Word of Mouth and events
Posted by spectaprod on February 7, 2007
Why do people go to any specific events? Especially the first time? Is it the instructors or the music? What about the flyers or the website? All those can help generate excitement but what really determines who and how many will attend any given event?
Why do you go to an event? I’ll admit that I go for any number of reasons, but the primary factor for me, and I’d bet for you too, is because other dancers are talking about it and especially if I have friends going to it.
For a new event it is essential to generate excitement within an influential group of traveling dancers. In order to do that everything from flyers to the website to emails must encourage people to talk about the event. Unless conversation and “buzz” can be inspired every event will fall short of it’s potential. Of course the trick is generating that buzz.
Once an event is established it can rest on it’s laurels, instructor line-up, musicians, DJs etc. This is simply the result of a critical mass of dancers who attended in past years and can’t stop talking about it. Think about such pillars as Beantown, Southwest Lindyfest, Camp Hollywood, or Swing Out New Hampshire.
All Balboa Weekend is a great example of how Word of Mouth impacts attendance. Marty and Val were able to get a core of the balboa community excited about the initial event and drew a respectable crowd. The next year was larger as word spread but as the people that went the first couple year relived how awesome the event was for all their friends that didn’t make it larger and larger crowds not only showed up, but began anticipating the next one. Attendance is ridiculously large anymore.
Yet All Bal doesn’t have a spectacular website and their flyers violate design rules all day long. They could probably go completely flyer-less, and rely only on forwarded emails and a PayPal account and still draw a sizable crowd.
As the Swing Dance Event Industry continues to grow there are more and more flyers to look at and more choices the make. The only way to cut through that clutter is get people to talk about the event with their friends so when they see a flyer it rings a bell and sends them to your site to register. Just relying on blanket email announcements, forum posts, flyers and a snazzy website won’t cripple an event, but it will hinder it significantly.
technorati tags:WOM, Lindy-Hop, Balboa, All-Balboa-Weekend, marketing, word-of-mouth, swing-events, lindy-events, lindy-workshop, swing-dance-workshop
