Free or Not Free: Navigating Event Pricing and Audience Value Perception

We explore the common question, "Should my event be free? " We take a deep dive into the intricate nuances behind this seemingly straightforward question, peeling back the layers to expose the root causes, from the nebulous concept of event value to the eternal struggle between quantity and quality of attendees, we leave no stone unturned.

We discuss the importance of having a solid marketing strategy and understanding your audience's perception of value, as well as the potential pitfalls of offering a free event, such as low attendance and engagement.

Understand your audience and the value your event brings to them in order to determine the best approach to pricing. Focus on the outcomes you aim to deliver and the reasons behind hosting a conference, so you can better define the value you offer and communicate it effectively.

Do your homework, even for free events, to ensure confidence in marketing and attracting attendees. Ultimately, the decision to offer a free or paid event depends on your audience, their needs, and your event's goals'.

Timestamps and key takeaways

0:03:23 - Balancing Online Events vs in-Person Events

0:08:57 - Understanding Audience Value 

0:12:16 - Achieving Outcomes and Audience

0:17:19 - Cynicism toward free events in a Post-Pandemic World

Balancing Pricing Online Events vs in-Person Events

And I would add to this, because this is a pandemic induced question, what we started hearing especially from other conference organizers that had been doing in person stuff for years. Was this questioning of an online event, which in a lot of respects is much cheaper to produce than something in person, If they could get away with doing it for free or for very, very, very low cost, as a way to counterbalance both their decreased expenses and to increase their audience. To convince people to attend online when they were used to attending in person before. And I think that's to me what's really kind of interesting is, how do we balance that? 

Understanding Audience Value

So going back to value and worth, It's really about understanding your audience's perception of value and the value of the content, which comes down to understanding your audience. And maybe we're just a broken record on this Nessa, but understanding your audience's everything. And again, we start with that early on in the process with our clients through our EventLabs through all of the production work that we do because ultimately if you don't have an audience there, you don't have a conference. And if you don't understand your audience, you can't create a conference that they're gonna love. 

And we're not saying that the answer is no. You should never have it for free. That's not what we're trying to say. But there are hard costs, so somebody has to pay for it first of all. And second of all, this assumption is because you're walking in already with the assumption that people are not gonna wanna pay for this. So we have to explore why, what's wrong with it? Because that's not true. If you're giving people value and something that adds value to their lives or, be it entertainment, education, access, people will pay for that. 

It's just understanding what is valuable to that audience. You know, some people care about certain things and then other people don't give a crap about that same thing. So if you're not exploring that, you're never gonna find a confident answer. You'll never be confident with whatever number, even with free. you'll never truly be confident in that if you're not doing your homework or understanding the audience and then understanding the value that you're giving to that audience. 

Achieving Outcomes and Audience

At some point down the line, you decided that whatever this thing you're doing had to be a conference, had to be an event. Right? That's a decision that's made. So we explore why this has to be an event. Why can't this just be a video that you stick on YouTube? Why does it have to be this? And from there, we help people build on top of that through an event lab. And through the strategy of okay, If this is your reason, what are the outcomes that you're trying to achieve? Because if it has to be a conference, it has to be a conference for the central reason, which is that the outcomes can only be achieved by this format. 

That's me cheating. That's me, you know, spoiling, Giving the answers. But yeah. At the core of it, you decided that it had to be a conference because you could only achieve your goals through that. 

Okay. But what are those goals? And how does that tie to the audience that you're presenting this to? And from there, from these conversations, that's where we can build towards pricing. Pricing is not a number that you just decide on on day one. when you go from there.

Cynicism toward free events in a Post-Pandemic World

I would also add that I think that post pandemic or in this weird limbo that we're in right now with it. A lot of people have become really weary and kind of cynical about free events and have been much less likely to just sign up. I think early on, it was a lot easier to be like, oh, yeah. I wanna go to that. Oh, I wanna go, I'm starved for social connection. Right? Because we've all been so isolated. But now as things are kind of equalizing, people are much more kind of critical about what they're committing to even if it's going to be a free event.

