Business events come in different shapes, sizes and price ranges. For example, you can set up a webinar on a very small budget or organize a multi-day international conference with a substantial price tag to match. Whatever your marketing budget may be, there’s always a business event that can help you grow.
But what are the best performing types of events among all these different options? Below we will give you our top 3, which includes events of various sizes and various investment levels.
There are various different types of seminars: seminars with interesting speakers, seminars you organize to launch a product and seminars where you provide training for your product or service offering.
What these different types have in common, is that you are gathering guests with similar interests in one location. You provide them with valuable information and insights through various sessions. If done correctly, these sessions revolve around the problem your offering aims to solve, in order to ultimately generate more demand.
During and after your seminar, you have the opportunity to connect with your customers through lots of touch points. So think strategically about the different conversion points you will be planning for; the sales team walking around during post-seminar drinks, temporary deals and one-time offers, etc. During these moments, your guests will be fully focused on your business and will be more inclined to make a purchase.
If you were to ask us about the most cost-efficient form of events, without a doubt we would say that that is webinars. Although many companies nowadays work with professional studios, hire camera crews and set up TV-worthy webinars, it is entirely possible to organize webinars at a very low cost. All you need is your laptop, a presentation and some promotion strategies.
A webinar means you invite potential customers in an approachable way. Make sure you pique their interest with your presentation. This will create the best possible circumstances for them to consider your product or service. Add an interesting deal or the possibility of an intake interview at the end of your presentation. With the right guests and a strategic conversion point, you’ll be taking a good step towards achieving your KPIs.
The downside of a webinar, however, is that it is mostly one-way communication. You talk and the viewer watches. In order to help you generate more interaction during your webinar, the InviteDesk platform offers its own webinar plug-in. This allows you to easily determine who has access which chat groups and who can or cannot remain anonymous, while also giving your commercial team more opportunities to interact with the customers.
Attracting new customers is more expensive than keeping your existing customers on board. Plus, existing customers often make up the bulk of your revenue; just check your sales figures!
From that point of view, customer retention is one of the most important KPIs for any company. And hospitality events can significantly help with that. You use these events to keep your customer base happy. You pamper them: you take them golfing, invite them to a soccer match or go out for dinner together. These informal events are ideal for obtaining information about possible new opportunities and for creating some goodwill with your customers, should this ever be necessary in the future.
However, the risk with hospitality events is that you may invite customers to activities that are not meaningful to them. This can backfire: ’I really don’t like soccer, so why are they inviting me?’ It’s therefore important to keep a good overview with information about your guests: what are their interests, do they live in the region of your event, what is their history with your company, etc. The InviteDesk platform is perfectly suited for this. You can easily consult all relevant data about your guests, so that you do not invite them to irrelevant events.
You just read about the three most effective types of business events. But organizing such an event in and of itself is no guarantee to success. The guests who actually attend can make or break your event. That’s why you should think twice about who you invite to your event.
The InviteDesk platform is optimized to ensure that your next event is jam-packed with the right guests. For example, marketing and sales can easily collaborate to optimize guest lists. Guests also receive automated and personalized messages at the right time. Finally, the platform collects event data about your guests, hence allowing you to be even more strategic with your invitations in the future.
Wondering how InviteDesk can optimize the ROI of your event? Check out our demo.
