Once you’ve designed and built your 5k event fundraising and registration website, it’s time to go into high gear with promoting your event. The traditional postings on your website, e-newsletters and email blasts work great, but today, social media marketing is of critical importance to reach your constituency using medium they frequent regularly such as Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

 

You will want to use these platforms all throughout the event life cycle including: pre-event planning, seeking volunteers, promotion of the event for recruiting participants and event sponsors, and post-event follow up to keep the excitement of the event and cause going.

 

Soft VS Hard Launch

There are two distinct launches to promote your campaign, for which you need to prepare: the soft launch and the hard launch.

 

Generally speaking, a fundraising campaign should last at least from 12- 16 weeks. The timing of the soft launch takes place typically 2 to 3 weeks before the hard launch.

 

Why launch your fundraising campaign in two distinct phases? The primary importance of a soft launch is to build momentum before you start promoting your campaign to the general public in the hard launch. The soft launch allows you to recruit your power fundraisers as well as board members, staff, close volunteers and team captains (who will begin to recruit their team members), and have them start fundraising.

 

Researchers have found that people are more willing to participate/give to a campaign that has already made inroads to meeting its fundraising goals. A soft launch facilitates this environment.

 

During the soft launch phase, you will use a very personalized email letter or phone script to help recruit these core fundraisers. The text needs to be written to make the power and key fundraisers feel an important part of the "inner circle."

 

In addition, you may want to throw a kickoff launch at your facility or at a local coffee shop as a means to motivate and strategize. Perhaps split the group into two “parties”, one for your power fundraisers and one for your Team Captains and share your campaign ideas with them. You can use the venue as a means to show the team captains sample emails to use to recruit team members and sponsors. As well, you can provide a short training and close with a short motivational session.

 

By doing a soft launch first, you present a campaign that is already on its way to success.

 

 

Hard Launch

The timing of the hard launch takes place typically 2 to 3 weeks after the soft launch and continues over the next 4 to 8 weeks of your campaign.

 

The primary goals of the hard launch are to 1) recruit as many people as possible to participate in your event and then 2) to motivate them to solicit their network of friends and family to give to the cause.
 
You will use materials and assets such as posters, email letters, advertisements for local media, banner ads and cover stories for placement on your organization’s website. 
 
The assigned Communications and Social Media Manager for your event will be the primary lead to assure that email blasts to your organization’s email list are sent, updates are posted to your organization’s social media sites, your organization’s main website is updated and local community media are sent regular press releases.
 
Since email is often unread, you can maximize recruitment during the hard launch by sending a series of 3 emails over a set period of time to your organization's email list. The first email should be a direct call to action to participate in the campaign event. Remember to include your cause story in this email. The second email should include a personal story of someone that has benefited from services offered by your organization or a personal story from a staff member. A link to a video or a piece of content related to your cause on your website can also be included, along with, of course, a call to action to participate. The third email should focus on their “last chance” to participate.

 

Each email send should be posted, as well, to your social media medium (i.e. FB, Twitter, Pinterest).

 
Don’t make every social media post a call to action, as in register now. This will become annoying.  Instead prepare announcements, updates and a few personal stories about people impacted by the cause. 
 
Assets needed for a successful hard launch:

Other Promotional Strategies

Photos and video clips really help in spreading the word and going viral. A good video that captures people’s hearts can translate into more participants and event sponsors. So upload your best video online using services like Youtube or Vimeo and share that link on your social media pages, in your email blasts with a link to your 5k event website.

 

Some organizations like to use online surveys to poll selected people associated with organization for feedback about interest level, event preferences and options. This is great tool to get extra buy in from key people that will help promote the event to their friends and family.

 

Social media hashtags, which will be discussed in more details in a near future blog helps you see who is talking about your event.  This information can be useful during different stages of promotion of the event.

 

You don’t need to wait until the final event details are finalized to start the buzz. Post a “save the date” flyer on your website and social media pages.  Send a “save the date” e-flyer to your organization’s mailing list.  Get the buzz going early. Use your site blog to keep the excitement building by posting personal event planning stories.

 

Remember to use all of the resources at your disposal to promote your event in order to raise the most money for your cause. Once you have your fundraising participants on board, the next step is to encourage them to fundraise for the cause. This step will be addressed in future articles.

 

The Wizathon team works with your organization to help you schedule all of the facets of your soft and hard launches to maximize your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign.

 

Return to the Main Article: Organizing a 5K Charity Walk/Run