In a shaky economy, attracting customers and prospects to a corporate event is challenging enough. Add shrinking integrated marketing communication budgets to that attention deficit and it’s a wonder anyone gets together anymore. But generating buzz for an event, be it a one-day workshop or multi-day conference, doesn’t have to break the bank. The next time you need to draw an audience, try these penny-wise promotion tactics:

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1. Define your ideal attendee. Sending invitations to your entire database will only drive up the cost of marketing your event. Instead, suggests Travis Stanton, editor of Exhibitor and Corporate Event magazines, mine your list for ideal attendees, such as your most loyal customers, and “wow” them with elaborate invites.

2. Leverage social networking Web sites. When The Economist partnered with the improv troupe Second City to produce an event called The Art of Political Satire, the New York–based event marketing firm Tentpole invited key friends and influencers through Facebook. Each time someone accepted the invite, their Facebook news feed alerted his or her friends about the event. “It’s like giving a flyer to someone, who then makes their own copies and hands them out to their own friends,” says Jon Paul Buchmeyer, a principal at Tentpole.

3. Partner up. If your budget is tight, seek out a partner with similar customer demographics, and leverage each other’s assets. “Whether that means piggybacking on an established event or looking for similarities in your target audience,” says Stanton, “any event becomes just grander, that much more of a draw.”

4. Enlist local bloggers. The fastest way to get media attention for your event is through the blogosphere. “The time from outreach to the blogger to the posting can be just a day,” Buchmeyer says. He recommends offering free event tickets to bloggers, who often use them as giveaways on their Web site to cross-promote the blog and the event.

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