How to make your St. Patrick’s Day event appeal to students

Students and St. Patrick’s Day go together like…beer and green food dye. But how do you attract the student crowd to your event? Sure, you can paper local campuses with flyers but so will everyone else.

Here are some tips for how to rise above the noise:

Make it essential

Students are always looking for the next big party but March can be pretty short of major celebrations. So use these two things to your advantage: make sure you promote St. Patrick’s Day as the essential date in the March calendar and your event as the one not to miss.

Go green

Green beer, green food, green face-paints…the “paint everything green” aspect of St. Patrick’s Day is becoming increasingly popular in the UK. And that’s great, because students don’t want to stand around politely sipping Guinness – they’d rather throw themselves headfirst into the festivities. Make sure that they can get the full experience at your event.

Extras, extras

What’s your St. Patrick’s Day event “extra”? Live fiddlers? Face painting booths? Green foam machines? Figure out what’s unique about your offering and put that at the centre of your promos.

Throw in relevant offers

It’s not that students like event offers, discounts and bargains – it’s that they expect them. So whether it’s early bird ticket deals, group bundles, or 2 for 1 on Guinness, make sure that you’re offering a great deal – otherwise they’ll just go to the event with the better package.

Get the right reps

If you’re going to use student reps to promote your event, then find ones who are culturally familiar with St. Patrick’s Day – their excitement will be infectious. Contact Irish and American student societies and offer them decent rep deals for pushing your tickets. This will have the added benefit of creating relationships with those societies too.

Use Facebook wisely

If you’re planning to create a Facebook event page, then use it wisely – don’t just wait for the RSVPs to roll in. Generate a buzz in the countdown to the event by posting updates on the featured bands, DJs, extras etc. And don’t forget to include shareable St. Patrick’s Day content too. The trick is to be entertaining and relevant, not spammy.

Using Skiddle to promote St Patrick’s Day Events!

To promote your event using Skiddle and to be included in our local and national St. Patrick’s Day Event Guide all you have to do is add it to the listings through Skiddle’s Promotion Centre, if your event includes the words St Patrick or Saint Patrick we’ll automatically include it in the guide so you can benefit from the millions of people that use Skiddle.com.

Happy planning!

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A special thanks to Deborah Martin who contributed for this blog on behalf of INTO Higher.

INTO Higher is a global education company that provides pathway programmes for international students to study at top universities in the UK, US and China: http://www.intohigher.com