Organizing events on a Zero budget By Ovanes Ovanessian
Exclusive
16 ProTips 64 Quick Tips
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“Hello, Welcome to the first edition of Organizing Events on a Zero Budget. My name is Ovanes and I’m the Co-founder of Weemss - a new generation event registration software. This book is a collective effort from our team to bring you a deeper understanding of what really makes events tick, as well as share some advanced tips and tricks on organizing them. You may ask why should you take advice from a company that develops event registration software, even if it’s one as excellent as Weemss. The answer is simple - all of us come with years of experience in event planning, organizing and marketing. We love unique events that challenge our perceptions and we are weary of the ordinary. But enough about us! If you’re in the event business this book is for you. If you want to be in the event business this book is also for you. If you want your company to be competitive and smart when organizing an event - this book is definitely for you! Organizing an event seems like an easy job only to those who’ve never had to do it. It can be a gruelling task for the unprepared, but it can also be a fun and exciting experience when you know how to do it. Most of the material you’re going to read here can be applied in any situation regardless of event budget, but we wanted to approach the task in the most difficult of scenarios, where we are organizing an event without a single cent to spend - from zero.“
Ovanes Ovanessian
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From Zero to Event Superhero! Organizing an event on a zero budget requires a lot more preparation, know-how and actual application compared to what you already know about organizing an event. If you manage, or dare we say when you manage to pull it off you’ll be a true event pro. Event if you’ve already organized a thousand events, we still guarantee you’ll learn some new tricks!
Start With an Idea For the purpose of this book we’ll assume you already have a basic idea for an event and we’ll help you build on it. Our focus for this guide will be to organize that event on a zero budget, get you selling as many tickets as possible, and make sure you’re independent of any other sources of income. Ready? Time to get busy!
ProTip #1 Time for the first piece of solid advice you’re going to read in this book. Once you have the idea for an event you will want to start working on it as soon as possible, or as the French say ‘le ASAP’! Starting late is a common mistake that many event organizers tend to make. A late start is always very risky regardless of your budget, so we wanted to get this out of the way before we proceed. You will find this to be one of the most valuable pieces of advice in this line of work - we promise.
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Table of Contents
Refining the Event Concept
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How to Know Your Event Audience and Why You Need to
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How To Negotiate Anything For Your Event
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Create a Website for Your Event
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Spreading the Word Without Spending a Dime
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Let’s Find You an Event Registration and Ticketing Solution
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...And Some Supplementary Tools
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The Fine Art of Selling Tickets For Your Event
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Closing words
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Refining the Event Concept
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So you have an idea for an event and you want to be sure people will show interest and buy tickets for it. The early developmental stage of the event is all about identifying these main aspects:
The Why, Who, Where, And When of the Event Why are you organizing this event? Organizing any event should always be based on the premise that someone out there needs such an event and wants to attend one. So the first question should always be - Is there a market for this event? If the idea is relevant and interesting, chances are people will show up - the answer to the next question should tell you if the event will actually sell.
Who is this event for? It is really, really important to identify who your event is suitable for. This is key to understanding what their expectations and needs are going to be. Solid knowledge of your target audience will be a major factor at nearly every consequent stage of organizing and managing the event. Every true event professional knows that people are the real measure of success, not profits, that is why we have dedicated a whole chapter on ‘How to Know Your Event Audience and Why You Need to’ (Chapter 3).
Where will the event take place? Choosing the venue can present the first actual stumbling block on your way to organizing the event on a zero budget. While not an insurmountable challenge, we still think it requires a more detailed analysis and we’ll touch on the subject further in the book.
When will the event be held? The date and the duration of the event are no trivial matters. First of all, make sure is that you’ve given yourself enough time to actually organize the event. Then there are a few things you need to consider when choosing a date for your event: • • •
are there any similar events on or around that date? can you negotiate for the venue to be free at that date and time? are the performers (speakers, artists, acts) that you’re inviting available in that period?
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Event Content is Still King Whether you’re organizing a concert, conference, or a social get-together, content is what’s going to bring people aboard. It goes without saying that this is a key area you need to put a lot of effort in. Your content will be the deciding factor when trying to negotiate partnerships, sponsorships, catering, media coverage, and so on. The stronger the content, the easier it will be to arrange the free stuff. Here are a few QuickTips that will always help when developing your content:
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Have a consistent theme.
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Align the content with your audience.
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Your aim should be to exceed participant expectations.
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Extra flexibility with the content when on a zero budget is a must.
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ProTip #2 The more time you spend on solid preparation the better the results are going to be, always. Refining and then polishing your concept will always result in more sales, a better participant experience, easier customer retention and an excellent brand image. People at the event can always tell if you’ve put a fair amount of effort in organizing it or if you just decided to throw a quick event for some easy money.
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And and welcome to the first edition of Organizing Events on a Zero Budget. This book is a collective effort from the Weemss team to bring you a deeper understanding of what really makes events tick, as well as share some advanced tips and tricks on organizing them. You may ask why should you take advice from a company that develops event registration software. The answer is simple - most of our team comes with plenty of previous working experience in event organizing, marketing, and working with people in a business environment. But enough about us!
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If you’re in the event business this book is for you. If you want to be in the event business this book is also for you. If you want your company to be competitive and smart in its operations when organizing an event - this book is definitely for you! Organizing an event seems like an easy job only to those who’ve never had to do it. It can be a gruelling task for the unprepared, but it can also be fun and exciting when you and your team know how to do it. Most of the things you’re going to read here can be applied in any situation regardless of your event budget, but we wanted to approach the task in the most difficult of scenarios - where we are organizing an event without a single cent to spend. We start from zero.
How to Know Your Event Audience and Why You Need to
From Zero to Event Heroes Organizing an event on a zero budget requires a lot more preparation, know-how, and actual application compared to organizing on a proper budget. If you manage, or dare we say when you manage, to pull it off you’ll be a true event pro. And best of all - we guarantee you’ll learn some new tricks even if you’ve already organized a thousand events. Start With an Idea For the purpose of this book we’ll assume you already have the basic idea for an event and we’ll help you build on it. Our focus for this guide will be to organize that event on a zero budget and to make sure you sell as many tickets as possible, so that you’re not dependent on any outside sources of income. Ready? Time to get busy!
