Publicity: How Did You Hear about the Conference?
October 16, 2007
Conference planners and event organizers stress about how to get people to attend their events and planning a new event is particularly challenging (as we found out). We are so grateful to each person to came to our conference, particularly those who had never heard of us and took a leap of faith that we’d produce something worth their time and resources. At the time of registration we asked each person how they heard about the conference. Thanks to Laurie Ann, our Startup Princess assistant at the Orem SBDC at UVSC who compiled this information.
Here is the breakdown of how we reached our first conference participants:
Affliliates: 10 guests (4 of which were from 1 individual)
Referrals: 2 guests
Media (newspaper, radio, or TV): 15 guests
SBDC UVSC clients: 12 guests
Startup Princess site, email list, or Startup Princess September event (pre-registration discount): 48 guests
Not known: 2
Events Calendars: 3
Exhibitors: 4 (these are people who approached us)
This breakdown demonstrates that half of the conference tickets came from readers of this site and people who were familiar with Startup Princess that we already knew (or whom already knew us). Affiliates were Startup Princess members who have large networks and sent out emails to their clients. The Media Campaign was helpful, (6 of those tickets were given away for free/promo), and we tracked over 140 referral links from the SLC ABC 4 affiliate station, which we appreciate! Awareness increased as a result and traffic has improved here since the exposure of the media, plus the affiliates who sent info to their lists was really helpful for us to reach people we don’t know who may consider us in the future. Partnering with the SBDC has been a huge opportunity for us all around– to have resources and a larger email list, besides their administrative support is priceless!!! I heard that it generally takes 7 contacts (emails, referrals, media, etc) for someone to act on something new…our email list heard from me several times and read about the conference often here, the others may have only heard about it once.
Today’s Magic Wand: Keep building your email list, you may not use it right now, but you never know when you may want to use it as an affiliate or for producing your own event someday. People who already know you will be more likely to attend a first time event than people who hear about the event through the media or from a friend.
