10 digital marketing tools to help you grow your event planning business

Using digital marketing to promote your event can mean anything from sending out emails to your mailing list through to running a full social media advertising campaign. 

Whatever the scale of your online activity, it’s a dead cert that it could be made more effective by using the right digital tools. 

From measuring the success of campaigns through to determining who your event’s target audience is – there’s a whole plethora of software, apps and tech designed to make your online marketing efforts more efficient and effective.

Let’s take a look.

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the bread-and-butter of digital marketing tools. It can seem a little complex at first, but you really don’t need to be a pro to reap the benefits of using it for your event website. 

Google Analytics’ main offering lies in providing invaluable insights about site visitors – including key demographic data about them, as well as information on how they behave on your website (like whether or not they’re making it to your ticket registration page). If you’re brand new to this tool, we’d recommend checking out Google Analytics Academy to get started. 

2. Canva

Canva has soared in popularity recently, thanks to the way it makes simple graphic design accessible to all. Of course, nothing beats hiring an actual graphic designer for larger-scale projects. But Canva provides a great halfway house for those who can’t access a graphic designer all the time, or even at all. The tool lets you mock up professional social media cards, logos, animated videos and so much more, making it an invaluable go-to for any event planner looking to grow their brand online. 

3. Moz

No digital marketing strategy is complete without paying close attention to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Moz offers great free and paid-for tools that help with everything from auditing your event website for SEO opportunities, through to carrying out keyword research for landing pages and blog posts.

Tip: Even if you don’t have a website for your event, there are some fairly easy things you can do to improve the SEO of your event registration page.

4. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a really user-friendly tool that has the potential to seriously increase the effectiveness of your social media activity. It lets you generate blog and social media ideas, monitor your event’s social media performance, create content that resonates, and identify influencers that would be great to partner with. 

5. Buffer

Buffer lets you scale your event social media activity by enabling you to schedule posts in advance across different social media platforms. It’s incredibly simple to use, providing a reliable way for you to make sure you’ve got great content going out at the times you want it to with minimal effort. 

6. HubSpot

HubSpot is one of the most reputable digital marketing platforms around, offering excellent educational content, guides and tutorials, as well as intelligent tools to help with your digital activity. From social media, to blogging, to email marketing and website content creation, it’s got you covered for pretty much all digital marketing activity. 

7. Woobox

Woobox is a really nifty social engagement platform that helps you grow your interactive content offering. It’s got an excellent turnkey solution for running social giveaways and competitions, which makes curating hashtag entries and selecting winners at random so much easier than if you were to try to do this manually. Whether you plan on giving away tickets to your event to increase engagement, or are running a competition to celebrate a brand anniversary, this is definitely an invaluable tool to have in your box. 

8. Nanigans

Nanigans is a tool for those who are ready to step their digital advertising up a level. The platform is quite geared towards Facebook marketing, and access to the Facebook Exchange (FBX) which is used for retargeted advertising. (That’s where you hone your advertising efforts on people who’ve already interacted with your event). Nanigans also offers a range of other great features, including those that help you improve your Twitter advertising strategy, as well as your growth on Instagram.

9. GetResponse

GetResponse is a great email marketing platform that can help you to increase email engagement through clever trend analysis and automated activity. Basically, it assesses what’s going to actually land well with individuals on your email list. Then, it uses this information to generate more targeted, relevant emails. 

10. Kapost 

Whether you run editorial interviews with your key performers, write topical blog posts, or produce educational guides, content marketing is a great way to expand your digital event promotion. Kapost helps with exactly this kind of stuff, enabling you to refine every phase of the content marketing cycle. For example, it has a great feature that lets you assign content pieces to different ‘personas’ (you can read about creating personas for your event in this article). This, in turn, provides you with information about when in the content marketing cycle that persona is likely to convert. Nice.

And there you have it – 10 great tools that help you to master the ever-expanding world of digital marketing for your event. Now to sit back and watch those results come rolling in.