Seven ways to ensure the success of your event venue

As published on www.eventerprise.com/blog:

As a venue owner, you have to face and overcome a myriad of challenges on a daily basis. In the face of late nights, the stress, and seldom seeing your friends and family, running your venue is a calling, not a career. And yet, even though venue owners pour their hearts and souls into their venues, many will go bankrupt within the first few years of operation.

If you want to secure the future of your venue, it is imperative that it ticks specific boxes. But what exactly is it that makes an event venue successful? Is it about having the best sound system with built-in laser show options? What about having the world’s top chef? The truth is, while some over-the-top gimmick or celebrity chef may increase the hype around your venue, if you want to keep your doors open, there are a few more mundane considerations for you to take into account. We did some research and found these seven common, albeit often overlooked elements that can make or break your event venue.

Parking

“A venue with a parking lot is what dreams are made of” –  Whova

Regardless of whether your venue is geared to cater for 20 people or 20 000 people, parking should always be at the forefront of your mind. Many venue owners are under the false impression that if the interior of their venue is awe-inspiring guests will forgive them the lack of convenient parking.

The truth is that people are creatures of convenience when it comes to parking. Don’t believe us? Go to a shopping mall, and take note of how many people would rather sit in their car for 5 to 10 minutes waiting for a parking spot at the front door, as opposed to parking at the far end of the lot and walking.

If your venue doesn’t have ample parking, you might start to feel dismayed, but fortunately not all is lost. There are a number of alternative options you can look into.

The first step is to take a walk around your neighbourhood and to take note of what parking lots are empty during your operational hours. If you find a few options within a block or two of your venue, find the owners of those lots and try to enter into a parking agreement with them. If you charge cars a parking fee, you could split the money raised, and you could even earn a profit!

So what do you do if you can’t find a spot within a 5-minute walk from your venue? The simplest solution would be to expand your search to a broader radius. If widening your search radius helps you find the perfect spot, you can then offer a valet service or a shuttle service to ensure that your client’s guests don’t have to walk.

Services and Amenities

“ In addition to the appearance of the site, it is also important to take into consideration the services and amenities that the venue offers.”  Yuanyuan Zhou

When offered two similar products, consumers will always choose the option that gives them the most bang for their buck. If you’re serious about standing out in the crowded event venue market, then take a look at what value-added services and amenities your venue can offer.

If you consider the importance of food at most events, it’s no surprise that one of the most sought-after amenities is a kitchen. You don’t need to offer in-house catering, but having a kitchen can still be the difference between someone hiring your event venue or your competitors up the road. But, what can you do if you don’t have a kitchen? Building one isn’t exactly cheap, and can take months or even years from the time you first decide to build to the time construction is complete.

A quick and easy workaround is to offer a food truck a prime parking spot in front of your venue. In this scenario everyone wins; the event host can feed all her guests, the food truck makes some money, and you make money from renting out your venue. And for the savvy business owners out there, you could even charge the food truck a small commission for parking in front of your venue and make some passive income. With the recent popularity and proliferation of food trucks, there is no excuse not to offer catering at your event venue.

Now that food is accounted for, how well is your venue geared towards music and announcements? Even if you don’t have a live music venue, you should still be able to offer your guests basic AV equipment. For the most part, you won’t be expected to have a PA system fit for a stadium (unless you own a stadium of course), but having a small PA system and an overhead projector on offer can do wonders. From quiet background music to public service announcements, speeches, and even karaoke, there is no end to the usefulness of having in-house AV equipment.

Another way to go the extra mile and have your venue stand out is to offer setup and cleaning staff. By having house staff, your client won’t need to stress about vetting new people and can focus more on hosting his event. And if you bill the cost of staff into the price for the venue hire, your client will have one less item to stress about. By reducing someone’s stress, you make it far more likely that they will recommend you to someone else. This is a strategy that will yield long-term results; if you can get your current client base to sing your praises, and maybe leave a few reviews online, your event venue will benefit from the positive effects of social proof, thus bringing new clients knocking on your door.

Insurance

“Most venues incorporate event insurance into the rental fee. If the venue doesn’t require it, you should still have your own third-party insurance plan. Damages to the facility, or an injury stemming from an alcohol-related incident are real possibilities with huge financial ramifications.” – Gevme

One of the most overlooked value-added services you can offer your client is event insurance. Event liability insurance is like a pair of pants; very few people will notice it unless you don’t have it. Since most event venues already incorporate insurance into their rental fee, you will stand out (negatively) if you don’t offer insurance. If you want your venue to be considered one of the best in the business, it’s your job to ensure that your client needs to do as little as extra legwork as possible.

To be clear, we’re not suggesting that you start an in-house insurance company that you personally underwrite. However, you can take out a comprehensive insurance policy that can protect you, your venue, and your clients from the potential for substantial financial losses.

Acoustics

Nothing can make or break the sound of your performance, your rehearsal space, a recording venue or a home entertainment system more than room acoustics. You may have the very best instruments, speakers, amplifiers and recording equipment and you may have placed it all perfectly in your space, but if your performance/recording/listening room has poor acoustics, you’re really facing an uphill battle.” –  Alesis.com

Nothing can make or break the sound of your performance, your rehearsal space, a recording venue or a home entertainment system more than room acoustics. You may have the very best instruments, speakers, amplifiers and recording equipment and you may have placed it all perfectly in your space, but if your performance/recording/listening room has poor acoustics, you’re really facing an uphill battle.” – Alesis.com

If you market your venue as a live music location, and the acoustics are bad, you may as well hand out flyers advertising your competition. Considering how small most local music scenes are, word of poor acoustics will spread like wildfire. Musicians spend years honing their craft and writing songs, and they can spend weeks or even months perfecting their tone. If they’ve put all that effort into getting ready for a show, and the venue has terrible acoustics, they will slate the venue to anyone who will listen.

