The Top Four Reasons to Host an Event

Marketing expert Hannah of Hoyland Marketing gives us some advice on hosting events.

To get it right, events take a huge amount of planning, communication, promotion and analysis. Are they worth it? 

Absolutely, but not all of it is easily measurable, so it can’t all fit into a neat ROI spreadsheet. Below are our top four unmeasurable reasons to hold an event.

1. Captive audience
Depending on the type of event, your delegates know they are going get something out of it. Whether it is learning, networking, getting fed, having a drink or a bit of a dance. There is something in it for them. This makes them a warm captive audience for you to launch your new service or product or to make a grand announcement. There is no other way to see so many clients and prospective clients in one place.

2. Brand awareness
A huge amount of communication is necessary to pull off a great event, but every printed invitation, phone call, email, status update, tweet or post also gets your brand out there. See it as an opportunity to re-engage with dormant customers, nurture existing and promote your brand to prospects. 

3. Personalisation
So much contact is digital, we are all guilty of firing off an email to make ourselves feel like we have achieved something, when all we have really done is sent something saying I’m on it but haven’t done it yet! True, valuable action is face to face, an event is perfect for this. Because everyone is in the same space and hopefully enjoying themselves, it enables you to engage with the personalities and not just the companies. And, we all know, people buy people, not products.

Differentiation
If you get it right, an eagerly awaited annual event for customers, suppliers and supporters differentiates you from your competitors. 

 What can you measure?
Just because you can’t measure the four big benefits above, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t measure anything. You need to know how much to put in the budget each year. At the very least you should measure the following: 

• Staff attendance – especially sales staff: how much does it cost for them to be ‘off the road’?
• Travel – what is spent on fuel, mileage claims, trains or taxis to attend?
• Accommodation – what are you paying for your team to stay close to the venue?
• Venue – what are you paying the venue itself?
• Merchandise – what are you taking to give away or display?

Contact us if you are looking for more ideas on how to grow your business. Events are just one of the strategies that we recommend to our clients, there’s plenty more where that comes from! Email hannah@hoylandmarketing.co.uk or call 07714794544.