Event Solutions magazine, a monthly trade publication covering the events, meetings and incentives industry, produces the annual Event Solutions Conference & Tradeshow. Through both the magazine and trade show, Event Publishing, LLC provides resources for everyone in the events industry and is best known for providing professional certificates for event planners and producers while delivering primary research to quantify and identify breaking trends in the industry.

Zvents was featured today, online, sharing how event marketers can reach the most of their target audience through Zvents’ local search and advertising network of hundreds of web and mobile partners.

Online marketing has become one of the best ways to promote an event and attract the right audience. Consumers are constantly searching the Internet for their specific interests, and as an event marketer, your goal is to compel attendees to get to your event.

Be sure to grab a subscription to Event Solutions after catching up on Zvents

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Ethan Stock, Zvents CEO and Founder, was recently captured at The Kelsey Group’s “Drilling Down On Local ‘08: Marketplaces” Conference. In his presentation, Ethan discusses Zvents’ business model and how time-based promotions are an essential online marketing tool for all local merchants to get consumers in through their doors.

With the overwhelming and startling growth of local advertising revenue, Ethan Stock explores how Zvents is leading the evolution of local search - showing its impact on the advertising industry and what trends to expect in the future.

Check out the video below!

Online Videos by Veoh.com

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Somewhat surprisingly, mere flyers for your local community event are more expensive than you might consider. Sure, the cost is still insignificant relative to other forms of advertising but consider alone, the time spent formatting a poster in Word or Powerpoint let alone bringing it to Kinko’s to have them take care of it for you.

Your event listing on Zvents not only syndicates the details through our Media Network (promoting your event in most local media and related websites), we design and deliver a poster format with all the pertinent details.

Make no mistake, we realize this is a minor convenience but a convenience none-the-less! Just click “Print” from the event’s page on our site we reformat the design with the pertinent details of the event using an image, description, date and time, and address and phone number which you can print by the thousands to plaster around town. But wait! There’s more! We’ve integrated the same map users find when the discover your event through our site and allow you to choose from nearby restaurants, parking, or bars/clubs to highlight on the map helping your guests join the fun.

Can’t wait to get started? List an event now

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We’ve been cooking up new ways to promote local businesses and events, and we’re thrilled (exhausted and relieved!) to announce that the Enhanced Listings beta period is officially open.

What are Enhanced Listings?
A new way to make your event or venue listings stand out from basic listings, and benefit from enhanced features and design options.

By upgrading your Basic Listing to an Enhanced Listing, you can:

• Tailor your marketing messages with special offers, news and announcements and promo codes
• Appear prominently in search results with a colorful, highlighted listing
• Increase brand awareness by adding your company logo
• Upload a video ad, commercial, or virtual tour
• Stylize your listing with colorful custom graphics
• Enhance your brand experience by removing advertisements or user reviews

We offer two packages - and Enhanced Detail Page package and a Search Results package. You can also add additional upgrades, such as removing ads and user reviews, or adding custom graphics to the border on your listing.

Here’s an example of an Enhanced Detail Page Package for Sibby’s Cupcakery in San Mateo:

The Search Results Package highlights your listing in search results:

For a limited time (a few weeks, most likely), you can create Enhanced Listings for your business, venue or events - for free! Join the beta now.

And remember…every listing created on Zvents is shared with our growing 250+ Zvents Media Network partners too.

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Last week we wrote about Eventbrite as an inexpensive and easy-to-use event registration and ticketing service. Yesterday, they announced the beta launch of the Eventbrite Partner Affiliate Network, which enables affiliates to earn money by referring event publishers and promoters to use the Eventbrite service.

While ticketing affiliate programs have been around since about, oh, Day 2 of the Internet, Eventbrite’s program puts a new twist on the model - an affiliate receives a cut of the revenue on every ticket sold by an event publisher who signs up for the Eventbrite service through the affiliate’s web site

If you become an affiliate partner, here’s how it works:

1. Run Eventbrite ads on your site.

2. An event promoter or publisher sees the ad, is intrigued by its promise of easy and cheap event registration and ticketing, and goes to the Eventbrite site.

3. The same event promoter learns more, says “Hey! This makes my life easier and helps me sell more tickets to my event”, and signs up to manage one of their upcoming events through Eventbrite.

4. Let’s say the event is a music festival, and 3,000 tickets are sold at $50 each through Eventbrite. The service fee for each ticket is $1.25. As the referring affiliate partner, you receive 35% of all the service fees collected (3,000 x $1.25 x 0.35), so you earn $1,312.50.

Eventbrite also offers a traditional ticketing affiliate program: if you sell tickets to their events, you earn a commission for every ticket sold through your site.

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Let’s face it, promoting events can be a lot of fun, but managing the event registration, ticketing, and attendee lists can be a real pain without the right tools. Today, more and more event participants expect to be able to register online for events, which means you may need an easy and inexpensive way to facilitate registrations, collect payment information, and manage your attendee list.

If you host small, infrequent events or large events (where there are few types of attendees), all you may need is an event registration tool that allows you to:

• Collect credit card and registration information
• Process credit card charges
• Set up a basic registration form that you can link to from your Web site
• View/export a list of people who registered for your event

Two services to check out are Eventbrite and Brown Paper Tickets.

Eventbrite

With Eventbrite, there are no set up or monthly fees, or ticket fees for free tickets or events. All major credit cards are accepted, and final payment processing is done through Google Checkout or Paypal. Some nice functionality Eventbrite provides is the ability to send email invitations, customize and brand your event registration page, offer discount codes and group discounts, track affiliate/partner ticket sales, and track RSVPs from invites.

Eventbrite also goes a step further and offers to publish your event in search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and…Zvents!

Fees: 2.5% of the ticket price, with a minimum fee/ticket of $0.99 and maximum fee/ticket of $9.95.

Brown Paper Tickets

As the “fair-trade ticketing service”, Brown Paper Tickets is here to change the ticketing industry, as stated in their Bill of Rights. BPT offers similar functionality to Eventbrite, and also includes 24-hour phone orders, assigned seating, password-protected prices, comp ticket and media pool ticket distribution, festival-style ticketing, and the option to print paper tickets (for a nominal fee).

Unfortunately, Brown Paper Tickets does not publish their event information to any of the event sites or search engines (Hey BPT, we’d love to hear from you if you want to give your clients this option).

Fees: 2.5% of the ticket price, plus a fee per ticket of $0.99.

Event Registration Services For More Complicated Events
Planning a more complex event, such as a conference, trade show, or series of events? Idealware wrote a fantastic in-depth post about the features and benefits of several event registration and ticketing tools, including Acteva, 123SignUp, Cvent, and RegOnline.

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Southern California Media Partners In Zvents Network

Yesterday we posted about how Zvents syndicates its listings to over 200 media partners. Following up on our promise to share more regional information (while we update our Media Publishers page!), below is a list of our current media partners in southern California and the greater Los Angeles metro area:

• Orange County Register
• LA.com
• Daily Breeze (Gardena)
• High Desert (Victorville)
• Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario)
• Los Angeles Daily News
• Pasadena Star-News
• Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA)
• San Bernadino Sun
• San Gabriel Valley Tribune
• Squeeze OC
• Whittier Daily News

If you have a SoCal business or want to promote events happening in southern California, listing on Zvents (or a Zvents’ media partner site) will automatically share your listing with all the media partners in the Zvents network, including the local media outlets listed above.

Ready to list your business or events? Sign up for a free account today!

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