14.02 – Launching Your Own Public Event
Creating great customer experiences is more important than clever advertising campaigns. Hosting your own event can build relationships on your terms and elevate your brand beyond the products or services you sell.
First Rule of Success: Focus on Your Attendees
Make the event about your attendees, not you. If you disguise a sales pitch as a customer appreciation, thought leadership, or charitable event, you’ll destroy trust among your customers and harm your chances of sparking new relationships.
Second Rule of Success: Host Meaningful Events
Don’t host an event just because you can. Ensure it’s meaningful and offers value to your network. The goal is to build relationships and leverage your network to introduce your company to others. People build connections with people within the brand, not the brand itself.
Hosting Events with Meaning
Relevance is crucial to the success of your events. If the theme, purpose, activity, or benefit doesn’t provide direct value to your customer base, you’ll likely be disappointed in the turnout. Successful events have a direct impact on customers’ quality of life, community, or causes they feel strongly about, and are relevant to your business and the role you play in your customers’ lives. Examples of meaningful events include:
- Hosting a volunteer highway cleanup day followed by an after-party with “road trip” swag as thank-you gifts.
- Organising a dinner event at your business or a nearby park, packed with games and contests, with admission being donated food items.
- If you own a retail clothing store, setting up an after-hours party to collect business clothes customers no longer need, offering appetisers, cocktails, and light entertainment. The collected clothes can be donated to a local shelter or program that helps place needy adults in jobs.
Funding and Monetising Your Event
Events can be costly, and covering the entire bill with the hope of generating sales and acquiring new customers may be more than you can afford. Here are some ideas to help with expenses:
- Partnering with local restaurants or catering companies to donate refreshments in exchange for signage and mentions in publicity material.
- Asking owners of new local venues to host your event for free in exchange for sponsorship mentions.
- Finding local musicians and artists who need exposure and will perform or design promotional materials for free.
If you’re in the B2B sector and choose to host a conference or thought leadership workshop involving external speakers, you can justify charging an admission fee. The content needs to be different and more actionable than other events competing for attendees. Hosting your own conference or professional summit positions you as an authority, perceived as a pioneer, leader, and expert.
Ways to Monetise a Conference
- List a price for your event to give it value, then invite customers to attend for free and offer a substantial discount to any friends they bring.
- Invite companies that provide complementary services to yours and target the same customers to underwrite any speakers.
- Seek sponsors for special workshops or receptions, or as underwriters for entertainment.
- Record sessions and sell online access to the video for a nominal fee.
Getting Help Managing Your Event
Most small and medium-sized businesses or marketing departments don’t have the time to manage a full-scale event. Hiring event planning consultants and firms can be a solution if your budget allows.
Event managers can help design and manage all aspects of your event, including shows, speeches or activities, meals, conference and hotel room reservations, security, transportation, and other details necessary for staging a major event. A good place to look for a proven planner is the Event Planners Association.
