20 Highly Effective Ways To Promote Your School Event

A typical school calendar has myriad events spread across it. It could be that groundbreaking ceremony, the prom, school dance, or even a homecoming parade in the offing. Depending on the rules and school best practices, it’s crucial to plan so that nothing ever goes wrong. We consider attendance as a critical success factor for every event, so the more, the merrier. Why would you not jump with exhilaration if the whole community turned up to your soccer event? It would also be newsworthy in the local dailies.

But nothing comes on a silver platter, not even crowds turning up until you put in all the effort. Again, some of the school functions come with an extremely tight budget. It means you must be pretty creative to pull it off. Every event is different and unique, so copycatting promotion tactics is never an option. It is why you must consider every detail, double-check, and tailor every task and undertaking to your event. The first thing is getting started with the organization bit, and here is what you can do.

1. Establish A Working Team for The SChool Event

Most school events work out so well because of willing volunteers ready to handle various tasks. So, your first task is to identify dynamic, outgoing individuals to form a team. You can then assign each of the specific duties related to the event. And remember, there should be a team leader who functions as the key contact person among the group. If anyone needs any info, whether it is about the guest of honor or the list of attendees, only this person can lead the overall event direction.

2. Brainstorm What It Takes to Pull a school event Off

As I already mentioned above, your event is unique. It is like no other. Hence it needs its exclusive promotion tactics. So, please discuss with your team what it could take to pull it through. You might also have to critically dig through the previous school calendar events, especially those that came out tops. While they could be entirely different, you could borrow some of the best practices. Still, you have to discern and use only what suits your school event. Look at it this way. Methods that could quickly bring the crowds to say, a sports event may not be the same as those that attract masses to your 4k club fundraising.

3. Decide Who the Audience Are for your school event

Even before you pull out all the stops and go full swing into the event organization mode, you need to identify the function’s stakeholders. For example, are you targeting parents, the local community, students, or the media? Or are all these groups of people involved? Once you are sure of this part of the plan, you can decide on the suitable communication channels to reach them. Then, depending on the time frame and available resources, you can take advantage of every available medium to hype your function.

School Event Promotional Tips

It is one thing to organize, and it is another to get into the full-throttle of exciting the event. Whether it is a concert, games, or fundraising for charity, you now must get off any of your current laurels and do the actual horse work. So here is a list of tips you can use.

4. Link Your Promotional Activities to Your District Website

The district website can act as an influential online office where every post you make and every other info you disseminate leads people to the website. The website will consist of full details of the event, including location and contacts. Those attractive posters and flyers can also call this place home. As your content hub, this site is also authoritative in its own right, such that people will be motivated to check what’s in the works. From here, you may not only post the link to those teaser videos, but you can also send recaps immediately after the event.

5. Create A Call-To-Action Within the School Website

The school website is a great place to promote your event. But since it can also be an overly busy place, you must be strategic about precisely placing your call. In this case, I would suggest those internal pages. High-traffic areas include the admissions, tuition, and special programs pages. So, place your CTA here. If the website has a visits page, take advantage of it too. Ensure your CTA has all the correct contact details and some form of urgency to push people to subscribe to the event.

6. Decide on The Most Suitable Visual Designs

 Generally, people react most to what they can see. It is why presenting your audience with awesome images related to your event might begin to play the trick. If you are a creative designer, you can now bring the main idea about the event to paper. You can also use those striking and full-color images to draw massive attention. What if you do not have graphic design skills?  You can reach out to various graphic designers to create that head-turning poster or flyer, then upload it in just every medium.

7. Create Teaser Videos Too

With technology running every aspect of our lives, you can now easily create a viral 60-second video to showcase what the event is all about. You can also do a docuseries demonstrating any event preparations and then post it on the district website or the school website. Once done, you can then share the link on social media. You can also use any past videos related to your event to hype this one. Remember, these are merely teasers, and you will keep sending recaps to remind all the stakeholders of the impending function.

8. Use Your Schools Social Media Page To Promote a school event

Research indicates that over 70% of schoolers between the ages of 12-18 are on social media. They are browsing either on Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat and your sole purpose is to rein them in to attend the event. If you utilize the school Facebook page, try and have as many followers and likes as possible.

You can then share your teaser videos here and update everyone about how far the preparations are. Do not shy away from Instagram for schools’ option page, which is an easy way to post images and videos for your audience. Besides uploading videos and posters, you can also create updates, enabling people to read about the upcoming event.

9. Make Those School Announcements

Your solid building block starts from here. So, take advantage of school announcement days to make yours. Does the school use a public address system to address everyone? Take a chance with that one, too, sensitizing them of the upcoming event and what preparations you are doing to ensure success. The district website can help with daily announcements too. You can be sure each parent and each concerned community member will be receiving daily updates on the progress.

