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Morning!
I’m on a mission to find the best brunch spot in Manchester. Here’s what I’ve tried so far: Federal, Ezra & Gil, Smithfield Social, Moose, Bruncho, Hampton & Voúis.
All were okay, none were spectacular. So if you’ve got a Manchester brunch spot recommendation - do let me know!
Right, less brunch more marketing.
Today, I’m going to show you how to get people to actually turn up to your events. It sounds like such a simple task yet it’s one of the hardest things to do when you’re not a huge brand name.
So I’m going to let you see the Event Marketing Playbook we use with clients. I probably should have kept this close to our chest… but it’s too late now.
Let’s get into it!
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
THE PLAYBOOK
In life, there are a few things I dread:
1/ Getting robbed.
2/ Bumping into someone I don’t want to see.
3/ Trying to get people to come to an event.
Yep, I really do dread it. Because there is so much that can go wrong…
No one could show up.
Only a few people show up (even more awkward).
People show up to the wrong place.
You make an error with the times.
They don’t get reminder emails.
There are just so many things that can go wrong and all of them leave you looking like a baffoon in the worst way possible.
That being said, if you are able to make them work they can have a massively positive impact on your business.
They can drive a sh*t tonne of revenue.
Make long-lasting connections.
And be remembered.
But getting people there isn’t as simple as picking a date, booking a venue, and posting a link to get tickets on your LinkedIn.
No, getting people to your event takes huge effort and some very good marketing - especially if you’re not a major brand or don’t have 100,000s of followers.
Over the past few months, more and more of our clients have been hosting in-person events, so we devised a playbook to make sure they’re a big success.
I can’t promise what you’re about to read will sell out your event, but I can promise you that it will give you every opportunity to do so.
Here’s our 3-step Event Marketing Playbook:
Step 1) The Slippery Slope
I’ve been to 3 “networking events” in the last 3 years.
1 conference (that a client ran)
1 Christmas social (a friend invited me to)
1 event (my friend was speaking at)
3 events in 3 years and I only went to them because I had invested interest in going. The truth is, it’s almost impossible to get people to commit to leaving their houses and going to attend any sort of event nowadays.
Now that is a big problem if you’re hosting an event.
My advice: Reduce the commitment gap
When you start by using your marketing to solely get people to the event there is a massive commitment gap.
Very few people are going to take you up on that, so you need to start with something where there’s a smaller gap - something where there would be a high percentage chance they would do it.
So what’s something you can market to them today that may get them closer to pulling the trigger on the event ticket?
You want to look for low-commitment offers, like:
A downloadable cheatsheet.
A PDF ebook download.
A webinar to attend.
All extremely low commitment.
If you can get them to download a cheatsheet, you’ve got them on the slippery slope. The next step is to push them down it…
Step 2) Loss Aversion
Once you’ve got your “Prospect” to download or make some small commitment to an offer of yours, your hook is in their mouth. They’ve taken one step closer to coming to your event, but they’re still a long way off.
They’re at the top of the slippery slope and it’s your job to push them down it.
How do you do that? You put a big fat weight in their pocket. That weight is the fear of losing something.
This is a tactic I first learned from the writing course “Ship 30 for 30”. It’s a simple course that helps you publish 30 pieces of content for 30 days in a row.
Not that spectacular or impressive. Until you realise that they make $10M+/year with the course.
Wild.
A while back, I studied all of their marketing that made the course successful. Most of it was pretty basic, but they did one thing that stuck with me…
When promoting the course they send all of their email list a voucher to spend on the next cohort.
It looks something like this:
5% get $250 voucher.
10% get $150 voucher
25% get $75 voucher
50% get $50 voucher
The key here is that they don’t send a discount code for a % off the course. No, they send a voucher supposedly worth a good bit of money. This is where loss aversion kicks in.
People now feel like they have something to lose → They have a limited time before they “lose it” → They’d rather buy the course than lose $250.
It’s a simple trick, yet they credited it as a massive part of their success.
Luckily for us, this same exact tactic works for event marketing.
There are 2 simple ways you can utilise it:
Option 1: In the lead magnet or resource they download attach a ticket to the event that will expire if they don’t RSVP.
This won’t be crazily effective but is still more effective than just pushing the event. This way they still have something to lose - the free ticket.
Option 2: In the lead magnet or resource have an offer for something valuable that they can only “activate” by showing one of your team at the event.
Example: You run a PPC company and give them a ticket to a £2000 value full company Google ads audit - activated by showing a ticket to a team member at the event.
Now they have this valuable thing, all they need to do is turn up to the event to activate it.
Do you see how the commitment changed there? Now it seems like a low lift to get something valuable vs before when it seemed like a massive lift to get something worthless.
But there’s still one last step to get them over the line.
Step 3) Outcome Stacking
Every decision is made of 2 factors:
Investment
Outcome
A lot of marketers love to overcomplicate why people buy their products, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to the outcome they think they’ll get from it - the same goes for events.
At this point, we’ve closed the commitment gap, we’ve given them something to lose, and now we just need to nail the outcome side of the equation. But here’s the thing, most people forget that you can stack outcomes. When it comes to marketing an event this is super key.
Here are 3 outcomes I always push clients to stack to sell out events:
1/ Educational Outcome
People don’t want to turn up to an event where they don’t what they’re going to learn from it. So it’s always key to make it very clear the outcome they’ll get from attending the speeches or talks at the event.
Example of bad event title: PPC Masterclass - vague and no clear outcome.
Example of good event title: Exposing our PPC playbook to double your ROI as an ecom brand - clear valuable outcome.
The aim is to make the outcome of turning up concrete and clear.
2/ The Network Outcome
Who am I going to meet by going here? That’s the question that often attracts the higher-value attendees.
So you need to make it as obvious as possible that people like your ICP are turning up. If you want PPC agency owners there, make sure you clearly show that some massive agency owners will be there.
Here’s a simple way you can do that:
Private invite key faces in the industry and add them being RSVP’d to your landing page. Example: “Already RSVP [Name of industry leader]”
If you can pull in a big enough name this will massively impact who and how many people show up.
3/ The Value Outcome
Lastly, you have the impact of your loss aversion tactic. The more value you can offer them for turning up the better. This often won’t bring in the big fish, but it can bring in 100s of the medium to small-sized fish.
Find something that is highly valuable to your target audience and tell them they can get it if they show up at the event.
If you’re able to combine all 3 of these, it’s an absolute no-brainer to come to your event.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
Step 1: Get them on the slippery slope
Step 2: Put something to lose in their pocket
Step 3: Stack your outcomes
I still dread it every time a client comes to us with an event, but this playbook is slowly becoming my event marketing bible.
Hopefully, you found this useful, if you did… why not share this with a friend?
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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