Running search engine optimization campaigns is an effective marketing strategy for promoting events. Event Smart provides Event Schema Markup to provide Google and other search engines event data in the format it needs. When search engines find your event page and index it to their results, your event can be shown to attendees who are searching for relevant events in your area.
Additionally, you can leverage paid search engine marketing to increase your event’s exposure – especially for local events. Whether you’re organizing a conference, fundraiser, sporting event, or workshop, running a search engine marketing campaign will help you rank at the top of search engine results pages.
In this article, we’ll share some tips to help you get the most out of your event’s search engine marketing campaign. Before we begin, let’s quickly take a look at how search engine marketing works in the context of events.
How Does Search Engine Marketing Work?
As an event organizer, you probably already know that getting your event to rank in Google is pretty difficult. You need to publish search engine optimized content regularly to be able to see results a few months down the line.
The problem is that if you want to start selling tickets early, you’ll need a faster way to make your event pages show up in search engine results pages. One way to see results faster is through search engine marketing.
Search engine marketing platforms (like Google Ads and Bing Ads) are popular marketplaces where you can pay to have your event website’s pages rank in search results for specific keywords. Your site’s page will appear at the top of the search results page whenever a user types in a search query that contains the keywords you’ve paid to rank for.
For example, if you are organizing a musical in New York, your result might show up at the top of search engine results pages whenever someone search for “musicals in nyc”. Notice how the search result is tagged as an Ad.
Search engine marketing platforms work like auctions. What this means is that, instead of paying a flat rate, you make a bid on how much you’ll pay for clicks. That said, the highest bidder doesn’t always get a spot in search results.
Search engine algorithms show ads based on relevance of content, keywords, and ads – compared to the search phrases or terms a user inputs into the search field. For this reason, it’s important to make sure you’re using the right keywords and publishing high-quality content.
7 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Event’s Search Engine Marketing Campaign
Search engine marketing isn’t as simple as placing the highest bid on the keywords you’d like to rank for. Here, we’ll look at some of the ways you can get the most bang for your buck when it comes to optimizing your event’s search engine marketing campaign.
Tip #1: Use the Right Keywords
Search engines use keywords to determine how relevant your content and ads are to prospective attendees. So, the first thing you need to do is make sure you’re using the right keywords in your search engine marketing campaign.
When looking for keywords to bid on, make sure you’re striking a balance between search volume and relevance. Here’s what you need to do to get started:
Determine which phrases are most relevant to your event. In other words, what are the phrases a user would search for and find your search result to be the most relevant. For instance, if you are organizing a tech conference, users searching for tech conferences in my area, technology conference, or IT conferences would find your event website (or page) to be relevant.
Once you have a list of around 20-30 keywords that you’d like to rank for, you can begin validating them against search volume. For those unfamiliar, search volume tells you how many people search for a particular keyword per month. Ideally, you want to bid on relevant keywords that have a high search volume. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush to validate search volume.
Tip #2: Create an Engaging Event Landing Page
Your event’s landing page should answer the basic questions regarding your event. Specifically, you want to make sure you provide information about:
- Who your event is for.
- What your event is about.
- Where your event will take place.
- When your event will take place.
Depending on the type of event you are organizing, you can provide additional event details such as your keynote speakers, the topics you’ll cover, and your event’s agenda. You might also consider adding a call to action button on your event’s landing page that leads prospective customers to your registration form.
Tip #3: Geo-Target Your Copy
Including information about your event’s location and venue will help with the search engine’s ability to target users based on their location. To take things to the next level, you can use attendee data from previous events to decide which localities you want to target with your search engine marketing campaign.
If, for example, attendees traveled from different cities to attend previous events, you might consider broadening the geographic area to your state instead of just your city. It’s also a good idea to use the city (or state) name on your landing page and in your ad copy.
Tip #4: Coordinate With Digital Marketing Channels
One way to enhance your marketing efforts is by using a mix of promotional strategies. On top of search engine marketing, you might consider leveraging public relations (PR) channels to get the word out.
The key benefit of promoting your event using PR channels is that you’re able to get third-party credibility. Find opportunities to talk about your event on podcasts, interviews, and television programs.
Tip #5: Set Up Social Media Pages
Creating a cross-functional process between search engine marketing and social media marketing gives you insight into important information. For instance, you might come across keywords that you can use to enhance the effectiveness of your event’s search ads.
Tip #6: Leverage Event Schema
Leveraging structured data (such as event schema markup) helps search engines understand your site’s content better and improves search visibility. In addition to this, you can gain rich snippets for your event website by using event schema.
Event Smart supports Schema.org structured data markup for events right out of the box to support search engine optimization for events. Paid search engine marketing paired with rich snippets is a surefire way to increase your event site’s visibility in search engine results pages.
Tip #7: Use Keyword-Rich URLs
Using the keywords you’re targeting for in your event website’s URLs helps with search engine marketing. When browsing through search results, prospective attendees will take your event site’s URL into consideration when deciding which site to click.
With Event Smart, you get event pages with keyword-rich URLs right out of the box. For example, your events pages URL might look something like localcharity.eventsmart.com/events/christmas-gala-2018 and your venue pages might have a URL like localcharity.eventsmart.com/venues/brooklyn-loft.
Conclusion
Search engine marketing is an effective way to promote your event, increase search visibility, and boost registrations. The best part is that there are many things you can do to get the most value out of paid search ads.
What types of marketing campaigns do you run to promote your events? Let us know in the comments section below.
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