Top 10 ways to promote your trips and events
Unless you are a seasoned pro at sales and marketing, the task of promoting a trip or event to your fellow members can feel overwhelming at first. Don’t worry, though. First, travel is a popular conversation topic, and you will find that many people are receptive to hearing about a faith community-sponsored trip or event.
Second, below are 10 easy steps for promoting your trip. By following these strategies, you will be well on your way to selling out your event. (Note: Although the word "trip" is used in the following list of 10 points, the promotional tips and hints below also apply to events.)
1. Tell and invite others on a trip. There’s virtually no better tool for promoting and advertising a trip than personally telling others about it and inviting them on it. Best yet, it costs nothing to do this.
2. Ask your spiritual leader to join your trip. Be sure to invite your community spiritual leader to join your trip. Having your spiritual leader participate in the event almost always ensures immediate interest in the trip by fellow members.
3. Have your religious leader make the official announcement. Whether the spiritual leader of the faith community can join the trip or not, be sure to ask this person (or someone of similar influence) to officially announce the trip to members and encourage them to sign up for it.
4. Print and hand out flyers. After receiving approval from your religious leader to spread the word about the trip to fellow members, your next step is to get flyers of the trip printed and placed in the bulletin, handed out to members, placed in the brochure rack and so forth.
5. Get other committee leaders involved. One of the best ways to promote the trip/event to all segments of your faith community or organization, is to get the committee leaders involved in the trip promotion. Ask them to promote your trip at their respective committee meetings.
6. Hang posters/notices/announcements. Hang posters and other notices/announcements about the trip around the building facility, especially at entrances. And, above all, make sure the posters are attractive and appealing. You want to capture everyone’s attention!
7. Call and e-mail campaigns: Ask for volunteers to assist you in a calling campaign to inform fellow members about the trip. In addition, conduct an e-mail campaign to fellow members to promote the trip.
8. Host a trip promotion get-together. One of the best ways to promote a trip is to host a get-together. Here you can present videos, photos and/or Power Point presentations of the planned trip. And, as always, consider having some free food (i.e. pizza) on hand; this almost always increases turnout.
9. Create a Web page on the faith community Web site. Create a Web page on your faith community Web site which advertises your trip(s). Even better yet, try to get an entire section of the Web site dedicated to your travel program.
10. Start a Social Network Group. In following up to the above Web-page idea, you might also consider launching an online social network group for your trip. This enables you to post photos, videos and blogs about the trip. How can you get started with this? Visit the WRTA Social Network; here you can create a private or public online social network group promoting your trip/event.