How To Run More Events
The first blog in this series looked at how you can earn more income from your current events programme. That is definitely the first step if you are looking to increase the number of events you run or to earn more revenue from your events business. This blog looks at Gallus Event’s second classic approach to running more events: “Targeting Your Current Customers or Members”.
You can look at this approach as a more traditional way to run more events as it’s really about properly analysing your database. Every organisation that has run some events will have a database. Hopefully in there will be really useful information that if you mine you may find events gold! It is a traditional approach but it’s also very effective. Past customers, one hopes, will have an affinity with you. You should at least have a conversation starter should you wish to target them with new events.
Gallus Event’s classic approach to running more events: part 2 “Targeting Your Current Customers or Members”
Can you segment your database by:
1. Job level. Have you looked at your events programme and to ensure you are running events for every level within your customer base? We often find that organisations ONLY concentrate on the most senior individual. It’s not just the senior professionals who can benefit from the value of a well-targeted event.
2. Job title. If you have a large database have you ever searched it simply by job title? You may be surprised to see who you have details of. And if you have enough of a constituency with the same job title and if you can find the right content you may have a new event.
3. Industry / sector / specialisation. This can be an events gold mine especially for professional bodies. You may have a large amount of members from a field that you are currently not offering specific support through your events.
4. Location. Are you running events in the right areas? A quick location search will allow you to make sure you aren’t missing out on any events that you can perhaps bring closer to your members.
5. Age. I would hate to be too generic here but if I am sure there are certain types of events, especially ‘social’ ones that will appeal to people based on their age. For example are you doing anything for the ‘young professionals’ in your database?
6. Gender. If your database is male or female heavy this should be represented in the events you run. Don’t be scared to fall in line with common stereotypes, but do try not to make event attendance open only to a certain gender.
7. Outside interests. Your customers and members are ‘people’ too with interests outside of their work. I think event organisers sometimes lose this focus. Are you collecting the right information to help support this?
8. Professional interests. As above your customers and members aren’t just interested in the technical content they will have other professional interests too. Are you missing a trick by not realising this?
9. Members / non-members. I’ve seen membership bodies sitting on a pile of extremely useful content that every member knows but non-members would die to hear and to engage with.
10. Size of organisation. What is of interest for a large organisation can be totally different from what’s important to a smaller organisation. Does your events programme reflect this?
I hope you’ve found the list at least interesting and at most a source of new events.
Want more inspiration? We’ve used this approach for many of our (clients) to generate new events. If you join our LinkedIn group: Making Good Organisers Great or visit our Facebook page you can see the actual examples of the types of events we’ve either run for our clients or some great examples from other organisers.
We are running a couple of training courses to help organisations run not just more, but better events on the 6th July and the 7th September in London. The course can also be run in house. We will be covering the details, processes, pricing and marketing strategies behind this approach as well as the other four Gallus ways to run more events.
