Both online and in-person events are a huge opportunity for small business owners. From connecting with customers and prospects to building a bigger, better referral network, there’s no limit to what well-run events can do for your business. But what is a successful event? And how do you keep your attendance high and participants engaged?
To find out, we held our own event featuring three event superstars who are small business owners themselves. They shared their top event planning tips on everything from driving attendance and audience engagement to crafting on-point messaging.
If you’ve ever wanted to host an event but weren’t sure how to get started or you simply want to level-up your event strategy, catch the action in the video below.
Event Planning Tips: Secrets Straight from the Pros
Below, fellow small business owners, Alignable members, and event masters break down the dos and don’ts of hosting successful events. The panel features Al Wagner, Cherri Pedrioli, Sue Brooke, and Alignable’s resident marketing expert Maureen Plowman.
Short on Time? 3 Takeaways That Will Transform Your Events
We know you’re busy running your business, so if you can’t watch the whole video, we get it. Instead, take a look at the top event planning tips from the session below.
1. Know your audience and cater to them
Before you start planning your event, you should know who your ideal audience is. What’s important to them? What are their pain points? How can you help them solve their problems?
Answering those questions will help you come up with messaging and content that adds value in the areas that your audience needs it most. It will also help drive attendance.
2. Nervous to host an event? Take the leap anyway
Many business owners aren’t confident speaking in front of an audience. But the only way to get over that fear is to just do it. Our experts mentioned that the act of hosting makes you a better host, even if you’re an introvert by nature.
And if you’re worried about what might go wrong, try to keep it in perspective. Sometimes, the best events are small; other times, the tech fails. Whatever it is, prepare as best you can and take it in stride when things go sideways.
3. Master reminders to boost attendance
Many members asked questions about getting more people to show up to their events. After all, no one likes to spend a lot of time planning an event that only a few people attend. So what do you do?
Experts pointed to reminders as the key to increasing attendance. By understanding your audience and perfecting your messaging to provide value, you can craft reminder emails that get people excited about your event.
And remember to make them as personal as you can, track your progress like open and click-to-open rates, and iterate, iterate, iterate. While there’s no magic formula, you will eventually settle on tactics that work for you. Just keep experimenting until you do.
Transcript: Event Planning Tips for Introverts, Extroverts, and Anyone in Between
Maureen Plowman:
Great. All right. Welcome everyone. If you’re here to participate in our How to Host “Must Go” Events then you’re on the right place. My name is Maureen Plowman. I am the vice president of marketing for Alignable, which is a great place to be because I get to work with tons of small businesses like yourself and also work with a team of great employees that are really focused on helping make small businesses successful.
I’m a career marketer, mostly focused on services and technology. My first job was as an events manager where I managed over 150 events for a company, both small and large events, both online and offline events.
Maureen Plowman:
And I won’t tell you how many years later it’s been since my first job, but many years later events still play a very important part of my marketing strategy. I’m really excited to be here today and to share some of these tips and best practices with you.
I also am passionate about small business owners so much so that I married one. My husband is a small business owner that has an events company. And so I understand and appreciate the challenges that all of you go through to be able to do what you love and to really help our communities thrive.
Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us today. I am really, really excited to introduce this rockstar panel of your peers. We have three small business owners with us today who are going to share some of their top secret tips with you.
Maureen Plowman:
I’ve told them it’s not just any tip that they give anyone, we’re going to save the special top secret tips for you.
Let me first start by introducing Cherri Pedrioli, she’s the CEO of two organizations, Custom Plumbing and Holistic Choices. She’s joining us today from Santa Rosa, California.
She’s a serial entrepreneur. She has a whole tool bag full of choices for how to network as a business and to do events. She’s been involved with BNI. She started her own networking chapter and group so she’s got a lot of great tips to share with you.
Maureen Plowman:
We also have Al Wagner who is president and CEO of TruPayroll. He’s based in Marco Island, Florida. I feel like we should be there today because the weather here is a lot colder in Boston than it probably is there.
Al has been the area director in Southwest Florida for Master Networks. He’s a chapter president for the last five years. He served on the board of local nonprofits. Done a ton of events.
Al is doing amazing things with keeping people engaged and attending consistent Quick Connect type events, which you’ll hear about today.
Maureen Plowman:
And I also want to introduce my friend, Sue Brooke but also my colleague Sue. We work together on the marketing team here at Alignable and Sue is on this amazing journey across the US right now in her Winnebago meeting and bringing together small business owners on Main Street so you can help support each other and learn from each other.
Sue is an author; she has been an entrepreneur her entire career. Welcome to my esteemed guests. Why don’t we start with you, Cherri, if you wanted to just say hi to our attendees today and just let them know why you’re excited to be here.
Cherri Pedrioli:
Oh okay. Thank you. For me, I’m excited. Groups and events was something that I thought at the beginning of the pandemic was going to be a challenge. And I am excited to share some of the tips that have actually taken businesses to the whole next level since going virtual.
Meeting people all around the world that we would have never met had we stayed in person. Online events has been amazing. I’m I’m excited to be here. Thank you, Maureen.
Maureen Plowman:
Of course. Thank you. Al, how about you?
Al Wagner:
Yeah, I’m going to echo Cherri, the amount of business that actually has grown as a result of being able to connect virtually online. 2020 as a crazy year as it was, was one of our best and it’s hands down through networking.
Maureen Plowman:
Awesome. Sue.
