Finding new attendees can be stressful. What happens when your expected friends and community members are busy at another event? Or have to step away from the hobby for a while? The reality of running LARP events is that often a certain number of attendees are needed to afford the space. Many events stop because they can’t consistently meet those goals. Some even struggle to have enough staff support. So how do we bring new people into our events, games, and the hobby as a whole?
Here are some insights into marketing best practices from events similar to the LARP world. I’ve been working in theater event organization and social media marketing for about a decade now and these are our tried and true methods. Buckle up, this is going to be long.

Define the Message

You’ve spent a lot of time putting love and life into these projects, don’t stop that energy short when you’re sharing it out. Before you tell a single person about your game, know how you want to pose it.

• What is this event similar to that you can use as touch-stones for new people?
• Is there something else running that you need to differentiate from?
• Consider the tone or vibe of the game so you can carry that through to your marketing efforts.

Who are you targeting?

Just as the vibe of your game is important, so is the type of community you are trying to foster. As a community, we’ve been really good at setting expectations for immersion but not as good at showcasing what our games and members actually look like. People join groups they see themselves fitting in. So consider who you’re trying to attract that way you can model it back to your audience.

• What audience is your game appropriate for?
• Who would be most interested?
• Consider age ranges, race, gender, and sexual identities.
• Who seems to be most present already and who do you want to see more of?

Focus on the right places.

Discord is great. Facebook groups serve their purpose. Personal forums are novel. But these are very siloed means of communicating with people. While these allow a lot of room for communities to be fostered, they aren’t great at reaching new people (or keeping people informed). While I fully support the use of these tools, they should come second to what should be considered priority communications: Websites and Email. They’re old school, but they’re the most direct ways to reach people.

If you’re planning on sharing information that your players need – don’t hide it behind a community wall that only those in the know can access. Put relevant updates on your website, send them in an email, and then send out a notification on social media/discord as a follow-up if you have the spoons and time for it.

SEO & Information

Websites feel boring sometimes, and that’s okay. We don’t all need the flashiest landing page or to shell out a bunch of money to design the most impressive site. Instead, I want you to focus on a few key things:

Make sure the most relevant information is available, clear, and repeated.

You’d be shocked at how many times someone could read a date or a location and forget it. Don’t make this obnoxious but keep important information on multiple pages. An event announced on your home page, an event schedule page and a blog announcement is great. An event date hidden in the flavor text of your ticket purchase page is not.

Target keywords to show up in search results.

I know this feels like a rat race sometimes. If you do this once when you’re setting up your site, it will do a lot for you in the long run. And since many LARPs aren’t utilizing this, you’ll have an easier time showing up in search. The best way to do this? Include the words LARP, Immersive Experience, and Live Action Role Play on your pages. More than once. Even better if you include your location in those phrases. A small blurb on your About page about “providing LARP experiences to the Greater Boston area” will do wonders. A FAQ page will do even more.

If you’re struggling to determine what to include, check out Answer the Public and search larps, and what type of game you’re looking to run. It will pull up actual searches people are looking for that you can try to answer.

Keep web pages up to date!

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve come across a LARP website only to find out it hasn’t been updated in months or years. If your game is no longer running, maybe consider taking the page down. If you want to keep it up as a legacy page, make it clear that it is no longer active. If your game is running, make sure it doesn’t stay dormant too long.

Best recommendation: a week after you hold an event, you should update the site in some way. Whether that’s a thank you, a TBD for upcoming dates, or an announcement for the next scheduled game put up something.

Social Media

This may seem blunt, but if you can’t stay active on social media, stay off of it. I’m giving you permission not to make an account for your individual games. You’re going to lose out on a lot of room for organic growth, but not having social media slows you down a lot less than having a page that’s had no activity for three years.

Using Social Media Without Starting a New Account

Here are some ways you can utilize social to reach new people if you know you won’t have the time, energy, or content to fill out a separate page.

• Use your personal accounts to set up public event listings. Facebook is great for this, and surprisingly so is Linkedin if you want to treat this like a business, that’s a you call.
• Utilize your community leaders. Identify people who are notable in your space already and ask them to share or post about your events.
• Create a hashtag and just ask people to populate it. It’s so easy to add #[GAME NAME]LARP to a photo someone was already sharing of their costume or memory.
• Search on social media sites you’re already on for people asking questions looking for larps. This can be in dedicated FB groups, on Reddit, in TikTok comments. Spend 10 minutes every week to respond with “Hey XYZ game happens in MA! It seems like what you’re looking for” to a few people.

Leaning into Social Media

If you want to tackle having a social presence to market your LARP you have two routes you can go in. Marketing a specific game or marketing your company. There are pros and cons to both of these, but consider how much time and energy you have. If you’re running multiple games, or think this is going to have a short campaign run and want to carry people over to the next one, marketing your business (or yourself) might be a good option. But if those games are in wildly different genres and you really one to focus in on a niche audience, you might be better off separating them out.

Just Pick Two

We all know just how many social media platforms there are. You don’t need to be on all of them, especially if you’ve never promoted an event before. I recommend picking two and getting as good as you can be on them instead of spreading yourself too thin. Instagram and Facebook have features that allow you to cross-post to both at the same time, so you could get away with three if you want to. I just recommend posting from Instagram first, not the other way around.

TikTok is going to be the easiest place to reach people who are local to your area. YouTube has the best search functions. Linkedin should probably only be used if you’re doing something in the professional training realm – which is certainly not everyone.

Posting

Once you’ve picked your focus pages, get on a consistent schedule. It really does not matter what this is so long as you stay to it. Algorithms train themselves on patterns. The more you stick to one, the more it can anticipate when you’ll post next and be primed to push content out to the right audience. If you’re too sporadic, sometimes those algorithms don’t know what to do (and sometimes your audience loses interest).

Here are some basic recommendations on how often to post on each platform:

• Facebook – 2x/wk min, 1x/day max
• Instagram – 2x/wk min, 1x/day max (stories not included)
• Twitter/X – 1/wk min, no real max just don’t spam
• Bluesky/Mastodon – unclear at the moment, will update
• Threads – 1/wk min, don’t spam
• LinkedIn – 1x/wk

Reddit should really only be used from personal accounts if leaving comments or posting the occasional promo unless you are making your own subreddit.

While these numbers are helpful, I really recommend spacing out how often you advertise an event. At work, I only like to include links to sign up/register for something on every third post. So make the other two something fun, informative, or otherwise engaging.

Don’t Forget Meatspace

So much of marketing these days focuses on the digital. It’s easy to look past some of the old tried and true methods, but there’s a reason every high school and college has taken up some of the same practices, and its because they work (even if just a little bit). For that reason, here are a few ways you can reach people where they’re already out and about:

• Host a booth or event at a local Ren Faire, Expo, Con, or other such nerdy gathering.
• Drop off rack cards to local game shops, LARP stores, or costume businesses.
• Buy ad space in college and local little theater programs.
• Hang fliers on college campuses, in local game bars/escape rooms/etc (that allow it)

You don’t need an endless budget for this, something small and eye-catching goes a long way. And of course, listen to your community when they recommend places to share things. Ask folks to take cards to local businesses or hand them out when they attend events. Nothing works better than a positive review from someone who actually plays your game.