9 Best Word of Mouth Marketing Strategies for Events

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most effective yet overlooked marketing strategies, especially in the events industry. With 92% of consumers trusting recommendations from friends and family over any other form of advertising, word of mouth should be a core part of your event marketing plan.

Harnessing the power of people’s recommendations, referrals, and conversations can significantly amplify the reach and impact of your event. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into nine of the best word-of-mouth marketing strategies that can can help you boost event attendance, increase engagement during the event, and drive more conversions from your event long after it’s over. 

Why Word of Mouth Marketing?

• Trust Factor: Personal recommendations foster a sense of trust that traditional advertising often struggles to achieve.

• Cost-Efficiency: Leveraging satisfied customers for promotion proves to be a cost-effective strategy, delivering impactful results without hefty financial investments.

• Expansive Reach: Word of Mouth has the innate ability to transcend geographical and demographic barriers, effortlessly reaching new audiences.

• Community Building: It goes beyond transactions, focusing on building a loyal community around a brand, enhancing long-term customer relationships.

9 Best Word of Mouth Marketing Strategies

Here are 9 of the most effective word of mouth marketing strategies to amplify your next event:

1. Identify and Equip Brand Advocates

The best word of mouth starts with your biggest fans. These brand advocates are excited about your event and willing to spread the word to their own networks.

To leverage your advocates:

• Identify who your best customers and loyal attendees are. Look for those who engage frequently on social media and drive the most referral traffic to your event pages.

• Hold a special pre-event briefing just for advocates to equip them with key event details, selling points and assets to share on social media or email. Empower them to easily spread the word.

• Highlight and feature advocates who drive major registrations on your social channels. This boosts their status as trusted insiders and encourages others to follow suit. 

2. Recruit Micro-Influencers in Your Niche

Micro-influencers may not have as large of a following as mainstream celebrities, but they tend to be experts in a specific industry or niche. This gives them stronger connections with a targeted audience that is more likely to convert.

Work with 5–10 micro-influencers in the months leading up to your event by:

• Compensating them with free event tickets in return for creating organic content and driving registrations from their audience. 

• Featuring them as speakers, or hosts of key segments like a panel or roundtable conversation. This builds their status as industry experts.

• Promoting their content through your social channels to amplify reach. Discounts or special offers tied to their promo codes drive more value.

3. Turn Past Attendees into Ambassadors 

Past event attendees can be powerful word of mouth drivers for returning and new audiences alike. About 40% of event attendees learn about events from a family member, friend or colleague.

Leverage past attendees by:

• Surveying those from your most recent event about what they enjoyed and what they would like to see more of. This helps you refine future messaging and focus on your strengths.

• Following up via email to ascertain their level of interest in connecting you with their own networks to boost registrations for your next event. Provide easy tools and templates for them to share promotions.

• Handing out physical mail cards at the previous event for attendees to drop in the mailbox for any friends or colleagues who may benefit from attending.

4. Strategically Spread Key Event Info Leading Up to the Event

Timing is critical when amplifying your word of mouth marketing efforts surrounding an event. Start 1–2 months before the event to generate awareness through early bird promotions. Then continue seeding interest and urgency through teaser content and special offers.

For instance:

• 4 Weeks Out: Announce special promotions, like early bird rates, referral bonuses or extra swag for the first X registrants. Then equip advocates to spread the deal while space is limited.

• 2 Weeks Out: Release snippets of exclusive content or speakers that will only be available live at the event, like workshops, celebrity keynotes or experiential activities to create intrigue and urgency among key audiences. 

• 1 Week Out: Offer attractive last chance/final wave rates, along with any final speaker announcements. Remind registrants to share the event info and offers with their networks to maximize word of mouth buzz right up until the event begins.

5. Add Social Buttons, Visuals and Links to All Content

While many marketers focus primarily on the words they use to describe an event or promote it, don’t underestimate the power of visual content and calls to action to drive word of mouth shares.  

Every piece of compelling marketing content about your event should contain:

• Social media buttons to initiate easy sharing to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other channels

• Snappy, benefit-focused headlines that encourage scanning and sharing

• Short paragraphs and bullet points interspersed with relevant imagery to improve skimmability 

• Links and CTAs to register or directly share the event details with others  

The more shareable and scannable each piece of content is, the further your event message will spread.

6. Get Partners to Co-Promote  

Partnerships extend your event promotion beyond just your own website and social media platforms. By getting strategic partners to co-promote your event, you gain direct access to their followers and tap into their trusted reputation.

Ideal partners might include:

• Sponsors who are boosting their own offerings at your event. Cross-promoting each other’s digital channels expands exposure.
• Industry media outlets and key publications that will naturally attract your target demographic. Consider partnerships to produce trackable referral links or content specific to that particular event.  

• Local community calendars, tourism boards, and such to promote events that will attract visitors. These can include local publications, radio stations, regional industry groups, Meetup chapters, and more based on event specifics.

The key is determining partners who align with your event positioning and give you expanded, yet targeted outreach capabilities. Structure joint promotions, discounted rates, and referral tracking links to monitor mutual campaign success.  

7. Reward Referrals with Perks and Prizes

Everyone loves to be rewarded! Giving perks and prizes for referrals taps into human interest for exclusive benefits and friendly competition. You can get creative with rewards like:

• Early check-in or VIP lounge access for those who drive the most new registrations

• Drawings for big ticket prizes like free airfare among all those who refer friends
  
• Event swag or gift bags valued at X times the number of referrals driven by an advocate

Tools like ReferralCandy or Extol enable you to easily launch referral programs tied to unique links and promo codes so you can track referrals back to the source. Plus they automatically administer rewards based on levels achieved.  

8. Create Post-Event FOMO Buzz

There’s one key window you don’t want to miss when it comes to word of mouth event marketing. As attendees are returning home from your event, nostalgia and FOMO will be taking hold. Everyone will be reliving highlights and may regret the sessions they didn’t make it to.  

Capitalize immediately by:  

• Sending a quick email survey to capture testimonials, feedback, suggestions and memories while the event is fresh.

• Follow up your survey with a limited time post-event bundle offer of materials they may have missed to generate urgency and sales. 

• Share select event content, recordings and images on social media while tagging attending influencers and advocates. This taps their own audiences to like, comment and spread event buzz.

9. Create a Customizable ‘Spread the Word’ Hub

Don’t just hope your happy attendees, brand advocates, sponsors and partners will spontaneously spread the word. Make it incredibly easy for them by creating a dedicated hub they can access with everything needed.  

Your Spread the Word hub might include:  

• Sample posts and templates for all major social platforms complete with images and CTAs

• A link, QR code and short URL to directly send people to the event site or registration

• Compelling stats and selling points on why the event is timely, relevant and impactful  

• Access to logos, banners, videos and other visual assets 

Conclusion

Word of mouth marketing is crucial for event success. Identify and equip event evangelists to spread the word. Work with micro-influencers to reach niche audiences. Turn past attendees into ambassadors. Share key event details and offers leading up to the event. Optimize content for easy social sharing. Reward referrals and provide shareable assets. Track what content and tactics work best to refine your approach over time. Implement these strategies to boost event marketing and conversions.