What makes an event successful to you? Is it an exclusive venue, high profile speakers, relevant case studies and a full audience? Or are you thinking about the new business opportunities?
An event should be able to demonstrate its value to the business, this could be new prospects for the sales pipeline, new business opportunities set for immediate follow-up or it could be excellent branding awareness and education. Because of this every event should be focused on pre-defined goals to ensure you can achieve what you set out to attain.
With this in mind, here are just a few top tips to consider when planning your event:
- Make sure the type of event you create is suitable for your audience and volume of delegates. i.e. a webinar promotion can be great for brand awareness but it doesn’t matter if you only have 3 delegates, whereas a large venue is costly and an empty room can reflect negatively on your company.
- Are you attracting the right audience to your event? Yes a prestigious venue may attract many delegates who are keen to maybe take a tour of a premier football stadium, but what interest do they have in your offering. If your focus is new business you need a strong message to attract the right delegates.
- Check out what other events are planned for the same day, some unknowns can always surprise you but do your homework.
- Watch out for habitual attendees. Some people love events and work the circuit with no real business interest or intention of taking it further. Are these the people you really want in your audience?
- Do you think one eshot to your database is enough? Definitely not, as your telemarketing follows up the promotion they can gather new contact details to add to the database so when you eshot again, you have a larger audience to target.
- Lastly, don’t forget the event follow-up is equally important to nurture those warmed prospects along the sales process. Treat the no-shows with the same attention as the actual attendees, they remain interested targets that you need to engage with.
Have your experiences highlighted any other words of advice you can share?