These things combined should provide everything you need to know and understand your audience. That knowledge will dictate what you do from this point on and how you do it - from generating event content and developing a marketing strategy, to negotiating partnerships and even choosing the venue!
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One can have the most brilliant idea for an event and still fail to sell it. That’s why it’s imperative that you know who the audience for your event is. As we said earlier identifying your audience is key to understanding their expectations and needs. So how exactly do we do that?
Take a good look at your event! Your event is in essence a product that you’re going to sell to people. Analyze that product and think about how it will fulfill a need or solve a problem for a potential customer. Who might be interested and who may benefit from attending your event?
Do your homework Doing some research about any similar events can help you get information about your industry, the current market and your competition. Such information is already out there and can easily be found at no cost whatsoever.
Developing Audience Profiles If you have a rough picture of what your potential audience is going to be, develop your event participant profile, or profiles if you feel the event’s going to have more than one audience. Here’s some food for thought: • • •
What is important to these people? Do they have advanced knowledge on your event’s topic(s)? What impresses them?
• • • •
How do they interact? Are they technical? Are they conservative or bohemian? What are their problems?
To have a good understanding of your audience you need one more thing - identify where your
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audience is and what they do. Do some brainstorming about which websites and blogs they are likely to visit, which social networks do they frequent?
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These things combined should provide everything you need to know and understand your audience. That knowledge will dictate what you do from this point on and how you do it - from generating event content and developing a marketing strategy, to negotiating partnerships and even choosing the venue!
ProTip #3 Your work is never done. It’s essential to stay current on market and industry trends, your competition, and your audience. Make sure you keep track of sales, interactions, and more. This helps you see what participant preferences are, as well as notice trends, patterns, and possible areas of improvement. In Weemss for example you monitor statistics and real-time reports on all key elements of the event registration process so you can adjust them at any moment if something is underperforming!
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How To Negotiate Anything For Your Event
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If you really want to to learn how to create an event on a zero budget and make the most out of this book, you need to adapt and change your usual approach to organizing. This section covers basic negotiation skills and practical applications in getting venue, speakers, partners and sponsors on board.
If you think outside the box, instead of paying for products and services, you could actually get
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paid.
Following on from the previous chapter, you should by now have a solid understanding of your event audience. That particular mass of people you are gathering, your event audience, will also be interesting to somebody other than yourself. If nobody finds your audience interesting, then you might have problems and should go back to the very beginning of this book.
Understand the Value of Your Event Pay attention because this is what a lot of people struggle with and can’t understand - the value of their event. Value will always be the basis of any negotiation, so it is essential to master this concept for any event. Consider what any marketing professional from any company would love to get their hands on. Apart from a Porsche, it’s reaching more people with their product or service. Your event will provide access to people, even more so, access to a guaranteed audience in a natural setting. Knowing your audience well will mean you’ll actually know who to approach in your negotiations. Convince them your audience is the right target for their product, service, and so on.
Still unsure about your event’s value? You should probably work some more on your event
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concept!
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ProTip #4 The event concept, content and the experience it’s going to offer are also part of the equation to understanding the true value of your event. Every new speaker, performer, partner, piece of technical equipment and so on, that you manage to get on board will increase the event’s value and give you stronger footing for the next negotiations.
Learn to Negotiate When working on a zero budget, your negotiation and communication skills are absolutely vital. These skills come from practice, but if you don’t know anything about negotiation, make sure to learn the basics. Here are some QuickTips to prepare you for negotiation:
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Focus on the value of your event - your audience, the experience you’re providing, the event
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concept and content. •
Talk less, listen more and ask questions: You may get a better proposal than you expected, so don’t jump in at the first chance.
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When negotiating you should always make it clear that you have other alternatives.
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Make sure you DO have other alternatives available otherwise you’re shooting yourself in the foot by going all-in on a High Card.
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Play your cards close to your chest. Don’t reveal your options.
ProTip #5 If your event has a cause, companies with a similar CSR goal may be willing to participate. They may want to align your cause with theirs or just their personal and honest values.
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Know Your Options You can get a product, service, or anything else for your event in one of three ways: • •
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Pay for it is not really an option at this stage of the event organizing. Further down the line you might have some money from ticket sales, but not in this early phase. Barter and get it free. As they say, ask and you shall receive. Negotiate a barter deal where you offer something in return for goods or services. Remember two things: 1. In many cases you using a service benefits the provider of that service. 2. The value of your event as discussed in the previous paragraphs. Get paid for it. Think Hollywood movies and product placement. If you can manage this part, you are a bad-a** event pro.
In terms of sponsorship, endorsement, partnership or in our case placement, the film industry can be similar to the event industry. General Motors for example paid good money to have a prominent presence in Michael Bay’s Transformers series, because they understood that the movie’s audience loves cars as well. There’s no reason why your audience shouldn’t be interesting to a brand, company, or service out there. But the best part is when there’s good synergy between them it will make your event an even better experience for your audience.
What Needs to be Negotiated Now that you see your value, know your options and understand the basics of negotiation, you can start negotiating anything for your event. Here are some helpful QuickTips to work with:
Venue •
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Approach alternative, out of the box locations and avoid traditional congress centers and venues. Be original and be flexible.
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Be creative! For example, if you are organizing a conference for small business owners try to approach a bank and use their conference room. They may want to product position their small business loans!
Speakers •
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Look for local speakers and save them and yourself transportation and accommodation expenses.
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Target people interested to position themselves within your particular audience. Offer them the chance of free publicity (within your event) and positioning for their product or service (within your audience).
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Entice them with non-monetary goodies.
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Media Partners •
Look for small, local and specialized media suited for your event.
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Offer them free tickets.
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Offer exclusive content, interviews.
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Everything Else... You need to negotiate a few more things like catering (food/drinks/hostesses), technical equipment (AV/lighting/stage), entertainment (artists/activities), goodies (prizes/swag). Again use the draw of what your event is going to offer and the draw of your audience to arrange for these things at no cost.
