Some conference planning teams get their attendees wrong! So why do we get it so wrong? It has everything to do with the rapid pace of change—the age of discontinuity as Drucker called it—and our default thinking. The heart of our current organizational challenges is that we rarely diverge from our default thinking. We assume that all of our conference attendee challenges can be solved by analyzing our past. We embrace quantifiable metrics which is particularly ill suited for analyzing … [Read more...]
Three Marketing Flubs That Cause Conference YES Decision Skids
Your email marketing blast generated plenty of clicks. But the registration needle hardly moved. What's up with that? Conference Registration Frustrations For every smooth registration journey, there are many other frustrating moments that cause people to bail. You worked hard to earn that maybe click. Now they're skidding and losing interest. Three Marketing Roadblocks Here are three messaging roadblocks that prevent you from converting them to YES: 1. One Size Fits All! You crafted a … [Read more...]
Your Conference Needs A Customer Vision Statement
What is your vision for your conference customer? In case you are confused by the term conference customer, I mean your paying attendee or registrant. What is your vision for your conference customer, the paying attendee? How do you hope to help your paying attendee to grow, evolve or transform? What traits and characteristics do you desire to create in your customers through your conference experience? Those are some tough questions we need to consider. Many conference organizers have … [Read more...]
Designing Conference Customers, Not Just Traditional Conferences
We are thinking about conference innovation from the wrong perspective. We usually think about conference innovation as something we create for our paying attendees. Or we think about innovation as something we design with attendees through crowdsourcing. We need to make a critical leap. Conference innovation is a way to design attendees! Innovation should be treated as a medium and method for (re)desigining customer. ~ HBR author Michael Schrage. Evolving Your Conference … [Read more...]
Measuring What Matters To Your Conference
If the only conference numbers you care about are attendance, exhibitors, revenue and profits, you will never be able to understand why those numbers fluctuate. You’re only guessing and planning conference programming through a shot-gun approach if you don’t get serious about measurement. It’s time to stop relying on your gut. Or your volunteer conference planning committee. It’s time to measure what matters to improve your conference. Data Counting Versus Measurement You probably … [Read more...]
What Do You Want Your Conference Customers To Become?
“It’s not the attendees’ job to know what they want,” paraphrase of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. “Larry [Page] is into making people what he wants them to be—which is a little smarter,” former Google Executive (from author’s private correspondence).” So who do you want your conference customers to become? Adopting The Ask In Conference Design This simple question, “Who do you want your conference customers to become?” can transform your traditional conference planning. HBR author … [Read more...]
Your Conference Needs To Go On An Education Session Diet
Your conference attendees and prospects are less satisfied with an extensive list of education offerings than a narrow one. Too much information overwhelms them. And they walk away without any action. Ultimately, confused customers don’t buy anything. The Paradox Of Choice Yes, it’s true that when given a choice between a small and large assortment, customers state that they prefer a large variety. (Chernev,2003; Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). Ironically, when they chose something from … [Read more...]
Stop Trying To Offer Conference Content To Everyone
As a conference organizer, you want everyone to become a registrant, right? Male, female, young, old and everyone in between. So you try to attract as many people as possible with your programming. And you try to reach as many people as possible with your marketing. You are willing to take money from anyone willing to give it to you. Casting A Wide Net It seems like a logical and wise choice to try to reach everyone. It gives you the widest reach. It’s like fishing with a net. It’s … [Read more...]
