3 Major Tricks for Upping Corporate Event Attendance

Organizing a business event is never an easy task. Oftentimes, you’ll do all that you can to ensure that people, places and resources are properly in place only to be met with the one thing every seasoned event planner absolutely dreads—a struggling list of attendees.

You’ve put in an enormous amount of work, and if nobody shows up to enjoy it, what good has been accomplished? Luckily, by no means does your tremendous effort need to be in vain. There’s still always time to generate a bit of buzz. Based on our experience, here’s what we would highly recommend:

1) Take to Social Media

There’s a reason social media marketing has taken off in recent years—as far as pushing products and services is concerned, few outlets are as effective in their reach. Simply put, in today’s day and age, when organizing a business event, social media isn’t really an option—it’s a necessity.

So, take to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to target relevant, work-related groups through some paid advertising. Or, if you’ve already created an event or sent out a group invitation, remind potential attendees of exactly why they should make your corporate event a priority. Believe it or not, people’s lives are extremely busy, and all that’s sometimes needed to improve attendance numbers is a friendly reminder.

2) Use Early-Bird Incentives to Your Advantage

Social media is incredible, but let’s take things a step further and talk about one of the best promotional content types you can publish through such a platform—early-bird incentives. Seriously, these work like a charm when organizing a business event. Even better, when done early enough, you save both you and your team a great deal of stress.

Discounts, special promotions and top-notch prizes are efficient ways to influence people during the earlier stages of organizing a business event. That said, though a good deal is enticing, believe it or not, what often truly gets people excited about a corporate function is free, high-quality merchandise and exclusive access when they arrive. Armed with this knowledge, use early-bird incentives to your advantage.

3) Ask Special Guests & Speakers to Help Out

Shockingly, this authoritative promotional tactic isn’t used nearly as much as it should be. If you’ve managed to go through the trouble of attracting a few top-tier, industry-specific speakers to attend your event, don’t hesitate to ask for their help when it comes time to solidify a guest list.

Yes, you can ask your special speakers to talk about their upcoming speaking engagements on their personal social channels, but take real control of the situation and have them compose the text for an event e-vite or open themselves up for a brief Q&A session at your event. The potential here is limitless, so feel free to get creative.

Even for the most experienced of professionals, organizing a business event is hectic. There’s no getting around it. However, when each of the aforementioned tips are correctly put into practice, you’ll have one less thing to worry about—people showing up.

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