Define your Audience

First, define your audience. Who do you think would want to attend your event?

• University campus?
• Community members?
• A subset of community members?

Budget

What is your budget for promotion?

• If no budget is your answer, you’ll want to focus on free event listings, social media, and old-school email.
• If you have some budget, you can consider things like posters and print and radio advertising.

Campus Event Promotion

• Post to the University Calendar
• Post to University Announce
• Post on your department website and send out to your listserv
• Send event details to Scott Coleman to post on the College of Science website
• Send event details to relevant UA units and ask them to distribute to their listserv
• If you have an event flyer, post on common billboard areas and distribute to departments to post

Community Event Promotion

• Create a Facebook event to share with your followers (add other departments/organizations as co-sponsors to increase visibility)
• Share event details (or Facebook event) on social media. On your twitter posts, add @UofA and @UAZscience, which will encourage retweets.
• Depending on space and timing, Scott Coleman may be able to include in the COS e-newsletter, which goes out bi-monthly.
• If you think your event warrants a press release (e.g., famous speaker, large venue, multi-day festival or series, interesting back story), you can send a draft to Scott Coleman, who can offer suggestions and forward to UANews.
• Are there certain local organizations that might be interested in your event? Send event information to them and encourage them to send to their members and post on social media.

Do You Want a Poster/Flyer for Your Event?

• COS Marketing/Communications is creating templates to help units create event flyers that are compliant with the UA brand. The request needs to be made 2 months prior to the event.

Do You Have Money To Spend?

• If you create posters, flyers, or rack cards, Kathy's Posters is a company in Tucson that can help you distribute them around town. 
• If you want to run some radio spots on AZPM, buy a print ad in places like the Star or the Tucson Weekly, or advertise on Facebook, you can contact Hilton & Myers, the media buying vendor for the University of Arizona. They can provide recommendations on how you can maximize your budget, as well as do the media buying for you.

Have you discovered other great ideas for promoting your event? Please email your thoughts to Scott Coleman at sacoleman1@arizona.edu, and he will add to the suggestion list!

Need more help?

Check out our templates

Send us a marketing request