ProTip #6 Work with university students or recent graduates who will help for free in exchange for professional experience (design, video editing, communication etc...). Attract volunteers for the day of the event, they will also gain valuable work experience.
Your Time is Valuable Too You can negotiate practically anything, but keep in mind that time is money. In some cases paying for services or goods can come out cheaper than negotiating. You should: 1. Estimate the time you are likely to spend negotiating for a good or service; 2. Estimate the cost of that good or service. What’s the result? Calculate and make the right choices. For example, negotiating free water for a half-day event for 50 people may not be worth the effort and man hours involved. If you are organizing a multiple day event for 500 people, the time invested to negotiate the bottled water may be worth it.
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Create a Website for Your Event
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You probably already know that having a website and an online registration form for your event is a necessity today. Since the purpose of this book is to give you new food for thought we’re going to focus on key design aspects that will increase the number of registrations for the event.
#1 Make it easy to navigate and read This is basically another way of us saying you should apply the KISS principle. KISS stands for ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’ and is a design principle that states simplicity as the key goal when creating something. Follow these QuickTips and you should be ok:
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Try to view the site from the visitor’s perspective. Is it easy to find the information you need?
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Is the font too large or too small? •
Avoid clutter at all costs. By clutter we mean too many things gathered in a single area of the page.
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Don’t put too many buttons and needless navigation. You want people to register, not to get lost, frustrated and leave.
#2 Make sure it loads fast In all fairness this should’ve been a ProTip. Visitor satisfaction decreases the longer it takes for your event page to load. That’s the conclusion from data analysis conducted by search engine giants Bing and Google. So while most web designers tend to focus on everything else, you should be optimizing your event page for speed.
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Test your event website from different devices. Just because it loads fast on your office
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computer, does not guarantee it would load fast on mine.
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#3 Keep the important bits separate In your case the important bits are the information about the event, the date and time of the event, the venue address, and of course the registration form. Keeping them separate allows the visitor to ‘chew’ the information better and you also avoid that clutter we mentioned a few paragraphs up.
#4 Add a CTA (Call-to-Action) The CTA is used to push website visitors towards some action. In your case that action is registering for your event so the Call-to-Action should take them straight to the registration form. There’s no rule of thumb for what size, phrase, or style works best, just make sure your CTA appears as a button and not plain text. Here’s a few QuickTips to help you make a great Call-to-Action on your event webpage:
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Keep the text short, clear and simple. For example ‘Buy tickets’ or ‘Register now’ are excel-
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lent CTA buttons. •
Make sure your CTA button grabs the attention of the visitor. This is usually done by using a contrasting color, or by placing a border around it to make it more distinct.
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Keep it above the fold. The fold is the area of your website that comes after scrolling down. Research shows people care about what comes first and as long as there’s a visually engaging element it will perform miracles for your registration numbers.
#5 Limit the number of actions Your event page has one function above all and that is to convert visitors to registrants. That’s why we recommend limiting the number of actions the visitor can perform to as few as possible - preferably one! Provide visitors with the information they need to make a decision and then add the registration form. Combined with the ‘Register now’ button on top of the page you have an event webpage optimized for conversion.
ProTip #7 Recent studies in Internet user behavior reveal a noticeable difference in the way a user interacts with the web from a mobile device and from a desktop or laptop. If you wish to convert all of these interactions to actions - where the potential buyer actually registers for your event, you must provide the optimal user experience irrespective of whether they’re is using a desktop computer, smartphone or tablet.
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One Site to Fit Them All Are you familiar with the term ‘responsive design’ or as some people like to call it ‘mobile-friendly’ design? It means providing the optimal user experience irrespective of whether the potential customer is using a desktop computer, smartphone, tablet, or whatever mobile device they come up with next.
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Day by day, the number of devices, platforms, and browsers that need to work with your site grows. Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift in how we’ll build websites for the decade to come.
Jeffrey Veen, author of "The Art and Science of Web Design" and ex-leader of Google’s apps UX (User Experience) team
Responsive web design offers the way forward. How quickly you adapt and deliver a quality
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mobile experience will determine how competitive you are.
Create Your Event Page With Weemss Our excellent Event Webpage creator is optimized for maximum effect and helps you make a site for your event in just a few minutes. It’s 100% responsive and looks great across all devices. Registration forms built with the software are also entirely responsive and can even be integrated on your very own site as easily as you would embed a YouTube video. This will enable your visitors to register for your event from any mobile or personal computer device. Remember that interacting with the web on phones and tablets is not the same as on a desktop computer.
WordPress is Your Friend It’s always best to create your own website. We highly recommend WordPress for that. Apart from paid themes and plugins the service is free, it’s customizable and easy to use. A good many of their free themes are also responsive so you can create a fast and mobile-friendly website for your event at no cost.
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Spreading the Word Without Spending a Dime
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Publicity is all about reach and you want to reach as many people as possible. You want to get them talking about your event and at no expense! Zero-budget style, right? Let’s see if it can be done.
Yes, it can.
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For Traditional and Online Media Partners In Chapter 4 ‘How to Negotiate Anything for Your Event’ we discussed how to get partners on board and by this point you should have certain media outlets that are partnering with you for your event. Presumably you are giving them something extra that non-partner media will not be receiving. In return you can ask for something extra as well. In addition to the publication of press releases, interviews and other promotional materials, ask the media outlets you are partnering with for: • • • • • •
Permanent or periodic presence in their publications (online and offline) Place your organization’s or event’s logo as their partner Ad space Publish some promotional materials for the event Permanent or periodic presence in their newsletter or bulletin Presence at one or more of their events if they have any - booth or stand, make a short presentation during a session break, prize draw (the prize being tickets to your event), etc.
For Traditional and Online Media (non-Partners) Create a targeted media list Set your sights on local media outlets and get as local as possible. Journalists are after stories that are important to the community they cover, so if your event is in South-East London look for media based there. Create a list of the publications you have found and add the editors’ contacts. Localize by industry too. Find media outlets that cover your particular industry or field, or that of the event and add those to your list as well. If you are organizing a gaming conference contact magazines that review games and likely cover the gaming industry.
