Event Attendance Tips

Are you planning an event for your business, and hoping to get more people to show up? We’ve got some awesome event attendance tips for you!

Many times, when planning an event, there can be many speed bumps before D-Day itself. An event is still very much a product you must sell, but unlike a solid product, it is always changing. Sometimes vendors have last minute emergencies that cause them to drop out. Or attendees decide a day before that they’d rather save time and gas for the movies that weekend. Sometimes your funding gets cut in favor something else beforehand, and you are no longer capable of funding the event. 

There can be any number of reasons that causes an event to go from perfectly planned, to “hey can we reschedule for another date?” Many planners must have a backup plan to their back up plan of their back up plan! 

Here are some event attendance tips below that I recommend pursuing to knock out some potential roadblocks for your event.

Photo by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash

Give Something Without Expecting Anything in Return.

You are going to have to give up something to host an event. Whether that be you taking a loss, or you are foregoing some other sort of business venture. An event is a marketing strategy to help you generate leads for your sales funnel. Expect that you are going to take some form of sunk cost to pull off that amazing event. You will be foregoing another opportunity for this one, and you must carefully decide, “is what I will gain from this event, worth what I will lose from this other opportunity?” Mentally preparing yourself for the loss can help you prioritize more meaningful aspects of the event. This will then help fuel the chances that more attendees will show up.

Photo by Jaxon Lott on Unsplash

Promote Others.

When I worked as a door-to-door salesman that required me to do a presentation to leads, my Uncle gave me some helpful advice… “If you ask 100 people, 10 people will say yes. From those 10 people that say yes, only 1 will show up, and there’s a 50% chance that 1 person will turn you down after hearing what you have to say.” That meant that if I wanted even 100 sales that day, I needed to speak to 100,000 people. 10,000 will say yes, 1000 will show up, and 100 people will give me their credit card information.

I don’t know about you guys, but it is difficult for 1 person to speak and personally get to know 100,000 people. So, network and connect with those participating with you. If you have 10 vendors joining you, and each person can speak to 1000 people, there’s your 100 sales right there. Sell to your vendor partners that your clients can turn into their clients, and vice versa! By promoting who you are partnered up with, you expose yourself to their clients, and will generate more referrals between all of you. 

Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

Make it Rewarding

It is a guarantee that you will get people that say yes to attending, but do not actually show up to your event. This could make your event not worth the cost. So offer something that is rewarding to your attendees. For example, you can set up a sort of scavenger hunt, with a prize at the end. This can even be tied in with your vendors and sponsors, by encouraging clients to go around the event and meet people that they would not have even considered speaking to!

Give these a try and let me know how they turned out for you. These are just some event attendance tips that I should have expected when I planned out our Wedding War Wednesday live stream, and I hope that you don’t run into as many hiccups as I did! (I lost vendors the day before the actual event due to family emergencies! That definitely gave me a heart attack!). What are some other speed bumps that you’ve run into when putting together an event? Comment them down below and let me know what you did to defeat them!