10. Use More of The Offline Space 

While most people are busy doing one thing or the other online, offline also works fantastically for promotions and adverts. Those head-turning posters and flyers can be like a breath of fresh air, away from the phone or comp screens. But you must be tactical in the way you use them. If you are making any programs, brochures or raffles, ensure every person has access to them. It means you place them at the very strategic locations on campus where most people congregate. So how do you design your paper prints to resonate with the event? Here is how:

11. Create Event-Themed Posters

Did you know posters make excellent promotional material? But you must design them to resonate with the event so that once a person looks at the sign, they should instantly get the message. Let’s assume it’s a school dance you are organizing. It means the posters should have a school-dance theme. I would suggest you create powerful, thought-provoking imagery aligned to dance, which also draws immediate attention. Use all the right colors and positive but brief text to accompany the pic.

12. Create Specific-Event-themed Flyers

Like the posters, flyers are some of the best tools you can use to create awareness about your event. If you are designing, make them as striking as possible and with sharp colors. Then, of course, the leaflets should only bear images and messages about your event. Remember, the more visible and conspicuous your flyers are, the more response and attendance. So, place them where everyone can see. If it is at the dining hall, so be it. If the graduation square is where most students and staff love to hang out, that reflects a high-traffic area where you can hang your flyers.

13. Use Infographics to Hype Your Event

While infographics are mostly larger images than posters and flyers, they also provide room for editing info. Meanwhile, they remain a critical promotional tool that you can share on any medium, including blogs, websites, and social media. The editor feature permits you to add any new updates as you continue to prepare for your school event. You can also add event info, such as contacts, event date, and location, right at the top or bottom of the page.

14. Take Advantage of the Social Media Ads Feature

Depending on the nature of your event, you can go the ads way. For example, let’s imagine you are fundraising for a cause. In this case, it might have to take money to make money, hence placing those ads on Facebook, Instagram, and even YouTube. But I would ask that you also try the geo-targeting feature, which focuses on stakeholder location. So, for example, the ads can focus on a particular radius from the school and parents with kids in a specific age range.

15. Create A Facebook Event

You can reach a considerable number of people through the Facebook events feature for several reasons. For one, the event displays your location. Secondly, it will show a list of those attending and all those interested. That can keep attracting as many people as possible, making your function a huge success.

16. Use Email Marketing Tactics

One of the most powerful tools for event awareness is an email campaign. While here, you can compile a list of subscribers and send out a brief note to each about the event. You can include a link that leads the subscribers to the district website, which should be having full details.

But people don’t just open emails unless there is a catch, and that is where your creativity should manifest. So, include an attractive subject line to bait them. Also, personalize your content, making it friendly and not so rigid. You can take advantage of any available tools to create links, and banners too.  And lastly, a reply link enables your subscribers to chip in their thoughts. It could be a participatory approach that amplifies the function.

17. Capitalize on The FOMO Factor in Your Communication

FOMO is a short-term Fear of Missing Out tactic. So whether it is a Facebook post, live video, Instagram story, or email, use FOMO to engage your audience with some urgency and benefits. Let them know how much they stand to lose if they miss attending. Later, you can also send a short email to non-attendees showing the much they missed. You can be so sure the next event, if any, will be a full-house.

18. Work with Local Community Publications

At this point, nothing should hinder you from spreading the word. Thus, why not take advantage of the local dailies to do your bidding. You will have hit the right notes with community members as they consider this a newsworthy event that they must attend.

But before you hand in your release, familiarize yourself with the newspaper’s deadlines to submit within the right time. Some publications may require that you hand in the info weeks, even months in advance. Unfortunately, late submission can mean that the message doesn’t get published as you might have wished.

19. Pitch Local TV Stations about your school event

If you are promoting, the TV might be the right place to pitch. You can first communicate via email, asking the relevant departmental personnel if they air your event info. Suppose no one gets back to you. Then, of course, wait for a few days to make a follow-up. Mind you, the only way you can have people respond to you is if your content has that visual appeal. So, before you send, make creativity your best ally. That applies to any other communication channel you use. Your content should appear professional to draw instant attention and appeal to the masses.

20. Utilize Student Media for your school event

If your school has a publication, radio program, or webcast, then you could conveniently use it to release news about your upcoming function. There are two reasons I recommend this medium. First, you will be addressing the primary stakeholders, who are the staff, students, and parents. Hence you are likely to rein in a substantial number of attendees without a huge hassle. Secondly, school media is budget-friendly, and so if you have limited funds, this channel could be your saving grace.

Takeaways

Everything you do, every step you take plays a significant role in making your school event a success. There is no way your massive efforts will fail you. In that case, be ready to have a blast. Otherwise, your organizational skills are helpful from the word go. It includes forming a reliable team that can handle different aspects of the event from beginning to end. And finally, since you are promoting, never hesitate to take advantage of any legal channel to attract attendees. Any medium is a justified means to an end.