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Event Promotion: 10 Tactics We Used to Sell Out a 500-Person Conference

Event Promotion: 10 Tactics We Used to Sell Out a 500-Person Conference
Last year, we ran Ahrefs Evolve: a sold-out, 2-day, 500-person conference at Pan Pacific Orchard in Singapore.
The Ahrefs team at Ahrefs Evolve

I interviewed Shermin Lim, our events marketer, to find out how we marketed the conference and sold out all our tickets.

My interview with Shermin Lim

Here’s everything we did to promote the conference. You can use these same strategies (or be inspired by them) for your own event—big or small.

ours:

  • Event description
  • Value proposition
  • Speaker lineup with bios
  • Event agenda
  • Pricing and ticket tiers
  • Information about pre-event workshops (speakers, bio, pricing, agenda)
  • Sponsor information
  • Venue information with photos and videos
  • FAQs
  • Why attend conferences (with explanations from two highly recognizable experts in the industry)
  • Local attractions and travel tips
Ahrefs Evolve landing page
The section on Why attend conferences in the Evolve landing page
What to do in Singapore section on Evolve's landing page

Make this page early. Don’t worry if you have yet to finalize any details. Just leave them as “TBD”, then update the page gradually as you confirm the venue, speakers, and sponsors.

We left information as TBD on the early version of Evolve's landing page
crowned the world’s best new skyscraper.

Pan Pacific Orchard

We promoted our venue by producing a short video touring it, highlighting its high ceilings, modern architecture, and open networking spaces:

rank your event page on Google, it isn’t the only page you should be ranking. There are plenty of other opportunities where you can rank high on Google and insert mentions of your own event.

For example, in order to gain visibility for Evolve, we published two blog posts targeted at “conference”-related keywords:

Here’s how to find such keywords:

  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter keywords relevant to your event (e.g., marketing, SEO)
  3. Go to the Matching terms report
  4. Use the Include filter to look for words like “conferences”, “events”, “meetups”, etc.
Matching terms report

Look through the list and find keywords where you can potentially pitch your event. For example, we naturally mentioned Ahrefs Evolve as one of the SEO conferences worth attending last year:

SEO conferences worth attending in 2024

As you can see, this page ranked pretty high on Google and maintained its rankings (at least until most of the mentioned events were over):

The best part is that we can simply update this page this year and it’ll likely regain its rankings again—you can see the spike in rankings every time we update this post:

Spike in rankings whenever we update the post

However, creating content isn’t just about ranking. You can also support your events team. For example, we wrote one for potential attendees on how to persuade their bosses to allow them to attend Evolve:

Our post on how to persuade your boss to send you to Evolve

We even gave them an email template they could use right away:

The email template we provided
event marketing strategy—we would also promote our conference in those events:

Promoting Evolve at our other workshops

We did this by having a roll-up banner of the event with a QR code people could scan to get the tickets. The emcee, one of our team members, would also make sure to mention it frequently during the workshop itself.

If the event was held in our office, we would display the event information and the QR code on a TV.

Promoting Evolve at our other workshops

If you’re not doing event marketing, don’t worry. You can also promote your event in other events or channels:

  • If you’re sponsoring a conference or running a booth in one, have printed materials promoting your event too.
  • If you’re speaking at a conference or being interviewed on a podcast/YouTube, make sure to weave in a relevant mention of your upcoming event.
  • If you run your own YouTube/podcast, even better. Promote your event in your intro or as a pre-roll ad.
take risks with our marketing. We love it because it differentiates us from a sea of sameness where every event promotion is identical.

To promote Evolve, we designed a giant helium balloon with the event branding. It wasn’t AI; we actually flew it up, staged a photoshoot (with drones), and turned those images into eye-catching ad creatives.

Tim Soulo's LinkedIn post promoting Evolve and using our helium balloon as an ad creative
Ahrefs' LinkedIn post promoting Evolve and using our helium balloon as an ad creative

Do you have to spend the same amount of money we did? You don’t have to—there are plenty of low-cost, high-impact stunts.

For example, while not specifically to promote an event, Deliveroo Singapore used to have its staff wear kangaroo onesies and go around the Central Business District to hand out flyers and other swag items.

Deliveroo staff wearing kangaroo onesies

It’s all up to your own creativity.

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