Forms of advertising

Newspapers and magazines

Which publication you use to place your advert will depend on what you can afford, but more importantly will relate to the profile of your proposed audience. If you are running an over-80s knitting event, even the cheapest rates and largest advert in Punk Rock Weekly will have little if any benefit. Place your adverts in the publications that your expected or target audience will be reading.

The rates in even local newspapers can be shockingly high. As with any other trade or profession, if you know your way around you can get cheaper rates and squeeze good deals out of the publishers. For example find out what the deadline is for the insertion of adverts, then talk to the ad sales department just a couple of hours before they close the books. It is possible to push the price down and arrange for a bargain advert, but it’s a lot more complicated than that, so consider using a professional – especially if you can get one to volunteer their services.

Free coverage

You may be able to talk the local paper into doing a small item about your event, if it is raising funds for a charity or local crafts and local residents are the stars.

Don’t overlook the possibility of arranging for an article in the local papers or special interest magazines a few weeks before you plan to run the event. People will note it and hopefully mark it in their diary and social plans. Later when you start advertising, people will hopefully recall the interesting things they read in the article and be more willing to make the effort to get to your event.

Some special interest magazines will accept free listings of events that wholly or partly cover their particular interest. It is worth investigating this possible source of free advertising and making additional or further enquiries through the side-show and attractions’ suppliers that may give you additional coverage.

Let’s face it, how many times have you seen a local newspaper with a front-page article about a turnip shaped like a duck or some other trivia? If that’s all they can find for the front page they may well be interested in filling some column inches with an article on your forthcoming 40th anniversary model aircraft show!

Radio

Local radio can give free mentions, but more often than not you will have to pay for radio exposure. Depending on the event type and size it may be possible to attract a radio or television road-show. This gives multiple benefits, attracts the young, gives free advertising and helps to attract additional side-show owners, who want to cash in on the expected audience.

Members

Your club or society members are good sources of free advertising. Distributing handbills and notices to them so that they, their friends and relatives can pin them up in shops, offices, clubs etc. will give you greater coverage. Additionally, you can mention the event in the club newsletter and make agreements with surrounding and affiliated clubs to advertise the event in their newsletters, and even get their members to distribute handbills etc.

Handbills

You may wish to consider the possibility of getting handbills printed up. They could be delivered to all of the local homes and businesses by club members or possibly they could be distributed for a fee with the local newspapers, or even hand-delivered by the post office, though the last two methods are quite expensive.

With clubs or societies, you may call on the support and good will of members to keep the cost of handbills down. With so many people having home computers, you could consider emailing, or circulating to club members a handbill document on diskette or CD. Then you could ask them to copy the handbill file onto their machine and pass the diskette or CD on. They could print as many copies as they require to distribute themselves, or to hand out for circulation through relatives and other contacts.

Public transport

If you are proposing to plan, organise and run a major event, you may be able to interest the appropriate bus coach and rail companies in co-operating with you. Depending on the location, target audience, event type and event attractions, they may be interested in offering a combined travel and entry ticket. The benefit of this is that they will help in advertising the event and could attract members of the public from a much wider area.

Internet

You may well already have a club website, or access to a person who can supply a site for you. Again depending on the type and size of the event it may be worth generating a few web pages to advertise the occurrence of the event.

For some larger events you may wish to attempt ticket sales over the web. Using the right key words in the site description and keeping your site current with the search engines will give you better web exposure.

It can be profitable, but common sense has to prevail. If you are organising the village primary school, class 3b, under 7’s Easter Hat Competition, are you really expecting to get interest from Australia and America?

Chain email

Though chain letters have had a bad press, you could use an electronic equivalent to advertise your event. Compile a short email equivalent to a handbill, and email it to any interested parties you may know, asking them to forward it to interested parties that they know etc. In this way, your event details can be circulated to thousands of people in just a few days.

Please remember to include at the top of your email a note asking people not to forward the email after the date of the event, there is enough junk email in the world already and nobody wants to see an email advertising your event months after it was run.

Hoarding/signs

You could erect signs or hoarding to advertise your event, but this will introduce a few new headaches as it involves issues of planning permission, permission of the landowner, costs, health and safety, erection and accidents etc. A large sign on the proposed event ground next to a major road, saying ‘Model Aircraft Show Sunday 23rd August’ will warn passing public that the event is coming. (See Chapter 16, ‘Signposting’.)

Fly posting

That is when cheap advertising signs or leaflets are made up and then simply stuck onto phone boxes, bus shelters, shop windows, in fact any vacant flat surface. Some people find the low cost of this advertising method to be too tempting and paste their signs everywhere. Do not do it! You must have seen the notices around – ‘Bill posters will be prosecuted’ and you may be.

If you are caught fly posting, you may have to pay for the posters to be removed and/or the local authority or owners of the fly-posted property may take action against you. Fly posting is unwarranted, spoils the environment and cheapens your event. Make sure that members of your club or friends and relatives are not fly posting as well. It is your event and you will be the one held liable for any damage.

Additional information

Though not strictly speaking advertising, you should consider additional information that you want to pass on to the public. This information could be printed on the tickets, handbills or posters as a service to the public. Wherever it appears, make the best use of the space. For example if you are arranging a fireworks event in November, you have to display all the usual information regarding venue, date, time and price, but there is other information that could be of use.

It will be dark when the event begins. Frequently fireworks events are held out of town, which means they are off unlit roads. Using one side of a ticket for helpful information and advice, or just using the last few lines of a poster or handbill could save the lives of spectators, or at least avoid inconvenience.

I would suggest, for example, that you note for a fireworks event that people should wear some light-coloured clothes so that the drivers of passing traffic can easily see them. Ask them to be particularly careful with excited children while approaching and leaving the event. I would also include a reminder to bring a torch, simply so that they can see where they walk and find their way back to the car after the event! A lot of people forget that they will have to get out of their car and cross fields and tracks to get to the fireworks site and then go back again to find their car, which is one of over 300 in a huge and unlit field.