3 Quick tips to grow your event

Wherever you look, competition is out there for our personal time.  Getting heard and attracting new customers to your event, show or festival is vital to sustainability and profit.  Whether you're a not-for-profit event, you still need to keep growing and evolving to keep your customers coming back for more each time; no one can really afford a bad event or to lose money so how do you keep growing?

You may have the right formula for the event so now you need the customers.  If you're an outside venue, the weather is always something that can add those extra challenges that could effect whether or not people come on the day so what can you do, anything?  Gladly yes!

Tip 1 - Be responsive!

Increasingly more and more people are browsing the web via their mobiles than they are on desktop which means your website needs to be mobile responsive.  This doesn't mean 'the page fits on the phone', it means you scroll down to see content, not zoom in or scroll left or right which drives your customers nuts!  Even in 2015, Google reported that 40% of customers browsing a website that isn't responsive on their mobile would close it down and go elsewhere - that's your customer you could be losing.  

Responsive websites don't have to cost the earth either so there is plenty of opportunities to quickl and easily sort this and still keep you in control editing and adding images and content.

Tip 2 - Take advanced sales/registrations

Whether or not you have a full time event organiser, pressure on time is a constant.  We need to do more smarter and if you could save just one hour a day by your bookings or ticket sales happening automatically, over the course of the year, you could gain an extra 48 working days, that's more than month an a half from just 1 hour a day - couldn't you use that to grow the business or event?  How much more could you achieve if you grew your time by more than a month and a half in a year, that's got to be worth it! 

Its also easier than you think and more cost effective!  If you're already doing online sales, are you still posting them out?  What about saving money or adding in extra value, there are plenty of ways to still improve your offer online.

Tip 3 - Engage your customers

If you have been growing your email database then great, but are you using them?  Are you keeping in touch or 'just don't have time'?  'They know of the event anyway' - do you say these?  What about social media?  Yep, your customers are likely there too and again, you don't have to be a  major IT whiz to use Facebook.  But what are you using social media for if you are using it?  So much to think on but each of these doesn't take much effort to use effectively and can even be done in just a few minutes a week.  Engaging your customers socially is a great way to keep them loyal and get them coming back year on year and we'll be writting more on further tips how to use social media in future posts so stay tuned!