Creating a Promotional Calendar for Your Community Events

An often-underrated component of creating successful events is developing a strategic promotional calendar. Unless your event is so spectacular on its own that word-of-mouth will fill every seat in the place — and let’s face it, that rarely happens — your team will need to establish a plan for informing your community about each program on your schedule.

Here are some tips to help you create a successful promotional schedule for your community center’s upcoming events.

Special Events Promotional Checklist

• Identify your intended audience: Consider who you are trying to reach with each event on your calendar, and where they spend their time. Simply put, target your marketing efforts toward who you hope will attend each event. If your goal is to draw in a crowd that is younger than the people who typically engage with you, utilizing multiple social media channels may be the best way to reach them. Seniors, on the other hand, are more likely to read the local paper, watch the evening news, or even skim through a flyer they pick up at the library or receive in the mail. The one social media channel older adults do seem to engage with is Facebook. So, keep these tips in mind as you plan.

• Set a realistic budget: Before you can plan a marketing and public relations campaign, you’ll need to know how much you can spend. Keep in mind that if you are a nonprofit organization, you might be able to offer media partner sponsorships in exchange for coverage. That can help stretch your budget. Some smaller publications will also allow you to submit an article for publication with the purchase of an ad. It’s another way to get more reach for your dollar.

• Think strategically: Not every event needs a full-scale promotional plan. Identify which ones you think will help you raise more awareness of and interest in your community center, and spend the majority of your resources on those. Then take some time to consider how to make the most of your resources. For example, it might be helpful to enlist the services of a high school or college student who needs internship hours. They may be able to assist in developing digital assets or another task. You could have them work on the smaller programs to free up staff time to work on the larger ones. Or you could ask for sponsorships from area businesses and individuals in exchange for publicity or other perks. 

• Ask for volunteers: Busy team members may think they don’t have time to put together a committee of volunteers who might slow them down. While it’s true that working through committees can be time-consuming, there are advantages. One primary benefit is that you can leverage the professional and personal networks of committee members. That can be helpful on a variety of fronts, including fundraising, seeking raffle prizes, inviting guests, and more. Let your local United Way agency know you are seeking volunteers, along with senior groups at local churches, members of the chamber of commerce, and more. Don’t forget to announce it at events and publish an article in your own newsletter. 

• Don’t skimp on communications: You may only need to communicate about your event in your organization’s newsletter or you may need to share the event on your website, social media, and more. Either way, using professional imagery is fundamental to making a good first impression with your target audience. Spend the time to design your own imagery or simply use our ready-made content library, WeCreate. Inside WeCreate you can find beautiful graphics for print and digital use created especially for non-profits like yours. Choose from thousands of images that support all types of events and center communication needs.

• Evaluate and reevaluate: One final tip is to make a point of reviewing the successes and failures of each event and looking for opportunities for improvement. Have team members do the same. And if you feel comfortable doing so, ask a few attendees if they would be willing to share the good and the bad with you. Soliciting feedback gives you an opportunity to identify problems and resolve them before the next year.
  
  

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