How to Promote Your Event

When promoting your hackathon, it’s useful to keep in mind that most events have a 50 to 30 percent drop-off in attendance. Given these stats, it’s your goal to over-market and overbook!
Tell Your Hackathon’s Story
What’s your hackathon’s "brand?" How is it unique? Why would you want to attend?
The more tailored your message, the better. Make it school-specific.
Use the same messaging to stay consistent and build momentum
Highlight hackathon benefits perks and the ease of attending: it’s free of cost, transportation will be provided, etc.
It would be great to include a short case study or example "about us" page from a successful hackathon here to show, rather than just tell, organizers how effective branding works.
Getting the Word Out
We've outlined below strategies you can use as you're spreading the word about your event.
Invite students from other schools to attend
Select at least three schools within six hours of your campus
Look at schools that have previously hosted MLH hackathons
Select at least three schools within six hours of your campus
Don’t overlook community colleges — they’re often rife with promising participants
Reach out to student groups and departments on all campuses
Groups: ACM & IEEE, SWE, SHPE, etc.
Departments: computer science, design, engineering and applied math, physics
Speak in-person during the first 5 minutes of relevant classes and student group meetings on your campus.
Explain what it is, why they should care, when and where it’s being held, and how they can get more info.
Launch a social media campaign
Make a Facebook event page twitter account. Invite and connect to all your friends and members of on and off-campus hacker groups. Check out the Florida Hackers Community for some examples.
Ask other hackathons to tweet about you
Consider Facebook or instagram ads.
Get pre-event press coverage
Tell your school’s paper and ask for a press release 

Marketing Goals & Timelines

Next - In Person Hackathons

Managing Registrations

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Contents

Tell Your Hackathon’s Story

Getting the Word Out