How to generate Word of Mouth for your event.
February 26, 2009
Time is such a valuable commodity for people today. When you ask someone to attend your event, your often asking them to gift you something - their time – that will increase the pressure in their working day or even make it longer.
Many corporate events I have produced are compulsory to attend for staff and sometimes even suppliers ! What a great way to create resistance to your message before you’ve even begun.
Have you asked if you’ve created enough value to make it essential for your customers and potential clients to attend or are you focused on why it’s important for you that they attend.
How much better would the expectation be if it was considered a reward to attend the new product launch, or annual sales event. How much more ready to listen and take in the message would staff, customers and suppliers be if there was a slight barrier to attend or if there was a reward for talking about the event and bringing someone along ?
Here are a few ideas to kick your thinking off.
How about a reduction in price as more people attend ?
Once you have a certain number of people attending and your costs are covered how about some kind of rebate for every attendee with the rebate increasing until the event is full ?
How about a voucher for a free drink or an item at the staff canteen for each person who tells someone else and then brings them along ?
This is a great solution if it’s a not compulsory to attend event at your workplace, perhaps on a worthy subject but one that does not generate a lot of enthusiasm. Don’t make it a free lunch etc at the event. The idea is to generate word of mouth to get people talking about it before the event and to give both people a reward for attending with someone. When they use their voucher etc, they will probably sit and talk about the event as that’s what got them the reward.
How about a lunch or morning tea etc if you get your entire dept, or section, or team to attend ?
They have to register on a website, nominating a team leader who will organise everyone arriving together etc and they have to have a 100% strike rate with their group to win the reward.
How about a 5 minute slot on the main stage at the annual conference to the dept or team that are first to get 100% of the department to register for the event.
They get to tell the rest of the company about their dept and their achievements over the last 12 months and their dept goals for the next 12 months. It makes them celebrity’s for the weekend or day of the conference.
How about a special closed door meet and greet session with the company CEO or celebrity ambassador if you have one for the supplier or client who brings the most registered attendees.
You have to ensure a mecanisim that verifys that all their registered attendees are at the event. The meet and greet gives a supplier an audience with the CEO and time to network with their contact within the company.
OK now your reward for reading all the way to the bottom of the post !
This post is dedicated to Seth Godins 3,000th post ( In a row ! ) Seth is an author who constantly finds ways to reward his readers. I’d love his traffic, but more than that I’d love his concise and focused talent. Then I would deserve his traffic. Keep going Seth and I’ll keep trying to hone my skill.
I have a signed by the author copy of two of Seth’s titles to give away. Tribes and Meatball Sundae.
E mail me your best word of mouth ideas to generate event attendance or reward ideas for event attendees via the contact page on this site. I’ll post the best 10 with author attribute and a link to your site and will select randomly the best two to receive one of the books each.
The books will be sent via mail to where ever you are on the globe !
