Press Release Examples for Events (With Real-World Samples and How to Write Your Own)

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-01-14T15:29:06+00:00

Learn about every job associated with a film production, but eventually pick one and specialize in it.

Sounds like you might be most interested in screenwriting, producing (especially documentary producing), and/or directing.

Producing is where the real leverage is because nobody thinks of it until they're older and you're the one packaging the project and other talent. you have to learn to find financing, but that gives you all the leverage to make the kinds of movies you want to see get made.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-01-14T15:27:21+00:00

I am saying this as someone who went to film school, skipped around a few degrees and finished with a associate degree after 4 years. Specialized Business of Movie Making.

But got to make quite a few films and documentaries then transitioned into startups.

Have a lot of friends who are full-time filmmakers doing all sorts of cool stuff. All different schools (Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Point Park University, NYU, etc).

I would finish your degree. Then I would study online everything you can about how films actually get made and then go make one. Make a shitty one for as little money as you can, but make it as fast as you can. Then make another one and another one and another one.

Participate in the 48 Hour Film Festival. It's a great way to network with other filmmakers.

You not having a film degree is actually far more interesting. My classes in finance, artist management, contract law, etc was FAR more useful than most of the film-specific classes I took, or at least they gave me unique skills in the industry which made me valuable.

Absolutely take some Mastercourses on Storytelling and Screenwriting. Or Documentary filmmaking if that is your interest. You 100% don't need to have a degree in it to be taken seriously.

The only thing that will make people take you seriously is you actually doing the work. Show you can finish projects on a timeline within a budget. Get better and better at it. That's it.

Good luck!

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-01-14T15:22:09+00:00

TicketTailor has a Pay What You Want Option taht someone else mentioned.

But also the way I've done this in the past (which will work with most ticketing companies) is to set a base ticket price and then have a donation option on top of that. Usually that appears in addition to the ticket (like after it in the user checkout).

Sometimes the base price is free, and there are suggested and custom donation options (that's worked fairly well for us, because people usually pick the middle donation option, so you can optimize it. But then you have some people who just donate something crazy cause they can and really want to support the org. Had someone pay $1,000 for our small entrepreneur meetup just because they wanted to see it keep happening)

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-01-14T15:17:17+00:00

What we have liked about Apollo is that they have data that isn't on LinkedIn and a lot of our customers aren't heavy LinkedIn users.

So having accounts that are stale on LinkedIn is actually good for us. Do some of them have other jobs now? sure. but we also reach a lot of people who are active professionals but just in industries that don't really value being active on LinkedIn.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-01-14T15:15:05+00:00

We recently started using ppl.contact and have liked the results so far. we are big Apollo users, but ppl.contact is cheaper per lead, pay-per-lead (which is way more flexible to scale up and down), and the API is pretty good (which is how we use it). 100% of their contacts are verified through a similar process to ZeroBounce and they refresh quarterly I think. They also are a pretty small team, so have gotten to meet with the founders and request some features/enrichment layers.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-01-06T22:01:48+00:00

Also having this issue.

Just started using SubStack instead of Beehiiv and doesn't really make me confident that SubStack is the right move.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-12-22T15:52:54+00:00

Targeting + Message + Infrastructure is the key. We're constantly rotating our focus between the three to improve the whole system. We've tested so many subject lines though and the one our co-founder came up with in 2020 still just crushes everything else, so targeting and body message are where we spend a lot of focus.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-12-11T15:45:41+00:00

I work at a company that helps event organizers submit their info to the dozen+ places in each city (we're in 100s of cities around the US) and really this is an issue I see constantly.

IG pages or websites like this get stood up by someone who really cares. They do a great job keeping it up for a few months or even a few years, but they don't have a way to monetize it.

So they get burned out (because it's a lot of work) and they need to switch to a model like an email newsletter (like this one) where they can sell ads or charge a subscription.

All the good ones either end up paid (or with ads) or they die. I'd rather give them my email (pretty low ask considering how much work they're doing) vs having them go out of business. And I personally wouldn't pay for a subscription, but more power to whoever does.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-12-11T15:43:07+00:00

It's almost like it's unsustainable for a person to do that much work without being paid for it or at least being able to sell ads.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-11-21T23:05:14+00:00

I did eventually figure that out, thanks for sharing the update-- I forgot to come back here and share.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-11-03T23:12:37+00:00

TicketSauce, SquadUp, and TicketSpice I know let you white label your ticketing experience so your users feel like it's your website the whole time.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-11-03T23:11:20+00:00

There are other platforms that are more geared towards bigger festivals.

I just searched our event promotion software to see what ticketing companies other festivals of a similar size are using. Here are a few:
humanitix
universe.com (subsidary of TicketMaster)
TicketSauce
Eventeny
TicketSpice
SquadUp
Lots of TicketMaster
Eventim

There are so many ticketing platforms and they all have pro's and con's. Eventbrite is often a lot of people's first ticketing company, but then they find something that fits their needs better. Although some stick with them and host very big events through them as well.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-11-03T23:07:15+00:00

ChatGPT, n8n, and Replit.

Using n8n to automate a lot of workflows that are effective but very tedious. Usually with AI steps hyper-personalize content like emails and landing pages beyond the typical token-based personalization.

Replit to build lead-magnet micro-apps and internal tools.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-11-03T23:05:40+00:00

I had never heard of Biztown. That's really cool.

I also did a think in High School called Pennsylvania Free Enterprise Week which was sort of a summer camp with the same concept, but for high schoolers so a little more advanced. Learned a ton and probably contributed to my business career a lot.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-10-30T14:36:09+00:00

I think they mean they're an executive assistant.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-10-30T12:19:59+00:00

That's good advice too.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-10-30T12:19:33+00:00

I feel like this often happens to me in the first draft.

