Your event listing can often make or break your event, so it’s worth spending a considerable amount of time and effort on each one. After hosting dozens of events and event organisers at The Createry, here are our top tips for making your listing a success.
Make key information skimmable
The most important details people want to know are the date, time, location and price. Make these easy to find and ideally near the top of your listing. You could include them in your event banner as well.
Sometimes people skim over information that is formatted differently, so having them summarised as an easy to see list in the listing itself – even if you’re just repeating it elsewhere – can be helpful for people who miss it in other places or who rely on plain text because they’re using a screen reader.
If you have specific requirements or limitations for your event, state them clearly so they’re difficult to miss. This may be things like that it’s a women’s only event, or that access is via stairs, or that they need to let you know about allergies and dietary requirements in advance.
Don’t use AI to write your listing
Events are all about human to human connection, and that starts with your event listing.
AI doesn’t understand the emotions and goals of people looking to attend events. It’s all too easy for it to miss the mark on tone, provide generic text, prioritise the wrong selling points, or make the reader question their trust and your authority if they identify it as AI.
Instead of writing your listing using AI, use it to create a checklist of what you could include, what other people include in theirs, to refine your event title and make it more concise, or to evaluate your listing after you’ve finished writing your draft.
If writing isn’t your strong point, consider hiring a copywriter, or asking a friend to look over your draft. Once you have one listing perfected, you can use it as the base for your future events and the process will be much faster.
Event title tips
Arguably the most important part of your listing is the title. It has to attract people enough to click through, and contain the keywords needed to pull in your target attendees if they’re searching on websites like Eventbrite or from search engines.
It’s not just what you say, but how you say it; the tone also helps you attract your target audience, so word choice is key. The phrase “Female entrepreneurs” comes across differently to “Women in business.” The event title “Perfecting your selfies: tips for content creation girlies” is very different to “The art of portraiture for online creators.”
There are plenty of different ways you can write successful titles, but there are some key elements you should always try to include.
Take the following event title:
Tips For Designing Your Website
It’s clear what the event is about, but not who it’s aimed at. Let’s add the target audience in.
Web Design Tips For Entrepreneurs
Better, but take it one step further by answering the “why”:
Web Design That Converts: Tips For Entrepreneurs
Why attend this event and what will you gain from it? It’s to learn how to use your website’s design to convert visitors into sales. Now let’s add some intrigue/FOMO (fear of missing out):
Web Design That Converts: Little-Known Tips For Entrepreneurs
You could use “overlooked,” ”must-have,” “underrated,” “hidden,” “secret,” “unusual,” “essential” and so on, or pick words that specifically appeal to your customer base.
Optional: add the year to show freshness. You could also reference a season of the year, the specific quarter it is, or similar. This is especially useful for when you’re about to head into a new year or season as people are looking ahead.
Web Design That Converts In 2026: Little-Known Tips For Entrepreneurs
Tip: If you’re naturally wordy, write your title and then ask AI to keep the same tone but make it more succinct. Sometimes you don’t need to include everything – shorter can be better!
Keep ticket options simple
Having several ticket options, or multiple options that sound quite similar, can be confusing and lead to analysis paralysis. If people feel overwhelmed or uncertain what the right option is for them, they won’t buy at all.
In addition to keeping the options simple, keep the names simple as well. “Bonus email subscriber ticket” may make sense to you, but it will confuse the average person reading the ticket options.
On websites like Eventbrite, people often see the ticket options dropdown before seeing your description of the event, so avoid making them work harder for the explanations by keeping your naming conventions simple and obvious. And if you can just offer a single ticket option, all the better!
What’s in it for the attendee?
Ideally you want to write your listing as if you’re answering the question “why is it worth it?” throughout, but you also want to include a section that clearly and explicitly answers that question.
This part of your listing deserves its own paragraph/section because people want to see the value in how they’re spending their time and money. It’s also often underrated as you’re often so familiar with your event that you forget what people won’t know or miss some things that people want to know to make a decision.
If you’re not sure how to answer this question, try using any/all elements from this simple structure for inspiration:
You’ll come away from this [session/workshop/event/class]….
- having learned a
- having overcome b
- able to c
- feeling d
- with more confidence in approaching e.
If there are any skills, tangible outcomes or commercial returns involved, be sure to prioritise those. For example, “By the end of the class you’ll have learned xyz basic crochet techniques and leave with your very own cat keyring.” Or, “After this workshop you’ll have the skills and confidence to command a higher price for your newborn photography shoots.”
One of your reasons should always be about meeting people. This could be framed as “like-minded people,” “new friends,” “other people who understand,” “other [local business owners/crafters/bookworms/creatives,” or similar. In-person interaction is one of the key reasons someone wants to attend your event (vs watching or listening to something at home, such as a webinar or podcast), so be sure to highlight it and anything related to it. For example, an opportunity for valuable one-to-one networking and conversations, to perfect your technique in-person with a professional’s feedback, to have deeper conversations, to pick a pro’s brains one-to-one, to create a new connection, or to pick up networking tips and tricks.
Event organisers at The Createry often incorporate something extra to add more in-person value, for example including a half day of coworking (at our special rate for event hosts) or including a canalside or castle walk as part of their event.
If attendees get something tangible, be explicit about it. People recognise and celebrate the added value in that, whether it’s a workbook or coffee and cake. Small (affordable for you!) mystery gift bags can also draw interest.
For business networking events, you can offer the opportunity for all attendees to bring their own branded items and create crowd-sourced gift bags on the fly. Just be sure to give ideas of what you want them to bring, so you have good quality and variation!
Dispel objections with an FAQs section
Put yourself in your ideal event attendee’s shoes. What objections are they likely to have that will stop them buying a ticket? It could be they’re worried about finding parking, the ticket price, the event not being the right level for them, arriving or standing around alone, or something else entirely.
If you have people email you questions about your event, this could also be a source you draw on to understand any pain points too – if one person has asked you something, it’s likely other people have the same question, even if they haven’t got in touch.
Eliminating objections and offering reassurance works well in a question-answer format as it’s easy to read quickly and stops your listing looking like a heavy block of text.
Example:
I’m worried about coming to this alone as I don’t know anyone?
Don’t worry, we have a buddy system – just ask for a buddy in your order notes and we’ll make sure someone is on the door to welcome you and introduce you to someone fun to chat to.
Try to answer questions concisely and within the listing – you don’t want to send people away to another web page in case they don’t come back!
Scout other listings for inspiration
Head to Eventbrite and look at the event descriptions for similar events in different areas, asking yourself these questions:
What aspects and features do you like or dislike?
What makes you rule out an event?
What questions do you have that the event listing doesn’t answer?
What do the most popular events/organisers have in common?
Which event descriptions have great titles and first lines that really draw you in?
What imagery and formatting is interesting or powerful?
What trends can you identify across the board?
Found this post useful? Try one of these next: How to run a super-successful business networking event or How to encourage social media engagement at your event.
If you’re interested in hosting an event in Nottingham and think our spaces could work for you, drop us an email – hello@thecreatery.co