Tips For Producing A Memorable Business Event (Cont’d)

Marketing: Getting People to Attend
18. You’ll need a DETAILED marketing plan. Create a marketing plan for the event. The more organized you are, the more professional your event will be.

19. Be tireless in your efforts or your event will fail.  If you don’t want to be at your event alone … then market, market, market, market … and market some more.

20. Define good reason(s) for people to show up.  What’s the draw for attendees? You need to define WHAT you’re doing at the event that will bring those target attendees in the door. For a consumer product it might be a party with entertainment and product demos and freebies. For a business crowd it might be educational content or an exciting, well-known expert speaker. Whatever it is, don’t lose the connection with why you want this particular audience clamoring to get in.

21. Lay out in writing why your target market should attend – don’t assume the benefits are obvious. When promoting an event, be sure to tell your target market what they will learn, who they will meet and why they should be there. Don’t assume your friends will tell their friends. If you are using speakers, give them advertising copy so that they can promote the event to their audiences.

22. Use online social pre-events to promote the main event.  To build interest in your event, try holding a Google Hangout or a Twitter chat a few weeks before the main event. Invite a few of your speakers to participate in the online social event. Give a preview of what’s to come at the main event, by doing some discussion of what speakers will cover, or highlight the activities. It generates anticipation.

23. Buy advertising on social media networks.   Buying advertising on social networks is often overlooked by small events. Social advertising platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter above all) offer in depth targeting options that can significantly help to reach our target audience in our geographical location. The good news is that no large budgets are required and ticket sales can be easily measured.

24. Use YouTube to promote your event. YouTube is the second search engine worldwide after Google. Uploading videos from our previous events or interviews with our speakers/performers is a great way to convince prospective attendees to click on buy. Video provides significant visual cues thus impacting heavily on our decision making process. With events we always feel the risk of not knowing what will happen, video eases that tension.

25. Use online registration. The easier way to scare people away is by having analog registration (faxes, bank draft or at the door only). Offer online registration to secure as many attendees as soon as possible. That will help to forecast numbers and release budget soon.

26. Offer local partners incentives to promote you. Press releases sent to the relevant media outlets will help generate news buzz and you could look at getting media (online and offline) involved as partners. They get exposure at your event in return for publicizing it. If they don’t want to get involved at that level, approach them with the idea of running a competition for their readers to win tickets.

27. Make it easy for your speakers to publicize to their followers. If you have any experts/speakers attending, encourage them to publicize their attendance to their social media followers/email subscribers.

28. Give early bird incentives. Early bird tickets at a cheaper rate are a great way to get early sign ups by giving people an incentive to act now rather than wait and forget.
We will bring you the concluding part next week by God’s grace.
For more tips on Event Planning, please visit our blog www.royalsdelightblog.com. Contact us also for all your event needs and you will be greatly delighted you have done so.