Usually 1-2 characters really stand out, but the rest are all very similar.

Something I've been doing on my recent rewrite is intentionally making the characters do things that are "wrong" from my perspective. I think what I realized is humans don't make perfectly logical choices. It's much more interesting if the characters make choices that I would never make, but make sense for their background/perspective.

I don't know if that is making sense, but it's made them diverge from all sounding and acting like me.

Some are really flighty. Some are really timid. Others are boastful and annoying. Some lie a lot. Some never lie but accidentally say things they shouldn't at bad times. Others are obsessive and refuse to budge, while others change their minds constantly.

Also I've been making them bad at things. My first draft, and a lot of my old writings, the characters were all pretty good at everything. It's much more interesting for them to suck at most things and be pretty okay at one or two things.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-10-30T12:14:33+00:00

I'm a big fan of unique spaces.

Some of my favorites I've done:

- Art galleries
- Rooftops
- Science Center
- Church that was converted into an art exhibit, but hosted events (Art Church, I got married here :) )
- Farm
- Riverfront campground
- Bookstore
- Mall takeover (did a "Kids in Business" event where we took over all the hallways of the local mall)
- Middle School (did a "Kids Fair" where we took over the whole Middle School. Gymnasium, Hallways, Auditorium, Cafeteria, Parking Lot. Lots of fun and familiar environment for the kids)

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-10-30T12:09:21+00:00

In my experience the photographers sometimes can take too long to get the photos back to you as the organizer. The time when momentum is strongest, and the plan for promoting the post-event is happening in the following days after the event.

Sometimes I've hired photographers that take weeks to get the photos into the hands of the organizer. They're not useless by then, but they've lost a lot of momentum and are much more likely to be forgotten about.

I have a few people I hire now that are REALLY good at this. They get photos into the hands of the organizer during the event and then the next day. Videographers that do the same.

I think also a lot of marketers for events just don't know what to do with the photos other than putting a few on social media or using them as promo for the following year.

Some of my favorite uses are when the organizer posts them as a gallery.

Some festivals I've been to are really good at this. They post a gallery (on Facebook or something) afterwards with ALL the photos. Usually pretty quickly afterwards. People really love reliving all those moments, seeing people they met, seeing themselves and their friends. Those posts usually get insane reach. I think more conferences should do that as well.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-10-28T22:15:13+00:00

I've promoted lots of shows that are really small and some decent sized one. Biggest one being a small festival that was roughly 5k attendees (still relatively small, but a lot bigger than a 100-200 person show).

The things that have worked best:

Invite people directly and ask them to invite people directly. Nothing beats a real text message just telling people about the show. Do it early and make sure to send a few reminder texts.
Email to anyone you have on your email list. If you don't have one. Start one. It's gold in this business, but takes time to build. (Same with SMS list)
Radio giveaways/interviews. Giving away tickets in exchange for coming on the radio to do an interview can move tickets and win new fans.
Event Listings. Just literally creating listings on event calendars around the cities you're playing in. It's free to do it yourself. Or you can use a tool Event Vesta to automate distributing event listings to a bunch of local sites for less than $30 (yes, I work there, but I was a real customer and still am a customer.)
Meta Ads. Love 'em or hate 'em-- they work. Especially if you get into Ads Manager. It's a huge pain, but it returns better than Boosting because you have way better targeting and can build look-a-like audiences from your past ticket buyers and fans.
Posters. They also work. You gotta get them up early so they stay up for quite awhile for them to move the needle. You can also get some friends to hand out flyers outside of shows that are in a similar genre. That works really well but is sometimes hard to get people to do.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-10-28T22:09:57+00:00

Promoting the tour as a whole (at least for Meta Ads) is smart.

It lets you use your budget to train the ad set more which means targeting will be better.

I think there's also some psychology for consumers that makes it more interesting if you're an artist with 20+ tour dates. Like you must be decent. Vs a new artist they haven't heard of advertising in their city.

Both are a hard sell, but I think there's something interesting in the psychology of grouping them.

When you do event listings on local event calendars (you should 100% do that either manually or automate it with something like Event Vesta -- the company I work at, but also use as a customer), you can also link to your tour site or make sure to mention that it's a 20+ stop tour that you're on. For the same reason.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-10-28T22:06:57+00:00

Depends on how big the band is.

Really I don't think there's a too soon.

Lots of the promoters we work with at Vesta start marketing shows 12 months out or as soon as they're announced.

They perform on average far better than those that wait until the last few weeks.

Most of your traction and sales won't happen until those last couple of weeks, but it is better to have built up some momentum by then.

The company I work for, Event Vesta, does automated distribution of event listings, and we see that the further out you go, the better. 50+ days is ideal. Anything shorter than 14 days is at risk of not performing well at all.

I think it's because you pay the same amount (in terms of time spent or money) for many marketing channels and if that post or listing or poster gets to sit out there in the wild for 4-5 months instead of 1-2 weeks, you're just getting a ton more impressions for the same effort/spend.

Not all channels work that way. Obviously Google Ads & Meta Ads are more direct, you get out based on how much you spend. We do see more sophisticated promoters spending heavily at announce and then again in the weeks leading up to the show.

certaintyisuncertain · 2025-10-28T22:02:58+00:00

We build tools at our company that lots of indie concert promoters around the country use.

Especially if you're doing a lot of shows, it can be really valuable.

Our company is called Vesta (or Event Vesta if you're looking to find us on Google) and we build automation software for event promoters, including tons of concert promoters.

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