Getting the right people to your event can be more important than getting high volumes of people to your event – particularly if you are organising an exhibition and your exhibitors expect to do business with their potential clients.
When organising exhibitions, I always stress that my focus will be on getting ‘the right people’ through the door – rather than focusing simply on high footfall.
So, here are my top eight ideas to get the right people to your event:
- Build a database in advance of promoting your event. There are lots of ways you can do this, including starting a LinkedIn group for your target audience, an opt in page on your website whereby visitors to your site get something of value of free (such as a report or white paper) in return for giving you their email address, by teaming up with another company or media group that will already have a database, or purchasing a database.
- Start to build relationships with the right people, so that by the time you are promoting your event, they already know and trust you. This can be done physically at networking events and meetings or on line via social networks.
- Include VIP tickets in your sponsorship deals. This means that when sponsors come on board they have tickets that have a finacial value to them, that they can then give to their best clients as a loyalty reward. It’s highly likely that their best customers are the exact kind of people you want at your event.
- Invite your own VIP’s to the event as special guests.
- Publish a sample list of delegate names (get permission first – perhaps from your list of VIP’s) on your website. If people see that their peers are attending, they are more likely to book too.
- Find out who are the influencers in your market – bloggers, CEO’s, magazine or newspaper editors etc. Ask them to promote the event by tweeting/blogging about it, or simply sharing the information with their peers at networking events
- Put a footer on all of your emails, with your event logo, venue, date and a link to the website. Ask your speakers, sponsors and exhibitors to do the same.
- Make it easy for people to book and them their confirmation email/e-ticket immediately so that they know they have a place at the event. If you offer a great service, they are more likely to tell their peers about your event. Our online registration system does this automatically for you of course – so you don’t need to worry about having sufficient resources to respond to bookings 24/7 .