How to Promote Your Event on Google Quickly and Easily

As event organizers, you need to know how to put up your events on Google. More than that, you need to know how to make your event stand out from the rest!

Google is used for everything nowadays. From streaming movies, finding your next favorite restaurant, and even booking your next event.

Google has always been stingy about its search data. Still, estimates by third parties such as Internet Live Stats speculate that about 5.5 billion Google searches happen every day, at a rate of about 63,000 per second.

Due to this, it makes plenty of sense for event managers to leverage this wide audience to promote an event.

But how exactly can you promote your event on Google, and what are the best ways you can do so? Find out more in this in-depth article!

Why use Google to Promote Your Event

Google is the most-used search engine today. This makes it the #1 place that most people go to when they want to look up an upcoming event.

To capitalize on such strong demand, Google developed systems for allowing event planners to market their events on their platform. The most notable is called Event Markups.

By now, you’ve most likely unknowingly used this function in some way or another. When you search for “concerts near me” or “cooking classes near me,” Google displays a wealth of valuable event information that you can use to decide which event you will go to next.

As event organizers, you need to know how to put up their events on Google. More than that, you need to know how to make your event stand out from the rest!

But why use Google? There are a few other resources that you can use to list your event online, and some might even be easier. Nevertheless, here are some reasons why we argue that Google is the best place to promote your event online.

Wide Reach

As mentioned, Google is used for (or at the very least connected to) almost everything we do in our lives. It’s a common room for almost all event attendees, from teenagers to office employees to CEOs—every demographic imaginable visit Google at one time or another.

Being a good event planner means advertising where your potential attendees already hang out, and that’s Google’s search platform.

Not just that, but Google also provides a complete suite of information that can guide your potential customers from the discovery of your event to driving directions to the event location with Google Maps. It’s a complete ecosystem of solutions, all in one place and accessible with just one search.

Specificity and Control

Google gives you a good amount of control over how your events will be displayed. Search engine optimization and pay-per-click schemes can be fine-tuned down to the last letter, depending on market research results.

This level of control is important because individuals search for events with a variety of intentions that are more difficult to pick up on other channels such as apps or social media platforms.

Better Targeting

Tools such as event tags allow you to optimize your event according to exactly what your customers might be searching for, such as locality, mobile devices, social media, etc.

Google will use different metrics to classify your listing and filter it through to make sure that it only reaches interested searchers.

Ease of Use

Google’s event listing features are easy to use and comfortable to learn.

For those who are just learning, there is tons of information about it, such as this article. Even for those who know what they’re doing already, there are many tools and features to discover that can drastically improve how easy the features are to use.

There is even plenty of third-party software that can further optimize and automate a lot of things for you, which lessens the amount of time you spend navigating the learning curve.

Data Analytics

Depending on the scale of your operations, the degree to which you want to measure the impact of your marketing campaigns will vary. Nevertheless, it’s critical to have some form of data gathering and analytics for your campaigns.

This is so that you can have a reliable template for your event planning, a template with data-driven methodologies and measurable effects.

Google Analytics provides varying analytical capacity depending on your needs. If you want an overview of some key insights, the free version will suffice. If not, there are also premium services you can subscribe to, with a comprehensive view of all the relevant metrics that you can use to inform your digital marketing for your event.

How to Create an Event Listing on Google

Now that you know the importance of listing an event on Google, how exactly do you do it? There are multiple ways to go about this task, which we’ll provide you with an overview of here.

With a Third Party Website

Third parties such as social media and ticketing websites will most likely have their event website listed on Google’s event search experience, so if you’re posting about your event there, you should already have your work cut out for you.

If you’re not sure, you can check simply by searching for an event listed on the platform and see whether it’s listed on Google.

If the event posted on your website shows up, you don’t have to do anything else, and you can simply continue posting as is. Your website will automatically list it on Google without you needing to do anything else.

Using a Content Management System

A content management system, or CMS, is a platform/service that you use to create and host your content marketing efforts. Examples of this are WordPress, SquareSpace, and Wix.

The best thing you can do is to check if there’s a plugin within your CMS platform that can automatically add the data for your events to appear on Google without you having to learn HTML. Plugins make it easier to modify critical things like this without needing to spend time learning about the technicalities.

Using a Data Highlighter

You can use a tool like Data Highlighter to connect to the Google platform by highlighting your events. This is best if you want to feature your listings without needing to modify your HTML. This is a good option if you already have an event website and want to maintain your existing website structure.

Go to the Data Highlighter page.
Select “Start highlighting”.
Select “Events” as the type of data you’re highlighting.
Enter the URL of the page that you want to highlight data on. This could be a single page, or a series of pages that share a common format. For example, if you’re highlighting event listings on a calendar, you would provide the URL of the calendar page itself, rather than each individual event listing.
Select the tag elements that contain your event information. For example, on a calendar page, you might identify the tags.
Data Highlighter will display a preview of the data it has found on the page. If the data looks incorrect, you can go back and adjust your selections.
Once you’re happy with the preview, click “Publish”. This will create a new Google Calendar for your events, which you can then view and edit at any time.

With HTML

If you’re using a CMS to show your content to the internet, then you’re most likely taking care of the backend of your website as well.

