#audience intelligence

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All too often event planners think they know their event’s biggest appeal. They tend to focus on what they want to present rather than on what the audience really wants. Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking you know what’s best.

In this blog post, we’re going to talk about your audience and how to figure out your event’s biggest appeal. Once you know what’s most valuable to people, and when you know your hook, you can use it to reel ‘em in.

Audience Intelligence

Understand your audience. Know your audience. Connect to your audience and listen to their needs and wants. This is called audience intelligence, and it’s vital to figuring out your event’s biggest appeal. Audience intelligence allows you to connect with current and future event attendees on a personal level. Surveys allow you to discover you event’s biggest appeal and meet the needs of your audience. How do you do this?

You send out surveys and deliver an audience-first event. Surveys are the best tool for assessing your attendees’ needs and discovering your event’s biggest appeal. (tweet this) Surveys help you facilitate an audience-first event, and they help you measure how well you met audience needs.

Conduct Pre-Event Surveys

For your event to be a direct hit and not a near miss, you’ll need to focus on providing meaningful content. To do this, you’ll again have to figure out your event’s biggest appeal. To maximize return attendance to your events, you have to first ask what people want, and then deliver on their expectations.

Consider the pre-event survey. Before you start planning your event, research your audience to learn about their needs and what’s important to them. (tweet this) This allows you to discover their expectations so you can create an event that is of direct value to them.

Some things to ask in a pre-event survey include:

What time is best for you – morning, afternoon or evening?

Are you willing to travel?

What topics interest you?

Do you have a speaker you’d like to hear?

Any preference on entertainment?

Conduct Real-Time and After-Event Surveys

Surveys are an integral tool in the event planner’s tool box. You should also survey your audience during and after the event. When surveying current attendees, you can conduct real-time in-person testing at the event. For people who attended your last event, send out email surveys. Ask them what they found most helpful and most memorable about your event.

Make sure you really listen and then act on survey participants’ suggestions. They’ve told you what they find most appealing and valuable, and it’s your job to listen. This knowledge allows you to market the next event creatively and strategically.

One example from a recent event survey demonstrated to an event planner that sometimes it’s the little things that matter. While the event manager listed a social event on the day’s schedule, survey results showed people called it happy hour. Next time, the event manager might just call it happy hour so it is clearer to attendees. This shows your dedication to audience-first events.

The Takeaway

Learning about your event’s biggest appeal is all about getting feedback and gaining knowledge you can use to improve each event with an audience-first outlook. Regardless of your event size or type, pay attention to these five important phases in which you can use surveys to figure out your event’s biggest appeal:

Discovery: The first explorations of your target audiences’ needs and expectations. Can be done at your last event.

Marketing: Use the pre-event survey to collect more information.

Execution: During the event, engage attendees with real-time interactive polls and quizzes. Conduct mid-event surveys on speakers and workshops.

Evaluation: Collect surveys for post-event feedback.

Once you get comfortable conducting surveys, you’ll have no trouble figuring out your event’s biggest appeal and making your next event a resounding success. One last tip: after you’ve got your survey results, compile the data and make a game plan while the information and the event are fresh in your mind!

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Are you ready to take control of your audience and learn how to conduct meaningful surveys? EventKloud can help! EventKloud offers an innovative, high-tech alternative to managing events, from inception until well after the event has ended. Try our cloud-based platform to manage your event from one dashboard, incorporating everything from data-driven metrics and measuring how effective your marketing efforts are, to coordinating social media posts in one place. Check it out at eventkloud.com today.

Image: Kevin Cortopassi

The best way to get to know someone is to ask them questions about themselves…and then to keep asking questions to get to know more.

Getting to know your event audience is no different.

If you’re looking to bulk up your knowledge about your event audience so that you can deliver the best experiences possible and boost your attendance numbers, it really is as simple as asking questions and listening to the answers.

The right questions, the right strategy, and the right way to keep track of data about your event audience will result in a rich stash of knowledge about them.

Step 1. Build An Email List

Email might seem old school, but it’s critical for the success of your next event. (tweet this)

You need an email list! Hopefully, you already have one. If you don’t, or if yours is still in the low numbers, it’s easy to build them up if you take the right steps.

The best way to build up your email list is simply to keep giving your event audience invitations to sign up for a newsletter.

Social Triggers recommends that you embed three email list opt-in forms on your About page alone, and suggests sprinkling sign-up boxes throughout your website, such as on the top of your sidebar and after single content posts. AWeber is one app you can use to maintain your email list.

Frame it so it’s not another boring newsletter subscription: your audience is more likely to subscribe if they realize that they’re getting updates and advance news about events.

It’s also good to offer them something immediate in return like a free report, guide, song, etc. That’s an event audience centric focus that is great for your overall strategy.

Read on to find out why an email list can be so useful.

Step 2. Survey Your Email List Subscribers

The email list comes in handy when you want to survey your audience at just about any time: post-event, pre-event, or any time you’d like some extra information.

Post-event is a particularly good time to get feedback on what your audience likes about your events and what they want to see more of; plus, they’re more likely to respond when the event is fresh in their minds. If you’d like to encourage more people to respond to your surveys, give a little something back: offer a small product discount, create a prize raffle, or put survey-responders on a VIP list for advance ticket information.

Ask the basic questions of your event audience’s age and lifestyle demographics, what excites them, and what they feel like they’re lacking, but you can also ask questions that seem completely left-field, if you that’s what you need. In fact, the more specific and even goofy some of your questions are, the more people have fun answering them. If you want easy survey software, SurveyMonkey is a popular go-to.

Bonus trick: kill two birds with one stone – style and embed a fun poll on your main page. Then embed an email list opt-in when people answer.

Step 3. Track Data And Poll Your Event Audience Through Social Media

Use social media for more than updates. Ask your followers questions. (tweet this)

Your social media platforms aren’t just a way to share information about what you’re doing: they’re a valuable resource for getting to know your event audience.

There are applications like Followerwonk for Twitter and Simply Measured for Facebook for getting knowledge about your followers without you even needing to ask.

Of course, asking for feedback on social media is also crucial. Not only will you get to know your event audience by asking them questions via Twitter or Facebook, but you’ll also establish a rapport that will keep them coming back to your social media pages.

Conclusion: What Are Your Goals?

Gaining more information about your audience starts with goals. Set goals for how much information you would like to gather. It could be getting 50 surveys responses or it could be getting 5 people on Twitter to respond to specific questions. It could even be getting people from email and social media to participate in phone interviews.

Set the goals and track engagement to keep your team motivated.

Keep it audience centric. Tell your audience that you’re looking for ways to improve your event so they get more value. That will give them the incentive to respond.

Getting to know your audience so that you can create bigger and better events is as simple as asking a few questions in the right way. Don’t be shy: you audience wants to share!

Want to learn more about engaging with your event audience? Check out these posts:

Helpful Hints To Engage Event Attendees

How To Throw A Twitter Contest To Rock Your Next Event

Do you need help with your event promotion and management?

Learn more about how EventKloud can help and what we can provide. Here is a little information about us.

Image: Flickr

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