Sue Brooke:
Oh my gosh. This is so exciting for me because now that I’m actually out there on the road and meeting people in person and I’m noticing how everything’s shifted. We’ve all been on Zoom and everybody’s met people virtually.
A lot of us have met people that we’ve become super close friends with on the screen and now people are coming out and they’re seeing people for the first time that they met online or they are reconnecting with their friends that they haven’t seen in over a year.
And it’s just this magic, magic energy. I’m excited to share what I’m seeing out there with people going from all the virtual events to now doing both or just doing in person events. I’m super excited to be here today.
Maureen Plowman:
All right, well then let’s get started. First we’ll just start with how our audience can participate. This is going to be a conversation today. I mentioned, we’re bringing these three small businesses just like you to the forefront so they can share their advice but it’s a conversation with you all as well.
Two ways to participate. One is use our chat. Go ahead and throw your questions in there and we’ll take them either throughout the presentation and then as well at the end.
And then also we’ll be doing a few polls as we go through the conversation, just to kind of get an idea of where you are with events, what types of venture doing, things like that. Two great ways to participate and let’s get started.
Maureen Plowman:
I am going to just stop sharing so we can actually see each other. There we go. Sue mentioned, it’s a really interesting time.
We are 18 months where the world has really changed and our digital presence has become much more important, both for ourselves and our organizations. Many of you are now starting to do events in person, which I think is so exciting. In fact, we did a recent survey and 40% of our members were starting to do in person events and everyone was just so happy again, as Sue mentioned, to be back together again.
I’ve also heard many of you are doing some hybrid events. You got really accustomed to doing events online and now you’re continuing to do that. You can do it from the comfort of your home. You don’t always have to go drive somewhere. You can reach more people.
We’re going to talk about both of those things today but before we get started, let’s do a quick poll and see what types of events you are holding.
Maureen Plowman:
Right. A lot of people doing both.
Al Wagner:
I have the theme song from Jeopardy playing in my head.
Maureen Plowman:
I know, exactly. Do do do do.
Sue Brooke:
You can go ahead and sing that.
Maureen Plowman:
For sure.
Al Wagner:
You don’t want me doing that, you really don’t.
Maureen Plowman:
It looks like people are doing, obviously a mix of both events and there’s still about 20% of the people that aren’t doing events at all. I think hosting events can really benefit your business in a lot of different ways. It helps you stay in front of your customers. It helps you to build relationships.
I read a recent study that said that customers that have a high level of emotional connection with a company or a business are more likely to use them. That’s how you kind of keep that emotional connection going.
And then the face to face interactions are just a great compliment to what you’re already doing online.
But I’ve also heard from many of our members that they’re shying away from events. They’re not quite sure exactly how to either hold the event or they’re not sure how to get people to attend or how to make their events stand out, which is of course why we’re here today.
Maureen Plowman:
Let’s do one more quick poll, Chelsey, on different challenges that you may have with doing events. Your biggest challenge, whether it’s driving attendance, making your event stand out or again, if you have a great event, how do you then turn that into success for your business and return on investment?
Sue Brooke:
We should have added all of the above.
Maureen Plowman:
Right. I know. Driving attendance, that was going to be my guess. It looks like right now, driving attendance and engagement is kind of the biggest challenge, which we hear a lot. I think, great to hear that. We’ll cover that today as well. All right, great. Chelsey, thank you.
How important are events to your business?
We’ll hear the tips today on how to drive attendance, how to keep your audience engaged and how to capitalize on that success. But let’s start with how important are events to your business? We’ll start with Cherri and how do you use them?
Cherri Pedrioli:
Events are very important. Sorry, it looks like my internet’s doing something. They’re very important because without the events, especially in pandemic time, how are you going to meet people? Those of us who were out networking before. Events is one way to meet people, to build relationships, to turn them into customers and referral partners. Very important.
Maureen Plowman:
Perfect. You want to add anything to that, Sue?
Sue Brooke:
Yeah. I think it’s really important to just get out there and meet people. And exactly what Cherri said. It was the pandemic was such an interesting time because there were a lot of people that hadn’t even been online, hadn’t even used Zoom or any of those type of things.
And now that they’ve become kind of experts in doing that, they’ve built really solid relationships with people they would have never, ever met if that hadn’t of happened. They’re super important to build those relationships outside of your area.
And now I think in person it’s going to be really important to get out there and meet people in person. Absolutely.
How to get started planning an event
Maureen Plowman:
All right. All right, Al. When we think about planning your event, whether it’s online or in person, what’s important to consider right out of the gate, as you’re just sitting down, they have an idea, kind of where should you start?
Al Wagner:
I think it’s really important to know the group or your audience, what’s important to them? And particularly before I started doing those on Alignable, I went to the group and said, “What’s the best time of day and day of the week for you?”
Because it’s all about driving attendance and engagement so you need to set yourself up for success in the very beginning. And so how can you do that?
Put out those polls, ask the group, get engagement going in at least a text string and start. In fact what I ended up doing is use a Google form and asked everybody to fill that out as to what was their best time and then ended up selecting what was the most favorable for everybody.
Ultimately that’s what you want to be able to do is provide the venue that people are going to be able to actually get to.
Maureen Plowman:
Okay. Cherri, anything around having a clear purpose or the agenda that’s important to consider as you’re thinking about planning your event?
Cherri Pedrioli:
Absolutely. Because for me personally, my events are all about meeting particular type of people to take events out to the community.
I host events to meet doctors and practitioners around the world so we can take the events out into our communities so they can explore all the different voices in alternative and holistic healthcare. I use it very different but it’s been amazing. It has absolutely been amazing.
