What if the people you want at your event aren't scrolling?

Last year, my nine-year-old daughter put skincare products on her birthday list. She isn't on social media, so I had to laugh to myself wondering if nine-year-olds are really talking about skincare at school. Jokes on me...because apparently that's the new norm.

Fast forward to last month, I was on a solo road trip to Chicago and had an episode of Create Tomorrow on and the host and guest were talking about how kids find trends when they aren't on social media. The guest, Paula James-Martinez, is the founder of Cuqui, a new print-first magazine and offline club for teen girls. Her point was that you can't tell kids to log off without giving them something worth showing up for. What Cuqui is doing is giving kids something that arrives in the mail...something they can hold (who remembers Teen Magazine from back in the day) and a community that exists beyond a screen.

After spending the summer at home with my kids I'm in the era of constantly telling my kids to put down their phones and at the same time purchasing a Brick for myself to control my scrolling. Both Cuqui and the Brick are built around the same idea that sometimes it takes something tangible to pull us away from a screen.

What does any of this have to do with events?

We're asking people to leave their screens and show up in a physical space for an event, yet a lot of times we're relying on those same screens to help them discover the event. If the event exists in the physical world, maybe more of the promotion should too.

A lot of people are trying to spend less time online (the analog trend is having a moment), while event promotion still depends heavily on people being there. We post social, send emails, add information to the website and apps and assume because it's online people are finding it and reading all the details. Putting information online about an event and helping the right person discover it are two different things.

In a previous role, I used to push back at how many event emails we sent because the same information went out week after week. People still said they didn't know the details and our inboxes were flooded with questions that had already been answered. It wasn't that we hadn't shared the details, we just kept using the same channel and assumed email number 20 would be the magical one they would finally open and read.

Think about the busy CEO or VP you really want at your event. Are they scrolling LinkedIn or Instagram at the exact moment your post appears hoping to find something else to add to their busy calendar? Are they reading your email as soon as it hits their inbox? Maybe, but I wouldn't build a registration plan around hoping your ideal attendee see's your social posts or reads your emails.

They might be more likely to hear about your event from someone they trust. A coworker might mention it in a meeting or a peer tells the team they plan to attend. Sometimes an industry group might put it in from of them or a printed invitation (direct mail is making a comeback) lands on their desk.

Helping people discover your event means figuring out where they already spend time and how you can show up there.

So what should you do? Maybe you ask board members to personally invite people instead of asking them to share another social post or you could partner with an organization that already has the attention of the people you want to attend...or my favorite, you could put something in the mail.

I've been testing this out myself for Moments + Merch. Instead of waiting for the right person to scroll past one of my posts, I've started sending things directly to the people I want to work with. Because I am a merch girl, most of it has been what I like to call lumpy mail because flat envelopes might get tossed...but usually a bubble mailer or box gets opened. I'm not saying every event needs to mail a box of merch, but reaching the right people requires a few different channels.

The whole goal is to put the event information into someone's physical world and give them a reason to pay attention.

Digital promotion for events still very much matters, but if the people you want at your event are spending less time online, adding more content to those same places won't fix your event discovery problem. So for your next event, before you decide what else you should post online, ask where else can your event show up in someone's world besides online?