Hosting an event can be a great opportunity to show off your business. A lunch and learn can be a good way to educate your customers about new products or important concepts. An evening dinner could be a good way to make your top customers feel important. An open house could help bring in brand new customers and to build word-of-mouth buzz. However, to make your event effective, it’s important to ask yourself these important questions.
1. Who Is Your Target Audience?
Do you want to encourage your top customers to continue using your business? Do you want to create more sales by bringing in prospective customers? Knowing what audience you’re targeting for your event can help focus your plans and ensure that you’re talking to the right people.
2. What Do You Need?
Once you’ve decided on your audience, make a list of everything you’ll need. Do you need to rent a sound system for a lunch and learn? Do you need to send invitations to your customers? Do you need to prepare a talk? Do you need to have catering or book a venue? No matter what type of event you’re hosting, take some time to make a list of everything you need to do before the event can get started.
3. What Else is Going On?
Have you ever scheduled a trip, only to find out that there was a big event going on at the same time? You will want to avoid creating that kind of challenge for your customers, so it’s a good idea to consider other events that might cause an issue. This will help ensure that your customers don’t have to deal with excessive traffic or challenging parking because of another event in your area, and it helps ensure that they won’t have a conflict that prevents them from attending.
This isn’t just local, though. Consider whether there are out-of-town events that your customers will be attending that might make them unavailable for your event. For example, if you work largely with schools then you wouldn’t want to schedule your event on the same weekend as a state education conference.
4. What Are Your Limitations?
You want to host a great event, but it’s important to know what you can or cannot realistically do. If your schedule is tight, hosting an all-day event might be beyond what you’re able to do at the moment. If your budget is tight, a catered lunch might be more challenging than a coffee hour event. If you have a quick turn between planning and the event itself, you might have to keep the guest list small and the event itself simple.
5. How Are You Going to Get People Through the Door?
Getting people to attend an event is all about how you pitch it to them. If you want to bring in the community, marketing in a local paper could be a good option. If you want to bring in your top customers with a feeling of exclusivity, you might want to invest in an announcement to invite them to your event. And for some audiences, an invitation or marketing pitch might not be enough; you might need to offer food or freebies to get them interested. Whatever your audience, it’s good to plan how you will encourage them to be at your event.
Do you plan events at your business? How do you ensure that they are a success? We’d love to see you join the conversation in the comments below.
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