The Five P’s of Publicizing an Event

Whether hosting a major annual fundraiser for your nonprofit organization or planning a smaller-scale affair on your college campus, publicity is a key ingredient to the success of any occasion.  Even the best-planned events are only worth their while if they capture the attention of the intended audience.  Before defining the path for publicizing your event, it is important to identify what you hope to achieve through its success.  Start by asking yourself: 

“Is the goal of my event to…”

Sell a product? 
Solicit donations for a cause?
Gain name recognition for my organization?
Or simply demonstrate thought leadership in the field?

Once you have identified the criteria through which you will measure the event’s success, you can then target the appropriate audience and methodology for publicizing. 

As I see it, the most effective vehicles for publicity for any nonprofit, corporate or collegiate event can be easily categorized into the “Five P’s” of publicizing. Print, Press, People, Podcast (or web communication) and Professional Publicist. Depending on the scale of your event, you may wish to exhaust several or all of these means to get the word out and ensure success for your cause!

Print:

Print is the timeless, traditional way to spread the word about an event and should not be underutilized.  There are many opportunities to publicize your event creatively via invitations, Save the Date mailings, and more.  Monthly newsletters, ads in local newspapers, posters, flyers, banners, church bulletins, and postcards are also excellent print vehicles to get the information in front of your audience. 

Press:

Using the press to your advantage can be a tremendous form of publicity for any event.  Create a well-written press release that includes important information about the event, e.g. who, what, when, where, why, and a person to contact with questions or for further information.  You should also include in your press release the names of any celebrities or other honorable guests that have attended in the past or will be attending in the current year, and any other information you think your audience will find compelling. 

In addition to press releases, media kits can be created for the press that include your press release, information about your organization, photographs from previous events, give-aways with your company logo and event date (t-shirts, balls, totes, paper weights, hats).  You can distribute your media kits to newspapers, radio stations, television news programs and magazines in the area to further spread the word.  Make sure these media packets are available to the press at least three weeks prior to your event. 

Lastly, if you desire media coverage of the event itself, it is important to alert the media of where and when it will take place, who will be in attendance, what the purpose is and also to provide them with information about your organization for their coverage.  While it is common for the media to focus on the fanfare of an event, it is also important that they are equipped with information about the mission of your company or organization; this will help them contextualize the event in their coverage. 

People:

If you can rely on at least a portion of your audience to spread the word amongst their peers and colleagues, people then become one of your strong resources for publicizing.  The power of word of mouth is not to be underestimated when considering the process of publicizing an event.   

For a college event you may wish to utilize your professors and mentors to make announcements in lectures, while in the corporate and nonprofit world, board meetings and other business gatherings are an excellent opportunity for individuals to demonstrate support for your event and cause.  A celebrity, dignitary or other honored individual publicly endorsing your event is an obvious bonus. 

Podcasts:

Podcasts, which is really just a blanket P-word I’ve adopted to represent all web-related publicizing opportunities, are perhaps the most abundant resources available to your organization as you publicize your event.  In addition to sending Save the Dates and invitations via the web, you can create a website for your event or a banner on a partnering website. You can also take advantage of relevant blogs and the many existing social and business networks such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkIn, Ryze, and Social Edge, for posting information and flyers about the occasion.  Your website or a partnering website is also an excellent place to post press releases, photos, podcasts, news stories and other promotional efforts surrounding your event. 

In many cases, you may even find emailing your media kits or making them available through the website to be a more cost-effective and thorough means of distributing the materials to the press. 

Professionals:

In many cases hiring a professional publicist may be wise, if not necessary.  Major publicity work can be extremely time consuming and may require the concentrated efforts of someone with ample experience in the field of event planning.  Sensitive work such as handling celebrities and honored guests may also be better handled by someone who is accustomed to working with high profile individuals. 

A publicist is generally well connected, and will have the means and know-how to effectively spread the word and also ensure that the press is provided with accurate and favorable information regarding your company and its mission.

* * * * *

It is certainly not feasible or even necessary for every organization to take all of these steps to publicize an event.  Again, it is essential to begin by defining your goals realistically for the success of the event and plan a pragmatic publicity campaign that makes sense for your organization.  The importance of robust, well-planned publicity efforts for any event should never be understated as they are the foundation for your audience, without whom, there would be no event.   

Comments

[Laura]

I'm glad I came across this. While I do not work in non-profit yet -- it intrigues me and I hope to one day help out in that area. Thanks for the great tips!