Quick, name any business that makes money from one-time customers only. Can you do it? What business model depends upon a one-time customer purchasing services or products from the company and never returning? You probably can’t think of a successful business model that works that way. Repeat Business Is Required For Success Imagine a restaurant that has six million potential customers within a 30-mile radius. The restaurant provides average food, average service in an average … [Read more...]
The Six Types Of Audiences Your Conference Needs To Succeed
Your conference audience is your most important asset. Imagine your conference for a minute without an audience. Imagine exhibitors and sponsors showing up but no audience arrives. What happens? Your conference needs an audience to survive. And you need a loyal audience if your conference is to grow and evolve. Your conference audience is the bedrock upon which your conference is built. The Customer Has The Power Audiences are not owned. It is the individual that decides whether or not … [Read more...]
Why Your Conference Needs To Focus On Building A Loyal Proprietary Audience
Quick: What is the most important asset of your conference today? Sponsors? Exhibitors? Your brand? Your events team? Your history? The venue? Your vendors? The content? Your speakers? Your technology? Yeah, all of these are likely responses. However, there’s one asset that most conference organizers and hosts constantly miss when responding to this question: audiences. [Note: Author Jeffrey Rohrs drives home the importance of audiences to any business in his book Audience: Marketing In … [Read more...]
Attendee Satisfaction Or Delight Does Not Lead To Conference Loyalty
Organizations tend to overestimate the loyalty they get from exceeding customer expectations and customer satisfaction says new research from CEB. So what does this mean to conferences? Satisfaction of a conference experience is not a predictor of loyalty to the conference or organization. “…We found no statistical relationship between how a customer rates a company on a satisfaction survey and their future customer loyalty,” says authors Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman and Rick DeLisi in The … [Read more...]
Engaging Conference Attendees At Hello Results In Big Rewards
Are you looking for ways to improve your conference attendee loyalty? If yes, and I’m sure you are, here’s an effective strategy: Integrate a deliberate on-boarding effort for new attendees into your attendance-marketing plan. Master this and you’ll receive big rewards! First Time Attendee Trend Our industry is experiencing an interesting trend with the increase of first-timers at annual conferences. According to Exhibit Surveys Inc., the all-show average for first-time attendees has … [Read more...]
Are You Attracting Your Best Attendees Or Are You Repelling Them?
Why are conference organizers doing so many things that repel their best customers? Instead of bombarding paying attendees with marketing messages, how about just making good on your promise to deliver education and networking opportunities? Missed Opportunities To Grow Attendee Loyalty This summer, I attended three large conferences – one in our industry and two outside. All three were premium conferences, yet all three missed out on opportunities to grow attendee loyalty. Here are … [Read more...]
