10 ways you can boost conference attendance.
These 10 conference attendance boosters will help you feel like you’re floating on a cloud of confidence, over your filled-to-capacity conference.
05
FEBRUARY, 2019
If you’re responsible for conference attendance, you’ll know this scenario only too well: Your conference is in a few months, registration has been slow and you know that registrations don’t always translate into attendees. Stress and exhaustion begins to take over – you need to boost conference attendance, and you need to do it soon.
I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, here they are:
1
Simple Registration
Nothing kills interest in a conference like a long and tedious registration process. The fewer fields there are, the more pleasant the process which means an increased chance of conversion! What? Short registration = increased registration.
2
Incentives for early registration
Everyone loves a good discount. And it’s a great way to motivate people to register early. By offering incentives you’re giving them a reason to actually register (aside from being able to attend the event of course) and they may tell their friends to register -added bonus – word of mouth promotion.
3
Invite Early
Life is busy so don’t leave your invitations to the last minute (I beg of you). The earlier the better. But wouldn’t prospects forget about the event, especially if it’s months earlier? The answer to that is a simple yes, of course they’ll forget – but that brings us to our 4th point.
4
Follow up regularly
Always follow up! Following up with prospects makes them feel special as well as reminds them of the upcoming event. Prospects that feel important are more likely to attend the conference than those who feel forgotten.
5
Personalise all correspondence
Don’t forget to personalise your correspondence! I see this all the time in my inbox, emails that are generic and impersonal. If they couldn’t take the time to address the message to me, why should I give them mine? Take the time to personalise your correspondence. It may take you longer but it’s worth it.
6
Keep your conference website updated
There’s nothing more frustrating than an outdated website! If your audience sees an ad about the event, and would like to learn more but can’t find information on the website they WILL lose interest.
7
Retarget old contacts
Old contacts that have fizzled out can be still be converted! This means sending the audience that has received another invitation by retargeting them. Never give up on old contacts.
8
Communities
Having a community dedicated to your conference is a great way to help increase attendance.Having a community gives you a captive audience to draw on. The group members have been interacting with your event for a while, so they are the perfect people to invite to your event.
9
Lookalike audiences
These allows you to reach new visitors. But what is a lookalike audience? A lookalike audience is based on your personas. LinkedIn filters the audience for you, based on the people in your custom audiences. Where can you do this? LinkedIn has a great feature that once you’ve uploaded an email list to LinkedIn, you can create a lookalike audience.
10
Social Media promotion
It’s the digital age, and social media is growing every day. With 590 million active users on LinkedIn, imagine the reach. You can let thousands of people know about your conference! Social Media is my favourite way to promote any event and it should be yours too.
Use these 10 tips the next time you need to boost conference attendance. You’ll never have to worry about an empty venue, ever.
If you need to boost your conference attendance, get in touch. We have a team of B2B event marketing experts.
Eric Louw
CLIENT SERVICES DIRECTOR
Some people are just destined to market B2B events. Eric is one of those people. It’s not because he’s passionate about B2B events (that’s a given), it’s because he’s passionate about helping B2B event organisers maximise their marketing budget with digital marketing tactics.
Eric Louw
CLIENT SERVICES DIRECTOR
Some people are just destined to market B2B events. Eric is one of those people. It’s not because he’s passionate about B2B events (that’s a given), it’s because he’s passionate about helping B2B event organisers maximise their marketing budget with digital marketing tactics.
