For women entrepreneurs, who may face challenges such as gender discrimination and harassment on top of everyday business demands, a service like Eventbrite offers a handy combination of control and automation. This puts greater autonomy and power in your hands — and a full range of easy-to-use tools at your fingertips — to make building a women-owned business easier than ever.
Of course, entrepreneurship is never easy. So, to help you learn how to plan a women’s business event with real impact, we checked in with two event creators whose businesses are booming. They credit Eventbrite for making planning, organizing, and marketing events both seamless and comprehensive. Read on and discover their secrets.
Creator Spotlight: Katie Saffert
Katie Saffert started her subscription-based mentorship and guidance group, Business Church, with the goal of encouraging women entrepreneurs to fulfill their potential in both personal and professional environments. Members of her group set periodic goals and enjoy a range of benefits to help them progress toward and achieve these benchmarks.
Then, every 13 weeks or so, Katie hosts female entrepreneur events she calls A Day of Celebration. These events combine yoga, breath work, and a favorite beverage, and celebrate the various victories and accomplishments her membership achieves. Through her own career, Katie says, she noticed a pattern many entrepreneurs may recognize: “I just sprinted past all of my goals that I’ve set and didn’t really take the time to sit back and acknowledge all of the work that I have done.”
A vision achieved
Her vision for A Day of Celebration is to counter the tendency among high-strivers to sometimes ignore their accomplishments. Instead, she wants to “give ourselves the acknowledgment that we deserve. Because when you are a business owner, not many people give you that acknowledgment — so it has to come from us, the owners/founders/CEOs of the company.” Periodically hosting a women’s business event such as this has proven central to Katie’s successes — including the launch of five different businesses in recent years.
Eventbrite tools to the rescue
To make things easier for herself, Katie takes advantage of the many tools and conveniences Eventbrite has available. She especially loves how user-friendly it is and maintains that “the ease of having the back-end and tech done for us — and then also being able to easily send emails out to our attendees — has been such a huge tool for us.” Eventbrite Boost makes promoting your event across social media channels a cinch while creating your event through Eventbrite allows for easy guest registration, ticket sales, and data analysis. Management features like the follow-up emails, automation, and attendee sign-in were particularly useful for Katie when building her entrepreneur events. She considers live, in-person events irreplaceable. “Having events around whatever business you have is the best marketing you could ever do.”
Keywords are key
Katie offers this advice to event creators who are considering different small business event ideas: “Use keywords.” But more than that, use the right keywords. “Thinking about your ideal client and what they might be looking for, those are the keywords you’re going to want inside your listing.” The right keywords make it much easier for the public to find you and your event. She also suggests that creators “pay the [Eventbrite] fees. The cost is worth every penny when you consider paying an assistant [to] do all of the manual setup and tech behind the scenes. It’s the best platform to host events on.”
With business at the Business Church showing no signs of slowing down, and with several more Celebrations already scheduled, she might be on to something.
Katie isn’t alone in her quest to bring small business events — and events for women entrepreneurs in particular — to communities across the country. We also checked in with a certified yoga instructor and sound healer who uses Eventbrite to market not only her business but her image as a means of building her brand.
Creator Spotlight: Marquita René (a.k.a. MQ)
While much of the world closed up shop a couple of years ago in response to the pandemic, yoga and wellness instructor Marquita René instead saw a need for improved health, both physically and emotionally. So MQ, as she is known — with her 500 hours as a registered yoga instructor and 85 hours as a prenatal yoga instructor — started Black Velveteen Yoga. It involved online classes, which allowed her to reach people from across the globe at a time when health and wellness were top of mind for millions.
She also quickly realized the value of Eventbrite in her promotional and marketing efforts. She shared her experiences as a female entrepreneur at the recent RECONVENE session, “Squad Goals: Cultivating a Loyal Event Community.” She spoke about how she was first turned on to Eventbrite by a fellow yogi she met during her training, who promised her how easy it was to spread the word about events to the wider public. The recommendation came at the perfect time; she was just starting out, and one question nagged her: “How do I create and grow a community when I’m the new kid on the block?”
MQ has a few particular pieces of advice for event creators to make sure entrepreneur events are a hit:
- Photography is key for brand-building. She emphasizes that you want to avoid stock photos, as they can make your website or event page seem more impersonal and less distinctive. Instead, she reinforces her brand by featuring photos of herself. And you don’t need to spend a lot of money when hiring a professional photographer; she suggests trading services with a photographer who’s looking to build a portfolio. Another option is to take the photos yourself. “I got an inexpensive tripod and took the photos on my own,” she says. This allows her to control her imagery and create her own look. And since Eventbrite makes it easy to change photographs, you can keep your brand current by featuring images from your latest event.
- Social media is your friend. MQ completely understands why some creators may be wary of social media. “There’s this pressure that you have to be a genius to post on social media,” she says. But ignoring platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter can mean missing huge opportunities. “Take advantage of your bio section in your social media accounts to include a link to your personal website,” she advises. She’s successfully connected with numerous other brands on various social media accounts. For example, she has partnered with the Daughter’s Den and has connected with the Indigenous Intentions community. “You want to find brands that you’re familiar with and that already line up with your brand,” she says, “because it will feel more organic and more natural to promote them and share what they’re doing.”
- Focus on small, obtainable goals. Setting yourself up for success means setting realistic goals. “The key thing is to have good time management, to be realistic about what you’ll be able to accomplish, and set yourself small, obtainable goals. Take everything moment by moment, and know you’ll face challenges, but that you’ll be able to overcome them at the same time.” And with each victory, your business gains momentum.
How Eventbrite can help you plan your business events
What Katie’s and MQ’s stories show is how easy and effective Eventbrite can be in creating business events that reach as wide an audience as possible. The intuitive interfaces and simple processes let any of us — no matter how tech-savvy we might be — create and market successful events on a regular basis. Eventbrite’s effectiveness leans on three essential features:
- Easy emails. Features like registration allow you to create an email database of people who have expressed an interest in your event. Creators like MQ love how easy it is to stay in touch with their clientele. “The email aspect of Eventbrite was a great resource for me because it allowed me to send reminders to my attendees when class was starting,” she says. That made it easier for her students to keep track of her classes and helped to improve attendance.
- Targeted communications. Ease of communication is also what makes Eventbrite Boost so useful. With the ability to send as many as 6,000 emails a day, targeting only those who are most likely to attend your event, Eventbrite Boost gives you not only volume but also effectiveness. You can also promote your event across various social media with a click of a button. And as any successful entrepreneur can attest, broad and effective messaging is half the battle.
- Intuitive workspaces. Eventbrite’s new Workspaces navigation streamlines all your tasks in one easy-to-find location on a calendar-based main page. You get an Orders Workspace that lets you find any order placed within the last 12 months, plus a Marketing Workspace that helps you organize a wide range of promotional efforts across social media and email campaigns. Finance and Reports Workspaces make staying on top of your events a breeze.
Create your women’s business event on Eventbrite
With so many tools at your fingertips, it’s never been easier to create women’s networking programs and business events that make a real impact. In-person and virtual events are great ways to achieve your goals, whether you seek to educate, network, or inspire. All you need to do is to begin the journey.
Create your event to take your brand to new heights.
