Get People to Attend Your Event

Which is more important? Choosing the location, food, presentation or other details of your next event or getting the right people to attend? Well, of course it is the latter. But it seems that many salespeople spend much more time on the upfront prep work of an event and much less on persuading people to attend. The good news is that there are new strategies beyond sending out invitations and just hoping for the best. In addition to your invitations, here are three ways to promote your event and build attendance.

1. Build buzz for your event. In other words, give them something to talk about. Develop content beyond the invitation in order to build value into the event. Write a blog entry, include information on your website on featured speaker(s), include a video on your YouTube channel discussing the value of the event, etc. Post on your Facebook fan page. Include a Twitter hashtag, such as #RetirementSeminarDallas and encourage people to use it when tweeting about your upcoming event.
2. Change your registration process. Give people easy ways to share your event with others. Services such as Eventbrite let your attendees share the event with their networks as they register. You can also offer those who have registered an article download that they can share with others. The article can be about a topic that will be covered at your event.
3. Post your event promotion. Consider videotaping your event and posting highlights on your YouTube channel or your website. Another idea is to record the event presentation to SlideShare. Then promote the video clips and presentation to attendees to share with others. This also builds momentum for your next event.

It doesn’t matter what you decide to serve at your next event. What matters is getting people to attend.