keywords wherever you tin perchance transportation your event. For example, we people mentioned Ahrefs Evolve arsenic 1 of the SEO conferences worthy attending last year:

As you tin see, this leafage ranked beauteous precocious connected Google and maintained its rankings (at slightest until astir of the mentioned events were over):

The champion portion is that we tin simply update this leafage this twelvemonth and it’ll apt regain its rankings again—you tin spot the spike successful rankings each clip we update this post:

However, creating contented isn’t conscionable astir ranking. You tin besides enactment your events team. For example, we wrote 1 for imaginable attendees connected how to transportation their bosses to let them to be Evolve:

We adjacent gave them an email template they could usage right away:

If idiosyncratic is attending an manufacture event, chances are they attraction and would put successful attending much events.

Since we were simultaneously organizing and moving smaller-scale workshops, panels, and webinars—Ahrefs Evolve was lone 1 portion of our event marketing strategy—we would besides beforehand our league successful those events:

We did this by having a roll-up banner of the lawsuit with a QR codification radical could scan to get the tickets. The emcee, 1 of our squad members, would besides marque definite to notation it often during the store itself.

If the lawsuit was held successful our office, we would show the lawsuit accusation and the QR codification connected a TV.

If you’re not doing lawsuit marketing, don’t worry. You tin besides beforehand your lawsuit successful different events oregon channels:

• If you’re sponsoring a league oregon moving a booth successful one, person printed materials promoting your event too.
• If you’re speaking astatine a league oregon being interviewed connected a podcast/YouTube, marque definite to weave successful a applicable notation of your upcoming event.
• If you tally your ain YouTube/podcast, adjacent better. Promote your lawsuit successful your intro oregon arsenic a pre-roll ad.

FOMO is simply a almighty intelligence trigger that tin assistance physique consciousness for your event. People privation to beryllium portion of the in-group—they privation to be events their peers are attending and get the “behind-closed-doors” knowledge.

You’d privation to perpetually punctual your assemblage that they’re missing out. For example, we announced connected societal media whenever tickets were sold retired oregon selling fast:

We ran a generous giveaway to physique hype for the event:

We made graphics showing the planetary illustration of attendees (in the lawsuit that region was a factor):

We created societal media cards for attendees to stock that they were attending Ahrefs Evolve:

At Ahrefs, we emotion to take risks with our marketing. We emotion it due to the fact that it differentiates america from a oversea of sameness wherever each lawsuit promotion is identical.

To beforehand Evolve, we designed a elephantine helium balloon with the lawsuit branding. It wasn’t AI; we actually flew it up, staged a photoshoot (with drones), and turned those images into eye-catching advertisement creatives.

Do you person to walk the aforesaid magnitude of wealth we did? You don’t person to—there are plentifulness of low-cost, high-impact stunts.

For example, portion not specifically to beforehand an event, Deliveroo Singapore utilized to person its unit deterioration kangaroo onesies and spell astir the Central Business District to manus retired flyers and different swag items.

It’s each up to your ain creativity.

This is beauteous obvious, but if you person the budget, you tin besides tally ads connected Facebook, Instagram, X, oregon TikTok for your events.

For example, we spent a full of $8,000 connected Facebook and Instagram ads for Evolve:

Final thoughts

Promoting an lawsuit is similar launching a startup. If you privation attraction and visibility, you person to spell each guns blazing. If you privation to merchantability retired tickets, you request to harvester most, if not all, of the tactics above.

Because that’s what we did to merchantability retired a 500-person conference.

Want to spot however we’ll beforehand Evolve 2025? Sign up present to larn more.