Then there are the audiophiles in the audience. If the acoustics and tone don’t live up to their standards, you can expect more than a few harsh reviews on sites like Yelp. As mentioned earlier, social proof is a potent motivating factor when people decide on what purchases to make. The problem, of course, is that social proof can go both ways – if your venue consistently gets low ratings and poor reviews, then people will be less willing to use you in future. 

The good news is that any room can be sound treated to optimise its acoustics, and while sound treatment won’t suddenly turn an oddly shaped room with a weird echo into an orchestra ready amphitheater, it can transform terrible acoustics into okay acoustics. Sure, people don’t sing the praises of okay acoustics, but they seldom go out of their way to complain about it either. If your venue can’t offer the best audio quality someone’s ever heard, the least you can do is compromise and make sure that it’s not awful. And while sound treatment isn’t exactly cheap, it’s still a better option than declaring bankruptcy.

WiFi

Providing free internet access at an event may also be a good selling point. Such seemingly small perks can make the critical difference to individuals and businesses making decisions on which events to attend.” –  Air Angel

We live in a digital world, where thanks to the proliferation of smartphones people are just about always connected to the internet. Whether they’re sharing pics on Instagram, live tweeting about a show, using Midomi Soundhound to identify what song is playing, or using WhatsApp to find and chat with their friends, the average event attendee uses the internet in a variety of ways.

At this point, the cynics among you might start to think that since mobile data is so cheap, why should venue owners fork out for millennials to go online? After all, smartphones make people less sociable, and the point of being out is to socialise right? 

The trite answer is that even though mobile data is cheap, free is better. And if your competitors are offering free wifi and you’re not, there is a good chance that people will get the impression that your event venue is outdated. Even if your line speed isn’t as fast as mobile connectivity can be, most people would rather wait an extra second or two if it saves them some money.

The thoughtful and more considered answer is that by offering free wifi, you show a deeper understanding of the needs of your clients. If you show that you understand the needs of your customers, they are more likely to ask your advice and engage with you on other elements of their event. Remember, if they’re not asking you the questions, there is a good chance that they’re asking your competition. 

Wifi also gives clients who want to book your venue the ability to integrate more technology into their events. It means that they can run real-time social media competitions, live stream exciting parts of the event, and even offer virtual reality meeting booths. Event technology is always evolving and changing, and to stay relevant you event business needs to do the same. 

Availability (operating hours)

“This factor almost goes without saying, but it’s a good rule of thumb to have several day/time options in mind (or at least be somewhat flexible with day/time of the event) before you start reviewing venues so you don’t immediately limit the number of venues you can consider.” –  Planning Pod

If you want to ensure that you can accommodate as many people as possible, you should aim to be as flexible time-wise as possible. Declining to book a 12:30 to 4 pm tea party because your coffee shop closes at 3 pm is a sure fire way to drive business away. Naturally, you want to remain within the bounds of decency. So while there’s no need to run your venue as a 24/7 operation, allowing an event to start or finish two to three hours in either direction of your normal operating times can have a huge impact.

If you’re running a high profile venue like Sydney Opera House you can get away with rigid times, but if you’re running a small destination venue in the middle of nowhere, or a pub in the heart of a big city, ensuring that you have flexible operational hours will go a long way to bolster your reputation. Nothing will make people sing your praises more than you going out of your way for them.

Marketing

“Although true of anything you’re trying to market, social proof is especially important in marketing an event venue. Prospective clients want to hear what other clients have thought of the venue, as well as how it was received by guests.” –  Prime Concerts

The catchphrase from the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” is “if you build it, they will come”. And while that is a great sentiment, in reality, it doesn’t work like that. If you build the most amazing event venue in the world, and no one knows about it, it stands to reason that no one will come. For an event venue, the more accurate catch phrase would be “if you build it, then ensure that the small details have been taken care of, then continuously market it through a variety of channels, they will come”. And while that phrase doesn’t look as good on a t-shirt or roll off the tongue as well, it’s the reality of owning an events venue.

The effective marketing of your event venue is of paramount importance to the long-term success of your business. The only problem is that it is possible to be a great businessman, and still being terrible at marketing. Sure, the two disciplines have some overlapping concepts, but the day to day application for each is different. As a business owner, you know that you should have a Facebook page, a website, run Google AdWord campaigns, and maybe even get into programmatic advertising. But what you know might be out of date, or you might only have a rudimentary knowledge of how to do any of that. And to exacerbate matters, most your time is already monopolised by the day to day tasks required to run your business. So what can you do to remedy this problem?

Historically as a business owner, you would be left with two options; either hire a professional marketer to join your team or hire an agency to take care of your marketing needs. While both of these are viable options, they can cost you thousands of dollars a month. Fortunately, thanks to Eventerprise.com there is now a third option: EventerAds.

Besides the astronomical costs of hiring an agency, another downside is that most agencies don’t fully understand the events industry. Sure, they know how to buy ads and to report on the results, but without an in-depth knowledge of the events industry they’re throwing things at a wall and hoping some of it sticks.

By contrast, EventerAds is a cheap and effective means of marketing your events business and is run by event industry marketing specialists. And the best part is that you don’t need to do anything other than select the package that works best for your business. Once you’ve chosen what package you want, our professional team of marketing experts will do the rest. With EventerAds you can take the stress and guesswork out of digital marketing, and focus all your energy on running your business.

If you want to make your life a little more comfortable, browse our EventerAd packages and let us take care of your digital marketing requirements.

By Warwick Levey | April 17th, 2018 | Categories: Sales & Marketing | Tags: event planning, event venue, EventerAds, events