Conference Growth Is Connected To Unique Attendee Experiences

If you want to grow your conference, you need to annually create a unique conference experience.

You also need to create an emotional bond with your registrants. We have to remember that our registrants are people too.

And your conference experience should help them solve the issues that are keeping them up at night. Our paying customers buy conference registration with a trust that we will deliver what our marketing materials say we will. And, never, ever forget that they also want a fun, unique experience.

Six Tips To Creating Growth

Here are six tips to creating conference growth through attendee loyalty.

1. Create Tribes Of Loyal Attendee Advocates

This means creating a conference experience that does nothing wrong, delivers on its promises and is a totally new, fresh experience. It should feel like a first-time conference experience every time. Creating a clangorously (ringing) new experience each year will create impassioned evangelistic advocates. Then not only will they attend every year, they will tell others about it and encourage them to attend as well.

2. Keep It Simple And Special

Don’t overcomplicate the conference experience with too many choices, too many breakouts and too many offerings. Curate and streamline the conference experience so that it is easily understandable and memorable. Keep it simple and special.

3. Be Distinctive

Do something surprisingly distinct and different for your attendees. Make it an uncommon conference experience. Don’t offer the same same ole, same ole, predictable experience.

4. Become An Uncharacteristic Solution Provider

Give your attendees what they need but never thought they would get from you! Focus on their pain points and challenges. Then provide unfathomable, unique experiences where they can learn solutions to their problems.

5. Arrange An Emotional Connection Like An Award Winning Tony Musical

Look at your conference experience like a producer would look at the arrangement of the music for a musical. Does it produce the right emotional journey for the paying attendee? Does it provide the right participant touchpoints at the right times? Does it produce the desired outcome for the conference brand?

6. Walk In Your Attendees’ Shoes

One of the most important things you can do is walk through the entire conference experience in your attendees’ shoes. In your mind, visualize what attendees will do from the beginning to end of your conference experience. Where can you provide moments of fun, surprise, the unexpected and human connectedness.

What other tips would you add to this list? What do you do when a conference experience does not align with their marketing materials?