7 Essential Things That Can Make or Break Any B2B Event

Nothing is more demotivating than spending countless hours and lots of money planning an event only to have a disappointing turnout. Event managers fail to generate desirable ROI from their events due to either low event attendance or inefficient meeting room usage.Let’s take a look at 7 essential things that can help you boost sales ROI from your next event:

Make Registration Easy

By removing all barriers to the registration process, you can increase the number of sign-ups. Simple and easy registration can help you sell more without spending more, and deliver substantially improved results.

Make sure that your registration process does not include too many steps. Look at the registration flow, and count how many steps it takes to complete. If possible, don’t ask registrants to create a new user account for registration, instead link the process to their Google or social media account.

Furthermore, if the event is paid, you should mention the fee and package on the registration form.

Select the Right Place

The best way to get more attendees is to choose a venue that is centrally located., Along with this, the venue should not be too expensive so as to drive up the cost you will spend per attendee. If many attendees will be traveling from out of town, then hosting the event at a venue near the airport or hotels is advisable.

Share additional information such as parking, transportation modes, city maps, and a list of local sights to help your guests explore the city after the event.

Next, pay attention to the décor inside the venue. What style is the architecture and what does the building convey? Services and amenities such as catering etc. also play an important role in making an event successful.

Promote Your Event

Email Marketing

When you start, plan out the content that you will use to promote your event by considering your attendee persona and their key challenges. You can begin with a press release announcing your event, who your speakers are, and describe the value that attendees will get.

Email marketing can help you increase registrations, if done right. Since you know your personas, their challenges, and have the right solution, send an email with a short & direct subject line. Optimize your email for clickthroughs and enable social sharing as well.

Video Marketing

Once your content is ready, go online and distribute it. Video marketing will help you grab attention. You can interview your speakers, get them to give a preview of their presentations, embed the video on your website or upload on YouTube.

Social Media

Create attractive images to promote on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest to direct people to your event’s site or landing page. You can write blogs on the challenges your persona faces, and offer solutions. You can then drive your audience to the event sign-up page by adding a CTA (call-to-action) to your event. Paid distribution can be used to drive traffic to your event page/site.

Influencers

Influential people in relevant industries can get your event in front of the right people. Put together a compelling outreach email/tweet/InMail and let them know what they will get in return for sharing your event with their followers. You can offer them a free VIP ticket or a speaking slot.

Offline Promotion

Ask local businesses for sponsorships. Interviews in local newspapers, or on a local radio or TV stations can also help you promote your event offline. If possible and relevant, you can get a local celebrity to participate and promote your event. One good way to get registrants for your upcoming event is to get a booth at exits of current events and get visitors to fill out the sign-up forms.

Invite the Right Keynote Speaker

One of the most important elements to an event is selecting a great keynote speaker for the agenda. You should prepare a list of renowned speakers, define your target audience, draft the meeting objective, project time frame and define the expectations from the speaker.

Your keynote speaker should be able to deliver something to your audience that they won’t find elsewhere, and their content should connect with the goals of the event as well.

Include Technology

Organizing an event is time-consuming. By using the right technology, you can take some weight off. There are some exceptional event management platforms that can help you promote your event online and boost registrations. Event managers can also try meeting booking management apps that can help manage all activities, right from booking a meeting space, sending notifications, to sharing meeting notes after an event.

Provide Right Facilities

There are some basic facilities such as projectors, power supply, internet connectivity, parking facilities, drinking water, and refreshments that should be a priority to make any event not only successful but memorable. It will help you create a comfortable and functional environment for your attendees.

Gather Feedback After Event

Feedback is one of the most important aspects of any event because it can tell you if your effort was worth it from your attendees’ perspective. You can email them a thank you note and ask about their experience at the event to make improvements in next event.

You can also send a survey after any event to attendees to learn if their expectations were met, how rewarding the event was for them, etc.

Conclusion

Event planners should have a thorough understanding of the meeting, who will be attending, what messages are being communicated, what type of speaker is needed, and what has worked in the past. These 7 elements, combined with some scheduling flexibility, technology and planning will help you deliver a successful event.

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