Why Some Events Sell Out and Others Don’t
Facilitator: Traci Browne
Scribe notes: Sarah Vining
- Make invitation only, first come first serve
- Build the reputation and the people will come
- Ego building, make them feel VIP by invitation only
- Charge a lot or just charge; in general more likely to show up
- Monday morning events, low attendance
- Couple of people to decide that the event is brilliant, they’ll tell everyone (i.e. attendees who blog, video-blog, tweet from the event; hire 10 people to do it for your event)
- “Celebrity” hit a blog on your event – you become lucky!
- Events on Tuesday/Wednesday (due to travel) or Wednesday/Thursday (in-city event) creates bigger attendance
- Holidays don’t make a difference in attendance if event has built reputation
- People don’t register if they don’t get anything out of it
- Do people attend for TSR? (Tradeshow romance) Should there be date night at these events?
- Events where you’re matched by interests
- Continuing education credits @ events
- Back to traditional marketing (buying lists) to promote social media – lots of noise, explore marketing outside social media
- Push content all year long – it’s about being lucky and catching someone’s attention
- Does seeing session titles and speakers’ names drive attendance?
- Media partners for events are responsible for promoting the event after it’s over
- People can learn in the office, so content isn’t everything
- Benefit of attending – key connections + face-to-face, but most events don’t make time for this.
- Badges with keywords, what you want help with at your conference
- Match-making with people who have common problems, e.g. sitting on a bus going to an event
- Approaching bosses for permission to attend – are title of sessions necessary?
- Why do people go to events? One ECDC reason: gorgeous men throwing axes (who knew?)