Mistakes to Avoid When Planning Your Event

Planning your first event can be very exciting and overwhelming at the same time. There are many facets to planning a successful event. You don’t want to rush into it without a clear plan in place.
Here are four mistakes to avoid when planning your event:

1. Not planning far enough in advance. If you’re planning for 25-40 to attend, give yourself about 60 days to plan. For larger events, give yourself 3-4 months to plan.
2. Doing it all yourself. It’s impossible to do it yourself, especially a live event. Write down everything that needs to be done and hire people to do some of the tasks.
3. Ineffective social media. The key to success is to make sure you are marketing and promoting on the right social medial platforms. Don’t promote just to promote.
4. Not creating a sense of urgency in your marketing. It’s not enough to ask people to register. You have to entice them to do so. The best way to do this is to offer discounted registration prices, also known as Early Bird Specials.

Do You Know Your Audience?

When you’re creating your presentation, it’s important to know your audience. You want to do as much research as you can on the people who will be attending your presentation in advance, so the presentation addresses their needs. Here are some questions to help you design an effective presentation:

1. What is the profile of the people attending?
2. How many people will be attending?
3. How does their knowledge of your subject matter match yours?
4. How much time do you have? How will you manage the way questions and discussion fit into your time allotment?
5. How might your age, gender, background, appearance, or other factors affect your credibility? What can you do to establish credibility?
6. What are the actions steps you want the audience to take at the end of the presentation?

Create Urgency to Buy NOW

At the end of your talk you have the opportunity to promote your products or services. If you’ve delivered a powerful presentation and given great content, your audience will be interested in what you have to offer.

To create urgency for people to buy your product or service at the end of your talk, have a special offer with a deadline that you can present. The special offer can be a dollar amount savings if they buy now. Make it clear it’s for a limited time only and to take action to buy now.

When people walk out the door, the chances of them buying your product or service drops dramatically. You want them to buy immediately—at the moment when they’re excited about what they’ve just heard.

An example of a special offer with a deadline is “Save $200 (this is the amount they save) if you sign up by February 28th (this is the specific date).”

Follow Up is Key to Getting the Business as a Speaker

The gold is in the follow-up. Follow-up is the key to getting business and making money as a speaker. Studies have shown that 80% of sales are lost due to the lack of follow up. And, the sale is made between the 5th and the 12th contact with a prospect. So it’s important to stay in touch with the people who came to hear you speak.

Always remember every person in the audience, whether or not they purchase your product, program, or service, is a potential client and you don’t want to let them slip away.

Here are 5 steps to following up for the business:

1. Always follow up with attendees within 24-48 hours of an event.
2. Send them a “Thank You for Attending” email.
3. Repeat the special offer you made at the end of your talk.
4. Let them know you’re gifting them a free online newsletter.
5. Continue to stay in touch with them via email until the “special offer” ends.