But I think like Al said, it’s so important to know what is your event is all about and who your audience is.
What can you do differently to help your event stand out?
Maureen Plowman:
One other thing I’m noticing that’s coming up in the chat is that are people Zoomed out? Sue, if you think about, so specifically for online events, what can people do differently in the beginning as they’re thinking about what type of even they should have to really stand out and make people want to attend their event?
Sue Brooke:
Okay. Yeah, and again, it’s really about who is your audience? Who do you want to be there? And I teach this all the time and you have to do the research to figure out who your best avatar is that you want at the event.
And then decide what is it that’s going to inspire them or get them to show up? Which is always everybody’s biggest I think, it’s like, you have events people say they’re going to come and then they don’t show up. How can you create the messaging around that event to get people excited to show up?
And I know we have someone in our audience right now named Natalie who’s really, really good at that. She’d be a great person to reach out to but be that person and think of the messaging of what’s going to get people to show up.
Maureen Plowman:
And how do you do that? Do you have a friend that you might sit down and brainstorm with? Do you go to a quiet place and just start writing ideas in a book? Or maybe as you’re traveling around or during your day you’re coming up with ideas?
Just some quick tips how they could be creative and really think out of the box?
Sue Brooke:
Yeah. Everybody has different strengths. It might be a great idea to find somebody else that if you’re not a really great event planner, for example, and you don’t have that strength, find someone else that has that strength.
I know Cherri has experience with that when she was doing her holistic things. I knew Cherri when I was living in Santa Rosa, she is the idea person and had all the ideas for the events. And then she had a person that was really, really structured and really good at knowing how to read those emails or whatever it is to get them there and really work on the messaging to get them there. I think not trying to do it all yourself is a great tip.
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah. Oh go ahead Al.
Al Wagner:
Can I interject on that too? With what Sue’s saying, it’s a great opportunity for co-branding. It’s not like your event has to be so myopic in its focused where you can actually co-brand with an event planner or anyone else that you might be working with in order to create success. Why not?
Event planning tips for introverts
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah. That’s a great idea. Someone else also mentioned, the title of the event is events for introverts, extroverts and those in between. If you’re an introvert, which I’m hard pressed to believe any of you on this call right now that I’m talking to you are, but for our wider audience, or maybe you’re just doing a great job showing that you’re not.
For our wider audience that might be an introvert and they haven’t done an event before. It’s kind of a nervous, maybe they’re a little nervous to get it started. What advice would you have for them to kind of get over that stage fright, if you will? Cherri?
Al Wagner:
I’ll jump in. Just do it. I’ll take the Nike slogan, just do it.
Cherri Pedrioli:
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Al Wagner:
The only way to get comfortable with something is to actually do it and practice it. And you’re not going to be good in the beginning, particularly if you’re an introvert. Even extroverts will talk too much.
Cherri Pedrioli:
Like Al said, just do it. But for me, I am an introvert and it wasn’t until joining BNI that I was incredibly shy. I thought I’m going to stand up and speak, I’m going to pass out. I’m not even going to make it through here. Immediately joining BNI, I got involved. I got involved in leadership.
What I do is I go to other events, I get involved, I bring people into my events, I get them involved because they’re also introverts. They’re also shy. We can help each other. And like Al said, it’s not going to be perfect the first time. I’ve done many events and I learn from each event.
Don’t be hard on yourself. Just do it.
Sue Brooke:
Yes. I’m going to jump right in because I actually do a whole presentation on networking for introverts. And because I honestly am an introvert. I was super shy growing up. And it’s the one big thing is just do it. And someone just asked a question about getting over the stage fright, worry about tech issues and things blowing up.
A, you have to let all that go. If things happen, it happens. And sometimes it ends up being a good thing that happens. But also here’s a really great tip, don’t worry if only two or three people show up. Sometimes those are the best events. The absolute best events are the ones where only two or three show up.
And then what you can do is take that, get them excited, have an awesome event and then let them bring people the next time.
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah. And as far as those tech issues go, I will tell you, I was the person a few years ago, who was in a home studio webinar, a 1,000 people and I kicked by mistake, the cord that drove our connection and we got disconnected and I’m still here. I still have a job and life is still fine.
Those things happen and you get over them quickly.
How to drive attendance at your events
Let’s talk a little bit about our biggest challenge people had was driving attendance to the event. What are some tips and best practices for how we not only drive people to the event but then make sure that you don’t have a ton of event attrition and people are actually that registered are actually showing up for your event.
Sue Brooke:
I think Al’s a great person to answer this.
Al Wagner:
Reminders. Maureen, I think the single greatest thing you can do is to, once people are aware of your event and once they’ve registered, you got to stay engaged. And so it’s creating posts, particularly in the groups on Alignable. That’s where I spend most of my time.
And it’s reminding people to make sure they put it on their calendars and to check back in the group at that event. And if you can get it pinned to the top, great. If you can’t, you just got to keep reminding people that the event is going to happen.
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah. And also too, I think giving people, like for this event, we sent out a guide. People could get started reading the guide before the event, just kind of giving them little bits of information to kind of keep them interested in coming.
Al Wagner:
Life gets busy and people tend to forget.
Maureen Plowman:
And what about driving people to actually attend? Getting the awareness out there beforehand?
Sue Brooke:
Go ahead, Cherri.