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To recap, focus your efforts on media that is: Small Local Specialized That is not to say you should avoid big media outlets, just tailor your message and focus more on the ones above.
Prepare a Press Release like a PRo Now that you have your list of media outlets you need to prepare an engaging Press Release. The Press Release needs to sound worthwhile for the journalist to cover and also worthwhile for the audience to read and engage. There is a vast amount of Press Release guides online, whichever you pick just make sure you are covering your PR basics, the five W’s and one ‘H’: Who is organizing the event? What is the event about? Where is it happening? When is it happening? Why is it important or interesting? How is it relevant to the media outlet and audience?
Press Release Topics and Ideas • • • • • • • • •
Event Announcement New Session/Topic/Activity Announcement New Partner Onboard New Sponsor Onboard New Speaker or Performer Announcement Interview with a Speaker or Performer Prize Draw Announcement New Promotion or Offer Announcement (we’ve got more on that in chapter 9 ‘The Fine Art of Selling Tickets For Your Event’) New Milestone Reached
Remember to draw a line between media partners and non-partners if you want to have a fruit-
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ful relationship with your media partners. For any partnership to work it needs to be mutually beneficial for both parties.
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For Social Media and Content Marketing You need to be present and very active on Social Media. Join conversations. Don’t just “like” and “favourite” other people’s comments, add a reply and make it more personal. Share useful information with your audience, share useful articles from your blog. Thank people when they share your articles and retweet them (Twitter). Of course all of this will go alongside the promotions, updates, press releases and news coverage you will be publishing regularly.
Why Not Start a Blog? Although it may seem difficult to organize and follow, try to have a schedule for your blog articles and post regularly. A blog is only as good as its updates, so keep it active and publish articles at least once a week. Blog Topics and Ideas • • • • • • • •
Any of the Press Release (news) topics above re-written in a more casual, everyday tone of voice An exciting new development in your industry Advice, how-to, useful tips, tricks or “hacks” article relating to your audience or industry An Interview with a speaker or performer from your event An Interview with someone from your team An Interview with a partner, sponsor or endorser Interview with a famous attendee from a previous edition of the event Give the audience a teaser about how awesome the event is going to be and why they should
• •
rush to buy tickets. A whole story about a previous edition of the event Some off-topic banter that most will relate to, for example “5 Ways To Be Happier” (keep those posts to a minimum otherwise you risk making the blog irrelevant)
Whatever the topic of the article, keep in mind that the main point of writing it is to attract at-
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tendees and sell tickets. We talked about the importance of the Call-to-Action in the previous chapter and you should definitely use them in your articles as well.
Needless to say all messages and blog articles should be shared immediately on all your social media profiles!
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Twitter Your Twitter profile should be a constantly updating conversation about your event, industry and audience. Try and get personal too. Some QuickTips:
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Reply to people and companies instead of just favoriting their Tweets.
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Engage new followers in a conversation instead of just “thanking” them for the “follow”.
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Join in and Start your own conversations. Ask questions and ask for opinions.
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@Tag organizations, people and partners when possible.
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You need a unique #hashtag for your event, use it regularly and make sure you are tracking it. The bigger the momentum, the higher the chance of your event going viral or at least reaching the intended audience.
Journalists and editors are extremely active on Twitter, so, yes, be there, be active, @mention!
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Facebook Nearly all events, worldwide, are present on Facebook. Make sure you create a Facebook event for your… event. Here are some more QuickTips for your Facebook event:
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Details. In the details section start with a link to your event’s website. If attendees need to
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register elsewhere make sure you explain that clearly. Always add the necessary links. •
Add more hosts. Click Edit at the top right of the event and then add sponsor or partner names in the Host field.
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Add the Venue. If you want a map for your event, instead of typing a physical address, add the venue in the Where field.
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Sell Tickets. In the Tickets form add your Weemss event webpage or your own website address.
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Event wall. Don’t tick the Only admins can post to the event wall option. You want everyone to be active on the event page, organizers, sponsors and attendees.
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Use Tags. For an even greater opportunity for likes, shares and comments get the sponsors involved. Tag sponsor companies, your event partners and speakers in your posts. Encourage their activity there.
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Note: “Like and Share this post to WIN a Free Pass” sound familiar? Well, it’s actually forbidden according to Facebook rules. Don’t make the mistake of trying to force the visitor’s hand into sharing information on their personal profiles.
Instagram If you have the time or staff (or volunteers!) engage in Instagram too. Instagram, much like Twitter, is great for conversations with your audience. Here are some QuickTips on what you can do using your unique event #hashtag:
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Create a picture competition, showcase the participating entries and create engagement.
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Create hype with a behind-the-scenes look (pictures/video) into the event’s organization,
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team and set-up, or maybe even some goof.
ProTip #8 Instagram integrates with Facebook and Twitter, making it easier for your audience to connect with you in any of the networks they are active on.
Whichever social network(s) you decide to use, make sure your content is: • • • • •
Visual (Pictures/Graphics/Video) Relevant to the event and event topic (at least 80% of the time) Useful or fun for your potential participants Positive rather than negative Engaging and encouraging conversation
Mass email marketing Email marketing is a good way to generate more buzz around your event and even increase registrations for it. Since we’re feeling particularly generous in this chapter here are even more excellent QuickTips you should follow:
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Test before you send! Really, testing is always important and if you can test something by all
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means do so! Test on multiple devices. •
Again make it responsive. A lot of the people receiving your email will open it from their mobile devices. You want them to be able to read it effortlessly, otherwise they probably won’t read it at all. Test the email on a mobile device.
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Yes, add a Call-to-Action. Make sure it’s obvious, but not too obvious to the point where it takes the whole screen of the mobile phone. Links are better CTAs in emails if you’re going the responsive route.
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Keep your message brief! Anything above 3 or 4 sentences will not be read, or even have negative effects, such as people flat-out refusing to register for your event, unsubscribing, adding your email to the spam filter, or all of these together at the same time.
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Add a personal touch. Personalise your messages so that the recipient feels as though you’re reaching out to them alone.Try addressing them by their First Name only.
