Reasons for poor attendance at your events

I just want to post this here in blog and I was reminded this morning about an event that got poor or low attendance of people visiting it, I was affected because of that Glorietta bombing last 2007. There are many reasons that we can put here, But I like to add on some observations I found in other events that gives a bad result. I'm no expert here, im just blogging it here and it might help you.

1. Lack of promotion and marketing
this is the most important part of you are organizing an event, you have to put your heart and soul in doing marketing and promotion. Use all of your time and energy and manage it well. Some events I observed lack promotion and marketing, that results for low attendance of visitors and no sales in some retailers. Organizers should layout some plans first on how will they do marketing the event and then promotion, they must assure this to their sponsors, retailers or exhibitors that the event will be promoted well.

2. Typhoon and natural disasters
Another problem we faced every year, and sometimes as an organizer I pray to God to spare a single day and not to have any typhoon,rain or natural disasters. The first ever big event that I'm involved in the year of 2000, a nasty typhoon hit the country on November 2000, and every place in Manila is flooded and deserted. I was informed that the day 1 event is postponed, but felt sorry to some visitors who went there all wet with the rain and found out that the event venue is closed. In some events, they have a rain or shine policy, the event will push through, because the organizers pay for the venue and time is very precious for them. The use of the venue is very important because you rent it and pay a lot of money, thats why I'm so scared if theres a typhoon or earthquake.

3. Political drama
This is the new problems we face. I'm not even sure if the year of 2o10 will be a good year to start to organize an event. We are now preparing for the upcoming Presidential election next year, and we don't know yet what will happen next. In some events from the previous years got affected with the massive Edsa rally, Senate hearing, SONA, coup de etat and some munity dramas. We dont want that to happen, because people stay indoors and avoid going out to the streets.

4. Terrorism
Bombing in public places are the most scariest incident. I just experienced this and it affected so much. The event didn't even reached a total of 60 percent visitors, and even that we are succesful, we still got low visitors and profit are not good. I also observed last time that a mall got bombed that week, but the event hosted inside the mall still continued the following days, but low attendance are expected and the bad odor of fire and water damage fixtures of the mall disturbed the attendees. The bus and lrt bombing incident is one of the scariest, and after that people avoid crowded places like malls, public transport and cities, which really gives a bad day for an event.

5. You didn't used the internet
Sometimes internet really helps, and if you are stuck using the traditional way of print, radio and tv, you might spend a lot of money in tri media advertisements, but theres another way of promoting you event for FREE, and that's the internet, use a social networking sites like Multiply, Facebook, Plurk or Google Groups (or Yahoo Groups). Create and build your online network and collect database of event visitors who showed interest in your event. There's a big difference when you promote an event using the internet and I saw that it is more successful and the target market is already in there in one place. But I still want to have TV and print advertisements, for me it is a formal way but more expensive.

6. Entrance Fee
Some events requires you to pay an entrance fee,while others are free entrance. There's a big difference if an event has a high price of entrance fee when it comes to attendance, You should inform them well why you have a higher price of entrance fee, so that they will know were the money will be used and what will benefit them. Some events have this and people complain because they are not satisfied, the word of mouth will escalate and it will affected the main event badly.

7. For number 7, I'll let you add your experience here and post a comment below

So what should we do in order to prevent this in having low attendance?
1. if you have an email database of your visitors, send them an email blast notifying about the event and inform them if will push through or postponed (or cancelled), and update some information to your website.
2. take time talking to them in social networking sites and study their behavior if they still have any interest going to your event.
3. monitor the local news for typhoon alerts and other political scene, you should be prepared when these occurs, because it can strike anytime and anywhere.
4. monitor all your web traffic, see if theres anyone visiting the site, or someone blogged about it, more hits and blog presence is a good sign.
5. call and inform you local AM radio news about your event and its announcement
6. I'll add more here if I get a new idea on who to prevent this.