Cherri Pedrioli:
If I can. Also, so like Al just said, reminders. On all my events on Alignable because I have the health and wellness and the construction, I send out or I will connect with people who register for the events. I connect with them and I remind them.
I am already trying to get emails outside of the reminders that come from Alignable. I am personally sending reminders. It’s super important just to remind but be consistent with your dates and times too, I have found that key.
Sue Brooke:
That is great advice actually because consistency is very important. I know that Al and Cherri both have experienced this.
If you have random days and nobody really knows when it’s going to be, I’m the kind of person that always want to please everybody, which you’ll never be able to do, but I have the women’s group on Alignable, women business owners group and ever since we started, we just said, Tuesdays at whatever time and every single week it’s the same.
People just know it, they put it on their calendar, they know it’s going to be consistent. Especially if you’re going to continue with multiple events over and over, that’s a great thing to do.
And then adding one more thing is invite them to bring a friend. Definitely invite them to bring a friend. Make that an important part of that as well.
How to craft great event invitations
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah. One question we just got is, how do you get people to read your invitations, your event invitations, given there’s such an influx of digital communications we’re getting today. How do you make those communications stand out?
Sue Brooke:
Go ahead, Al.
Al Wagner:
I’ll jump in. I actually asked to be a moderator, to help the group. And so within Alignable, you can request to become a moderator. And so that gives you the opportunity to pin a post, to create an event but it comes with responsibility as well.
And so you have to be willing to give first before you receive. As long as you’re willing to become that moderator and help that group maintain its integrity, then that ends up being at the top. And so you can actually get to have the visual right there in front when people first log in and go to that group.
Cherri Pedrioli:
And another thing is I use a lot of mystery things, mystery and curiosity to get people to open up the emails. And I’m actually doing that with the events that I’m creating on Alignable. I’m using my caricature a lot and that, believe it or not, has driven more traffic to the events.
Sue Brooke:
Wow.
Al Wagner:
I’m curious about that, Cherri. Can you expand a little bit about that? I’m sorry, Maureen, if I’m stepping on toes.
Maureen Plowman:
Oh no, you’re fine.
Al Wagner:
I don’t mean to. I’m fascinated by that one. What do you mean by your character?
Cherri Pedrioli:
My caricature. Sue and I, we’ve created our caricatures. And so I take that, create something in Canva and then that is the picture I use on the event. And people have commented so much on that. They’re like, I would’ve never seen it if I didn’t see that caricature.
They’re like, thank you for doing that because it’s not just that typical picture of somebody’s business. It’s just, you have to get creative. I try and use that creativity with the emails that go out as well.
Al Wagner:
Great opportunity to co-brand with somebody who is creative, because I’m not. That’d be interesting.
Cherri Pedrioli:
Actually, we all are according to Sue Brooke.
Why should you host both online and in person events?
Maureen Plowman:
Right. Find your inner creativity. All right. Let’s pivot a bit to we saw that a lot of people are doing hybrid, both online and in person events. What’s it important to do at both? And what are the different nuances you should consider from online versus in person? And so why don’t we start with, Sue.
Sue Brooke:
Oh okay. I think, like I said, I think it’s important to do both because of the fact that every single person has different kinds of personalities. You have the people that are more introverted that are going to go to an event.
Maybe they’d rather be just in their safe little space at home with their little box. And they’re there and a lot of times people that host the events or that are there, they think, oh, why do they even come? They’re not saying anything.
But just remember that everybody has a different personality, so they might be more introverted but they probably are paying more attention than some of the other people that are extroverts and getting distracted.
Sue Brooke:
The in person events are, I really believe are super important now because people are out there. They’re missing that. And it’s all about building relationships in the first place. That’s really why you want to come to the events and you want to try to connect with people and see the people that you want to connect with outside of the event.
I think it’s also important that whether it’s online or offline, you find those people you want to continue the relationship with and build those potential referral partners, which is my favorite thing to do or that could be potential customers.
Cherri Pedrioli:
And I think it’s important to stay flexible with this because I don’t know in other areas but I know Sonoma County we’ve been opened up and we’re very, very close to shutting back down again.
And I think it’s just super important to just to do both as long as you can and just know that it’s not a bad thing. It really is a good thing. And the pandemic is a bad thing but keeping things virtual I think has been awesome for businesses.
What should you do differently for in person events vs online?
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah. And is there anything though, besides getting the venue and things like that, is there anything that you should consider to do differently in person versus when you’re online?
Cherri Pedrioli:
For me, I was limited. When I did the in person events I was limited. I had only, I worked with on one of my events, I had 65 doctors and practitioners. I had 1,100 people attend the events.
Now I can have, look at how many more I can reach. I can reach so many more doctors and practitioners. I can reach thousands.
What day of the week should you host events?
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah. And is there any, one of the questions that just came in was, is there a favorite day of the week for in person events? Or are there certain days that chambers or other organizations have events that people should stay away from?
Sue Brooke:
Al.
Al Wagner:
That’s a good point. And I think the best thing to do is look in your specific area to see what other organizations are running events, particularly those consistent events.
Here in the Collier County in Florida, it was, you didn’t do them on Wednesdays and you didn’t do them on Thursdays because of competing events. And so unless you have a completely different draw, then find that night if there is one, that doesn’t have significantly well established competing events. We ended up on Tuesdays and then recently we’ve tried Mondays and that’s been very tough.
Mondays and Fridays are tough days because people are just getting back to work or they’re just getting ready to go on the weekend. Unless it’s a drinking event and that’s your crowd, Fridays probably won’t work.