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But use the right language. Knowing your audience address them accordingly.
In chapter 8 ‘...And Some Supplementary Tools’ we’ll introduce you to some free tools to aid you in the organization process. While Weemss can send automatic emails according to the tips we listed above, it is limited to allow the sending of emails only to people who’ve already registered for your event. That’s why one of the tools we’ve listed in chapter 8 is excellent for mass email marketing.
Weemss lets you export your attendee database from the event. Use the database for future
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mass email marketing campaigns. Perhaps for the Second Edition of some hugely successful event organized on a zero budget? *wink*
Mass emails are great for announcing your event. They’re also a great way to send out news about exclusive offers and special promotional sales, because everybody loves good value. Just don’t overdo it with the mass emails or else they might end up in the spam filter.
ProTip #9 Always check your links. Check if they work, check if they lead to where they’re supposed to. In online publications make sure the links are present when the material gets published and that they work! If there are no links, or the links aren’t functional you are creating a negative experience and hurting your organization’s image.
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Finding the Right Tool For the Job
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So you’ve created a website for your event and hopefully Spread The Word Without Spending a Dime. You are almost ready to start selling tickets for your event. Now you need to choose the right ticketing and event registration solution and you can either: • •
Develop such a solution internally through a risky trial and error. OR Use a trusted, existing event registration and ticketing solution.
The better choice for an organizer operating on a zero budget seems obvious, but ready-made event registration solutions present another issue to deal with.
Ticketing and Event Registration Solutions are Quintessential and They Know it Ticketing and event registration solutions know there’s a high demand for their services and so they may try to impose rules and regulations that may be of questionable benefit to the organizer. Some solutions will collect all the money from the event sales and hold onto them until after the event. Event participants may be required to register for the event through, with, or both through and with the ticketing solution. Oh, and they will eventually contact your customers with information and promotional offers from other event organizers. But wait, whose event is it anyway?
ProTip #10 With new developments in the event tech industry there are now solutions for the organizer that don’t go the traditional route. As such they give considerably more control to the organizer and help them maintain and strengthen their own brand, without sacrificing any of the functionality expected from that kind of service.
5 Revolutionary Ways Weemss is Changing the Rules How important is money to you? Rhetorical question, obviously. Zero budget or not, you probably don’t appreciate someone else holding the money from your event’s sales, even if it’s just temporary. Old-style ticketing and event registration solutions hold on to funds from your ticket sales for up to a week after the event.
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Meanwhile, organizers using Weemss receive money from ticket sales directly. Meaning you start receiving money from your event as soon you start selling tickets for your event. It’s that simple.
Choose an event registration and ticketing solution that also gives attendees freedom in avail-
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able payment options. Weemss offers an armada of payment options, so your customers are free to pay in any way they like, from cash to bitcoins.
What do you want visitors to see? Some event registration and ticketing solutions out there are so heavily branded that by the end of the registration process your participants are more familiar with their service and brand, than yours and that of your event. In order to strengthen your event’s brand and increase your recognition with the audience Weemss has a registration form and ticket shop that integrate seamlessly into your website. Strengthen your brand, don’t market someone else’s!
Where do you want participant information to end up? A lot of online event registration solutions continue to require event attendees to register an account with them or at least provide some personal information. That itself is no big deal until one goes through the parts of the Privacy Policy that concern the use of Personal Data and realizes that the ticketing and registration service will: • • • • •
Use your participants’ details for their own marketing purposes; Send promotional materials; Display off-site advertising content; Create spammy email campaigns; Share some of your attendees’ Personal Data with their affiliates.
You’re the one organizing the event and you’re the only one who should retain all event and participant data, that’s why Weemss gives you 100% data retention. We feel it’s important that you build your own customer and event database with detailed information about the most prefered promotional and special offers, ticket categories, payment methods, and so on. It’s a huge step towards improving your business and organizing an even better follow-up event.
Who do you want in charge of your communication with attendees? Old-style ticketing agencies act as a medium between you and the event participants. They communicate with your attendees and tow them to their own database for marketing purposes.
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We know that you care about your attendees. You don’t want their inbox overflowing with promotional spam from other competing events. Weemss lets you communicate with your clients directly - all communication sent goes straight to the recipient from an email address you provide. This helps build a stronger relationship between you and the individual attendee and makes it easier to retain them in the future.
Direct communication with your customers at every step of the way improves their trust in your
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organization.
Important Since this book tackles the task of organizing an event on a zero budget we feel obligated to let you know that Weemss charges 2.5% of every ticket sold. The fee however is only applied when you’ve made an actual sale and you pay only after you have received your money.
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7
...And Some Supplementary Tools
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Working on a zero budget requires you to be extra smart about your operations. While we’ve made sure to add a ton of useful features in Weemss to help with team collaboration, streamlining the registration management process, easy communication with participants, and so on, there’s still a number of tools you should use to supplement your efforts. Here is a list of tools we find to be extremely budget-friendly while still providing excellent functionality.
Gmail and Google Drive For file management, file sharing and team collaboration Think of Google Drive with Gmail as your diary, desk, office and HQ. With Gmail and Drive you are able to store, share and collaborate on files, documents, appointments and activities. All of your work can be neatly organized, should you wish it to be, accessible and editable 24/7, 365 days of the year on any device. Gmail and Google Drive comprise of Email, Calendar, a word processor (Google Docs), spreadsheet application (Google Sheets), slide show app (Google Slides), survey creator (Google Forms), a drawings and graphics app (Google Drawings) and there are hundreds of Google-made and third party add-on applications, some of which are free. Google Drive starts off with 15 GB of storage. Benefits: Easier team communication, collaboration and more efficient file keeping.
Sign up for Gmail and Google Drive for free. Google Apps for Work offer more features but there
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is no free plan.
Asana For staying on top of tasks and deadlines With Asana team members can assign themselves and each other tasks with deadlines and communicate in-app regarding the progress. Needless to say the tasks can be edited, subtasks can be added and deadlines can be changed. Use Asana to monitor how much team members have on their plate, know when they are full, don’t be like your grandma! Benefits: Less emails, better work communication and task progress-tracking.
