How to Promote Your Festival or Community Event to St. Louis Families

Families plan differently than adults. They decide earlier, they need more information up front, and one missing detail is enough to make them skip your event entirely.

Get listed eight weeks out

Parents fill weekends two to four weeks ahead, and summer plans much earlier. An event that appears on calendars the week of is competing for scraps.

List the moment your date is confirmed — even if the lineup isn't final. Free listings publish immediately and you can keep editing details right up to the day of, so there's no reason to wait.

Give families the information they actually need

Most festival listings answer the wrong questions. Families need:

• Exact hours for each day, not "all weekend" — multi-day events support a start and end date
• Admission cost, including whether kids are free and up to what age
• A street address, so you show up on the St. Louis map with directions
• An honest age range, since parents filter by age band
• Parking — where, how much, and how far the walk is
• Whether there's a kids' area, and what's in it
• Stroller and wheelchair access
• Restrooms and changing facilities
• Shade and water, especially for summer events
• Rain plan

Every one of these that's missing costs you attendance. This is the cheapest attendance boost available to you.

Lead with the kid-facing thing

If you have a children's tent, a petting zoo, free face painting or a bounce area, that belongs in your first sentence — not buried under the band lineup. Families scanning a list of twelve weekend events are looking for exactly that signal.

Photos beat descriptions

Use images of families and kids at your event, not empty grounds or a poster graphic. The $50 Featured upgrade adds up to five photos and top placement; you select it in the submission form and pay before the listing goes live.

A workable timeline

• 8 weeks out: list the event free with confirmed dates, address and age range
• 6 weeks: upgrade to Featured, add photos and the full logistics detail
• 4 weeks: book a banner or in-grid sponsored placement for peak visibility
• 2 weeks: post final schedule, parking map and rain plan
• Week of: confirm hours and weather updates

Paid options for bigger reach

Advertising is sold monthly and is scoped to categories that actually fit your event:

• Homepage banner — $175/month. Top of the St. Louis homepage, and your card also runs in the homepage Sponsored grid.
• List page banner — $125/month. Own a topic — Festivals, Free Fun and more — across category, curated list, browse, this-weekend and area pages, including the Sponsored row on those pages.
• In-grid sponsored card — $75/month. A card inside the event grid itself, among the listings parents are already scanning.
• Event page sidebar — $100/month. Runs alongside every event detail page in your categories, and stacks below the content on phones.

Sponsored sections are capped at 8 advertisers per page, so inventory is limited. List your festival free to start, and add placement only if you need the extra reach.