Maureen Plowman:
Right. Great. Goes back to knowing your audience. Al, while you’re on the hot seat right now, you run some consistent events every week. What’s important to consider with doing consistent events? And then also, how do you keep driving those repeat attendees?
Al Wagner:
I’ll tell you the biggest challenge for me was at first was just time blocking. Making sure that that event stayed consistent and then driving attendance. I’ve picked Tuesdays at 4:00. Sometimes it’s 3:30, sometimes it’s four but it’s now it’s Tuesdays. And that’s been pretty successful. And it’s asking those attendees to then go back into the group.
And I don’t want to be the only prophet, so to speak of it. I don’t want to be the only person promoting it so I ask everybody that attends, please put a post, take a snapshot of the screen and make a comment. What did you like about the event? Why would you come back? And it takes time. People need to become comfortable with exposing themselves and that probably wasn’t the right phrase to use, but to share themselves in that public forum.
That’s been pretty successful though in driving people to come back. Yesterday’s event was different though. We had three repeaters and everybody else, over 20 some new people showed up to that particular event. To me that’s still a success.
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah. And what about having a consistent agenda as well? When you do these meetings every Tuesday or whatever, do you have the people know what to expect when they come in? Is it a similar agenda every time?
Al Wagner:
I do the same one time and time again and that consistency helps me know what I need to do and how I can, particularly online, there’s a tendency for people to feel free in talking and then people are talking over one another. You got to be careful about that.
And so I call it herding the cats. If I know what my agenda is and it’s really consistent, then I can reign everybody back in and redirect them into the next phase or the next breakout room or whatever the case is.
And I publish the agenda so everybody knows exactly what’s going to happen. And I review it before the event, before the meet of the event begins.
Maureen Plowman:
Okay, Sue.
Sue Brooke:
Yeah. I’d like to jump in on that too. I have two different types of events I do. What I’ve done at the beginning of the pandemic, I started doing online virtual masterminds. We actually created a complete system. It’s the same every time, we actually put that in the registration so people are clear that they have to be there the entire time.
They have to have their face on the camera, how it all works, how it stays positive and that’s been amazing. And we get people that come every single week because of that.
Sue Brooke:
In the women’s group in a different light, we actually, I have different moderators in that group so I have different people doing different types of events. We’re calling it a virtual experience and everybody knows it’s the same time but they know to go look to see what the agenda is going to be.
I think that’s really important to be clear on that because some people are going to want to come to the mastermind, some people will want to go to Al’s types of events. Some people want to come to the ones where you’re just you get to talk about your business, so it’s totally different.
And I know Cherri’s doing something similar as well.
Cherri Pedrioli:
Yeah. I was just going to say, with our groups when, in particular, when we were in person and days and times were always consistent but the topic of the meeting changed. I had a lot of people coming. Again, in person. When I became the founding president of the holistic chamber in my area and went to structure an exact agenda, I lost attendees. I lost members. I started thinking about that with the Alignable groups.
We started out doing the same thing every single week and then it was seeing the same people, no new people coming in. Since I changed it up and we’ll have mystery Thursday, more people are coming in. I’m staying consistent with days and times but we are adding the little twist in there and it could be a mastermind.
It could be a speaker event. Just kind of keeping it fun and engaging and, and letting other people run the meetings. I think it’s huge because it gets them out front. You’re not always the one doing all the talking and planning and preparing so delegate and have fun with it.
Best practices for event length
Maureen Plowman:
Right. That’s a great point. What about best practices for length of event? Both online and in person, is it an hour? Is it 45 minutes? If it’s in person, is it two hours? Kind of what have you guys been doing?
Sue Brooke:
I will tell you, I’ll just jump in first. On our mastermind events that are an hour and a half, that seems to be a really good time because we’ve got the whole hour and then you kind of got that extra half hour and then you find a way to end it.
But it’s super important if you’re going to set that time and you tell them if the event is this long, you have to end when you say it’s going to end. Because people, especially now, it’s online, they might have something that starts right then. You have to be very clear and you got to respect their time, in other words.
Cherri Pedrioli:
Agreed. We do an hour and then if they want to say, participate in the mastermind, then of course I let them know about the Friday mastermind because it is an hour and a half. But same thing, we start on time, we end on time.
Maureen Plowman:
Okay. Al, what about you?
Al Wagner:
Yeah. I think I’m going to touch back on, I think Sue, you might’ve said it, if one or two people shows up at your event, that’s still a success because there’s people there to meet. If you have it set for an hour, mine are an hour and it allows enough time to meet a good eight to 12 people in that one hour time and when they’re not, hey, if you got to cut it short, it’s okay.
And as you said, Maureen, we’re still here. We still have our jobs at businesses still moving. We set it and if we need to shorten it, but I agree with Sue wholeheartedly, you end on time. I start
on time and I end on time.
How and when to charge for events
Maureen Plowman:
Perfect. All right. Let’s talk a little bit about, well, first of all, we did have some questions about charging for events. And is there a best practice for that? Price point? Is it better to have more people and charge less? Less people charge more?
Sue Brooke:
I can jump in on that one. Or do you have one too, Al? Go ahead.
Al Wagner:
Tons of experience on both sides of that stick. If you don’t charge, then nobody’s got skin in the game. However, you do drive attendance because it’s a free event. The quality of people in my experience usually drops if there’s not something or at least if there are vendor tables and you do a combo in a live event where you have some people are paying because they’re going to be displaying their services and their products.
