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There are so many elements that come with building a successful event. They aren't as easy as gathering speakers and guests, and finding a place to host the whole ordeal. There's a lot of planning involved before, during, and after an event to ensure you see success. By success, I don't mean a whopping hundreds of guests that attended but rather, "Were there any quality leads that came out of this?" Bear with me, this article is going to be lengthy because there's a lot to uncover when it comes to building a successful event.
Pre-Event Strategy
Let's start with the pre-event strategy. You have this event and you're excited to share the opportunities with your audience. You have an awesome set of speakers, selected an amazing venue, and now what? Well, you would probably do something like post about it on social media and hope for the best. Stop your efforts here and I can assure you that your event space will feel scarce. This isn't a "glass half full, half empty" situation. This is when the alarms go off and you realize that you could've done more.
Who Would Attend?
Here's some advice I can offer on your pre-event strategy. Or at least give you some insight into what has worked in the past for me. For your pre-event strategy, set a numeric goal on how many guests you expect to attend. With that number, double it and that's how many registrations you will aim to generate. Marketing gurus, you know what's next: know your audience. Determine the job titles, the companies, and what that persona looks like. At this step, if you have a sales team that will be both on the floor at the event or will be tasked to follow up on your generated leads, work with them to determine the target audience. Trust me, that will keep them happy. On the other end, use the target audience that sales have determined to find look-a-like audiences and intent data to discover other personas that happen to be interested in what you're trying to sell.
Location, location, location
Now that you've determined your target audience, figure out the online or physical spaces where they spend most of their time. Is it on a social media platform like LinkedIn, or do they spend their time digging through emails? Knowing where they like to endlessly scroll, will help you determine the channels you need to start reaching out and promoting the event. Keep in mind that you can pay your way through reaching your target audience on certain channels. Where you'll be spending your ad dollars is totally up to you, or more so, up to where you'll see the most return.
Incentivize
Another added value to registering, you can add an incentive such as a little welcome gift to the first 50 registrations only. This gives your audience a feeling of exclusivity and urgency. Now, I know there are some folks our there who don't agree with event incentives but you need to understand that we are not "buying business" with the incentive. The "gift" isn't what makes the sale. What it does is get you in front of your prospect. Even after giving a prospect a gift, you may not make the sale. That's in the hands of your sales team - your job as a marketer is to get in front of the right people, and sales to bring it home. I will write a separate article on event incentives, but you can learn more about them in this article by Tremendous.
There's a lot more that goes into planning your event strategy, but all of those other factors are relative to the outcome you wish to see from your event. There is so much to unpack here and I can't wait to share Part Two of Nailing the Event Equation blog series. If you are doing all of the right steps above for your pre-event strategy but you're not getting the results you wish to receive, feel free to book a consultation with me by submitting your information on our Contact Us page.
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