5 Ways to Make Extra Money From Your Event

Posted by Panache on September 11th, 2019

In these belt-tightened times, savvy event organizers are looking for new ways to up their revenue. Selling tickets to your event is only the beginning. Here are five proven ways to bring in additional income from your event:

1. Sell sponsorships
Selling sponsorships is the most popular method event organizers rely on to generate additional income from their events. Sponsorship deals are also the most is-executed. So where do organizers generally go wrong with sponsorships? They’ll commonly fail to provide prospective sponsors with the necessary level of detail and specificity in advance of the event, which makes it hard to properly evaluate results after the event.

It’s difficult for an event sponsor to pin down their ROI, so any help you can give them in measuring results will be greatly appreciated. This can make the difference between engaging a sponsor and not — or a sponsor who’ll come back next year and one who won’t. While there are many ways to give your sponsors more visibility, start by describing the sponsorship’s benefits in terms of cost for the visibility they will receive — in other words, the cost per impression.

If you expect that a banner placed in a venue will be seen by forty thousand people, then say that. If you will be sending an email invitation with a sponsor logo to ten thousand people, then let them know. Those kinds of details empower the prospective sponsor to justify the expense, especially if they’re considering other alternatives (whose ROI may be more readily measured). For help putting together a winning sponsorship pitch, check out this free sample prospectus.

2. Facilitate commerce between parties
Business events bring people together who have at least some expectation of doing business with each other. In that context, it’s not inappropriate to take a more “active” role in referring customers to businesses who are willing to pay for those leads. You’d be surprised how well received this kind of activity can be, since it may save people the trouble of having to find each other through networking alone.

As the event organizer, you are in a position to know not only who is attending your event, but also what business goals they may have. Use surveys to collect additional information from your attendees when they register. Then deliver targeted offers to the people who’ll be most interested in receiving them. The messaging tool allows for full HTML, so it’s easy to add banners and links.

3. Put ads on your event website
Because so much of your event promotion happens online, events can generate considerable online traffic. The primary “job” of the event website is to support the event, provide all the information prospective attendees may need to make a decision, describe the event program in full detail, and so on. But, you can also easily turn your event website into a source of revenue with a few well-placed and thoughtfully-chosen ads.

Work with Best Event Management Company in UAE that has relevant products or services to offer, and are likely to be of interest to those attending. “Online-only” sponsorship packages, which resemble ad buys, allow you to engage companies that weren’t interested in being traditional sponsors. If you don’t have the time or energy to sell ad space on your event site, you should consider contextual advertising options, like Google Adsense, that make it easy to display and monetize relevant ads.

4. Sell premium attendee experiences
Most organizers who create “premium” or “VIP” options for attendees do so by bundling and discounting. For example, in a multi-day conference that has multiple workshops, they may offer a package of three workshops — and offer a discount if you purchase the package. While this may boost overall attendance, it generally does not create incremental event revenue — which is the goal here. Instead, consider creating special experiences for which some of your attendees will be willing to pay extra. To apply an airline metaphor, think “first-class” versus a two-for-one coach.

5. Sell merchandise
As the bloated bags of swag after many events can attest, people like to come home from events with stuff. For the most part, these giveaway items wind up in the trash a few days later (along with the promotional hopes of the swag sponsors). A better way to capitalize on this desire is to sell merchandise before and during the event. This approach works especially well if your event supports a business that already sells things. You can use the event as an opportunity to better familiarize prospective customers with your offerings, or motivate them to buy on the spot with discounts or special deals.

Another idea is to use ticket types to create attendance options that include merchandise. This method works very well, as it allows you to sell merchandise to your attendees at the moment they are deciding to attend the event. Authors Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin have used this tactic to sell books and create revenue from an otherwise free-to-attend event.