How do you get people to your events?

Host it and they will come…is not gonna do it.

I’ve planned and attended hundreds of events — good, bad, and ugly.

Whether you’re hosting an event for prospects (most common), customers, or key stakeholders, the key to getting anyone to attend is having important, highly successful people there!

Get the bigwigs, everyone else will follow!

How do you get those busy, important folks there? Why are people attending events? What other strategies do you need?

Here’s the overview on the must-have components to get important people to your event!

Top 2 Reasons People Attend Events

If you host an event — especially if it’s a general, open to the public one — selling and job hunting are the primary motivations of attendees!

For smaller, invite-only events, it’s more nuanced — but almost always part of the motivation in some way.

Don’t fight it. Use it to your advantage!

1. Selling

The majority of attendees will be people who sell to your target attendee.

This is true of any event, large or small. People are busy. They make time for events with ROI!

Examples:

• Venture Atlanta: Founders go to meet investors, investors go to meet founders. Win-win!

• Dreamforce: Sales people attend to sell their products. Sales people are also users (and buyers) of Salesforce!

2. Job Hunting (aka “Networking”)

When we’d host Pardot user groups, we’d have two main buckets of attendees: new users and experienced users.

The experienced users were genuine Pardot superfans.

But often, you’d find they were also looking for a new job.

Makes total sense!

• Meet other companies who use the same platform.

• Talk to the company itself to see if they have customers who are hiring.

It was a win for us (great attendees) and a win for them (job hunting) and a long term win for everyone (more happy Pardot users at more companies).

4 Reasons Highly Successful People Attend Events

The key to a great event is having successful, important people there. But they are busy.

Here’s 4 ways to make sure that key prospect or local legend is in attendance!

1. Speaker, panelist, or featured guest

Want to get someone awesome and extremely busy to your event? Ask them to do a fireside chat or be on a panel.

Whether it’s for the PR, helping others, talking about themselves, or all of the above, you’re much more likely to get a yes for that than just a regular invite!

Panels and fireside chats are especially effective because:

• no one has to prepare a presentation

• you can have multiple people on stage, including the interviewer

2. Award or special recognition

Want to get a busy person to your event?

Give them a tiny plastic trophy and a round of applause!

Seriously though, this is why awards events or including a “lifetime achievement honoree” as part of an event are so effective.

Even the busiest person can usually squeeze in a thank you to their parents and “too many people to mention”!

3. Co-host, board member, or advisor

One time, someone asked me to be a co-host for an event. Anticipating a sponsorship request, I cautiously asked for more details.

All I had to do was re-share a social post and attend!

So, no work or money from me but I got “credit” and a public shoutout?

THIS is event ninja skills.

The event organizers had a stable of co-hosts - everyone sharing to their networks with guaranteed attendance. Knowing the co-hosts will be there increases attendance and is a “hook” for regular attendees.

Here’s some other examples:

• You know who attends PTA meetings? Members of the PTA (and their friends they roped into it 😉).

• Who buys tickets and tables at fundraising events? The board members of the non-profit!

• Want a great turnout at a customer event? Have a Customer Advisory Board. They feel ownership and responsibility to attend, especially when you send them a 1:1 request. (You can also make attendance required for your CAB - ha!)

4. Helping others

I know many women founders who will always make time for lunch with other up-and-coming women founders. They genuinely want to help and pay it forward.

When I attended Main Street Demo Day, they had a brilliant variation of this:

• They invited 10 people to be panelists over two different sessions. (Strategy #1)

• Each panelist had a table where attendees could join for a smaller group discussion and Q&A. Attendees rotate after 15 minutes.

• It was personal, efficient, high impact, and fun! (e.g. 15 min with each person = 10 hrs, but small groups = 30 min total)

This is the same reason that experienced founders will meet with less experienced founders over lunch. Small groups are efficient but personal, plus everyone needs to eat!

5 Extra Incentives To Drive Attendance

If you ask someone to be a speaker, but your event is in a dingy basement 3 hours away, that’s probably a no.

Ask a busy person to speak at a swanky restaurant that’s close to their house? Sure!

Here are 5 factors that can improve attendance but:

None of these are enough on their own!!!!

You need to layer together as many of these strategies as possible.

For example, when you combine networking, with great learning content, at a hot new restaurant, with well-known attendees, you’ll get a great turnout and worthwhile event!

1. Learning

People love to learn.

There’s different formats that work: peer-to-peer sharing, your company presenting best practices or insider info, a customer case study, advice from a panel, inspiring and educational content from your keynote speaker.

Note: You can get people to attend once with a great workshop title or premise. But you gotta deliver or they won’t come back.

2. Access to interesting people

All those high-profile folks who are hosting, getting awards, or on the panel? They are a big draw.

If the event is billed for C-level executives, you can expect folks who are:

• newly promoted to a C-level title who want to meet new peers

• folks with VP titles who aspire to C-level

• PLUS: C-level execs who are selling or networking, of course 😉

At the most basic human level, we are all excited to be part of and/or meet more of the “cool kids.”

3. Unique or luxury experiences

I’ll just tell you right now — if you invite me to a work meeting at a spa, I’m rearranging my week. 😂

Lauren Goodell, sales genius, did an event for C-level executives at a dry bar (get your hair blow dried) with 100% attendance.

Golf invites and the Porsche Driving Experience are go-to events for a reason.

Busy, successful people say yes to cool things!

When the invite said first-come-first-serve on our Founders Cup gift bags, I had multi-millionaire founders arrive right at 3p so they didn’t miss out!

(And I’m not judging because I am a SUCKER for free stuff. “Why, yes, I DO need 12 more pairs of sunglasses,” I say at every swag display. 😎)

Host your event at the hot new restaurant or club (why I host everything at The Perlant or Intown Golf Club #sorrynotsorry) and you’ll get higher attendance because everyone wants to “check out” the cool spot.

4. Personal passion or affinity

I love running so it’s an easy yes for me to attend Founder Funder Jogs!

Tapping into a secondary affinity for your event is another great way to drive attendance and engagement.

Examples:

• College alumni

• Religion

• Race/ethnicity

• Gender

• Sports

• Industry

• Career or job title

• Location

• Lifestyle or age range (Moms, Under 40, GenX)

Usually it’s a larger category (business) with a sub-category (moms).

The more targeted the niche, the more natural the connection among attendees (e.g. Founder Moms Living in Decatur, UGA Lawyers Who Love Baseball).

Tradeoff: more targeted = smaller pool of potential attendees.

5. Easy logistics

Timing, location, and parking all matter. Reduce friction!

If it's too hard, people will say

“Traffic is bad, I’ll never make it on time, sorry!”

“Sorry, couldn’t find a parking spot!”

What you want them to say is:

“Oh, it's quick to swing by!”

There's a reason the Founders Cup is 2-5p on Friday:

• No rush hour traffic to get there

• Rarely conflicts with work meetings (because Friday afternoon 😆)

• Make it home for dinner

• No special childcare

The easier you can make the event logistics, the more likely you’ll get a good turnout!

Your Most Successful Event Yet!

Want to host a great event?

You gotta know WIIFM (What’s In It For Me).

The human psychology WHY of someone’s attendance.

And it’s never (only) because they like your startup.

What’s been your best event and why was it great? Any other key drivers to add? What advice do you have for event planning??

Need help thinking through how to get attendees at your next event? Shoot me a note - I love this stuff!