How to promote new events

Imagine for a moment that you produced an event and no one came. The thought produces cold chills. With any event, there’s always the possibility that exhibit sales or attendance will be below expectations. But the risk is even greater with a new event.

However, you can minimize that risk and boost your new event’s chances of success with a well-planned and carefully executed promotion campaign.

Promotion is a significant expense for any event, and you’ll need at least a rough promotion budget before you can get started. But experienced event managers maintain that the numbers often change as you gather more accurate information and fine-tune your marketing plan.

When you’re starting an event from scratch, and don’t have last year’s budget to use as a guide, look at the budget for a similar event. Although the figures may not be comparable, the individual budget line items probably will be. For example, you’ll certainly have to budget for printing and mailing, but the amounts will depend on the quality of the printing you select, the weight and thus the postage per piece and the number of mailings you’ll do.

Think, too, about the type of event you’re planning. A regional satellite event, for instance, will be promoted much differently than an international event.

There will be costs for developing and/or buying mailing lists, sales calls and telemarketing. Will your sales call be local or long-distance. Will you do print advertising? Radio? Cable or broadcast television? Will you create any special events to generate publicity? Order advertising specialty items? Budgets from another event can help up to a point, but the list must be customized to fit your marketing plan.

The only safe way to develop costs for each of these items is to ask questions. Simply marking up figures from another budget seldom produces accurate results. Get bids from printers. Find out what postage costs are. Ask newspapers and trade magazines what their ad rates are. Your colleagues can direct you to reliable suppliers and can give you ballpark figures or negotiation tips.

How much is enough?

At this point it’s appropriate to consider an overall question: Should a new event be promoted more heavily than an established event?

The answer is a qualified “yes.” You may very well need to spend more to create awareness and to build momentum. The advertising and promotion budget for a new event should be perhaps 20 percent larger. The “yes” is qualified because many believe that cutting the promotion budget after the first year can hurt the event. Some people think they can diminish the budget on subsequent events, but that’s a big mistake.”

Do as much as you can for every event. For established events, do about seven mailings for exhibitors, four for buyers, plus ads and telemarketing. Take pride in complaints you might get. You don’t want anybody to say they didn’t know about the event.

Selling event space

A major risk when launching an event is assuming that everyone will be as excited by the idea as you are that you need only let people know about it, and they’ll rush to sign up. In fact, you’ll need to sell your idea persuasively and repeatedly. You must demonstrate why people should feel compelled to participate, why they can’t afford to miss it.

If your company is already well-established, and only the event itself is unfamiliar to potential exhibitors, that’s a good start. You can point to previous new event successes you’ve been involved with, Such successes suggest that you probably know what you’re doing this time, too.

But if you’re a small or young company, or the event represents a major departure from what you’ve done in the past, your own reputation may not be enough. You may need an ally. This is the time to turn to the various sources whose input you sought during the initial research that led to your decision to launch the event. Those individuals and groups can figure prominently in your promotional strategy by providing ideas that will improve your chances of success — adding to your credibility as you begin to sell booth space and perhaps even helping you to sell space. Line them up before you write your prospectus — you’ll want their names on it.

Forming alliances

Associations are logical allies, of course. Many event managers stress the importance of getting major exhibitors in the show early. The first question prospective exhibitors ask is ‘Who else is in the event? So try to get a handful of exhibiting companies lined up before you send your brochure. To hook exhibitors, include their input on the program, Even one exhibitor, carefully chosen, can be a major influence.

The support of industry publications is also important — whether financial, in terms of underwriting the event, or editorial, which adds to your visibility and credibility. Such support may not be difficult to get. Trade publications make a good living from events. They’re usually happy to support a new event unless they’re co-sponsors of a competing event.”

A persuasive brochure

Once you’ve lined up your advisers and allies, you can begin to develop your promotional material — which can be tricky. Promotion for an established event usually trumpets the success of the previous one, stating the number of exhibitors and attendees, the major companies represented by both groups, what percentages of attendees were responsible for making or influencing purchasing decisions and perhaps quotes from satisfied exhibitors and attendees. A new event has none of that information. Yet there is much information that can be presented to persuade potential exhibitors to sign up.

First, of course, is the rationale for the event. What need are you serving? The size of the market served by the event should also be stated in the material. Before deciding to launch an event identify a market, determine a need and research all the competitive events. The data you gathered on the size of the market, current sales and projections go into your material.

Make no promises

Your objectives for the event can be included in the material, but many event managers are careful not to state them as promises. You can have objectives — you expect X-number of people — but even that’s a bit dangerous. It’s better to talk about the content of the event and say, ‘Here are the kinds of people we’d like to attract.

