We believe all small businesses should seriously consider running events to help propel their businesses forward faster.
So, when you think about events (whether you consider ones you’ve run or attended in the past), what types of events first come to mind?
Types of Events
There are many different types of events, including:
- Workshop
- Mastermind
- Breakfast
- Networking
- Online training
- Sales webinar
- Masterclass
- Product Launch
- Seminar
- … and the list goes on…
So why should you consider running one of these in your business?
Why Run Events
Events can serve one or multiple purposes, including:
- Increasing leads – add new prospects to your database
- Adding value – providing helpful insights/information to your target markets to increase awareness, educate and/or to start solving their problems
- Increasing customer loyalty – creating more raving fans
- Generating more sales – ability to generate more revenue in a group setting or new revenue from events
- Positioning you/your business as an authority – events are typically run by experts giving you an unspoken level of authority
- Leveraging and saving time – allows you to talk to more people in less time
- Making a bigger impact in the world – allows you to reach and impact the lives of more people
Although these points are listed, I don’t want to discredit how important each of these reasons are.
We have seen it time and time again, just ticking off one of those reasons off the list (e.g. increase leads), it has allowed many businesses we’ve worked with take their business to a whole new level.
I wanted to share three major problems we see our clients and prospects come to us with all the time.
These are very common problems for many small business owners, but they can easily be solved by running events.
(Of course, they could be solved by other initiatives, but I wanted to share some examples of how we’ve managed to solve them with events).
Let’s take a look at them…
1. Not Enough Leads
If you don’t have enough people to talk with, why not run some ads to your target market and put together a free live webinar? A lot of the time service based businesses sell on a call. This could be a sales/ strategy/ discovery/ introductory type call, which is often a one-one discussion between a prospect and a salesperson. This works if the prospect is hot and they are close to making a purchasing decision.
For a cold/warm lead however who may not know you or may not believe they are quite ready to purchase, this could be too big of a step to ask someone to take. (It’s like asking someone to marry you on the first date…. I’m sure that wouldn’t go down well!!). By putting together a compelling ad, a killer webinar landing page (we use leadpages and their templates have converted on average at least 40% for us) and this topic allows you to reach new cold/warm prospects that you may otherwise miss.
2. Too Many Leads
Perhaps you have enough leads and you’re being swapped by one-one sales conversation. It might be time to consider how you can leverage your time more effectively. Webinars is one powerful way to do this of course like the one above, drive people to a sales webinar and on the back of that make an offer or even get people to sign up for a follow-up call. That way prospects on the call are more qualified and ready to take the next step.
If your database is big enough and you have leads in a specific geographical area, you may wish to consider running an in-person preview/introductory event. This often works best if you have a larger database, so you don’t have to spend all your marketing budget on filling a room. But do the math to determine if this option generates X results, yes more expensive is worthwhile for you.
3. New Revenue Stream
Is there a way you can start running an event to produce a new revenue stream in your business? Perhaps it might help you service a market you currently don’t have any product/service offering for?
Let’s say you’re a service based business conducting custom/one-one work. Your market is on the higher end, but you may have other prospects who aren’t quite ready or in the position to make that level of investment.
Is there a way you can package your expertise up and cater for a new market to generate a new revenue stream via events?
We did this in our business 🙂
One event we commenced was a paid monthly group Q&A webinars back in 2015. This provided two outcomes for us. Firstly, these webinars allowed us to provide more value to our clients. Secondly, it opened up a new audience who may not wish to have one-one support however who still wants to work with us.
This has seriously changed our business as previously we had to turn those people away.
What events could you introduce to generate a new source of revenue?
Final Thoughts, But Important Points…
Ok, so I may have got you all excited (and I hope so!) about running your next event.
I need to make a couple of important points.
Just because you put on an event, does *** NOT *** mean that people will come.
Sorry… it’s just the truth…
Even top speakers can struggle to get people to events, so please keep this in mind.
Here’s an article we did on how to get more bums on seats, so make sure you check that out.
Furthermore, the event structure is key, make sure you are very clear on the outcomes you want from the event.
Don’t re-invent the wheel regarding the event format/structure to achieve that outcome.
Look for gurus that run that type of event and achieve the results that you’re looking for (e.g. experts in running sales webinars).
Tap into their expertise (and typically years of tried and tested events), so you can use the same structure but adapt it with your event topic.
Ok….
I started going off track here and I’ve probably got enough to write another blog post on common mistakes people make running events!
I’ll need to write a post about that soon (subscribe below to be notified when we release it).
But hopefully, you start to get some ideas about why run events and what opportunities you have in your business to tap into the power of events.
Seriously, it has transformed our own business.
We also see this every day with our clients, that events do help accelerate business growth.
What action/s can you take from this article?
Happy eventing!! 😀
PS If you’re thinking about running your very own in-person event, check out our very own case study what we did to launch our first workshop.
(NOTE: Want to get more bums on seats at your next event? Learn the top 10 ways are clients are using to boost attendance that you can implement today. Learn more now!)
