How to Extract the Most Value From Your Business
A great business event can be transformative for an organization, allowing them to make a splash with potential customers and bolster the relationship they have with their existing ones. But those things don’t happen automatically. In some instances, a business event will offer only a mild ROI. At others, the business event’s impact is still being felt many months down the line. Here’s how to extract as much value as possible from your next business event.
Get Employee Buy-In
With business events, as with most things, you’ll get out what you put in. And that means more than just injecting cash to secure a great venue or hire the best caterers — it means bringing as much energy and enthusiasm as the organization can muster.
The keyword there is ‘the organization.’ You can feel when an event has been put together solely by management (and especially when it’s just the owner’s work). Events that have whole organization buy-in tend to really make an impression. Remember that while you can force your employees to be at your event, you can’t force them to be happy about it. Real enthusiasm will come from having your employees involved in the organization process from the very beginning.
Hire a Photographer
If you’ve secured a great venue, engaging speakers, and a long list of important guests, then having a successful night will be all but assured. But to get the most value from your event, you’ll need to book event photographers to capture the evening. This will give you photographs that you can then use in your marketing materials both in the immediate aftermath of the event and further down the line (in some cases, for many years). When you upload the photographs to your social media networks, be sure to tag any photographs of speakers — they’ll share the posts on their own pages, helping you to reach a new audience.
Get In Contact With No-Shows
Most of your post-event energy will go towards the attendees, since, well, they were actually there. But you can also dedicate some energy towards the no-shows, the people who said they’d turn up but didn’t. It doesn’t matter why they didn’t come — what matters is that you show them why they wish they had. A ‘sorry you couldn’t make it, here’s what you missed’ recap email, ideally with photos and videos included, will keep you at the forefront of their minds, and increase the likelihood that they engage with your business in the future.
Acquire Testimonials
Having a long list of happy customers in one room is the perfect opportunity to learn more about why they like your business so much — and perhaps, in the process, acquire a few testimonials that you can then use in your marketing materials. You don’t need to sit your customers down for a long interview that includes dozens of questions. With a few carefully worded prompts, you’ll likely find that you can get a few soundbites that you can use to provide social proof to future customers.
