How we organised the South’s Biggest Entrepreneur Summit
THE BRIEF
Sunny Bird PR set out to host the South Coast’s biggest entrepreneur event designed to equip entrepreneurs and marketers with the skills needed to reach millions of people and make millions of pounds.
THE CHALLENGE
With a plethora of networking and speaking events for businesses and entrepreneurs to attend we needed to make ours truly stand out among the competition to sell as many tickets as possible!
THE SOLUTION
We knew that to make our event truly stand out, the most important factor was a killer line up of speakers from a cross-sector of industries. The team diligently researched sought after speakers who could give our audience members insightful and tangible advice to grow their businesses. After many meetings and discussions, the final line-up included Co-founder of Lush Rowena Bird, Dragons’ Den star Piers Linney, The Apprentice finalist and founder of MYLK PLUS Camilla Ainsworth, founder of Social Chain Hannah Anderson, Grenade founders Alan and Juliet Barratt and Cemal Ezel, founder of the social enterprise Change Please.
Once we had our speakers secured, the next task was to organise a seamless and professional event for all our attendees. For our venue we chose Bournemouth’s Hilton Hotel, a stylish destination and a hub for business activity in the town. The team worked hard to ensure all the little details were worked out from menu options and seating plans, to the staging and sound for the day.
To ensure the summit was valuable for our attendees we added an interactive element to the day in the form of a live media panel which the audience could quiz on how to get their brands and businesses in the press. The media panel included journalists from across the board including a national print journalist, a regional newspaper editor, a radio station director, magazine editor and an influencer so our audience could pick their brains about how to pitch to journalists and work get their brand mentioned in the print, broadcast and digital media.
With the event arranged and speakers booked, the team focused on promoting the event. This included placing press releases in regional newspapers and business publications. We also arranged for our team to be interviewed on regional radio stations such as Hot Radio and Wessex FM to spread the news of the summit. Alongside this, the team set up a targeted social media advertising campaign to promote the summit to interested people.
Of course, no good event is complete without a goody bag which including products from a range of well-respected brands including Jimmy’s Iced Coffee, vouchers for the Chewton Glen Hotel and Spa and the SCA clinic, MYLK PLUS, Moneypenny notebooks, Great British Biscotti, Feel Good Coffee, Tea Pigs, Mr Lee’s Noodles and our very own Reaching Millions PR and Publicity Bible!
THE OUTCOME
More than 150 business owners and entrepreneurs attended the Entrepreneur Summit 2019. To promote the event, we also placed 14 articles in business and regional press which were read by more than 430,000 people. Following a post-event survey all attendees said the found the speakers informative and the event well-organised with 100% saying they would attend another Entrepreneur Summit- watch this space!