Event Launch Strategies

For most businesses, launches are important determinants of the future success of a venture. However, if you’re new in the market it’s often difficult to build that level of interest in crowds. Lets expand on an example that I mentioned in one of my previous posts of launching night-clubs. As a night-club owner, you want to attract the right audiences and create a lot of buzz at launch. The problem is that if people haven’t heard of you before, they will be skeptic about attending. If they don’t attend, your launch wont be a success. If your launch isn’t a success, it may never catch the popularity wave.

Lets face it, a $200,000 a year lawyer will not risk attending an unknown club launch if they believe the event will be full of railway workers. Likewise railway workers would rather walk on fire than attend an event full of lawyers.

The key is to create a story of the event being filled with the perfect crowd in the perfect venue for a perfect night out. When you know your crowd you will know what this story needs to be, and all you will need to do is get the story out.

Now if you know what you are doing, all of this can be achieved by using online social tools that are an ideal platform for leaking your story to create buzz. Lets take an example of how you can use Facebook in this scenario.

Target the early adopters. These people are the first to catch the fever and are usually the most active online.

If you get them on your lists, you’ll invariably create an environment of excitement around your nightclub launch. Of course, they won’t be easy to convince unless they see the value in it for them. Make it all about “them”.

Step 1: So, the first step is to create a virtual group on facebook of a cool usergroup who have great parties every now and then. You don’t have to mention the venues or details of the parties these people attend, in fact you can build a culture within the group where doing so is considered a taboo. Focus on group member’s party experiences & stories after a weekend, build excitement, promote their pictures — and the fun they all have each weekend! You want new viewers of the group to think two things: 1- these people are cool. 2- the parties they go to rock.

Step 2: You want to keep updating this group page with new activities, party ideas, themes, photos and all of the things that would attract your targeted audience as much as possible. Remember its taboo to mention a party venue, date or time. Promote the story pertaining to the event: 1- get people to start following the group in anticipation. 2- get them to share it with their friends. 3- get them to add stories and photos of their own nights out, in the lead up to your event. Remember the emphasis is always on non-disclosure of your venue or the date of your launch, though you would want to indicate a month. You may also want to promote personalities within the group as being the kind of people you want at your event. (always create that feeling of scarcity wherever possible).

Step 3: Suggest a “anything goes” policy (within the law), release parcels of information over weeks not days. Remember you are getting the crowd excited, by telling them the story where they can become the stars (if lucky). The story must reflect the perfect night out for these people. The key is to engage them into a conversation by having them participate in it. Get them to answer survey questions online (use survey monkey) about the entertainment or dress regulations, even crowd selection, make the group feel like they are organizing the biggest night out since the Beatles. The thought leaders, people who can move other people will rise to the top of this group through natural selection.

Step 4: As each thought leader puts their hand up you can leak a little more information to these people only, give them more detail regarding plans than you do for the rest of the group.

Remember don’t let them or the group know when the event will be held or where it will be, but you can leak details like the capacity, ticketing & how the selection process will play out. Give these people some ownership, give them something that sets them apart from the pack, its what they live for and you are going to need their support. Get your target audience excited about the concept of your launch party and begin syndicating this story through microblogging, use link baiting, photo tagging and other strategies to drive traffic to the group while the buzz builds momentum. Keep building the suspense until you have the group publicly asking how they can get tickets.

Step 5: When you have the numbers you want buzzing around the launch, outline your plans. Give the group a location but not the venue (address) and give them the date. Send out electronic invitations along with the party ticket capacity ensuring the number is well below the number of active members you have attracted to your Face book group (say 600 people). Be prepared to partition walls if you have to, ensure the venue size matches what ever crowd capacity you end up with. You are telling the story that everyone has bought into for this big night out, at the end of the night what you said will and must go down at all costs. You need to put your reputation on it and come out the other side.

Inform the hungry crowd that only people who RSVP as interested are eligible to attend. Make it clear that people are not to RSVP as confirmed, you don’t want to build walls around your story that you cant tear down if you need to. You want the group knowing that everyone wants to come without them knowing who will be there. Anyone who RSVP’s as confirmed is instantly deemed not-eligible for entry.

Step 6: If you have done everything well to this point you will have at least twice as many people that have indicated an interest in attending the launch than the number of people you have declared to be your capacity. Communicate the situation of scarcity to the group with concern for those who look like missing out. Do not allow yourself to become the door bitch whatever happens. Ask the group to decide on a door policy, have them fill out a quick survey about how to deal with the problem.

Now this is a multiple choice survey, so whoever writes it will want to make sure the group gets an option to vote for the lead personalities in the group to hand-pick a certain number of guests each from the list of people marked as interested. Most people in the group will know one of these leaders directly or indirectly which gives everyone a better chance of getting a ticket than your promotions team implementing a door-policy, its the choice I would pick.

Let everyone know that the leadership group will decide who receives tickets and these lucky people will receive text messages on the night of the launch event. Messages will go out between 9.00pm and 10.00pm and it will include the venue, directions & instructions for the midnight launch.

Included within the text message will be a pin number that can be used to open a locked doorway in a back alley (preferably) that leads them into a chamber where security will greet them.

Timing is everything in this game. Pick your launch night when the groups interest peaks - if you delay the hype may begin to wane and the result may even be a flop.

Its a fine line between getting this right and getting it wrong. Time your launch well, hit the right emotional triggers at the right time and you will see the results.

Your event launch will not only be full, patrons will have paid top dollar to get in. The marketing will have cost less than the security pin pad at the front door and all the people who couldn’t get in will spend the following week telling everyone about your club. More importantly you have already established a second tier of early adopters who all feel like they own the club, ensuring long term success.

Of course all of this is virtual instigated hype - some may consider it manipulative even. But again, nobody is forcing anyone to do anything against their will. If you want high impact launches without investing in promotions or losing out on ticket values or sales revenue because of freebies or discounts - this is the way to go. I’ve been involved in massively huge club launches based on this tactic alone. If you already have a market presence, creating online traction won’t require any virtual or artificial hype. A good example of that is how Techcrunch markets its conferences.

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

Social Traffic - The Book

Today’s tip! To succeed online you must start engaging prospects into a never ending conversation. To do this you need a world class email auto-responder system.

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