One area in which event managers can — and must — be very specific is in describing the plan for attracting attendees. Don’t say you’re going to do a multimedia campaign. Say that you’re going to give X-number of passes to your exhibitors for distribution, and that you’re taking l/4-page ads in these journals on these dates.

Share the marketing plan with exhibitors. It’s a clear statement of what kinds of buyers will be invited, but without any reckless promises to deliver those buyers.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to sign up some major exhibitors in advance, include their names on the prospectus. Also include the names of your allies — the associations, publications and industry experts who are endorsing or supporting the event.

If you don’t have an exhibitor list, but feel good about the event, that’s when your seminar program becomes very important. You want to create an environment where people will have a fulfilling experience. If your prospectus describes a seminar program that is likely to bring in the buyers, you improve your chances of attracting exhibitors.

Building a prospect list

When putting together your list of prospective exhibitors, you are once again starting from scratch. There is no “last year’s list” available for updating.

Most event managers agree that an exhibitor prospect list, unlike an attendee prospect list, must be homegrown.

An excellent source is directories from similar or competing events. If you’re taking a niche from a larger event, go right to that list. Buyers’ guides may not be quite as useful. People listed in buyers’ guides may not have the resources to exhibit.

Exhibitors and potential attendees can also provide names. Ask exhibitors who else they’d like to see at the event. And certainly ask any potential attendees you talk with during your research phase which exhibiting companies they’d like to see.

The consensus is that stand sales for a new event should begin a full year in advance. Many established events begin next year’s sales at this year’s event, and it’s reasonable that a new event would require at least as much lead time. Actual selling shouldn’t begin more than a year in advance. Within that limit, do it as soon as you can — as soon as you have a floorplan. But you can have conversations with people even earlier than that — as soon as you have identified prospects and understand the industry.

Can you actually begin selling too soon? In one sense, yes. As long as you have an event staffed and are creating overhead, you’re putting your expenses up. If you’re sending brochures, or your salespeople are making calls — well ahead of the time when potential exhibitors are likely to make the decision to exhibit — you may be incurring unnecessary expenses. On the other hand, you may be increasing awareness. It’s a judgment call and a budget call.

Telemarketing definitely plays a greater role in the promotion of a new event than an established event. Nobody ever sends in an application form with a cheque without someone chasing him. Telemarketing is critical.

Promoting attendance

With attendance promotion, just as with exhibit sales, event management must first develop a list of prospects and then persuade those prospects that this unknown event is not only worth their time, but is vital.

Associations can provide their membership lists and magazines their subscriber lists — but be cautious. Many lists are suspect. Groups may have lists that are not active. Be diligent — ask about the process used to clean the list. Are the names real? Current? Are the addresses good? Try to find out how many of an association’s members might actually attend an event. If the list comes from a publication, be very careful. The list is probably two or three generations down on the ‘live’ scale. There could be a circulation of 40,000, but only 7,000 read it.

Although exhibit space sales begin about a year out, attendance promotion for a new event usually doesn’t begin until three to six months out. Send a press release as much as a year in advance, to get associations talking about the event.

An early announcement could be just a postcard to clean up your list. And another advantage of such a mailing: You can use it to get responses if you have rented a list that you can use only once. Those who respond are ‘yours’ forever.

Ads build awareness

Trade ads are important for creating awareness among attendees. But such ads can be made to do double duty. If you include a line telling prospective exhibitors how to get exhibit information, it’s more effective than just advertising to attendees..

Building awareness for a consumer event can be even more difficult than for a trade event. It takes five years, and often 10, for a consumer event to become part of the calendar — for people to expect it. In the early years it’s terribly important to use the same jingles, the same typeface, the same style of ads — so that people will recognize them and say, ‘Oh, yes, I was there last year.”‘

And the timing of those ads is critical. The media want you to advertise a public event one month out. But the average man on the street doesn’t know what he’s doing 10 days out. It’s better to saturate the airwaves for a week than to fiddle around for three weeks.

It’s important to establish a timetable for the entire promotion process, and have checkpoints at which you can determine whether or not you’re on target. Which brings you full-circle to your promotion budget. What if you’re not on target? Do you pour more money into promotion, or do you bail out?

One thing you don’t want is a bad first event because you’ll never have a second. If sales are lagging, do some quick telemarketing. Try to find out if exhibitors are waiting in the wings, or if the event is dead. Have things changed since you did your research? If attendee response is low, it’s not as critical because they decide late. So you’d probably spend more on ads, direct mail and telemarketing to push them over the edge.

There’s a clear preference for giving it all you’ve got, as long as the event is still viable — and you still have money to spend. OrBe thorough in your research, and relentless in your marketing and promotion.


Leave a Reply