So the answer to the question is, it depends, of course, because it always does. Because at the core of everything that we do, it's about understanding what your audience is and how you can deliver something specifically for them. And then determining if that's through a free event or a paid event.

Transcript

0:00:14

How do you as a leader of a growing community truly make a conference or event that has impact? A gathering with purpose, and an attendee experience that knocks their socks off. An event that leaves your audience in awe and wondering where you've been her whole life. Make it Kickass the podcast that explores these questions by uncovering the strategies, tactics, and tools that we use every day to bring our clients conferences to life. 

I'm Isaac Watson, executive producer of Kickass Conferences, and we're here to help you make it, kick ass. Welcome back to another episode of Make It Kickass. I am your co host, Isaac Watson executive producer of Kickass Conferences, and joining me as always, the inevitable. Nessa Jimenez. Hi, Nessa. 

Hi, Isaac. Hi, everybody. 

I just keep trying to come up with new ways to introduce you. And I'm starting to run out. Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to start brainstorming new things. 

Yeah. You're starting to get fancy. 

I know. Well, using big words. This is a problem. This is our operations manager in case you've forgotten. I hope you have not.

0:01:28

We are here to dive in with an episode focused on one of the most common questions that we get asked. That's what this season is all about. And kind of teasing apart, what do people really mean when they ask these questions? What are the underlying problems that are making these questions bubble up to the surface? And what are some of the ways that we can solve them? And some of the ways that we do solve them in the works that we do because we are professionals. 

0:02:00

So this episode today, we're gonna talk about a question. It's fairly straightforward. But the question that we get asked often is, should my event be free?

 And this is a pandemic question. Let's be honest. Yes. For the pandemic, this wasn't really such an effect, you know, frequently asked question. 

Yes. And I think one of the well, we'll dig into that. But I don't wanna get ahead of myself here. Should my event be free is our core question. Nessa, let's first dive into what people really mean by this. And see if we can, you know, pull it apart a little bit.

0:02:39

So, yeah, the big question is, is this conference actually worth what we're charging. And we talked a little bit about that earlier this season. The word ‘worth’ there. That's a big one that we've gotta explore and do some timing there. What they're also asking is, can I get away with charging this much? Again, as we've talked about before, this feeling of,  they're cheating or they're doing something naughty. So they have to phrase it that way. And finally how do I get the biggest audience ever? Right? I want as many people as possible to come. So does making this thing free automatically mean that I'm gonna achieve that goal.

0:03:23

And I would add to this, because this is a pandemic induced question, what we started hearing especially from other conference organizers that had been doing in person stuff for years. Was this questioning of an online event, which in a lot of respects is much cheaper to produce than something in person, If they could get away with doing it for free or for very, very, very low cost, as a way to counterbalance both their decreased expenses and to increase their audience. To convince people to attend online when they were used to attending in person before. And I think that's to me what's really kind of interesting is, how do we balance that? So let's dive into some of the actual problems that caused these questions to come to the surface.

0:04:24

I think the big one is not having a well defined value to your event or having a little bit of low confidence in having created a weak attendee experience. if you feel like you haven't put in the effort, or you're not sure if this, especially if this online event, is gonna deliver the same things that it used to deliver in person, for example. That can raise these questions, these confidence questions around, well,  is this even worth charging for? Or are people gonna pay for this kind of thing? 

And going back to the word worth from the question. Worth implies value. So what they're actually telling us,  what is the value of this thing? That's what they're actually asking us to do to tell them what the value is in advance. Because if you don't know the value of your product, you're gonna have a hell of a time trying to sell it. 

0:05:23

Another problem I think that stems from this is being a little too worried about quantity over quality of your attendees. Some people get wrapped up in chasing this numbers game. It's like, oh, well, if it's free, I can get thousands of registrations instead of getting a couple hundred or something like that. And this it's just kind of a disingenuous metric.

0:05:50

To think that somehow big numbers equal a more successful event without really realizing that when you have a free event, especially a free online event, attrition is insane. The attrition of people actually attending  is just off the charts. And you end up with twenty percent, twenty five percent who are actually showing up. If they haven't paid anything because there's no skin in the game. And what's the first thing we're gonna do when we're not feeling like staring at our computers, when attending a free online event? We're just gonna not do it. 

