……Part 3 in the Beyond the Press Release series
Hopefully, you’ve built a strong list of groups of influence (key publics) for your event and established some serious expectations (goals) for each specific group. I promise you that these groups are going to be big help in reaching your event’s ideal targets, so it’s critical to reach out to each of them in meaningful ways.
Develop a specific communications plan for each group of influence. You’ll need a communications task and timeline that encompasses your event’s 12-month promotion cycle. Get into the habit of sharing relevant information and resources with your groups of influence early in the event cycle and they will be able to do more for you. Remember they have deadlines of their own and it’s always easier if they don’t have to squeeze you into their outreach at the last minute.
Give consideration to an appropriate level of depth and frequency? What types of information would each group find interesting or relevant? Your communication plans will be based specifically on the goals you established for each group.
Gather the supporting documents and collaterals (promo tools) you’ll need in order to maximize your impact with each key audience. Your event promotion team is creating a tremendous amount of promotional material and collateral, you should maximize it by sharing it with all your groups of influence. I always like to create a gallery of promo objects to keep at my fingertips –items I can easily tap into when preparing a routine update to my groups of influence.
What promo elements do you have available for sharing? Developing this communication plan sooner in your timeline might also inspire you to get some of your collateral materials ready sooner. Timely production of collaterals seems to be a perennial issue for the annual events I know.
Implement your plan and you will benefit exponentially from building relationships with your key audiences.
Watch my next post for a draft approach for one of my all-time favorite key publics, the event volunteers.
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