Fitness Event Promotions

Event promotions was the topic of the HubSpot Blog today. “How to Promote an Event With Inbound Marketing – A Step-By-Step Guide”

They provide a great blog and I encourage you to take a look at some great ideas for utilizing inbound marketing.

Mile Run Fitness Event

As a fitness professional nearly everything we do can be broken down into a fitness event of some type. It may be large or small, recurring or a single occurrence. Even if you wouldn’t think of a particular activity as a “fitness event”, if you can find a way to position it as such, you will find added power in your promotional efforts.

The below 8 points will assist you in promoting your next fitness event.

I would like to point out how the HubSpot promotion ideas relate specifically to the majority of you who follow this blog and participate in the Fitness Pro Travel community.

1. Event website or event page either way it is important to have a location to point to as you begin promotions.
   Especially if it is a new website for the event get it up and establish a link or two pointing to it.  This is important for your natural search potential in allowing the search engines to find you.  This item alone can go on for optimization, but essentially, anything is much better than nothing.
2. Utilizing your network to spread event news is relatively simple. Hopefully you have an established presence with a blog or social media connections, but for the fitness professional you should be leveraging to the offline world as well. Think clients, students, athletes, coaches, running groups, etc. that you work with. They are part of your network and you should ensure they are aware.
   You don’t have any of that, start with family and friends.
3. Each of those mentioned in item 2 above has a network of their own.  Do not miss the opportunity to encourage them to share your event with their networks.
   Take it a step further and find ideal champions for your cause.  People with influence or huge networks warrant greater effort and possibly even partnering compensation. The same is true for persons of stature within your industry. With their assistance to your event you can gain a great deal of authority to the cause.
4. Looking to related groups who may find interest in your event can be very beneficial.  HubSport offers some great on-line suggestions as groups are easy to find, but offline this same philosophy holds true. Seek out these community groups in both locations to continue to build event interest.
5. Everything about creating a community feeling around your event is a good thing, offline and online.  You have fans that have interest and will attend your event. Providing a community around the event may just be what is needed to turn them into Raving Fans.  Get a few of these and you will find your event being promoted far and wide for you.
6. Creating content is an awesome natural manner to generate interest in your event.  Getting others who are involved in the event to do the same compounds the effect. Search engines love it and potential interested parties may be coming to you pre-sold after they witnessed a good piece of content.
   Use multiple formats (articles, video, audio, blog, bulletins, forums, etc.) to reach folks in different places.
   In the offline world this could be articles to publications, speaking engagements, or healthy tidbits added to a company newsletter.
7. HubSpot suggests adding event tags to all online content created. This is becoming more common with the advent of Twitter. There is merritt in it, but you’ll want to educate yourself up on how these are best utilized.
8. Finally, one of the most simple not mentioned is the simple use of event calendars.  There are thousands on various topics you can find online. Many are related to health and fitness. Some do and some do not require payment to be listed.  Ultimately you want to look at those who utilize the calendar. Is that community related and interested in your event. You then may want to evaluate the traffic to that page or the size of the community. Alexa.com is probably the easiest way to get a rough estimate on internet activity.
   Offline you will find community event sections in local news publications, your event may also be allowed in local group newsletters, as well as some event calendars exist in community meeting spots. If your event is specific to a locality, don’t miss these options.

The above points are excellent and I hope you will utilize them with your next event promotion. To tie this to the Fitness Pro Travel community and how this community you are involved in assists with these principles, let me do a quick line by line tie in.

1. Once your event page is created, utilize the FPT blog, articles, bulletins to point people back to it.
2. Be active at FPT and build a network (friendships) with other members of the community.
3. Because of the ‘live web’ platform at FPT, those you network with are also building networks. Ask for their help in spreading word of event.
4. Search through groups at FPT to find communities that are established who may be interested in event.
5. Create your own group around the event. Use your network to drive other FPT members to it and grow an internal community within the larger community.
6. Write blog posts, bulletin updates, articles, and talk in forums at FPT to generate knowledge and enthusiasm for your event.  Very powerful options for spreading the message inside and outside FPT
7. And finally, do what you probably could have or should have done first and post your event to the events calendar. Simple to do and directed to the appropriate audience. The calendar is search-able and is viewed by hundreds of community members daily.

As you’ve read through this post you have seen obvious and not so obvious means to promoting your event.  These principles hold true for your business as well.

Promotion of anytype will be enhanced when it can be wrapped around or tied to an event. The event doesn’t have to be your own creation, it may be a simple sale event that is tied to a national holiday. Promoting around that larger event can provide you added bang for your buck and extend your reach.