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Asana is free for teams of up to 15 people with unlimited projects and tasks.
QuickTips
Mailchimp For outbound marketing To keep everyone posted on new updates, such as a new speakers, partners or other changes surrounding the event, you need to be sending out emails. Automation of this process is essential and the most user-friendly, reasonably-priced service for us is Mailchimp. Benefits: Simple and fast mass emailing, AB testing of email effectiveness.
With fewer than 2,000 subscribers, you can send up to 12,000 emails per month completely free
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using Mailchimp’s Entrepreneur Edition.
ProTip #11 You can also schedule and send automatic emails to your event’s attendees through Weemss. It’s easy and the emails can be personalized with merge fields, where every merge field is magically replaced with the correct value for each recipient.
Hootsuite For social media management We all fall victim to the mindless scrolling in social media networks, multiply that by the various networks and you get a couple of lost hours a day, at the very least. With Hootsuite you can manage all your social media profiles in one place, schedule posts and monitor analytics for the effectiveness of your campaigns. Benefits: Better organization and more efficient communication in social media.
Hootsuite is free for up to 3 social profiles (networks) with basic platform features.
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Google Analytics Track Website or Event Webpage Traffic The Internet is a jungle and Google Analytics is the local tribesman guiding you through and helping you to make sense of it all. Though the dashboard is not the fanciest, the software is incredibly powerful and useful for finding out: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Who is visiting your website or event webpage; Where they are coming from; How they got here; What they are doing.
By setting goals inside Analytics you can track specified conversion rates and measure effectiveness. Benefits: Understand your website’s traffic, set conversion goals and track progress. Weemss also has Analytics integration so you can track conversion rates for your event registrations.
Some advice for picking your own solution In choosing what applications you want and need for your event, consider the following: • • • • • •
Is the application easy to deploy? Is it easy to use or does it require additional training and services? Is it safe and secure? Is data encrypted, is it backed-up and what is the uptime? Is product support offered? Does it work across all devices? Is it mobile-friendly? Last but not least, how much does it cost? Is it a one-off or a license based fee?
Make a checklist of your particular needs and demo or trial the solutions extensively before committing to a choice. If you are working within a team, invite other members in the selection, because they will be using the applications too.
When checking reviews and articles pay attention to user discussions and comments more and
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focus less on what is written in the media, obvious but worth mentioning.
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8
The Fine Art of Selling Tickets For Your Event
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We We are ever so close to the moment where you’re going to start selling tickets for your event. But before that moment arrives you still have a bit of work to do. In this chapter we’ll talk about the 3 key elements that will make or break your sales - the importance of your pricing strategy, how to increase your conversion rates, and how to develop your promotional sales offers like a true pro.
1. The importance of pricing We are all used to the old sales trick of .99 pricing. This is called psychological pricing and although we are well aware of it, fact is, it continues to be widely used and it works. While pricing an event is harder since your “product” is an experience that is immeasurable, with the guidelines below you can make any price easier to swallow.
The Basics Start off with the average price at which you would like to sell your tickets and build all ticket categories, special offers and discounts. If, for example, your average price is €200, you should price all your tickets from €150 to €400 EUR. This should allow for discounts and special offers. With an average price and pricing threshold in mind, have a look at these QuickTips when developing your pricing strategy:
Offer at least 2 ticket categories, for example Silver and Gold. In fact, in a study by the Econo-
QuickTips
mist, people given three subscription options to the magazine were more likely to make a purchase decision, than when having just two available.
Always have one very expensive ticket option that stands out, for example Platinum. Apart from
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the chance of getting high rollers that want exclusivity interested, there is a hidden benefit to the high price option. If you add a high price option from the beginning, other prices will seem much lower in comparison. This is called anchoring.
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Always offer at least 3 time and/or quantity restricted tickets, for example Super Early Bird, Early
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Bird and Standard. Make your prices dynamic but never lower the prices for the same event. Those who bought a ticket 3 months before the event will be angry when they find out they can buy a cheaper ticket 1 week before the event.
Apart from pricing you also need to provide as many payment options as possible. You don’t
QuickTips
want to lose potential participants at the sale process because you don’t cover the online payment method they are most comfortable using. In Weemss we have integrated an armada of payment options, so your customers are free to pay in any way they like, from cash to bitcoins.
Now that we have the basics covered, have a look at some pricing tactics below, see what may work for your event and grab it, while stocks last!
The Tactics To make your price seem less, reduce the left digit by one count and complete the whole number with a .98, .99 or .95. This is psychological or charm pricing and it works because we humans tend to scan information rather than analyzing it in-depth. At first glance we see 4,98 as demonstrably less than 5,00. Whether it sounds completely logical or totally ridiculous, according to research numbers that are longer to spell out seem larger too.
ProTip #12 Consumers unconsciously perceive that there is a positive relationship between syllabic length and numerical magnitude. In other words €27.82 which has 7 syllables may be perceived as more “expensive” than €28.16 which has 5 syllables. Test your price to see how long it ‘sounds’ and optimize it.
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People also see prices written in a smaller font as being lower. A study discovered that “presenting the lower sale prices in relatively small font resulted in more favorable value assessments and greater purchase likelihood or choice than presenting the lower sale prices in relatively large font.”.
•
Instead of .99 psychological pricing you can round off the price and still make the total look like less. For example €200 seems less than €199,99.00. Remove any unnecessary zeros and characters from your price.
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While you’re deleting the extra digits, delete the currency sign or wording too. According to a study conducted with restaurant menus, participants whose menus had no currency sign or wording, on average, spent more for their lunch.
Some of these tactics may contradict each other, but this is normal. As with everything else you should experiment, measure the results, update and improve. Whichever and whatever pricing and tactics you decide to use, focus the attention on the benefits for your events’ participants. Every event is unique and brings value. Find what is unique and valuable about your event and share it. Focus more on the experience for participants, rather than the cost, savings or value for money. Inspire them to attend. After all, the reason people attend events is for the experience!
