The SuchCrowd Blog

We were talking at the office today and thought we should chuck something together to help our users! Because we love you! This blog post outlines the process of putting an event on SuchCrowd – from creation to success!

There are many different parts, and not all will be relevant for everyone. We’ve tried to start right at the start and give you tips as you go through your SuchCrowd journey. Get in touch if you have any questions! [email protected]

Step 1: Creating your event

This the first way your fans will come across your potential event on SuchCrowd, so make sure it is compelling! You want to make your description something that gives your crowd a reason why they should buy a ticket now - as well as why they should tell their friends about it.

Give them enough information about the event so they know whether they will be able to attend (date, time range, location etc) but remember it is really down to how they feel about the overall event – people often go out of their way to attend a particularly awesome sounding event, and if they genuinely can’t you still want them to share it with their friends that might be able to.

Sell your event. Give enough information for people to decide if they can go and be sold on the vision.

Shout out to Nick Knox who has done an awesome description 

Step 2: Selling your first tickets

Herd mentality is a real thing. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you spin it) people tend to follow others. This makes selling your first tickets the hardest.

We recommend you ask your diehard fans or people you think are very likely to buy tickets to purchase them first before you push it out to the general public. This serves 2 purposes, firstly – your biggest fans feel important and secondly – when you advertise it to the wider public there are already people buying in so more people are likely to follow!

Have a chat to your supportive people before talking to everyone. Give them first chance to buy tickets.

Step 3: Promoting your event

One important thing to remember is that SuchCrowd is different to event systems you have used in the past – because the event is unconfirmed. You can make this work in your favour, so do so! We recommend being very clear in your advertising that this event is tentative and may not go ahead if not enough tickets are sold.

Communicate your goal and give updates on how close you are! Keep your fans in the loop. This is important, it adds urgency to buying tickets and it also means people are not confused if the event isn’t going ahead. At SuchCrowd we also manage this process but it is easier if you do it as well!

Build on the hype of needing to reach your goal. Don't ignore it and advertise the event as something that is definitely happening.

Shout out to a star player Circotica who are just hitting a home run with this on social media

Short one today! Just trawling the web for some answers to this question. A lot of 5 tips to increase attendance., 15 ways to guarantee people will come to my event etc etc. 

Mostly promotion tips....I find it weird that I can only find one blog that suggested considering whether the event is something people want to attend first...

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/10-proven-ways-to-get-people-to-come-to-your-online-event/

Kudos to these guys! Something we strongly agree with at SuchCrowd. Less time on advertising, more time on making something people want!

No more empty rooms!

I’m Jacob Manning - CFO of SuchCrowd and today I’m writing about what I’m calling Lean Event Theory;

Entrepreneurship has evolved over the past 15 years. Traditional business thinking of a start-up as a miniature big business has left most disciplines. In 2011 Eric Ries wrote The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Around the same time Ash Maurya looked at the idea of business plans and created innovative methods for entrepreneurs to use that are faster to adapt and focused on validating ideas rather than building products. This was primarily the lean canvas model.

Lean methodology is perhaps most prominently felt in the technology industry, where beta versions have become almost acceptable to sell and in gaming we see customers lining up to be the first to play with an unfinished product. This is not to say that the importance of quality is overlooked. Instead, it considers how the end product can be improved by having the customers engaging in the early stages of development. Entrepreneurs now work in the light, designing projects in collaboration rather than behind closed doors. Not only is it acceptable to get unfinished products to the customer to play with, but its expected in certain sectors and the involvement has value for the customer far beyond the traditional consumer model of ‘you make - I buy’.

And yet some sectors remain virtually untouched by this new way of operating. Take the event management space. Event planners and promoters alike spend countless hours planning an event before pushing it out to the public and hoping the tickets will sell. Lean events is way of applying lean business theory to event management. Don’t plan out the event to the end and then spend your dollars on marketing and promoting. Consider first what the event goer thinks! Looking at lean theory in business, it would be insane to produce a fully functional product without first validating that the customer will use it.

Lean events is about getting very early engagement about whether people will attend the event. By applying lean event theory we can anticipate similar benefits to what lean start-up theory has done for other industries. Firstly the financial and social risks decrease as you receive validation that your event is desirable. Most importantly, using the lean events methodology will result in a better end product (event) for the consumer. Events are all about having a great time, and what better way to make sure that event goers will attend the event than by asking them first.

The organisation I'm working with, SuchCrowd, is made up of a group of people passionate about small local artists and we have seen them struggling from time to time with their events. We asked fringe artists what their number 1 problem was, and they replied ticketing systems are too expensive and don’t work on small scale events. We examined this more, looking at different systems that could be used and digging deeper into the pain point or problem of the entertainer and what came out was surprising! The problem was around what entrepreneur would call a lack of ability to validate event ideas. Being unable to validate can mean an event idea is not something crowds want to attend, leading to financial and reputation damage from low attendance.

....What a sucky experience :( that plenty of people seem to have experienced! I googled the phenomenon and found some of the saddest stories including this one 

https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/1xja7i/when_i_was_21_nobody_showed_up_to_my_birthday/

I remember friends being late to things I have organised and that painful moment when your are furiously checking your phone wondering if you sent the wrong date or time...

Amplify that times a million for an event planner right?! Not only a smash to your personal emotions but all of a sudden you have to face covering event costs yourself...

SuchCrowd wants to help by giving people a testing ground to validate their event ideas before they put them on. We hope it creates more awesome events for people and removes the risk of a failed event. We call it crowd demanded events. Check it out www.suchcrowd.co.nz 

A business accelerator is a pretty amazing experience! But it’s up and down and all around. Over the last few weeks (which feels like a few years) we have iterated, reiterated, reiterated...and then we bought SuchCrowd tshirts!

 We are a stronger team and company for it. And while not officially launched our beta product has arrived and we have people posting events!

SuchCrowd has always had the vision of making more awesome and creative events happen, which has been our sole driver and the thing that has kept us going through some hard times. Now we have a way to allow the people coming up with amazing ideas to test them with a crowd of people and to get early ticket sales which confirms that they are not just a weirdo wanting the event.

We want to help some amazing events happen from what we have built...we have ideas coming out of our ears (Imgur camps, Hustle Con, Hackerthons, Dota2 tournaments and circus all the time!). If you have fun ideas get in touch! We want to help you get your crowd and your funding to put on the event.

They call us the dream team...ok we call ourselves the dream team. But how did SuchCrowd get together!? The answer: Startup Weekend.

Oh heeeeey