According to Markletic, 87% of Marketers or business owners record successful business events which have a positive effect on their turnover. You are leaving money on the table if you have never or rarely hosted a business event for your business or career.
Recently, I attended a business event. I met some of the notable entrepreneurs in my industry who shared their journeys and mistakes. It was also a great time to buy a few books signed by the authors. It was an amazing experience connecting with individuals for the first tiem physically after having known them for so long virtually. The network, laughs and pictures made it a worthwhile event. I remember sending the host a long email appreciating her for hosting the event.
Events generally bring benefits to both the attendee and the host.
In this article, we would share how hosting events can hep you get quality leads and increase your revenue as a business owner. You would also learn why you should hold a business event, the types of business events, and the platforms you can use for online business events.
Why You Should Host Events As a Business
People host events for different reasons but I would like to share with you four important reasons why you should host an event. There
- To Gain Credibility
Hosting an event helps you to build credibility in your industry or business. People gravitate towards those they perceive are knowledgeable and known in an industry. They give money to those they believe are worth their onions and can be trusted. Hence, when you hold a conference or an IG live to share knowledge or talk about trending issues and probable solutions you increase people’s trust in you.
Have you ever listened to someone and believed them? If yes, you can use hosting an event to share your experience and talk about your services to gain trust. Not too many people are leveraging this so you should take advantage of this tip.
- Grow an audience
You can grow your audience base sporadically by hosting events. To host an event, you should do adequate publicity and leverage traditional and digital marketing for awareness and visibility. So you are assured of having new eyes see you before, during, and after the event. If you blow their minds away you are assured of new followings, sales, and audience.
You can increase your subscribers and contacts through registration where you can always upsell after the event. The impact of a virtual event doesn’t end after the event. People can always see information and pictures from past events from searches when looking for information related to the event or your business. Hence, increasing your reach and audience. Are you still doubting the benefits of hosting an event?
Picture from cxl.com
- Increase Revenue
Money is where people are. There are different ways you can make money from hosting an event. You can make money by making the event a paid one. You can also upsell your products or services to attendees. Revenue can be made during collaborations with other service providers or businesses while hosting the event. Hosting an event is a money-making machine on all fours when done rightly with the right strategy.
- Make Impact
One sure way of making an impact and living a purposeful life is hosting an event. People love to hear other people’s stories for motivation and encouragement. Charitable organizations, religious settings, businesses, and the government host events for change and impact on individuals and society. People always remember events that relate to them and you can incorporate that into your strategy to become unforgettable.
7 Main Types of Business Events
- Conferences/ Webinars
This is a business event where people from the same or different industries come together to share knowledge and experience. Influential and change-makers get to speak and attend to stay updated on trending and prevailing issues and discussions.
Hosting this kind of business event helps place you like some of the industry experts and aid credibility from clients and competitors. Even if you are a newbie, you can easily break into the industry rapidly by hosting conferences. This kind of business event is useful for credibility building. you have a higher chance of being trusted than someone who is not. Also, you can easily grow your audience base and sell by hosting conferences.
- Product Launch
Are you looking to launch a product or idea in the marketplace? Having a product launch is a good business strategy for getting targeted users or customers to get to know about your brand. Telecommunications, banks, food businesses and so many others leverage this to grow their audience and make sales. You can talk about the solution your product is offering to the market and the benefits to those in attendance. It is necessary to invite and incorporate stakeholders in your product launch. Stakeholders like users, subject matter experts, top management, etc for a successful product launch. You can also give discounts and launch prices to make revenue for your business.
- Charity Events
Hosting a charity event is one way to create an impact. You can use this as Community Service Responsibility (CSR) for your business. People want to associate with brands and individuals who are contributing their quota for sustainable growth in society. With this, you can make an impact as well as grow your audience base from possible attendees.
- Trade Fairs
Yes, trade Fairs are also business events you should not sleep on if you are looking to increase revenue, build credibility and even grow your audience. Recently, Naijabrandchick hosted a trade fair in Lagos consisting of different product-based business owners. She was able to build credibility for herself and other business owners who participated in the fair. Customers who attended became familiar with their brand.
Also, leads and customers can easily follow them on social media helping them grow their follower base. Of course, profits are made from both the hosts and participants so you see how hosting a trade fair can help generate leads and profit for your business.
- Virtual Summits
This is a kind of event where experts in a specific niche come together to discuss specific topics and trends. This is suitable for coaches, creatives, policy makers to drive conversation. It can be done yearly or quarterly depending on targeted reach and impact. It is a good means of attracting more clients and growing your audience. For example, we have MANI virtual summit, Nigeria Tech Summit, etc.