2. The Importance of Conversion Triggers The key to an effective event registration form is to engage your potential participant from the off. The quicker you have their attention the more likely it is they will fill in the form and buy tickets for your event. It’s well known that more than 85% of the information our brain receives is visual, which means visual stimulation is one of the most powerful ways to improve conversion rates and event sales.
ProTip #13 Conservative spenders make up the large portion of almost every customer base. In the world of online marketing, enticing and encouraging the customer to make a purchase is best achieved through visual stimulus - texts and images that use the persuasion, emotion, trust (PET) marketing approach, to stimulate potential buyers into making a purchase.
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Leading by example Two of the best examples for persuasive design are Amazon.com and Booking.com. Take the Today’s Deals section in Amazon. One of the main reasons it’s been hugely successful is the strategic use of the persuasion, emotion, trust approach. ‘Ends in...’ end of sale notifications and ‘... Claimed’ notifications, representing the number of people who have purchased an item from a flash sale, create respectively emotion - the fear of missing out; and persuasion - implying scarcity increases demand. Trust is inspired by allowing customers to add their own reviews of products they have purchased. Amazon.com
Booking.com Booking.com’s approach is highly successful as well. Most of the elements on their site are a combination of persuasion, emotion, and trust. Again they allow customers to write reviews and rate their experiences. They have ‘Latest booking ...’ notifications, showing the time since the last booking was made, they display the number of people who are currently looking at a specific hotel, and ‘This hotel is likely to sell out soon’ notifications when the number of available rooms is in short supply.
The end result for both of these behemoth websites, is that their visitors end up making a decision more quickly and more confidently. To conform with all of these best practice marketing techniques we created the Conversion triggers feature. It allows you to create automated notifications on your registration form and increase your sales considerably.
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‘Last tickets’ notification Display a notification about the number of remaining tickets available. By showing that your tickets are in limited supply you essentially increase the demand. This is always a strong persuasion element and is particularly effective when combined with a good promotional sale offer - we’re going to touch on the subject of these Special offers in part 3 of this chapter.
‘Sale ending soon!’ notification The fear of missing out is a common driver of action for marketers and advertisers. Marking the approaching end of the ticket sale on your registration form uses the element of emotion. Time running out creates urgency and leads to increased ticket sales.
‘Last order made’ notification Provide social proof. Show the time since the most recent registration was made. Potential participants feel more at ease knowing that someone else has already registered for your event. It generates the element of trust and raises the chance the next person will register as well.
Crossing the price Another very popular method for improving conversions is the crossed price. It is widely recognized that the visitor often responds to better value. Once again Amazon and Booking.com are a good reference on how this is utilized to great effect. They put the current price right next to the crossed out original price. This allows the potential buyer to easily compare the old price and the new price. In line with this, when creating your ticket categories, Weemss let’s you put an accent on your value propositions, by adding a crossed out price on your registration form for each category.
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ProTip #14 Enticing customers to buy has been around for many years now and the techniques used have improved overtime. Creating your registration form with usability in mind, is not nearly enough to ensure high sales anymore. To stay ahead of the pack you need to consider persuasive design as a key factor in increasing your event revenue. Conversion triggers and CTAs are a great way to add such persuasive design elements to your registration form. Sign up or Log in now and try the persuasion, emotion, trust approach to sell more tickets with Weemss!
3. The Importance of Special Offers What’s a special offer exactly? Basically it’s any kind of sales promotion - discounts, coupons, freebies, prizes, etc. Special offers help attract new customers, retain previous event participants, and in many cases help counteract the competition, thus increasing the number of registrations for your event.
What Makes an Offer ‘Special’ What makes a sale promotion ‘special’ is that delicate balance, where both your organization and the potential customer benefit from an actual purchase. There are 4 main aspects of a Special offer you need to consider: 1. Define a goal for your special offer. What do you want to achieve with your special offer? Normally you’d want to acquire new customers, reward your existing customers, or simply increase your event revenue. Once you define the goal you’re ready to decide on how to meet it. 2. Calculate its profitability - as stated above you need to give good value, but without sacrificing profitability margins. This is probably the most important part of creating the special offer. It requires some calculations on your side to make sure the offer is healthy for your event revenue. 3. Make it attractive - when we say attractive we don’t mean flashy ‘SALE’ signs, although as we already said in the previous part of this chapter, they do help. Your customers will always know a good value offer when they see it. And they will always know a bad one! Your special offers should never be in the latter category. If you have doubts that your offer isn’t attractive - it probably is not good enough. Either rethink it or don’t make it at all. Just don’t make it too attractive to the point where it becomes unprofitable! 4. Give it some exclusivity - a special offer works best when it has an element of exclusivity. This is achieved by limiting your offer in one way or another - making it a timed offer, setting a maximum number of times it can be used, seasonal sales, returning customer promo codes, etc. Exclusivity is always good! Addressing these 4 aspects properly is key to making a great Special offer. There are a number of ways you can utilize special offers for your event registration process so that it benefits not only the paying customer, but also your revenue.
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Special Offer Examples and How They Work 2-for-1 offers 2-for-1 offers are very popular as they are an excellent way to increase conversions and bring more people aboard. Unless you are certain to reach the maximum capacity for your event, you will definitely want to consider this option. There’s nothing more sad than a half-empty (or half-full, if like us, you like to look on the bright side of life) event hall. Keep in mind the 2-for-1 offer equates to a 50% ticket discount, so if you don’t expect problems with low attendance numbers, that kind of discount might be a bit high and you may want to go for a different Special offer type. Example: Web Summit set a limited number of 2-for-1 tickets for this year’s edition of the event and they sold out before their General Tickets even went on sale.
Free upgrade offers This is a straight up offer that gives participants more value for their money, so as long as such an upgrade doesn’t mean more expenses for your organization, by all means consider it a good option. Especially when it’s not directly tied to an actual discount. There’s a whole lot of people who’d jump at the chance to get a VIP pass for the conference, or watch the concert from the best seats in the house, or receive a business ticket and all at the price of a regular ticket.
