Promotional Events: If you build it, will they come?
Have you ever thrown a party and worried that no one would show up? For those of you who are party-throwers extraordinaire, you’ve probably never had that concern, since you really don’t care who comes…a party is a party, right? But for those of you like me who, although I love to attend parties, am always a little nervous that something major will go wrong. BUT when you throw, say, a baby or wedding shower, then you know what the main theme of party will be, who your attendees need to be and what the main goal of the party is…to get the bride or mom-to-be as much loot as possible. In those cases, most of us usually feel pretty confident on how to make that type of event successful.
With the thought of throwing a promotional event, now the anxiety level has notched up quite a few points, because this is YOUR “baby” i.e. your business or organization that you’re throwing this party or event for. You not only want people to attend, you NEED people to attend to help grow your business or charity in a very significant way. Whatever your ultimate goal of the event is – increasing awareness or revenue or both – planning a promotional event has to be really thought out in order to maximize your efforts and your budget.
You first have to determine 3 things:
1) Your overall concept for the event
2) Who you want to come
3) What you want to happen as a result of this event.
You can use your event to help you do the following:
1) Announce your new business or have a “Grand Re-Opening” to invite new customers to your current business
2) Showcase a new product or feature of your business
3) Raise money for charity while featuring your actual business location or just sponsoring the event through signage and other branding
4) Celebrate your current customers, vendors, staff or fellow businesses…holidays are always a good time to do these.
5) And many more, depending on your business or organization.
The bottom line is that promotional events can be very productive IF you know who you’re targeting and what your main goal of the event will be. A great party is wonderful, but a great event can really make a difference in the growth of your business or organization. And isn’t that worth celebrating? 🙂
**For more good advice on this, check out this great article on Dummies.com titled How to Plan a Promotional Event for Your Business by Eric Yaverbaum, Ilise Benun, and Robert W. Bly http://bit.ly/y30hMm
(If you would like help with making the right choices for your promotional event, please click on my CONTACT page and send me your contact info for your FREE Event Planning Consultation.)