And I think what’s the goal? At the end of the day, what’s the goal of the event? And for me, it’s a tough one because I go back and forth and just depends on again, I’ll go back to the audience and then what’s the goal?
Cherri Pedrioli:
I agree with that because that’s what we did. It’s something I have a really hard time with, with charging but I would charge my vendors. My vendors, and doctors and practitioners would pay because I want to give back to the community so the community was able to attend free.
But it was to be a speaker, a vendor it cost. And I think you’re right, it’s skin in the game. They’re going to be there. You’ve got the experts there.
Al Wagner:
Well, and to add to that Cherri too, what we did when we, so this recent event, we actually are raising money for veterans. The money doesn’t come to us as individuals, it goes, any vendor money all goes to the local VFW. That’s who gets it.
Pick a charity or pick an organization, pick a church, pick something and that helps to drive people even if they’re attending for free, then can spend money on either food or drink or whatever else you might have at the event or 50/50 tickets.
How to follow up after your event
Maureen Plowman:
We talked a lot about how to come up with creative ideas for events, best practices, how to get people there. What about follow up? And how do you know your event was successful? And I think one of the questions that came in for you Al, was you had mentioned that you send some up questions, what specific kind of questions do you send?
Let’s start there and then we can kind of talk about how you measure your success. How do you engage people going forward.
Al Wagner:
I ask basically one question, how’d you like the event? Depending on the answer, I ask the same question, just a better of how I present that question. What could I do to make it better for you?
That’s basically it. And then you have to decide whether or not you’re going to implement any of those particular changes depending on the structure and nature of what you’re doing.
Sue Brooke:
I know Cherri, Cherri has really specific things that she does to get people to come back or to follow up as well.
Cherri Pedrioli:
Yeah. I do the same thing with the emails though. I will send people after the events to ask how they liked the event and what can I do better. But really I have a specific followup system that I use that people actually will receive in the mail. I’m not a big fan of email anymore.
I have a system that they receive something tangible in the mail from me. I use it as a follow up. I use it as ways to talk about future events. It’s a whole amazing complete system.
How do you measure the success of your event?
Maureen Plowman:
Okay. And then I guess when you think about the success of your event, do you go into all your events thinking, okay, here’s my objective with this event? Here’s what I’m trying to get out of it.
And then how do you measure it? How do you tell? What does success look like for you, Cherri, when you have an event at the end of it?
Cherri Pedrioli:
Just when I hear and see the feedback from say, people come into the health and wellness event. Just their appreciation for what we’ve done to our community. The first large event we did was after the 2017 wildfires and 6,600 people lost their homes. I knew at that time, this community needed help.
They needed resources and it was just such an overwhelming, just gratitude for what we were able to do for them. And it’s every year we’re asked, “Are you coming back? Are you coming back? We’re ready to do more.” We’ve only been able to do a few of them in person but I’m grateful that we can do them online now.
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah, for sure. Okay. Al, how about you, how do you measure the success of your events?
Al Wagner:
I think that’s actually the most important question that we could probably answer and I think it’s going to vary for everybody. For me, I started networking in all the wrong ways and attending events for all the wrong reasons. And now I measure that success by how many people have I actually helped?
Not by what I’ve gotten out of it but was I able to connect Sue with Cherri or Cherri with you or Chelsey with somebody? And that’s how I measure success. It doesn’t matter whether there’s one person or a 1,000 people at it for the style of event that I do because it’s all about making those initial connections and then building upon them. For me, I can look at the event.
Al Wagner:
Yesterday, three people that returned to that one yesterday, I’ve built relationships with those folks. Some of them we’ve done business with, others I’ve developed friendships. You never know what’s going to come out of that.
And that’s for me, looking at networking and doing networking events, it’s a 12 to 18 month ROI process for me. Could be different for somebody else. That’s why 2020 was the best year we ever had because I spent the last four years cultivating. It’s about farming, not hunting.
Maureen Plowman:
Sue and I both have goosebumps, I think, because we love what you just said.
Sue Brooke:
And I want to jump in because I think, I’m looking at some of the questions here. There’s a couple different types of events. I think we’ve been talking more about more networking events or things like that, where it’s a continuation of building relationship building types events.
But a few people have been asking about charging for more things like events that are more training events, masterclasses, things like that and how they’re charged for those types of things.
And the best thing, the best advice I can give you for those types of events, those are different because it’s you being the rockstar and you’re sharing your talents and all of those things and you’re actually teaching something.
My advice to you on those types of events is to start out with a free thing where you’re giving away your best stuff. You’re giving it away. You’re getting them excited there, you’re building the relationship with them, whether it’s you’re building relationship with someone when you’re on the screen or when you’re being the speaker. You’re doing that.
Sue Brooke:
Get them to love you, get them to realize that you are the rockstar, you’re the expert in whatever it is that you’re teaching or training. Then what you can do is at the end of that event, then you say, “Hey, if you want to get deeper into what I’m doing or work with me one on one,” or whatever it is that you’re selling or maybe there’s a class.
Then you can say, it will narrow it down to those people that would pay maybe a small fee, maybe it’s $27, maybe it’s $97, some smaller type of event.
Sue Brooke:
And it’s kind of a funnel. You’re getting people to know you, like you, trust you believe that you’re the rockstar and then you get them into another event and then you keep doing that. When you get the people that are willing to take out their credit cards and pay a little bit of money, then you can sell them maybe your bigger programs.
