Online Conference Marketing for GSB

How We Did Non-profit Online Conference Marketing

Businesses are seeing a need for online conference marketing in a new post-pandemic world. Fortunately, MCG’s marketing is ideal for businesses and non-profits. The novel coronavirus pandemic raged throughout the country in 2020. A longtime partner of ours, GSB, a non-profit fundraising organization, saw the need to reach its network of charitable and congregational leadership.

This was a unique challenge for the organization. The word Zoom had changed in the vocabulary of business people, but the video chat service had been obscure before the pandemic. Thanks to its impressive streaming capacity, GSB saw it as a great app to reach its audience. They had the basics down for streaming the conference, but they needed the marketing know-how of MCG to maximize the attendance.

We took a three-prong approach to market the event, including email, social media, and a landing page. Our email marketing focused on reaching high-activity members of our audience to secure their ticket for the event. We made sure to diversify the messages of the emails to highlight the speakers, topics, and information. On top of that, we included sign-up opportunities in the GSB newsletter.

In our next approach, we created a landing page that started as a “save the date” page with general information. As we updated it, we included a direct link to get tickets and highlighted our speakers and event endorsements. This was created for GSB consultants to share within their networks.

In the last part of our general strategy, we created social media posts for GSB’s Facebook page. These posts included specific calls for action, such as dates for the event or to inform that a deadline was approaching. We also used these posts to highlight individual speakers.

Online Conference Marketing

Starting on Eventbrite

We were eager to jump at the opportunity to do something new with online conference marketing. From the start, MCG selected Eventbrite to host the event for two reasons. One, free events are always free to host on Eventbrite. Secondly, Eventbrite responded to the pandemic by including streaming options for online conferences.

These services added up to a very easy choice for us. When organizations jump into online conferencing, the process seems difficult. Knowing this, our goal was to make it as easy for GSB to get on the platform. This way, they could focus on content. That’s the purpose of non-profit conference marketing.

It was easy to set up the event for GSB because Eventbrite has a straightforward system. They allow recurring dates or date windows for events. Recurring dates are great for annual events. And date windows are perfect for events that take place over multiple days. Since our conference was a streaming event, we set up a date range for two days since the conference stream was split into two sessions.

Active Online Conference Marketing

We selected a date range for our event, but our stream was scheduled for specific times. That being the case, we needed a strategy to notify attendees about start times. Fortunately, Eventbrite includes a simple email system we used to contact our attendees.

Even better, these emails can either be automated or made for a direct send at any time. So we set up pre-event emails to make sure our attendees understood when the event would start. Then we sent a message ahead of an evening “happy hour” stream. Then we contacted our audience again the following day for the day-two stream.

But that is not all we did for our attendees. The event included valuable information, downloads, and video-on-demand after the conference. GSB stayed in touch with attendees by creating a survey and post-event website. We were able to keep the event page open for the month following the conference so attendees could get the information they needed.

Do You Need Online Conference Marketing?

McQuillen Creative works hard to satisfy the needs of our clients. Are you seeking a forward-thinking, intellectually hungry agency for your marketing efforts? MCG has the tools, knowledge, and talent to make your work easy.

We are constantly looking for ways to expand our capabilities, which means we’ll always be one step ahead of the game. If you want to see how we can upgrade your business, connect with our team today. We’re always looking to take on bigger and tougher challenges.


Contact McQuillen Creative

McQuillen Creative has been in the marketing game for over 25 years and we want to help your business. Do you need help with your social media presence? We offer month-to-month packages that scale with the needs of our clients. GIVE US A CALL and let’s see how we can create a brand strategy for your social media presence.

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Aberdeen, SD 57401 | 605.226.3481 | MCQUILLENCREATIVE.COM