How to Overcome 8 Common Event Marketing Challenges
February 27, 2025For every marketing challenge, there is a solution. Let’s talk about solving event marketing challenges. We work with many non-profit events and are well-versed in common issues facing event marketers. After years of lessons in the field, we have developed strategies to overcome those challenges.
Let’s dive into solutions for these 8 common event marketing challenges.
Eight Event Marketing Challenges
- “We can’t afford marketing.” Budgets are tight, especially for non-profits, so it may be tempting to cut funds for marketing.
- “We don’t know who our customers are.” This is a real problem when you need people to talk about your event and start buying tickets.
- “People aren’t talking about us.” When people don’t know you or don’t care deeply about your cause, it can be tough on ticket sales and engagement for your event.
- Poor or Inconsistent Communication. When your internal and external teams can’t quite agree or sync up on communications, things can get messy – which can confuse your internal and external audiences.
- Measuring Success. Knowing what metrics actually mean you achieved success is more than just attention or tickets sold, but what metrics are the right ones?
- “We have crisis after crisis and can’t seem to keep up a good messaging flow.” It’s hard to focus on the right messages when everything is an emergency.
- “How do we keep them interested?” Keeping your customers engaged in your community can be difficult if the event is a year away.
- “We can’t get enough sponsors.” Sponsor challenges can leave any event in the lurch.
Event Marketing Solutions
Budget
Budget constraints exist in every industry, and a common “solution” is to cut marketing, but is it really a solution? Cutting out the only effort directly focused on getting more attendees ultimately ends up hurting your event. Marketing strategy for events is crucial for knowing who your target audience is, and getting the messaging out to your target audience, maintaining the community that drives your sales. Instead, allocate 5-10% toward marketing and find other ways to pare down costs or improve sponsorships (see below.)
Targeting the Right Audience
When it comes to targeting your event audience, you likely already have data you can work from.
In the case of an established event, looking back at email lists, social media, and your past ticket sales, you can derive insight into who your customers are. Who comes to your event every year? Ultimately, you are going to have to gather some cold, hard facts in order to get the best information to work from for successful future efforts. Do your forms collect the data you need to find those insights?
In the case of new events, looking at events around your area similar to yours can provide the same kind of information. Over time, you’ll gather data from your attendees and better understand your audience.
Low Event Engagement
Combat low engagement from your event audience with messaging that resonates. Understanding who they are and what they want from your event is one step to improving their engagement. For example, do they like beer? Start promoting what options you’ll have at your event. Do they enjoy the culture? Use messaging that highlights how your event brings that culture to the world. Once you find the messages that resonate, you should start to see engagement improve.
Internal and External Communication
A common challenge for event leadership is aligning internal team communications and what messaging goes out to the world. Much of this can be solved by ensuring you have your goals, strategy, and plans in place – and clearly communicated to everyone involved. It matters because your volunteers, vendors, and sponsors are some of your strongest advocates – or can be – if they have the right messaging to share when the opportunity arises.
Measure Success
Before you start to market, you should have SMART goals in place. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. When you have a SMART goal, it’s much easier to determine if you were able to achieve what you set out to do. For example, your goal could be to increase attendance (measurable) by 10% (specific, achievable, and relevant) this year (time-based).
Your SMART goals should align with your overall organization’s strategy – i.e. increasing attendance matters because the event is a major fundraiser and supports the organizational mission.
Planning Event Messaging per Marketing Strategy
Develop your marketing strategy to achieve your goals – if those goals are aligned to your organizational strategy, your marketing strategy will be aligned as well. Marketing strategy should feed the message plan. Plan your messages according to the strategy first, then determine what might need to change if and when a crisis occurs. Many event leaders run into the challenge of having needs that pop-up as one-time or short-term instances that compete for messaging time on social and PR platforms. This can include real emergencies that must be dealt with immediately as well as smaller, but important, messages such as needing to boost specific ticket type sales.
In the case of a real PR crisis, there should be a separate plan to follow, and the designated contact should handle outgoing messages.
Maintain Event Buzz
To maintain energy levels surrounding your event, keep the audience hooked with content from past events along with look-ahead or teaser content. This includes content your team captured as well as UGC (User-Generated Content), including throwbacks from previous years and fan favorites. During the following months, keep the audience updated with ongoing plans and calls for volunteers, as well as tease any new features or offers for the next event.
Secure Sponsors
Creating sponsor packages that make sense well ahead of the event can help secure meaningful and impactful partnerships. Look at other events in your area to see what they offer their sponsors then gather your audience data and explain how your package will help your sponsor reach your audience.
Continue building on those relationships by thanking them publicly, building in social media shout-outs, links in emails, and logos on your event website. Promoting your sponsors this way helps new sponsors become interested in joining you in the future.
With more than 20 years of experience of public relations and marketing, we have learned how event marketing challenges can be solved with the right plans and people in the right places. If you want to chat with us about your event, make an appointment with our team. If you’re interested in how to boost your event marketing budget, check out How to Maximize Event Marketing ROI.
