Use an After Dinner Speaker to Boost Attendance
March 4, 2010 8:08 am Business
If you’re organising an event, for charity, a club or a business then getting good attendance is vital, especially if you are relying on money coming in from ticket sales. Obviously, publicising the event adequately is going to be the first step to getting people interested and choosing a date and time when there aren’t conflicting local events is important too. However, hiring an after dinner speaker may well be what makes your event great.
An after dinner speaker may be hired from various speakers’ agencies and the fee varies depending on who it is. The speaker you choose must obviously be dictated by the type of event you’re organising; a soap actor won’t fit in too well at a business conference for example. But if it’s just a case of getting bums on seats then most famous faces will work.
The reason an after dinner speaker boosts attendance so well is that they have much more publicity power behind them. They may go some way to promoting the event themselves, perhaps by posting it on their website or on Twitter. Even if they don’t the local press is much more interested to hear about a celebrity attending a local event than a simple local event, so don’t be afraid of shouting about it from the roof tops. Furthermore, any advertising you do yourself will be really boosted by the mention of your celebrity after dinner speaker’s name.
The best thing about using an after dinner speaker to boost attendance is simply the fact that many people will be interested in coming along for the novelty of seeing a famous face. The beauty of that is that these attendees might never have otherwise considered attending your event, supporting you club or championing your cause.
It seems an expensive investment, but many an event has been made great by an after dinner speaker, so look at it as speculating to accumulate and boost your attendance.