That’s a whole webinar in and of itself but hopefully that gives you an idea. And then if you’re doing an event like what we’re talking about, maybe you charge for just the snacks or in person type thing, anything that would be that way.
Al Wagner:
Sue, can I ask, I apologize, Maureen because I think one of the biggest things that I’ve heard is, well, I don’t want to give my best stuff away because that’s what you said. And as a former recovering CPA, giving that away, it makes people, see if you agree with this, it actually gets people to appreciate that they don’t want to do it. And they want to hire you to actually do that work.
Sue Brooke:
Love it.
Al Wagner:
Would you agree with that?
Sue Brooke:
Absolutely.
Cherri Pedrioli:
That is so true. It’s so important because it doesn’t matter what you sell, what your products and services are, it’s you. You have to build that relationship first. That person that you’re trying to connect with, once you build that relationship, they don’t care what you have to offer. They’re going to buy from you because it is the relationship.
What are some things to be aware of when hosting?
Maureen Plowman:
Right. Right. And it’s all about making it about them and not you. How you can help them. We had a good talk about that with some small business owners the other night.
Some other questions that came in are just around, what are some event gotchas? Things that people should just look out for.
Sue Brooke:
Okay, say that again, I guess, unless,
Al Wagner:
The hijackers. And what I mean by that is those people that want to just keep talking over everybody else and you’ll experience that. It could be a live event or a virtual event and they can take over and really turn people off.
Cherri Pedrioli:
And I think that people just coming in with the intention to sell. Be really, really careful with that. We don’t want to be sold to.
Maureen Plowman:
Yeah. What are some tips, Al, for when those hijackers perhaps take over? What’s a very tactful way to kind of redirect the conversation?
Al Wagner:
I tend to full of empathy and gratitude, hey, thanks for sharing that and now it’s time to go do this. And so you acknowledge that person for what they’re doing and you take the meeting back in whatever again, whether it’s in person or for virtual.
Everybody loves to be acknowledged. You don’t put that person off and everybody else hears you do that and then you redirect everything and the person who has hijacked it, that gets acknowledged usually will go, “Oh, thanks.” And then they’re quiet and you can move right along.
Maureen Plowman:
All right. Well, thanks for sharing that, Al. I’m going to redirect now.
Sue Brooke:
That was great.
Maureen Plowman:
We have about 15 minutes left. If you have some questions, please put them into the chat and we’ll jump around a bit now and take some additional questions.
One question that did come in is, when you think about an event where you have existing customers and new customers coming or new potential customers, how do you market your event to those two different audiences?
Sue Brooke:
Well, I’ll just say it’s all about the messaging. It’s all about speaking the language. I teach this a lot with just people just teach people about marketing and putting yourself out there and discovering who your most profitable avatar is.
And that can either be a potential customer or it could be the best referral partner you could ever have in your life, which is what I teach all the time. It’s much easier to go and find somebody who knows all of your most profitable customers that you can have in your business and building the relationship with them.
But it is all about speaking the language. It’s all about being careful about your messaging.
Sue Brooke:
And sometimes what you might want to do is let’s say you’re coming up with, you have an idea for an event, find that person. And you usually know that perfect person and say, “Does this messaging that I’m coming up with, does this really speak to you? Would you want to come to this event?” Or maybe you can ask that person to help you come up with the messaging.
Some people are really good about that with it and some people just aren’t, but try to find, like I said in the beginning, find someone to do this with you. Find your perfect partner to do these things with you.
Maureen Plowman:
Good advice. The other question we got was, how do you feel about hosting an event after hours? Do any of you have experience with hosting something maybe after the typical 9:00 to 5:00? Cherri?
Al Wagner:
For me, the online events have really been, oh.
Maureen Plowman:
No, no, go ahead. It’s okay.
Al Wagner:
I don’t want to hijack it. You asked Cherri so I’ll let.
Maureen Plowman:
Thanks for sharing that, Al. Cherri?
Cherri Pedrioli:
When we were in person, I did do them after hours because for many people, they were working. They had the 9:00 to 5:00 job and they’re like, “I want to be at your event. Is there any way you can do this at 6:00 o’clock?”
We would deal with 6:00 o’clock events and it worked out really well. I have had a few on Zoom and kind of 50/50. Again, it goes back to your audience, it goes back to messaging.
Maureen Plowman:
Perfect. Al, what were you going to add?
Al Wagner:
Cherri said it all.
How frequently should you hold events?
Maureen Plowman:
Great. What about monthly events versus weekly? Are they still a good way to keep up the consistency?
Sue Brooke:
I think it depends again on the event. Everything does. For example, if you look at chamber of commerce type things, those, they have monthly mixers, which is pretty cool. It’s like when they get together not only once a month, people are like, wow, I would have to wait until the following month to get there so I’m going to try harder to get there.
Especially when you started building relationships with those people and you want to see them again. I think it kind of depends. I think it’s maybe a good idea to have a monthly event that’s one type of event and then you have weekly or biweekly type things.
And also, I think it depends on virtual and in person. Most people, BNIs for example, they are forced to come every single week and have to be there but they have a very structured system. again, I think it just depends on the event.
Maureen Plowman:
Okay. What about nonprofits? One of the questions was, would all these tips still apply to nonprofits? Do you have to be more specific I guess within different industries? Al?
Al Wagner:
I’ll wait until I’m called on that. I’m kidding. Not for profits are in business to make a profit. It’s kind of, I come at that from a CPA perspective, you still have to raise money. You still have to do everything that a for profit business has to do.
