Tips for Maximizing Your Conference’s Attendance

If nobody is around and a tree falls in a forest, will it make a sound? The same question can be asked of your meetings: If nobody attends your conference, will it make a sound?

Poor attendance at a conference will force you to look for additional ways to reach your target audience, and it will certainly have an impact on your organization and bottom line, but not in the way you want. If people aren’t coming to your meetings, you are not getting your message out for your audience to act on, you are not meeting your conference goals, and you are not getting the return on the investment you have made in the conference.

So what can you do to make sure your next conference’s attendance is maximized? Below are some tips to keep in mind as you plan the next meeting so it makes a loud sound.

Always be thinking about attendance for the next meeting before the current meeting is over. Take advantage of the time you have with attendees. Ask them to provide information on:

- Why they are in attendance?
- What they would change?
- What they liked about the conference?
- What would cause them to attend/not attend the next event?
- What they got out of the conference?

With this information you can measure if your meeting met its goals, and get a baseline for what to include in/exclude from the next event.

But don’t stop asking questions now. Continue with a survey to your entire target audience. This will provide you with information on:

- Objections they have to attending.
- What could sway them into attending.
- New ideas for upcoming conferences, including best times for conferences and best locations for conferences.

Knowing what your audience wants is critical in building a conference that they will need to attend.

From this you can build an outlined agenda for the conference to use with registration for the event. Make it as easy as possible to register (online, fax, phone, etc.) and pay (credit card, check, invoice, etc.) so that signing up does not become a barrier to attendance. Explore different pricing plans as well, including early bird specials and volume discounts. You should make sure you research the pro’s and con’s for offering this for your event before implementing (i.e., will some attendees get jealous if they are paying more than the person next to them?).

Once a person has registered for your event, you need to continue to market to them. Feed them information on the goals of the conference and why it is important be in attendance. Let them know ‘what’s in it for them.’ Not only will it help make sure that they are in attendance, but it will also lead to them talking and promoting the meeting to other possible attendees.

Once at the event, you need to meet and exceed the conference goals that were promised. Not only is this good business, it also helps with promoting the next conference that you host. Once people have attended a show of yours that accomplished what was expected, they are more likely to attend another show.

While they are at your show don’t forget to get feedback from them. This is where the conference cycle starts up again to make sure the next one makes a loud sound.

Additional tips on maximizing meeting attendance:

- Use relationships (with other associations, businesses, influencers) to build a superior agenda (i.e., combine a session with another group in order to be able to afford a top-notch speaker/roundtable).
- Tell the right people – make sure that everybody that should know about your event knows about your event.
- Offer additional value outside of the main goals (industry speakers, job fair, networking opportunities, unique recreational event, etc.).
- Look into new markets to target (international, associations, industries, etc.)

If you have any questions regarding maximizing attendance at your next event or meeting, please contact us at [email protected]