CREATING WITH YOUR AUDIENCE IN MIND

Recently, one of our frequent participants asked if we could have a virtual Breakfast With The Girls and I smiled. Actually, I have been tossing the idea around in my head and a few other people have asked but no concrete decision has been made yet. Breakfast With The Girls has gradually become our signature event and I feel so grateful to be leading the team that makes this happen.

Sometimes I scroll through the pictures and bask in the wonderful memories from these experiences. We have had 6 of its kind since we started The Fabulous Woman Network in 2015. Today, I am going to let you in on how we have been making decisions on some aspects of this event since we started.

 

2015 Dinner With The Girls | Kumasi

Our Creative Director upon seeing how our Facebook page was on fire with engagement and growth, suggested we have an event for women in Kumasi. Now, I am not sure if prior to that I had thought about it. NOTE: If you’ve followed our work for a while, then you’ve probably heard me say or read that I had no idea of what to do with The Fabulous Woman Network in the beginning and for a long time afterwards. Well, I put aside any form of self-doubt and fear, as well as fought battles to eventually have our first ever event – Dinner With The Girls in December 2015. It was not ticketed, I simply invited some friends, colleagues and aquaintances. We had a great time sharing, networking and taking lots of pictures. Little did I know that by so doing, I was testing a business idea.

2017 – Breakfast With The Girls and Dinner With The Girls | Kumasi

I had just returned from the Mandela Washington Fellowship with a new zeal and a slightly better understanding of what a business looks like. One day, I was sitting at Golden Bean Hotel cracking my brain as to what to do next for an event. All of a sudden I had a thought ‘hey how about an event where you’ll just

have a great time networking with other women over breakfast?’ I loved the sound of that!

I quickly called my friend and Accountability Partner to share the idea and she said ‘good idea!’ Then I informed some of the ladies in our close network who all thought it was a great idea. The turn out was so good that I had to actually say no to a few people who wanted to attend at the very last minute. I promised the ladies that we were definitely going to continue the conversation on the ‘distin’ (see me in chambers for the meaning) with a dinner later that year and so we did.

After this event, I asked 3 of the participants to share their feedback and one of them actually gave a negative feedback that hurt like ouch. I was hurt because organising that particular event had been so stressful AND we had made a financial loss (not the first time). However, I decided not to be blinded by my bruised ego but instead probe to find out exactly what would make it better. I asked and asked including using Facebook polls until I had enough different though not new ideas to try which led to…

2018 Breakfast With The Girls | Accra and Dinner With The Girls | Kumasi

Yes, we had to do Accra as majority of the women in our audience resided there and I was frankly tired of ‘when are you coming to Accra?’ One lady actually told me point blank ‘if you want to be relevant, you have to have events in Accra’ Oh and by the way, we have had 3 events in Accra since then and not once have I sighted her at any. But I digress.

 

 

 

In summary…

There is so much more to what goes into these events, but for the purpose of this write up, I want to focus on some of the key steps we take before bringing an event to our audience.

*First, there is an idea which may come from a team member, a client, a random social media post, etc.

*Then there is testing of the idea by actually trying it out live, with mistakes and all.

*Afterwards, we seek feedback from our clients, analyse them, repeat what worked, improve what did not and try again.

*We start all over again from then on.

I cannot sit here and lie that we have perfected our art. However, I can confidently say that we have made a lot of progress and continue to strive for more.

I wrote this for you…

Do you struggle to create content i.e. products, services, experiences, social media posts, etc  for your clients? Then you are the one I wrote this for. One of your solutions is to ask your target audience what they want/need and give it to them in a form that will be of value to them. Like us, you probably do not have huge funds to do sophisticated research, I encourage you to be creative with how you ask and you will be surprised by what you will learn about your audience.

Oh one more thing, please avoid the temptation to copy blindly what others in your niche are doing. Ask your own audience, add your signature and God will polish it with His blessings.

You are truly fabulous!

Ama xx

Photo Credit: Vera Obeng Photography