Today the event industry is more competitive than ever. The way participants respond to your event content is seen as the one true measure of a successful event. For the smart event organizer happy attendees equals long-term company profits for 3 simple reasons:
1. Increases customer lifetime value – it is a well known fact that satisfied customers tend to contribute more revenue in the long run
2. Easier customer retention – it’s always cheaper to retain participants than it is to acquire new ones
3. Generates positive word of mouth – helps attract even more participants for the next events and at no additional cost
The key to participant satisfaction is identifying and then understanding your event’s audience, which in turn will help meet, or hopefully exceed their expectations. To achieve that all you need is the right approach and willingness to actually follow it.
an excerpt from ‘Organizing Events on a Zero Budget’ by Weemss Labs:
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One can have the most brilliant idea for an event and still fail to sell it. That’s why it’s imperative that you know who the audience for your event is. As we said earlier identifying your audience is key to understanding their expectations and needs. So how exactly do we do that?
Take a good look at your event!
Your event is in essence a product that you’re going to sell to people. Analyze that product and think about how it will fulfill a need or solve a problem for a potential customer. Who might be interested and who may benefit from attending your event?
Do your homework
Doing some research about any similar events can help you get information about your industry, the current market and your competition. Such information is already out there and can easily be found at no cost whatsoever.
Developing Audience Profiles
If you have a rough picture of what your potential audience is going to be, develop your event participant profile, or profiles if you feel the event’s going to have more than one audience. Here’s some food for thought:
– What is important to these people?
– Do they have advanced knowledge on your event’s topic(s)?
– What impresses them?
– How do they interact?
– Are they technical?
– Are they conservative or bohemian?
– What are their problems?
QuickTip
To have a good understanding of your audience you need one more thing – identify where your audience is and what they do. Do some brainstorming about which websites and blogs they are likely to visit, which social networks do they frequent?
These things combined should provide everything you need to know and understand your audience. That knowledge will dictate what you do from this point on and how you do it – from generating event content and developing a marketing strategy, to negotiating partnerships and even choosing the venue!
ProTip #3
Your work is never done. It’s essential to stay current on market and industry trends, your competition, and your audience. Make sure you keep track of sales, interactions, and more. This helps you see what participant preferences are, as well as notice trends, patterns, and possible areas of improvement. In Weemss for example you monitor statistics and real-time reports on all key elements of the event registration process so you can adjust them at any moment if something is underperforming!
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3 customer retention strategies that work
As previously stated retaining participants for your next event is important if you want to run a profitable event organizing business. The good thing is if you followed our approach to identify and understand your audience, you’ve already done a lot of the hard work. Here are 3 excellent ideas to further increase your chances of retaining all those satisfied participants:
– Use blogs to educate and engage participants
– Use email to send special promotional offers
– Create surveys and listen to your audience
You can read many more advanced insights on how to organize events like a mathemagician in our FREE e-book ‘Organizing Events on a Zero Budget’. Download the book from this page – no strings attached. Or if you’re not big on reading and haven’t tried Weemss yet, Get started now and experience a better way to create, promote, sell, and manage your events!
Image credit: Paul Katcher | Some rights reserved