I think all of this applies and maybe even more so from what Sue was sharing, give away some of your best information as a not for profit, that’s just going to raise more awareness of your mission, I would think. And that’s certainly my experience. I think everything that we’ve been talking about absolutely applies.
Maureen Plowman:
Okay. Does anyone have experience with running events for international markets that may be across different timelines?
Sue Brooke:
Cherri, probably. Didn’t you do something like that?
Cherri Pedrioli:
Yeah, we did on the onset of the pandemic, we did our very first virtual healing fair and it was a little challenging but I have to say, we had doctors and practitioners from all around the world participating. It kind of goes back to, what is the purpose of the event? And who are you trying to reach?
People will make it there. I had people, I think time zones, it was 2:00 o’clock in the morning their time, they were there. It was important to them to be there. That’s why I think the virtual events is perfect for global.
Maureen Plowman:
Right. And you can always record also and send someone.
Cherri Pedrioli:
And we did.
Maureen Plowman:
Which is very helpful. Let’s see, what else do we have? Someone else asked about, let’s see.
Sue Brooke:
I’ll jump in while you’re looking, someone was talking about the women’s healing circle and post that and she’s having a hard time growing it. Again, it’s really, really important to figure out exactly who your, and I use the word avatar and the avatar is the exact representation, a physical representation of your ideal client, referral partner, whatever that is.
Not everybody is going to want to come to the women’s healing circle. Obviously you’re not going to market to men. That’s an easy one. But which women? Really narrow down your niche and figure out, which is what I teach. You figure out who you want to show up at your event and then you figure out where they hang out, where are they?
If they are people that are very creative and maybe they’re scrapbookers or something that’s artistic, then go on Pinterest and find the people there. If they’re more, it just depends on who they are.
Figure out where they hang out. And I’m going to jump to this as well. This might help you as well. And everybody actually. Something I thought of a second ago.
Sue Brooke:
Is when you’re promoting your event to get more people there, don’t just find one place to put your event out there. Eventbrite is an example. Always put your event on Eventbrite, even if it’s a free event, doesn’t matter.
It can be free, it can be paid. But what happens with Eventbrite, what I learned with, I used to do a three day event on how to market your business. And I would put that on Eventbrite. Well Eventbrite actually has a calendar of events. And you can say, “Hey, it’s an event where anyone can come.”
Sue Brooke:
Meetup is a great place to create a meetup group. You can have, I think on one account, you can have three separate meetups. You can post your events there and that’s promoted to all of the Meetup people. Try different places. Alignable, you can put that out there. You can put it on your profile as an event you have.
Put it out there everywhere but also figure out where those people are to market directly to them. And again last, again is get people to bring their friends because usually someone that you want come to the event knows other people just like them that would be interested. There’s some more ideas.
What’s your number one top secret tip for holding events?
Maureen Plowman:
Great. All right. So we’re going to do with our remaining time, I’m going to ask each of our panelists here, what is your number one top secret tip for holding events? Let’s start with, who am I going to put on the hot seat first? We’ll start with Al. If you could pick just one piece of advice to give people, what would it be?
Al Wagner:
Reminders, reminders, reminders, reminders, reminders and more reminders.
Maureen Plowman:
Perfect.
Al Wagner:
It’s simple but it’s effective.
Maureen Plowman:
Cherri?
Cherri Pedrioli:
I have two, it’s being consistent and being authentic.
Maureen Plowman:
Okay.
Sue Brooke:
Ooh, I like that.
Maureen Plowman:
Sue?
Sue Brooke:
It’s kind of what I said again, is your messaging your everything and be enthusiastic and make your events fun and make people want to come back and tell people about it. And I guess I could throw this in that just came to me is if you have a great event and people just love it, what are they going to do?
They’re going to tell everybody, they’re going to post it on social media, get them to take pictures and show people visually how much fun they were having or how much they got out of it. And I guess that would be, I have a lot. That’s more than one, but sorry.
Maureen Plowman:
That’s okay. Great. Well, I’m going to share very quickly, just some additional resources that we’ve put together for you, growyourbusiness.alignable.com is a learning center that Chelsey has put together. There’s a whole section on events that has guides and videos and all types of things, infographics, lots of great information on events.
We also have, we have a ton of groups, but two specific groups we thought might be helpful from an events perspective would be Alignable Success Tips and Virtual Event Support. And either Jacob or Chelsey will put in the chat the links to those groups to get you started.
Maureen Plowman:
And then finally, one of the best practices I always like to give it an event is to give a call to action or give your audience homework to do. And so I’m going to invite you all to get it on this movement that we’re calling #OneMainStreet.
And it’s really about how do we shine the light on small business owners like yourself? How do we make people really stop and think about where to spend their next dollar? Instead of spending it at the big, huge stores, they’re spending it with our local small business owners, whether it be our accountants or someone has a physical location on Main Street.
Maureen Plowman:
What we’re asking you to do is support others as well. As you are supporting your own favorite, small business owners, take pictures, take a selfie of yourself there, put it on all of your social channels and use the #OneMainStreet, which will bring it all together.
And if we all do this together, we just have such a greater chance of drawing attention to such an important cause. As I mentioned at the start, you guys are all the heart and souls of our communities and so we want to try to support you and shine the light as much as we can.
Maureen Plowman:
A huge thank you to our audience. You guys have been fantastic. Great questions. Please keep them coming, to Sue, to Cherri, to Al, thank you so much for these great tips that you shared with our audience today. Appreciate you all.