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Free t-shirt / book / anything Everybody loves a freebie. Again an increased value proposition without an actual discount. Such an offer can be a good motivator and trigger a purchase for those participants that are still in two minds about registering for your event. This gets particularly budget-friendly when the freebies are provided by one of your event partners - you get more registrations, participants are happy with their gifts, and the event partners get some extra publicity.
20% limited time offer Percentage discounts for a limited time are always a very strong special offer. They generate urgency in potential buyers and in most cases trigger a sale. The % off the price can be lower or higher than the one suggested in this example, but 20% is generally considered to be just about right.
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10% volume discount You should always keep an eye on what the average amount of tickets per order is. By creating a Special offer that gives a discount for every order with more than the average number of tickets you are essentially pushing towards increased order sizes and more sales. If for example you see people tend to buy 2 tickets per order more often, you can create a 10% discount for 3 or more tickets.
Pre-launch offer You can use a pre-launch offer before the start of the actual ticket sales. Ask your event website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter if they are interested in attending. In return you will send them a promotional code with a discount. As an added bonus these offers can be utilized to generate some buzz around your event and peak the potential buyer’s interest in it.
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50 EUR voucher One of the strongest performers from these examples. People often see discounts based on a set amount as a form of credit and makes them want to use that credit on an actual purchase. Obviously the set amount can vary according to the price of your tickets and as long as it’s an attractive offer, the potential buyer will see amazing value in registering for your event. Holiday sale offers Holidays are always a good time to announce a promotional sale because the customer is hungry for a good deal and essentially more willing to spend money. In many cases the savvy buyer will be waiting for such a special offer to pop up on your site so they can register for your event at a better price. Meeting their expectations will go a long way towards retaining these customers in the future, generating a positive vibe around the event, and improving your brand’s image. Be aware though, that this kind of Special offer can be somewhat predictable and overusing it might cause your sales outside of the promotional periods to suffer, if your customers learn to anticipate them. Unfinished registrations offers A powerful technique to bringing back people who didn’t complete the registration process for some reason. In Weemss you have the option to export all unfinished registrations for that very reason - so you can contact anyone who didn’t go through the whole registration process and maybe offer them the chance to do so at a reduced price. Send them a promo code with a 10% or 20% discount that’s only active for the next 24 hours and convert them to event participants fast and easy.
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Loyal Customer offers This one obviously requires you to have a database of people who usually attend your events, which you really, really should! A lot of event registration solutions out there don’t let you to retain all data after an event. These databases are essential if you’re in the events business and helps build strong relationships with your customers and with your event partners and sponsors. Then you can send them a promo code with a ticket discount to show how much you value them.
ProTip #15 Creating a great special offer is definitely not rocket science. However it’s important to understand that there are dangers to using promotional sales without a strategic approach. A special offer will always give good value to the event participant, but obviously that won’t necessarily mean a good piece of business for your organization. Here are some potential CONS you need to be aware of before coming up with your Special offers strategy: • • • •
risk of devaluing the event experience decreased profitability lower sales outside of promotional periods possibility of damaging the brand
You must set a clear goal, do the simple maths, consider your brand and its target audience and
QuickTips
always plan your Special offers carefully. Do this and your profits will skyrocket!
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Your Event Sales Turbo-Charged by Weemss Nearly every design decision and feature in Weemss works so that you can sell more tickets than ever. Because our success is tied to yours the marketing features are based on the latest reports and all the best-in-business techniques that lead to higher conversion rates. Get started with Weemss it’s free and it will change the way you create, promote, sell, and manage events!
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Closing words
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Organizing on a zero budget can be more rewarding not just in terms of profits, but also in terms of feeling you’ve done so much with so little. As we said in the beginning of this book, once you manage to pull this off you can consider yourself a bona fide expert in the field.
ProTip #16 You may have noticed that throughout this book we repeatedly talked about ‘goals’, ‘strategy’, and ‘audience’. Whether you’re coming up with the event concept, working on your event website, developing your promotional sales modus operandi, and everything inbetween you need to have set goals, always think strategically, and aim to exceed the participant’s needs and expectations.
For everything else there’s Weemss to help you create, promote, sell, and manage your events. The software gives total control over the event registration process, unrivaled number of localization options, top-notch marketing tools, and the power to organize your events your way.
Final Thoughts Hope you enjoyed your time with the first official Weemss Labs book. Our belief is that nowadays the best ideas are born from collective efforts and that’s how we approach every task. This book is no exception. We certainly loved writing it and had a lot of fun tackling the different aspects of Organizing Events on a Zero Budget. This is part of a series of books we’re planning to release for your reading pleasure - provided you’re in the event industry or for some other reason find any pleasure in learning about the fine art of organizing events. Thanks for reading!
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Image Credits 1. Science lab logo - Logo vector designed by Freepik 2. Image page 5 - Ken Teegardin | Some rights reserved 3. Image page 9 - Christian Weidinger | Some rights reserved 4. Image page 16 - Jörg Schubert | Some rights reserved 5. mage page 21 - Paul Lovine | Some rights reserved 6. Image page 27 - Michael Summers | Some rights reserved 7. Image page 30 - BMcIvr | Some rights reserved 8. Image page 36 - M Yashna | Some rights reserved 9. Image page 41 - Simon | Some rights reserved 10. Image page 47 - S.Mathiesen | Some rights reserved 11. Image page 51 - Magdalena Roeseler | Some rights reserved 12. Image page 47 - Akimasa Harada | Some rights reserved
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Weemss® is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) that changes the way event organizers handle event registrations and ticketing through an innovative new concept based on market localization and complete user independence. With Weemss event organizers can create, promote, sell, and manage their events in 200+ countries, with 160+ currencies and 40+ languages available. Weemss gives full control and greater freedom. Event organizers receive their payments instantly after each sale, communicate directly with their clients, retain 100% of their clients’ data and decide what Weemss tools to use and how.
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ft © Copyright 2015. Weemss and the Weemss logo are registered trademarks of Weemss Ltd. All rights reserved. This book is free and can be shared freely with anyone, but only in its entirety. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of Weemss Ltd, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact us at
[email protected].
Release date: First Edition, 23 July 2015 35 Prof. Georgi Pavlov str., 1111 Sofia, Bulgaria www.weemss.com
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