Today's question comes from a worldwide survey of event organizers conducted a few years ago ...
"In what area(s) should I focus on to increase growth (revenue / attendance) for my events?"
It's an often asked question and my go-to answer bears continuous repeating. You and your event team need to focus intently on growing your marketing skills. It's not a matter of just reading a book or two. You need to continually sharpen the marketing saw.
An essential subset of marketing is an event's ability to truly understand their clients/attendees. When I broach the "know thy attendee" subject with event organizers, many get very upset with me.
Event organizers say things like, "how dare you, Eugene! We've been doing this event for 40 years. And we know exactly what our customers want!"
To be clear, I don't pretend to know an event and its idiosyncrasies better than any event organizer. But there are two places where I excel, asking the right questions and staying objective.
Asking the right questions involves sending a survey to previous event attendees. The same survey is also sent to the event's leadership team. Then, the survey results are compiled.
Overall, what the leadership team / board thinks and what their customer's survey responses are diametrically opposed to one another. Like opposite sides of the universe. It doesn't matter if an event has been going on for 5, 10, 50 or 70 years. Objectivity on the event's part is a rare and welcome gem.
So, get really good at marketing and focus intently on getting inside your event attendee's mind. As a result, being able to identify their reasons for buying a ticket to and why some decided not to attend your event. You will generate significantly more ticket revenue and increase your attendance.
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