Friday, December 28, 2007

Researching local events

A few months ago we went to a German festival at Fort Meade which is five minutes from our house. It was packed with sponsors who all had tables - well over 50 businesses. The place was mobbed and there were lines of people waiting to visit the tables to pick up information and the giveaways.

Come to find out later it was a whopping $150 to rent a table. You didn't need any huge trade show display. All you needed was $150 and something to give people who stopped by.

The event was Sat. and Sun. Just a wild guess - I would have pulled at least 20 deals out of it. I pulled 7 deals out of a small health fair held at a local fire station (which only ran 10am to 2pm) in '04 and about 200 people where there. There's one thing however I don't have to guess at. I didn't get any business out of it because I didn't have a table.

I've done a lot of research and obviously events are all over the place - far too many to be to personally attend. I'd like to be at the larger events this year - the Maryland State Fair pulls in 600,000 people. How much business would I get out of that?

I think a lot of it is how you have it designed. If you just plant your ass in a chair and people come by to just take your brochures and giveaways - probably not that many. If you create a bit of a buzz and get people to write down their basic info then obviously you'll do a lot better.

In our area Chick-Fil-A always has a booth where you spin a wheel to see which giveaway you'll gonna get. You also fill out a card to win a bigger prize.

I'm not sure I can give away any type of large prize due to rebating laws. But I can absolutely have people fill out short "get a free quote" cards. The bottom line is when people come by you want their contact information.

1 comment:

JR said...

Offer balloon animals to draw the kids in and then have the parents fill in an information card. Put the FUN back into health insurance!

Personally, I like the idea of having a big wheel with all the insurance company names listed and balloons attached underneath the name. If somebody breaks a balloon they get a prize. Compliance might have an issue, but you never know.