5 Event Copywriting Tips to Boost Event Visibility
Are you hosting an event but are struggling to get the word out? You’re not alone. With so many events happening daily, it’s hard to make yours stand out. But don’t despair—there are some things you can do to give your event visibility a boost. One of them is copywriting.
When you create excellent copy, you can draw attention to your event and make it stand out. You can get people to attend your event, too.
That said, here are five event copywriting tips you should follow:
1. Know your audience
Your potential event attendees are your audience. If your copy doesn’t resonate with them, you won’t convert them. In other words, event promotion is a lot like ecommerce email marketing. You need to know your audience so you can write compelling copy and get them to take your desired action.
Knowing your audience involves creating an attendee persona—a detailed description of a person representing your target audience.
Creating an attendee persona often involves digging into past events, studying past attendee surveys, and gathering necessary information about your audience through interviews and surveys. Below, we’ve highlighted some details to gather and include in the event attendee persona:
- Age of potential attendees: This data will help you decide what language to use, what event aspects to emphasize, and what graphic elements to employ.
- Their location: If you know the location of potential attendees, you can mention that in your event copywriting. That will help attract people interested in the event based on where it is taking place.
- Their income: If the event targets a budget-conscious demographic, marketing materials may emphasize its affordability. Low-income guests may be offered discounts or incentives.
Here is an example of an audience persona:
These details allow you to segment your audience. You can, therefore, create different copy versions to address your specific audience segments.
This invitation email, for instance, takes into consideration two audience personas: on the one hand are those willing to go to the event and on the other are those who would prefer to watch it from their homes. Email marketing is the channel with the highest ROI in digital marketing, and targeting options make it amazingly useful for sending out invites. Just make sure you build your list the right way so sending reputation stays solid. We’ll talk more about how you should write your event copy in the next sections.
2. Define your event’s tone of voice
Your event’s tone of voice is your event identity. It includes your choice of words when writing copy to promote your event.
As a general rule, your tone of voice should reflect your brand’s core values, goals, and mission. It should reflect your brand’s personality. In addition, it must connect with the audience emotionally.
To determine your event’s tone of voice, then, you’d have to determine the type of brand you are. Are you a quirky and fun brand, or are you a more serious one? Once you’ve done that, go back to your audience persona. If your event targets young people, your tone of voice will likely be more casual. If you’re targeting business-oriented people, it should be more serious and objective.
Check out this example. Madewell is a brand that values tradition over trends. So, even if the event it’s promoting to its young audience is a party, the company didn’t use a quirky voice in its event invite. Instead, it maintained a serious but casual tone:
After settling on your tone of voice, make sure this is the same tone of voice you use across all your platforms.
It helps if you create a content style guide for this. The content style guide should also specify how you can showcase your brand’s personality through other elements like style and punctuation.
This guide will make your work easier since you won’t have to determine your event tone of voice and other relevant elements with every copy you create. All you’d need to do is look at your content style guide and follow the guidelines.
Write your style guide in a straightforward way. This will help ensure anyone who reads it will understand it even without asking for help.
3. Make your headline stand out
Your copy headline creates your first impression. It’s the first thing your target audience sees on your landing page or right after they click on your email invite. If it doesn’t appeal to them, they won’t read your main copy, regardless of how well it is crafted. Statistics show that people read the headline content five times more often than the body.
That said, your headline must be relevant to the event. It should be written in your audience’s language. Also, your headline must promise value to grab attention. The value is the reason they will read your headline and, by extension, your main copy.
Here’s a great example of a headline. Since the event caters to designers, the event copywriter uses words that catch any designer’s attention. Which designer doesn’t want “design collaboration at its finest,” after all?
When crafting your headlines, make sure they’re not too long. The ideal character count is between 50 and 60, including spaces. You want short headlines because people are busy and, in general, don’t have time to read long titles.
4. Tailor your copy to each platform
Remember when I said you should determine your event’s tone of voice and make it consistent across your platforms? Just to be clear, that doesn’t mean you should use the exact copy on all your platforms.
After all, you need to understand that each platform also has a different kind of audience. The promotional and event-based texts you use for SMS marketing for e-commerce cannot be used for social media platform since the latter would require another tone of voice. This means an effective communication style in one platform may not be as effective in another. Besides, different platforms have their own character limits per post.
In other words, although you need to ensure a consistent event tone of voice, you should also tailor your copy to the platform you are posting on.
Consider these two postings on LinkedIn and Twitter on the same event:
Notice the slight difference in copy? On LinkedIn (the first image), the event copywriter has more room to explain what the event is about since the platform allows a maximum of 3000 characters per post.
Since Twitter has the shortest character limit per post (280 characters), the event copywriter needs to go straight to the point. Instead of talking about the event, they immediately highlight one of their guests, best-selling author Jay Shetty, in the copy. Shortness is even more apparent when texting to promote your events within the limits of SMS marketing, luckily you can use a combo of deeplinking and mobile landing pages to expand the message.
Note, though, that although the copy is slightly different across the two platforms, the event tone of voice is the same.
Regardless of the platform you use, make sure you emphasize the benefits of your event rather than the features in your main copy, too. So, instead of saying the event talks about basic content marketing concepts (feature), for example, say your audience can increase content engagement if they attend your event (benefit).
Remember that people generally will only click on the “buy tickets” or “register” button when they sense they are getting value for their money or effort.
5. Use a good Call-to-Action (CTA)
In event copywriting, the call-to-action tells your readers where to go. Without it, your copy won’t convert. So, you must instruct your readers to buy your ticket or register for your event, whichever applies.
But it’s not enough for your CTA to give your readers instructions. Your CTA must be smart, too. Check out this conversion rate statistic, depending on the CTA type used.
To create a smart CTA, you must identify the goal of your content. Are you looking to increase attendance at your event? Promote ticket sales? Your answers to these questions will determine the copy for your CTA.
A suitable CTA uses action phrases and vital phrases, too. Avoid weak verb phrases like “click here.” Instead, use phrases that speak of the desired action. For example, this email’s CTA, “book a room,” is original and enticing.
Also, your CTA buttons must get your reader’s attention. So, you should use colors that stand out like red, yellow, or blue. Make sure the CTA button color contrasts with your background as well.
Including a digital business card in your social media posts or emails is also a good idea. This way, interested attendees may contact you if they have questions about the event. All they have to do is scan the QR code, and they can gain access to your contact information. They can also save that important information on their smartphones and reach out to you later if they have queries.
In Closing
Copywriting is an essential part of marketing, yet it’s often overlooked when it comes to events. This is because people think all they need to do is list their event’s date, time, and location on their invites and they’re good to go.
But if you want your event to stand out, you need to put some thought into your copy. Following these five tips, you can draw attention to your event and boost its visibility:
- Know your audience
- Define your event’s tone of voice
- Make your headline stand out
- Tailor your copy to each platform
- Use a good CTA
The result? You can get people to attend your event, too. Good luck!
The author Michal Leszczyński is immersed in developing, implementing, and coordinating all manner of content marketing projects as the Head of Content & Partnerships at GetResponse. He has 10-plus years of expertise in online marketing with a Master of Science Degree in Strategic Marketing and Consulting from the University of Birmingham (UK). Michal is the author of more than 100 articles, ebooks, and courses for both GetResponse and renowned websites like Crazy Egg and Social Media Today.
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