How Freelancers, Consultants and Small Businesses Can Win Clients With Events

Going freelance, becoming a consultant or starting your own small business can be hugely rewarding – you get to be your own boss, bring your own ideas to life and capitalise on your past experience.

That said, it can also be challenging because – unless you are very well known and connected – clients won’t be necessarily be banging down your door to work with you.

It’s up to you to find potential clients and communicate how you can help them – and crucially, convince them to pay for your services. Building a network; getting out and talking to people face-to face, is absolutely vital.

To gain a better insight into the ways freelancers, consultants and small businesses are using events to boost their businesses, we surveyed more than 500 professionals working across a range of sectors in the UK and Ireland.

Here are 9 top take-aways from our report.

1. 83% of the freelancers, consultants and small businesses who hosted events in 2015 believe it helped them to generate more business and win more clients.

2. 53% intend to increase the amount of time and/or investment they put into events in 2016, while 38% will maintain their current activity.

3. 67% of  freelancers, consultants and small businesses (67%) stated they could – and did – measure the return on their investment from hosting events.

4. 40% of respondents judged the ROI of their event based on how many attendees they managed to attract; closely followed by looking at the leads generated (39%) or new clients won (28%).

5. A further 16% did set out to generate revenue from the event itself and evaluated ROI on profit made.

6. 11% considered intangible factors such as the response from attendees and having “happier clients”. Improved communication and higher participation rates were also highlighted.  

7. The most popular type of event organised by freelancers, consultants and small businesses last year was training, with 45% hosting sessions to share their skills. This was followed by networking events (40%) and workshops (30%).

8. Organisers using Eventbrite enjoyed a higher average attendance, with 47% hosting events with 21-60 attendees (versus 32% who used excel sheets and email); and 24% getting over 60 registrations (versus just 14% of those using manual registration methods).

9. 56% of freelancers, consultants and small businesses agreed strongly or very strongly that meeting people in the flesh was important for building relationships; while 53% agreed with the statement: “drawing people together is important.”

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