Promoting events and specials online: how to fill your venue

The event page on your own website

The most important place for your event is not Instagram but your own website. There you decide on content, look and booking route, and the information stays findable long after a social media post has sunk in the feed. So every event gets its own page with its own address that you link everywhere: in your Google profile, the Facebook event, your Instagram bio, the newsletter and on the poster via QR code.

If you hold events regularly, an overview page called “Events” or “What's on” with all upcoming dates is worth adding. Remove past events from the overview or mark them clearly as over. Nothing looks more careless than a New Year's Eve menu still on the home page in March. Check beforehand how the page looks in search results with the Google preview: title and description should make the event and date clear at a glance.

Google: posts and your Business Profile

Anyone searching for your venue on Google sees your Business Profile, often before your website. There you can publish posts, which according to Google come in three types: updates, offers and events. For an event, choose the event type: it requires a title plus start and end with date and time. Add a photo, a short description and a button such as “Book” or “Learn more” that leads to your event page.

• Publish early: the post should be visible while guests are planning, not just on the day itself.
• Discounts as offers: for a happy hour or a voucher deal, the offer type fits better.
• Add special hours if the event takes place outside your normal hours or you close for a private party. You can design a matching door sign for your opening hours for free with our generator.
• Add photos afterwards: upload a few pictures from the event to the profile, it shows people what it's like at your place.

Everything else about looking after the profile is in the guide to the Google Business Profile.

Facebook events and Instagram

Facebook has become less important for younger audiences, but it is still strong for events. A Facebook event created from your Page has its own fields for date, place and ticket link. People who click “Interested” or “Going” are reminded before the date, and their friends often see what their contacts are interested in. Also share the event in suitable local groups if their rules allow it. More in the guide Facebook for restaurants.

Instagram thrives on pictures and anticipation. A post or reel for the announcement, plus stories in the days before: the winery delivering, prep in the kitchen, the band at soundcheck. Put the link to the event page in your bio or as a link sticker in the story, and tag your location and any partners, who can then share the post. How to build Instagram as a whole is shown in the guide Instagram for restaurants.

Event calendars of your city and region

Many cities, municipalities and tourism boards run online event calendars where businesses can enter their dates themselves or submit them by email. The same goes for city magazines, regional newspapers, local radio and going-out portals. These calendars reach people who are actively looking for something to do at the weekend, and guests from the area who don't know you yet. In tourist regions the tourism board's calendars are especially valuable because hotels and visitor information centres use them too.

An entry in the city calendar often also brings a link from a respected local website. Links like these strengthen your visibility in local search, as the guide to local backlinks explains. For bigger events, a short press release to the local newsroom is worth it as well.

Newsletter and regulars

Social networks decide for themselves who sees your posts. A newsletter, on the other hand, lands directly in the inbox of people who already like your venue. For events it is the most reliable channel: regulars often book in the first few days and bring friends along. A short email with a photo, the key details and a booking button is enough. Announce several dates together, for example as a monthly preview.

Promote the event in your venue too: a table tent, a note on the bill, a sentence from your staff when guests pay. A QR code that leads straight to the event page connects the dining room with the booking.

Timeline: when to publish what

The most common mistake is a single announcement a few days beforehand. People plan evenings, celebrations and outings in advance and need several reminders before they book. A simple plan for an event with four weeks' lead time:

For small specials like a lunch deal two weeks are enough; for big nights like New Year's Eve or Christmas parties, start two to three months ahead. Seasonal specials that come back every year are best planned in an annual calendar, as described in the guide to seasonal specials in a traditional inn. Enter fixed dates once and reuse texts and pictures from the previous year.

Structured data for events

With structured data based on schema.org you describe your event in the code of the event page so that search engines understand it unambiguously. For the Event type, Google lists the name, the start date and the location with address as required. Recommended properties include description, end date, image, organiser and ticket details with price and availability. If an event is cancelled or postponed, change its status instead of simply deleting the page.

Don't expect miracles. According to Google, the special display of events in Google Search is only available in certain countries and languages; Germany in German is one of them, Austria is currently not on the list. The data still helps search engines and AI assistants match date and place correctly. How structured data works in general is explained in the guide to structured data.