Action Plan for Creating Marketing Collateral for Events


You know that a killer marketing campaign is critical to your event's success. But, wow, it's a lot of work!

While every event marketing project I take on is a little different, there is a general process I follow to create the marketing collateral. Creating the various items in an overlapping sequence allows me to save time...  and my clients to save money.

Perhaps my process can give you some ideas to improve your productivity, too.

#1. Assemble, create and edit all the components of the marketing message.
This includes things like logos, graphics and images, taglines and text, biographies, PayPal button code, and ALL the logistics, such as date, location and price.

#2. Create and edit images.
Canva for Work doesn’t give you all the power of Photoshop but it pulls its weight when it comes to productivity. I can quickly make a whole raft of sizes and versions to suit every online or print need.

#3. Create the email message in a bulk email program.
I usually start here because it’s my thing. I can design from scratch to my heart’s content.

#4. Create the printable flyer.
Copy and paste the body of the email message into Word, adjust the formatting, and send to the printer.

#5. Create the landing page.
There are a couple of quick options for this, especially if building custom landing pages on your own website is onerous.
  • Use the online version of the email message as a landing page. Buy a custom domain and point it to the 'read online' link.
  • Copy and paste the html version of your email message into a website builder, adjust the formatting, and publish.
Step #1 is the most important for ANY event marketing. If you don't do that well, the rest will suffer. Granted this is a simple description of the steps, not a how-to, but I hope you'll identify opportunities to be more productive with your event marketing.

PS: Here's a planner you might find useful, too.

originally published in Work Better, Not Harder February 26, 2016

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