5 Key Things You Must Have to Reach an Event Attendance Goal

I’ve been involved in a couple of recent projects in which acquiring attendees have been harder than usual. Instead of ruminating about the market conditions or the economy as contributing factors, I thought I might recap the main ingredients in my ‘recipe’ for a plan for hitting an attendance target. Doing so has helped me refocus my efforts, and acted as a benchmark in which to measure my activities.

It might also be of interest for you as well, so here are the things I believe you must have to hit an attendance target:

 

1) An Event Resume: This one pager describes the event in detail, including who should attend and why. The resume should be specific to each event as it’s the cornerstone for the content, marketing and sponsor/attendee sales. I’ve provided an example here.

2) A Budget: It may sound obvious, but you need to be able to ‘peel back the onion’ to know how much money it costs to attract a visitor and/ or a conference attendee and how much revenue they will generate, to confirm that your efforts are worth it. Knowing these details allows you to determine the approximate cost of your marketing for the event.

3) A Marketing Plan which includes:

  1. A branding statement about what the show represents;
  2. Attendee and attendee revenue milestones;
  3. A detailed production plan as to what are you going to do and when.

4) A marketing person who will manage the execution: This resource will have as many of these attributes as possible

5) An ‘engaged’ list: This means that you have some connection with a fair number of people in your database, beyond just having their contact information. Are they loyal to your event? Have you developed target personas? Do you or your marketing person know any attendees/prospects personally where they would take a phone call from you? Most companies have no relationship with their attendees/prospects. This makes their efforts MUCH harder.

 

Many of the above items are obvious. But identifying them and acting on them will tell you whether you have an ‘informed’ perspective – through metrics and relationships with attendees – or whether you are just following a project chart and hitting ‘send’ on millions of emails to attract your audience.

 

Food for thought?

 

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