The in-depth integration of culture and tourism offers new opportunities for the external dissemination and innovative inheritance of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). As a key birthplace of Central Plains civilization, Zhoukou City owns abundant distinctive ICH resources rooted in local farming and ancestor-worship culture, featuring high historical, artistic and tourism value. However, constrained by imperfect publicity mechanisms and backward communication concepts, Zhoukou’s ICH faces typical dilemmas including homogeneous publicity content, shallow cultural-tourism integration, fragmented communication channels and weak brand influence, failing to convert rich resource advantages into external cultural competitiveness. Taking Zhoukou’s typical ICH projects as research subjects, this paper systematically explores the current situation and practical problems of local ICH external communication. It proposes targeted optimization strategies covering content innovation, scenario upgrading, channel integration, brand shaping and institutional improvement. This study helps Zhoukou’s ICH break geographical communication restrictions and achieve sustainable external development, providing practical references for ICH external publicity and living inheritance in similar inland cultural cities.