Why should you identify your event target audience? Can’t you simply let everyone know about your event?
Of course, you could, but it would be too time and money consuming. It’s far better to identify your event target audience and a way to promote your event.
You may think anyone would be interested in your event, and it could be. But not everyone would participate.
There are several reasons why:
- The event is too expensive.
- The event venue is difficult to reach
- The timings do not correspond with their schedule.
It doesn’t make sense spending time and money to promote people that could potentially not participate.
By identifying your event target audience, you focus on the right people that you want to attend your event.
Read more to find out how to identify your event target audience with seven useful suggestions to start.
Rox Event Staff is the only event staffing agency in London that helps you take the headache out of staffing and event marketing in one place.
All this leaves you free to focus on your business!
How to identify your event target audience
The key to determining your event target audience is in knowing as much as possible about them. The more information you have, the easier it will be to promote the event.
Here some common characteristics for event marketing:
- Age
- Gender
- Employment
- Marital Status
- Salary
- Education
- Location
- Ethnicity
- Religion
- Hobby
- Technical Skills
Now let’s talk about strategies to identify your event target audience.
Suggestion: you can use this reminder as a reference in case you forget something
1. Analyse past editions participants
If you already organised a similar event in the past, you are already one step ahead. You can analyse past participants to understand your target demographics better.
If you follow our blog, you already know that finding your event target audience it’s a fundamental step in an event sponsorship request. This study will help you get the money to make your event happen.
The event itself may be brilliant; however, there may simply have been the wrong people.
2. Analyse your competition
If you don’t have access to past events – or if you never organised an event before – you can simply verify who attends events similar to yours.
Analyse everything that your competitors do:
- How do their websites look?
- What tone of voice do they use?
- What do they promote on social media (and on which ones)?
- What kind of content do they use (blog, images, video or audio)?
- What kind of comments and engagement do they get?
Write down what you find and analyse it carefully. You should now have a clearer picture of what kind of target audience you should aim to promote your event.
Suggestion: Use this template to analyse your competition the right way.
3. Ask information to colleagues in the event industry
If you are lucky enough to know someone that organised events similar to yours in the past, contact them.
Buy them a coffee and let them talk about their audience, where to find it and what event marketing is best.
You shouldn’t ask people that are organising a similar event during the same weeks. Honest competition is good, but that would be a bit too much.
Don’t you know other event professionals? Have a look at the following Linkedin groups:
- Event Black Belts
- Event Planners and Coordinators
- BizBash—Event Planners Gather
- Event Planning & Event Management
- Event Pros
4. Send a survey to your mailing list
If you already have a mailing list, use it to learn more about the registered people and their interests.
Create a pre-event survey and ask people about their past, interests and anything else that may help you identify your target audience.
Here some questions you can ask:
- What excites you about the event?
- Who would you like to see exhibiting?
- To what kind of food and drinks are you interested?
- Where do you find out about future events?
Suggestion: if you are choosing to connect with people on Linkedin, use our invitation templates with a 50% acceptance rate
5. Create your ideal client’s profile
The ideal client (sometimes called the client’s avatar) is useful for your event’s advertising.
It is merely an example of the typical event attendee. You can create this profile with the information gathered from your past attendees or the competition in the event industry.
For example, if you know that 70% of people that participates to events like yours in the finance industry, you will know your ideal client works in finance.
If you know about events like yours where men between the age of 30 and 50 attend, your ideal client is then a man who’s 40, working in finance.
Suggestion: read more on how to create your ideal client for your event.
6. Hire Event Staff that corresponds to your event ‘s identity
When hiring your event staff, you should always look for Event Staffing Agencies that are in line with your event identity and target audience. A professional staffing agency should offer your profiles that correspond to your target audience’s profile. Those are the best event staff to engage with your target audience as they already know how to approach your public and what the event is.
7. Find out what’s the advantage in participating in your event
It’s useful to dig a bit deeper why your ideal clients are interested in your event.
It may sound easy and predictable. After all, people attending cooking classes are not interested at all about learning to cook, isn’t it?
Partially right and partially wrong. Find out why they are interested you will be in a far better place to draw their interest.
For example, if your cooking class is focused on Japanese food, it may interest people that travelled to Japan or to those that have interests linked to that country.
Therefore, you can focus your event marketing strategy on Japanese subjects. Create an experience instead of telling people to attend to learn the real meaning of wasabi.
Suggestion: read more on reasons why people attend events to dig deeper.
Rox Event Staff is the only event staffing agency in London that helps you take the headache out of staffing and event marketing in one place.
All this leaves you free to focus on your business!
Who will you invite?
Summary:
- Analyse your past attendees
- Analyse your competition’s attendees
- Ask friends and colleagues in the industry.
- Send email surveys
- Create an ideal client’s profile
- Find out the real reasons why people attend events.
So…who will you invite? What’s the most challenging aspect you struggle to identify in your target audience? Let us know in the comments below.