Business events are a great way to promote your company and make useful business connections for the future. The only problem is, they’re incredibly expensive to run and many businesses find that they don’t see much overall return on that investment once they add up all of the running costs. However, if you can find ways to generate revenue at your events, you can make them far more cost-effective. By earning money to offset the running costs of the event, you will be able to put them on more often without causing cash flow issues in your business. These are some of the best ways to generate revenue at a business event. 

Sell Sponsorships 

Sponsorships are one of the most common ways that people raise money at business events. Instead of paying for it all yourself, get other companies and organizations to foot some of the bill in exchange for promotion. When somebody sponsors an event, their brand is included in all of the promotional materials and they can interact with the guests, meaning that they benefit in the same way that you do. In return, they cover some of the costs, making things a lot easier for you.

When trying to sell sponsorships, it’s important that you put together a good pitch. If people are going to sponsor the event, they need to feel confident that they are getting something out of it. So, put together a detailed package with information about who is attending the event and what benefits it will bring. Targeting the right people is crucial too. You need to pick businesses and organizations with a similar target audience to your own. However, be careful that you are not inviting any direct competitors to sponsor your event. 

Encourage Cash Payments 

This is a simple but effective way to manage the cost of running a business event. Taking card payments costs money in credit card fees, so if you can discourage this and get people to pay with cash instead, you maximize the revenue generated from any products sold at the event. Installing a few mobile event ATMs is an easy way to make sure that everybody has access to cash so they are more inclined to spend it. Making cash payments easy also ensures that you don’t alienate anybody that prefers using physical money instead of paying with contactless or mobile payments. 

Facilitate Paid Leads

When people attend a business event, they are often there to make connections with customers and generate new leads. But connecting with the right people can be tough at a large event. Brushing up on your networking skills and printing some good quality business cards is a start, but things will be a lot smoother if you facilitate leads for people, and they’ll be willing to pay for the service. If you look at your guest list and start making connections between people, you can offer a paid leads service to bring people together at the event. Putting people in touch via email before the event is always good too. Your guests will all get more out of the event and you will earn some extra revenue at the same time, so it’s a win-win. 

Put Ads On The Event Website

Promoting your event in the weeks and months leading up to it is so important if you want people to attend and, usually, you will use an event website to do this. Your event site is a good opportunity to generate a bit of revenue before the event even starts, and this makes it so much easier to manage the running costs. Putting ads on the event website is a quick and easy way to turn it into a revenue generator as well as a promotional tool for the event. However, you don’t want the ads to take away from the website and become annoying to potential attendees, so you have to choose wisely. Reach out to companies with a similar target audience and try to get ads that visitors will actually be interested in. This is also a good way to work with companies that were not willing to pay for a full sponsorship package but still want to be affiliated with the event in some way. 

Business events can benefit you and your guests in a lot of ways, but the cost puts a lot of people off. If you pour too much money into setting up the event in the first place, the return on investment is next to nothing. However, if you use these simple methods to generate more revenue, you can offset those costs.