- Hangouts
Hangouts are usually informal where like minds get together to share topics of interest. It can either be physically or online. This can be done by business owners, creatives, coaches to rub minds together. It can be done as frequently as possible depending on the host’s purpose and budget. You can host a hangout to build connections and make an impact.
- Roadshows
Roadshows are a series of meetings in public places to drive brand awareness and intimate possible customers with your products or services. It is suitable for product and service-based brands. For example, banks like Kuda bank, GTB, etc can run a roadshow. Artists like Wizkid, Joeboy, etc, Product-based companies like Mamador, Indomie, Lush hair, Sunlight, etc. They host roadshows to create a wider range of awareness. It takes a lot of planning and logistics management to pull off a successful roadshows. The host may have to do a lot of giveaway, discounts to increase interest.
5 Easy Steps To Host a Perfect Business Event
These are the major steps to take to host a successful business event
- Know your Why
It will be disastrous not to know why you want to host a business event. So ensure you define your purpose. It can be for profit, brand awareness, audience growth, and social impact. This helps determine if you were able to meet your goal at the end of the event.
- Have a budget
You need to know how many resources you are willing to spare for the event. This will help determine the type of business event, location, duration, food, and time of your event. You don’t want to be stranded and short of resources before the event. To have a successful event, a budget is needed.
- Promote your event
It is important to promote and use all necessary channels to pull the audience to the events. You can use influencers, email marketing, running ads online and offline, and keep marketing it till the day of the event. People have to see an ad at least seven times before they take action so you need to keep promoting your event till the day.
- Provide excellent service
This is the day you show up to blow the minds of your attendees. You provide excellent service depending on your purpose to ensure they leave with an urgent desire to do business with you.
- Evaluate your event
At the end of the event, you need to wrap up loose ends like sorting out payments and orders, sending reminder emails, and following up on inquiries. Also, tracking what worked and what didn’t can help for subsequent business events.
7 Different Types of Online Events Platforms
There are so many online platforms you can use to host your events. You should consider the purpose, budget, and audience before choosing one. Here, we would discuss the pros and cons of some of them to help you make an informed decision
This is one of the best platforms for onsite and online events with its high-tech features. It can help eliminate the stress of managing onsite attendees. Hoping has features that can print badges, help control session access, track attendance and issue certificates, provide cashless payments, and many more. It also has audience-engaging features to keep your online attendees tuned in and network seamlessly. It has different plans to suit your budget and purpose.
HeySummit is also a good online platform that has collaborated with other audio and video platforms for easy integration. It has fantastic features for event management setup, registration, and ticketing, customization of different aspects of your events, analytics and payments, etc. However, it has no free plan but there is a 14-day trial option to get you started.
This platform is useful in helping you reach a wider geographical area, generate and nurture leads and help expand your market reach with its incredible features. It is suitable for freelancers, and small and big businesses. This platform can support web, android, and iOS users. It also doesn’t have a free plan.
This is another platform that you can stream directly to Facebook, YouTube, etc. It can be used to interview guests, brand your broadcast, useful for recording and so much more. It has free and paid plans.
This is a common virtual event platform, especially for small virtual events. It can host about 100 people on the free version and about 500 on the paid ones. We have Zoom meetings and Zoom webinars. On one hand, Zoom meetings are best used for sales meetings, training sessions, etc. It can contain up to 1000 participants and has free and paid versions. On the other hand, zoom webinars can be used for event hosts, educational lectures, etc. It can contain up to 50,000 people and has only a paid version.
- Facebook/Instagram Lives
Instagram and Facebook both have features called Lives to help host formal and informal virtual events. I have seen people do sales and a market course during a live. You can also collaborate with other people to host a live event and get more leads with little to no extra cost apart from ads and data.
- YouTube
YouTube is another platform you can use to host virtual events like conferences, seminars, and even product launches. It can serve as an option for those who can’t join the onsite event so you don’t miss out on the online leads.
How We Can Help You
We at Adoza Visibility Company (AVC) are experienced in hosting successive business events. Whether you run a product or service-based business or want to run a local or international event, we are the best. We would cover from ideation to execution and follow up on leads to ensure you get maximum benefits of running a business event. You can contact us now via email info@avc-ng.com or call +1 (386)-339-0772.
Pingback: Networking Made Easy: 6 Essential Tips for Success at Events