Today’s audience is a tougher crowd to please. With so much at their disposal, it has become imperative to give them something unique to impress them. This becomes more challenging when you are hosting an event.
For any event to be a success, it must genuinely connect to its audience. Your audience must remember their experience even after years of conducting it. But considering the diversity of today’s target audience, how do you find the right ingredient that would make your event a success?
The success of your event would be solely based on your attendee satisfaction levels and positive feedback you gain from it. This blog is going to be all about that magic formula and making your event a grand success. So before we start, for any event to succeed, you must first know your audience.
What are their preferences? Which age group do they fall in, and what social backgrounds do they come from? What is the expected outcome of the event, the event budget, and the venue’s space constraint? Your event theme must be centered on your target audience.
So once that is sorted, here are some tips that you could use to enthrall your audience and get them asking for more.
Content List
1. Look For Unique Ideas
Based on the resources you have (budget, available time, and space) and the demographic you are hosting the event for, look out for unique and interesting event themes that could immediately wow your audience.
Everyone would want the event they attend to be an unforgettable experience. Give them just that. Your theme should go well with the outcome of your event (celebration, strategizing, education, idea creation, networking, or promotion).
2. Set Clear Goals And Performance Parameters
Have a clear view of what you want from the event and set clear parameters to measure the success of the event. Depending on what your event is expected to achieve, your performance parameters would vary.
While the number of attendees would give you an idea of how well the event has been planned, its success would be entirely based on how far the objectives have been achieved. Chart out ways that can project the ROI of your event to the stakeholders effectively.
3. Start Early
The key to hosting a successful event is to get your audience to talk about it. As per a survey, more than 44% of event organizers start their event promotions and registration three months in advance. Make a poster describing your event and create an online buzz.
The more people talk about it, the better would be the response. Choose the social media platforms that would work for the kind of event you plan to host. Go for professional networks like Linkedin if it is a formal corporate event or choose a more casual social media platform like Facebook for informal events.
Choose an easy and relevant hashtag for promotion and use it with every post that you put up to make your event trend on social media. Interlink all your promotional posts by adding the other social media handles to it and be consistent with the hashtag.
For example, your real estate Facebook ads can have hashtags like #investinyourdreams or #propertyinvestment. But to make them popular, it must be consistent everywhere and must link back to your other ads to create an impact.
4. Create Compelling Promotional Videos
Create a promotional page for your event and post relevant videos to advertise it. If your event requires registration, you can have a call-to-action that can get your audience to register for it. Posting unique video content on the promotional page ensures that your event receives the required online visibility and participation.
Video ads are by far the most powerful tool to promote an event. The audio and visual effects appeal to a broader audience than plain written or pictorial content. However, the challenging part is to create compelling video content that can engage and resonate with your audience. You can use a video maker tool like that of InVideo to get the right kind of promotional video for your event.
5. Get Insights From Your Audience
It is imperative to engage with your target audience and know their expectations from an event before planning it. This would not only help your audience in connecting with the event and its core intent on a personal front but also give you an insight into the expectation that would help you plan it better. If it is a corporate event, conducting online workshops, webinars, or live chat sessions can help in connecting with your audience better.
6. Look At The Bigger Picture
As a host, your primary focus must be to get your audience to know the bigger picture. Don’t restrict your promotions to the event alone and find ways to integrate it into the bigger picture: Lead generation and brand visibility.
Often the most valuable quantifiers that define the effectiveness of an event is an increase in sales, leads, and deal closures. So make this event an excuse to improve your brand presence.
Tell your story to your audience and get them to see beyond the event.
7. Find Ways To Make It Fun For The Audience
Be it a formal event or a casual one – the primary key to a successful event is the fun factor. Find ways to engage your audience. For a formal event, look at ways to give value addition to your audience. You can get them acquainted with the key speakers over live chat sessions, answer Q&A sessions of the attendees, have pop-up quizzes, engage them with fun facts or arrange for small souvenirs that they can carry with them. Based on your budget and type of event, you can work around the fun factor.
To host an event is easy, but to make it a success needs rigorous planning and meticulous strategizing. That said, all you need at the end of the day is the right inspiration and engaging promotional content to get it all started