A BELATED EVENT REVIEW

Hello everyone

Rather late, but still important - my review of the 7 June Godalming Bazaar event.  I am still looking for that elusive 'right sort of customer', but also realise I need the 'right sort of venue'.  We had 247 visitors to the event and obviously that is just not enough - but having flogged myself (as did many other people) silly with online, face-to-face, paid, paper, street, notice-boards and just about everything else advertising, what else is there left to do?

A lot of people involved in the handmade world feel that craft markets may have had their day - I don't want that to be the case for my events.  Having bought a company that organises events and invested a vast amount of time, money and energy into trying to make them successful, I want to, have to, make it a success for everyone involved - not just for me, but for the stallholders, for those who help out on the day and more importantly for the customers.  I have been offered lots and lots and lots of advice: some excellent, some too expensive, some pretty nigh impossible, some that should involve others but the 'others' don't step forward, so what can I do?

This brings me back to the topic of my last post - the right sort of customer.  How do I find them?  Having paid for an advert in a magazine that was to be delivered to 23,000 homes in the local Godalming area, surely somewhere amongst those 23,000 are the right sort of customers?  Possibly, but the biggest disappointment was that I have received feedback that the magazine was delivered after the event, despite being advised it would be delivered during the week prior to the event.  The only small consolation is that I had the sense to put the dates of the rest of this year's events in the advertisement - will people remember them though?

So sadly, it is back to the drawing board trying to think of new ways to promote the event to encourage customers through the door.   If you have thoughts, ideas, suggestions, please do get in touch or leave a comment on this blog.

Do come back later this week as I have a great guest post about the last Godalming Bazaar event - food for thought for stallholders and for me.

Jill