Here’s how to get the most out of your organization’s special events, workshops, or conferences.
What’s the purpose of your event? …Build relationships, raise awareness, generate revenue, and build your organization’s reputation? These are all good, but here’s one more absolutely critical thing you must do with all events.
Considering the time and resources that go into producing events, you can drastically increase the value of events for your organization AND your attendees, by getting this part right.
You must use events to learn more about your target audience. Clues and absolute facts about what’s important, what’s painful, and what’s missing are the raw materials you need for creating more value - ie, generating more revenue, more attendance, and more interest in your products and services - not just about the event itself.
It is not good enough to do an event survey, especially considering many surveys are ego-centric; meaning, they ask about themselves and the event. “Did you like it?” “Will you tell others about us?” “What was the best or worst part?”
By getting your attendees to pause and reflect on how they will get the most out of the event, you’re adding value right there. But this is about how YOU can also get more out of the event.
Tip #1: Add these survey questions
These can provide clues about what’s important, what’s hard, and what’s missing. The answers shed light on the pain points or opportunities where your organization could potentially offer more help to current and future customers.
What’s one specific thing you want to do differently based on something you learned at this event? Why?
What are you curious about or need more information about? Why?
Tip #2: Ask people to share during the event.
People want to reconnect and they’re curious how others are handling challenges. Make time in the agenda for semi-structured peer conversation (not everyone is a natural networker). Find a way to collect ‘share-out’ information, questions, or insights from attendees. There’s fabulous technology that makes collecting real-time insights easy, fun, and social. Or staff and volunteers could hold teeny tiny 5-minute focus groups as an event wrap-up exercise.
Tip #3: Ask Why.
It takes more time to process open-ended comments, but this is where the seeds of innovation are found. Customers and potential customers have the answers to how your offerings could be more valuable. But don’t ask people ‘what solution should we offer?’ Ask them why they feel an issue is important or why the problem is still the problem.
The point is, don’t let your cherished customers get away without revealing valuable clues about what’s important, hard, and missing. Expect that you’ll need to do a little interpretation of the answers. But if it was easy, the solution (differentiation, premium feature, etc) would already be out there, and that’s why it’s important to mine for the opportunity.
Of course, we’re happy to help you craft some good questions, add interaction to your event, or just brainstorm opportunities over coffee. Good luck with your events and remember to harvest the feedback and brew up the insights. Connect with us at www.alignltd.com/connect.