0:06:29

And as humans, we get really impressed with numbers. We love seeing numbers. a thousand people signed up. That's great. Most of those people are not gonna attend because it was free. And so being free, like you said, no skin in the game, no investment. They lose nothing because they put in nothing, especially for an online thing. the worry that if I have more people signed up or more people even live, it's better. It's not necessarily I mean, if your only goal is to have a lot of people sign up, then yeah, sure you made it.

0:07:06

But if we're doing a conference, that's just the beginning. selling the tickets. Now you have to do the thing. And think about your engagement too. if you're doing a free event, sure, you get five thousand people signed up. But if only five hundred show up and you were planning on five thousand and you'd created activities or ways for that audience to engage with each other. That's gonna dramatically change the environment and the experience that those attendees have if what you had created was for this larger group and only a fraction of that showed. And then if the five hundred people are lurkers, just wanna watch the livestream, but don't wanna click on anything or interact in any way, it can feel like there's nobody at your event. And that's the worst feeling. 

0:07:56

I think all of this comes down to not having a marketing strategy when we're talking about event value, when we're talking about quality of attendees. If you have a solid marketing strategy, that can address these underlying issues and can help solve them. But if you don't have a marketing strategy, which most people don't have when they come into organizing a conference.

That's one of the things that we do is develop that for them. It's really hard to have that confidence and to have that, you know, it's a lot of self esteem, to actually go out there and sell the tickets and communicate that value to those people. 

Alright. So we're talking about some of the problems feeding into these questions, let's talk about some of the ways that we can help solve those.

0:08:57

So going back to value and worth, It's really about understanding your audience's perception of value and the value of the content, which comes down to understanding your audience. And maybe we're just a broken record on this Nessa, but understanding your audience's everything. And again, we start with that early on in the process with our clients through our EventLabs through all of the production work that we do because ultimately if you don't have an audience there, you don't have a conference. And if you don't understand your audience, you can't create a conference that they're gonna love. 

0:09:33

And we're not saying that the answer is no. You should never have it for free. That's not what we're trying to say. But there are hard costs, so somebody has to pay for it first of all. And second of all, this assumption is because you're walking in already with the assumption that people are not gonna wanna pay for this. So we have to explore why, what's wrong with it? Because that's not true. If you're giving people value and something that adds value to their lives or, be it entertainment, education, access, people will pay for that. 

It's just understanding what is valuable to that audience. You know, some people care about certain things and then other people don't give a crap about that same thing. So if you're not exploring that, you're never gonna find a confident answer. You'll never be confident with whatever number, even with free. you'll never truly be confident in that if you're not doing your homework or understanding the audience and then understanding the value that you're giving to that audience. 

0:10:41

And one of the ways that we do that is by helping you understand what outcomes you're delivering for that audience. Many many times we work with speakers on developing their topics if they need help. And  one of the questions that we get asked a lot from speakers is, I feel like this is a little rambling or I'm trying to cover too much here and we always counter that by saying, well, what do you want people to take away from this? What is the outcome? What do you want them to do With what you're telling them?

 And if you can focus on the outcomes, whether that's in a talk you're preparing or when we're talking about a conference more broadly as a whole, then you can use those outcomes to then build into that. And that helps define your value. If you can say in your marketing, we will help you do x y z or you're gonna come out of this having learned, fill in the blank, that's gonna come across much stronger in delivering that value and communicating to them.

0:11:49

And under all of that is understanding why you're doing this in the first place. What are your motivations? Why are you even hosting a conference? That's another thing that comes out of our EventLab. We ask these questions, like, why now? Why you? really questioning the relevance of your intentions in a way that we hope will help solidify those and help you feel more confident about them.

0:12:16

At some point down the line, you decided that whatever this thing you're doing had to be a conference, had to be an event. Right? That's a decision that's made. So we explore why this has to be an event. Why can't this just be a video that you stick on YouTube? Why does it have to be this? And from there, we help people build on top of that through an event lab. And through the strategy of okay, If this is your reason, what are the outcomes that you're trying to achieve? Because if it has to be a conference, it has to be a conference for the central reason, which is that the outcomes can only be achieved by this format. 