This is important since you’re going to be doing a bit of tinkering with your website’s code with Google’s requirements if you’re not willing to do the previous two methods to add your events to Google.

By editing your event page’s HTML and using plugins, you can integrate with Google directly.

Tips for Making Your Event Listing Stand Out

Knowing how to put your event on Google is only the beginning. Even if you have your events listed on Google, it won’t do any good if it’s not optimized to stand out from the rest.

This section will discuss how you can make a stand-out event listing that will capture your target audience’s interest.

Optimize Your Event Schema Markup

This is perhaps the most critical aspect of ensuring that your event listing is the best quality possible for your optimization goals.

The Google event markup schema is essentially metadata that informs the search engine that your page is about an event.

The schema tells the search engine important information such as what kind of event it is, where to find essential data about your event, what other resources are being used on the page, and more.

“Marking up” a schema simply means the important data that you place at the right spot with the right format for Google’s web crawlers to easily follow. The following are the most important event schema that you need to mark up:

Venue of your event
Address of the venue
Event name
Starting and ending dates
Description of your event
Images such as logos, teasers, etc.
Offer type, price, availability,
Performers, artists, and notable personalities were present.

Marking the following information up will ensure that Google’s web crawlers will have an easier time collecting that information so it will be found when a search for it is being conducted by your audience.

This is important since the easier Google’s crawlers can index the information they need, the better the page’s rankings will tend to be.

But it’s not just the event primer itself that needs to have optimized SEO through event schema. To get the full benefit of organic Google search results, include the following pages.

Event carousel
Rich snippets
Knowledge panels and graphs

Pro tip: Include all of the relevant information in your rich snippets. That way, audiences can immediately see the details from the search results without having to click your link and look for the information.

Have a Balanced SEO Strategy

As you might have guessed from the previous item, search engine optimization is still key when it comes to ensuring that the right event pages can be found by your audience on Google.

The platform’s event experience has two main functions: transaction (buying tickets, booking seats, and more), and information (learning event dates, ticket prices, etc.)

The previous section focused on the technical SEO tasks, that is, making your pages easier to “see” for search engines. In this section, we will look at the importance of drafting great content on your landing page and building high-value linkages.

Don’t just count keywords; you also need to make your content exciting.

Have an Aggressive Marketing Strategy

Your event is only as successful as your marketing strategy. Make sure you have a plan to get butts in seats and keep them there. Below are a few key components to include in your strategy.

Have a clear and concise message about what your event is and why people should attend.
Utilize all channels of marketing including social media, email, print, and word of mouth.
Get creative with your marketing materials- make them memorable so people will want to attend and talk about your event.
Make it easy for people to sign up or register for your event- the easier you make it, the more likely they are to actually do it.
Keep your target audience in mind at all times when crafting your marketing strategy.
Have a plan for follow up after the event- thank attendees and ask for feedback to improve future events.

The more exciting, valuable, and talked-about your content is, the more likely it is for you to spark engagement around your event .

Strategically Use Keywords In Event Names

This one might rely as much on intuition as it does on data, although there are tools you can use to search keywords that might accurately grasp the intention of your searchers and thus would be a great tool to add interest to your event name.

Using well-placed phrases in your content makes it more likely that people will take action. You should also know which keywords generate the most interest within your niche.

Interest from people will go a long way towards making your Google listing stand out.

Examples of useful keywords that you can add to your event name can include:

Exact city or region of the event. Searchers are likely to include this in their query, especially if they’re looking for local events.
Type of event. Conference, webinar, workshops, online events, or other event types.
Activity/behavior. A Google search will also likely include action words about the event.

How to Track the Success of Your Event Promotion Campaign

Tracking relevant metrics is critical in refining your strategies to conduct a good event promotion campaign. As a good event planner, you need to know how to properly track the performance of your event marketing strategy. Here are some tips.

Know your goals. First of all, you need to lay down exactly what it is you’re working towards. Know how you will measure your success (tickets sold? or campaign engagement?), and then know what corresponding metric you can reliably measure.
Set your time frame. As an event planner, the time frame leading up to your event should already be well-defined. Set your marketing time frame based on the timing of your event.
Select your KPIs. Now that you know your goals and the time frame you’re supposed to achieve them, you can now think about how you can measure those goals. Decide on which event KPIs matter to your team, as well as how you can get those KPIs. For example, is increasing raw event attendance your top priority, or do you have more specific goals like average breakout session engagement or post-event attendee satisfaction?
Go into detail. Flesh out your KPIs and goals by going into detail as much as possible. Ensure that these factors adhere to the SMART principle as much as possible.
Consider making a measurement template. As an aspiring event marketer, you will need to ensure that your measurement methods improve over time. Create a reliable template for measuring your next events.

Promoting Your Event on Google This 2022

Good event management means good marketing. Promoting your event on Google is one of the most reliable ways that you can market your event online, with millions of people searching the web every minute of the day.

Thus, you need to know everything about making your event listing, Google listing, and event promotion. With this article, hopefully you have everything you need to accomplish this.

As good event managers, one of the best things we can do to improve our event planning is to use Yapp as your event mobile app.

Yapp allows you to:

Create Your App in Minutes
Add Unlimited Pages & Content
Leverage Instant Publishing
Add Unlimited Updates & Changes

If you want your event to be as painless as possible, try out Yapp’s free trial now!