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Who is attending this event?
Who is attending this event?
There are, fundamentally, 5 reasons why people attend an event: affinity to content, affinity to attendees, affinity to speakers, affinity to referrers, affinity to organizers.
New York,
New York,
United States of America
(prbd.net)
13/11/2010
If as event organizer or promoter, you want to understand why people attend your event, and therefore be able to improve your event planning and marketing, you need to answer correctly the first question any attendee ask him about any event he intends to attend: “Who is attending?”
There are, fundamentally, 5 reasons why people attend an event: affinity to content, affinity to attendees, affinity to speakers, affinity to referrers, affinity to organizers.
In this post, I want to show you few tricks to play with these 5 affinities to draw attendees to your events with great success:
Ask referrals from your speakers: From day one, ask all your speakers to refer the event to their contacts, colleagues, and friends. Encourage them to blog about their session ahead of time. Overall, Be specific when asking:
• Ask the speakers to blog about the event or simply tell their audience that they will be speaking at the event
• Send them a request to like the event on Facebook, on Linkedin, on Myspace, etc
• Prepare a tweet, and ask them to retweet it
• Prepare widgets like “I’ll be speaking at this event ….” or “I’m attending this fantastic event …” that they could embed on their website or blog
• Send them some T-shirts, fliers or any promotional materials they could use for offline promotion and online event planner.
• Give some free tickets to your speakers to offer to their audiences.
Don’t just ask one time and forget about it. Follow up, and ask as many times as necessary to have them send you referrals. Use Goodbuzz.org referrals report features to check who are really sending you referrals.
Ask referrals from your sponsors and partners: From day one, ask all your sponsors and partners to refer the event to their contacts, colleagues, and friends. Once again, the magic here is to be specific when asking:
• Ask the sponsors and partners to blog about the event or just tell their audience that they are sponsors of the event or they are partners
• Send them a request to like the event on Facebook, on Linkedin, on Myspace, etc
• Prepare a tweet, and ask them to retweet it
• Prepare widgets like “We are sponsor for this event ….” or “We are attending this fantastic event …” that they could embed on their website or blog
• Send them some T-shirts, fliers or any promotional materials they could use for offline promotion and grassroots marketing strategies.
• Give them some free tickets to offer to their audiences.
• if they have some indoor or outdoor boards, ask to send them posters to hang.
Don’t just ask one time and forget about it. Follow up, and ask as many times as necessary to have them send your referrals. Use Goodbuzz.org referrals report features to check who are really sending you referrals.
Go where you audience hangs out and Seed your content there: There are for sure tons of people out there that want to hear about your great event. Reach out to those existing communities, and you’ll be able to draw qualified people to your event and trade show promotions. Look for Facebook groups, Linkedin groups, Ning communities, Grou.ps forum, and any other online or offline communities relevant to your event content.
Prepare a PR stunt for newspapers and other traditional Medias. Make your content newsworthy by showing people how your event content will cover these present and future changes in society, business, politics, etc. that could effect/affect your audience. Of course you have to mention the key speakers or attendees. Great speakers draw attention, more people and medias coverage. Great sponsors raise the profile of your event. Go after them restlessly.
Ask referral from your early birds: People love to attend event in group, with friends, trusted connections. It’s more fun that way. Your early birds don’t want to hang out alone at the event, do they?
The fact is that a good part of your event promotion will be done by your early birds. After making up their mind to attend the event, they will start looking for people they know who will be interested to come with them. Give them the tools they need, but first start asking them to find those friends and connections that will be interested to attend the event. Ask them to:
• Update their social networks profiles with a quick message saying they are attending the event
• Tweet a short text about their attendance or about the event itself
• To blog or write to you about what they are looking forward to learning at the event, or “why are they attending”?
• Use some widgets like “I’m attending this event …” on their blog, website or social medias profile
• Ask them to like your event on Facebook, RSVP it on Linkedin, Myspace, etc.
Ask for cross promotion with other event organizers: You cannot succeed alone in this game. Networking is the key. When you see on TV or you attend an event that draw hundreds or thousands of people, you just wonder how they did that; and how damned you can’t attract 50 people to your event!
Success in this game comes from having strategic alliances with the right people. Smart event promoter team up, and collaborate with many other event promoters, and they get to know the influentials in their field and town. They create alliances, trust network, online business networking and peer referral networks. It’s in this way that it works. The big promotion with hundreds or thousands of visitors is actually a conglomerate of smaller promotions done by a myriad of partners pooling their promotional resources for the success of the big event.
The big river comes from hundreds of tributaries.
Visit our site: http://goodbuzz.org/example_success_stories.php
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