It’s amazing to me how much free marketing is available to non-profits. Before I started working for a radio station in Kapiti, I had simply no idea just how much attention a non-profit organisation or event could get with virtually no marketing budget.
Below are some ideas of what is available locally in Kapiti:
Radio Community Notices
Community notices play on radio stations all across Kapiti. With Mediaworks, the same community notice can play across all seven local stations, at no charge, provided that the event is non-profit or otherwise meets the station criteria. This means potentially tens of thousands of listeners for no cost. In addition to Mediaworks, there is also NZME, not to mention the local station Beach FM. It’s worth getting in touch with these stations prior to any local event.
Newspaper
A similar set up is available through local newspapers in Kapiti. Many local news outlets offer a free notice in their pages to non-profit organisations and events. The circulation on these papers is often very wide, and the local notices will be read by a large number of readers.
Local Facebook Pages
There are a number of town and regional Facebook pages that are free to post on, and sometimes encourage promotion not just for non-profits but also for businesses. A little bit of buzz on these pages can generate a lot of traffic. In Kapiti, for instance, there is the Kapiti Coast Page, and in Otaki we also have the Sunny Otaki page. Both of these pages are free to post on and will allow promotion (at the time of writing) for non-profit events.
Radio Facebook Pages
Radio stations are often looking for local content and will sometimes plug a non-profit event or promotion. Often the local stations have thousands of likes and the post will be seen by several hundred people at least. Contact the content organiser for the media outlet to see if you can get a post on their page.
I wrote this article because I’ve seen a number of events take place throughout the year that seemed to me to be under-promoted. Meanwhile there are radio stations and local media outlets actively scouring for content, who often would be very happy to talk with you. These are just a few ways in which you can boost attendance for a local non-profit event by hundreds of people with less than an hour of actual work involved.