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Let’s Party – Continued
the figure to give your budget some wiggle room. If you’re looking of things to try and get the word out there.
to lower expenses, consider co-hosting with other businesses or
organizations that are willing to split the costs and help promote the Some of the things we do include:
event. You can also consider striking cross-promotion deals with
your vendors to save on costs. Many of my Business Networking • Sending formal invitations which were “Hand
Partners in my most recent event even donated gifts to the event and Stamped” in an envelope
one local Family Medical Office donated the gift bags. We were • Postcards are certainly an option depending on the
so GRATEFUL and our partnerships with local business is truly type of an events
GOLDEN!
• Sending e-mail invitations
Do note, however, that there’s a difference between savvy • Creating a Facebook event with invitations
budgeting and being cheap. While it’s good to find ways to lower
costs, don’t sacrifice the quality of the event for the sake of saving a • Publishing social media (i.e. Facebook and Instagram)
few bucks. “Don’t cheap out, make sure the space is right and that posts and sometimes paid for posts or ads
you’ve staffed the event properly. If you can’t afford to do events, • Writing Blog posts for our website with pictures from
don’t.” So often I have gotten to the week of the event and folks the previous year
are tallying their costs and start to freak out at what they have spent. • Putting out banners in front of the store, custom flags,
To start with, that is just poor financial budgeting and in the end the banners and real estate signs
results end up in not spending the necessary budgeted amount in
places like marketing. This is a BIG one! Make sure you allow for • Leaving flyers at neighboring businesses
plenty of budget to MARKET your EVENT! • Handing out point of purchase flyers

USE MULTIPLE MARKETING TACTICS • Hand a list of your top 100 customers to your staff
and during slower times in the day, call top customers
The turnout of your event will depend on how well you market it, and invite them personally over the phone. This has
so spend a good amount of time and resources on this step! been one of the MOST effective ways of reminding
folks to attend. Over and over folks would tell us they
Fortunately, there are various tactics that you can look into, and would have forgotten had someone not called them.
I cannot tress enough to folks that you need to use more than one
avenue of marketing to get the optimum results! for example, I
utilized both online and offline marketing methods to promote DRUM UP SOME PUBLICITY
events at Wade Designs Jewelry.
Try to get your event covered in the media and the blogosphere.
For our annual Chocolate Night we would usually do a combination Reach out to journalists and influencers and share your story. I have

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