That's me cheating. That's me, you know, spoiling, Giving the answers. But yeah. At the core of it, you decided that it had to be a conference because you could only achieve your goals through that. 

Okay. But what are those goals? And how does that tie to the audience that you're presenting this to? And from there, from these conversations, that's where we can build towards pricing. Pricing is not a number that you just decide on on day one. when you go from there.

0:13:37

So when people ask this, should my event be free? Like with most of the questions people ask, It depends. I'm gonna harp on it just because that's what we do, but it all comes back to understanding your audience. Whether that's their socioeconomic status, what can they afford to pay for the outcome that you're gonna deliver? What are they willing to pay? What resources do they have? What resources do you have as an organizer? How will we question why are you even doing this? Is there anybody else out there that does?

 Are there any other ways that we can possibly do this? Not because we don't want to produce conferences because of course, we wanna do them the right way. We wanna do them intelligently and intentionally. And we wanna make sure that whatever we're creating with our clients is something that is going to meet both their goals and their audience goals. So that's partially why we keep coming down to this question or this notion of understanding your audience because that is core to everything, everything, everything that we do.

0:14:55

And even if the ticket is free, you still have to do all this homework because you need to be confident. because even if it's free, you're still gonna sell the ticket. Like, they're not trading money, but you gotta get to the website, you gotta get them to register, and then you gotta get them to show up. it's hard to say. Honestly, that's harder if it's free. Yes. Because there is no skin in. There's no commitment from them to do that other than giving you some registration information.

0:15:25

And related to all of this and another question that comes up in our event lab process is who isn't this for? It's really easy for people to say, oh, well, I want everybody and their moms to show up. Right? Yeah. Well, cool, but, like, moms don't care about x or y. And so by identifying, who is not invited, who doesn't belong here, who are you intentionally excluding, which is another thing that comes from Priya Parker when talking about setting your gathering's purpose.

0:16:05

That is a really key question to answer because that helps you identify who your audience actually is. What their needs are, what their goals are, and then how you can craft something specifically for them instead of trying to be a super generalist and hit everybody. And it'll actually bring them in because again, even if it's free, you still gotta convince them to come in. You still gotta convince them to attend. Doing all of that homework that we do with people at the beginning, it makes the decision easier, whether they're free or not free. 

 It just helps and then I move into marketing with a lot of confidence. Because there's always gonna be marketing, even if it's free. So don't think that just because you're doing it for free That you get to escape the marketing. Because that's not how this works. 

0:17:01

I would also add that I think that post pandemic or in this weird limbo that we're in right now with it. A lot of people have become really weary and kind of cynical about free events and have been much less likely to just sign up. I think early on, it was a lot easier to be like, oh, yeah. I wanna go to that. Oh, I wanna go, I'm starved for social connection. Right? Because we've all been so isolated. But now as things are kind of equalizing, people are much more kind of critical about what they're committing to even if it's going to be a free event.

0:17:40

So the answer to the question is, it depends, of course, because it always does. Because at the core of everything that we do, it's about understanding what your audience is and how you can deliver something specifically for them. And then determining if that's through a free event or a paid event. So let's do a little recap.

0:18:02

The core question is should my event be free? What people are usually asking is is this actually worth what we're charging for it? A little crisis of confidence there. Can we get away with charging this much? I feel like I'm pulling the wall over my audience's eyes a little bit. Or on the flip side, how can I get the biggest audience ever?

0:18:25

And we will help you work through those things by looking at what outcomes you're delivering, what value you're creating for your audience through your conference, understanding their demographics, socioeconomic status, what resources they have, what they're looking for, and all the different ways that you can do that. And through that, you can then make a calculated and informed decision on what, if anything, you should be charging for your event. 

Thanks for listening to Make it Kickass. We know that setting ticket prices can feel difficult and overwhelming at times, but we hope that you walk away from today's conversation and think about the value that you're providing your audience first and foremost. And if you wanna dig deeper into this topic, you can grab a free copy of the tool that we use with our clients to help them set ticket prices. And you can find that at geteventlab.com. And I will see you all next time.