The key to a successful event, research says, is to give audiences a great and seamless opportunity to connect with the brand. For the brand, these “bringing together” activities can only be worth the investment if the event attracts the right audiences; those who are most likely to become customers.
While this is a basic, primary thought the key lies in finding the answer to this – how does one attract a potential audience to the company’s event?
We have a few ideas to share on this!
- Understand the Prospects’ Motivation
The first step to attract potential customers to your events is to understand what motivates them. Think about why would these potential customers want to attend your event and then plan accordingly.
Go beyond your basic marketing figure and understand what factors would drive this audience to your event. Something like, where do they live? What do they do in the evenings after work? Where do they hang out online? When would they like to attend an event, during work hours or in the evening?
You can use the above questions as a start point and work on it to build out your understanding of your target audience. A thorough understanding of your target audience will help you to promote your event more efficiently. But more importantly, this step will help you frame your event’s value proposition in a way that will resonate with your prospects.
- Create a Focused Value Proposition
When someone arrives on your event website or on your registration page, you’ll need to convey to them why your event is unique and why it’s the perfect customised event.
A strong value declaration will surely help you set your event apart from the rest. It provides potential attendees with the most vital information, and helps them decide whether they should attend an event or not. Once you have your value proposition defined, audit your marketing matters to make sure they will correctly hook your attendees.
- Take a More Targeted Approach
With your ideal attendee persona built out, focus only on those who want to attend your event. Though online and social media advertising will give you access to hundreds of thousands of potential attendees, but, to get more quality hits/leads, make sure to promote your event to the most relevant audience.
Here’s how you can attract highly relevant audiences from a large pool:
- Get your Email Game Strong: Reach out to past customers, prospects, or anyone who attended your past events. Getting former attendees to your next event can be six to seven times less expensive than acquiring new ones. Having a mix of current customers in the room with prospects can be a great way of promoting word of mouth.
- Targeted Advertising on Social Media: Make use of social networks like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. which have built powerful, AI backed advertising tools that let you send targeted promotions to the exact right audience.
- Re-market to your Clients: Remind people who earlier viewed your event website, to register. Build on retargeting your ad campaigns to reach out to people who didn’t register.
- Simplify your Registration Process
To gather qualified leads, you need to gather significant information from your attendees. Ask for the initial important information, and let technology fill the remaining gaps. Once you get an attendee’s company information and job title, for example, their age or geographic location can easily be found via web analytics. Too many questions during registration will demotivate your attendees to even fill out the form and that’s where the maximum drop-outs will happen.
Whenever necessary repurpose a piece of content that you already have. Webinars, white papers, social media and blog posts are all amazing ways to offer content & to keep attracting your audience.