You know when you are excited to finally tell people about your event, you’ve got a well written invitation email, you’ve got a gorgeous poster and its been out for weeks but still, the sign ups are.. Lackluster? Or maybe there wasn’t the overwhelming response that you had hoped?
Well this kind of situation happens but not to worry! Here’s some tips that I recommend to boost the registration numbers that had worked for me.
Expand your target audience
This one time I volunteered for a relatively new non profit organisation and they have a fantastic free event for youth volunteers. Their marketing strategies is to promote the event directly to schools because that’s where the youths are. But to get past the “gatekeeper” is tough and I personally don’t like it when I have to pick up the phone to call the receptionist one by one for a follow-up. The marketing started 2 months before the event.
3 weeks to the event and the sign up is only at 10% and I knew its time to adopt a different marketing strategy. So I used one of my favourite tool which is to expand the target audience. The first step is to look at the programme and see what it has to offer. Then you break it down per line item and specifically promote that part of event to attendees that loved what your event has to offer.
Say, the programme have a speaking topic that covers “Volunteer opportunities in Singapore and abroad” so who would love to come and listen to this topic? Volunteers! Then your marketing strategies will look like this - “Send invitation email to all youths volunteer groups in every charity organisation in the city”
Rope in allies to help you
I’m a pretty lazy person and so I love to do things with minimum effort and maximum results. If you always do your marketing to individuals of the public, you can always try to approach organisations to help you promote your event. The trick is to find the VALUE that your event can provide to their audience. It can be in a form of an exclusive discount specially for their members, if not just highlighting how your event is aligned to their organisation’s values is usually more than enough! Organisations can be charity groups, big MNC companies, community centres, schools and the list go on. You can also go to the next level by identifying what kind of groups you would like to approach in these organisations - volunteer team, senior management leaders, the employees in the HR department etc.
Make your event too irresistible to miss!
Whatever it is that you think make your event so amazing, now its time to make your event so exceptional that its ridiculous for people to not show up at your event. As long as the reasons to go overrides the reasons not to go, people usually sign up to check out your event.
Some of the common strategies I use can be seen in the form:
- Lucky draw prizes
- Free goodie bags
- Complimentary tea break / lunch
- An esteemed guest of honour gracing the event
- A celebrity or influencer’s attendance
This way those attendees who are on the fence on attending now have extra perks to actually make the move to sign up.
Hope these tips are helpful for you and now you are ready to rock your event!
If you need any help with your event, I’m just a click away for a free consultation. Or if you have any questions, feel free to drop a line at rashidah@eventsandmeaning.com
Cheerios,
Rashidah
