Building Community as a Small Business: Lessons from Our First Event

In January, we hosted our first community event, and we wanted to share what we learned about building community as a small business with no established brand presence. If you’re a small business looking to engage with your audience, we hope this breakdown will be helpful!

Why We Hosted This Event

As a niche product, Ning Collective journals require a hands-on experience for people to truly understand their value. We wanted to create an intimate setting where attendees could try out a mini version of our main product while also enjoying a discounted shopping spree. By running a guided journaling session, we helped participants explore different sections of our system in a relaxed and interactive way.

Beyond that, we saw this as an opportunity to gain brand awareness without spending much—our total event budget was under $100. It was also a way to test our ability to host community events, build relationships with early customers, and grow through word of mouth.

Pre-Event Planning

Our journey began with tapping into our networks and inviting friends, small influencers, and some of our earliest customers. Here’s how we put everything together:

1. Finding a Venue

We secured a cozy, cost-effective space that aligned with our brand. As a small business we needed to cut costs, so we found a condominium function room. It was cozy and intimate, allowing for deeper conversations.

2. Creating Invitations

We used Google Forms for influencers, providing them with a special form, while Luma was used for regular attendees, allowing us to charge a small event fee. We then marketed the event through our respective social media accounts.

3. Designing Mini Journals

To make the experience hands-on, we created a compact version of our product so attendees could try it out during the session. This process was interesting as we had to decide on what features to modify to make it more interactive and not too intense to make the experience fun, but still give participants the space to reflect.

4. Purchasing Supplies

We sourced all our materials from taobao and Daiso. This kept our costs relatively low and all the materials are reusable for future events.

5. Catering and Dietary Restrictions

We arranged refreshments while keeping food allergies in mind.

6. Getting Sponsors

We partnered with Curated Culture, they sponsored the flavoured kombucha that everyone enjoyed. This was a joint effort between our brand partner Gleam Athleisure.

7. Aligning Brand Values

We integrated both brands around shared values of wellness and mental health, leading to our event name: Align & Unwind.

The Event

The event itself was a mix of community bonding, hands-on engagement, and retail activation. Here’s how it unfolded:

• Guided Journaling Session – We took participants through different sections of our journaling system, helping them experience its benefits firsthand.
  
• Interactive Conversations – Since we invited smaller influencers and early customers, we had the chance to chat with everyone and make personal connections. This allowed us to foster future partnerships and build a loyal follower base. By focusing on meaningful interactions, we opened up opportunities for future community-driven workshops and positioned our brand as more than just a product—it became an experience.
  
  
• Discounted Shopping Spree – Attendees had the opportunity to purchase our products at an exclusive discount, turning the event into a seamless blend of education and sales.
  
  
• Refreshments & Networking – Drinks were provided by our partner, Gleam, making the atmosphere more relaxed and social.
  
  
• Filming & Content Creation – This event doubled up as a content creation day without feeling too taxing. We simply documented our experience in an organic way, capturing key moments while engaging with attendees. This approach provided us with a wealth of content to use across our social media, effectively killing two birds with one stone—running a successful event while generating valuable marketing material.

Post-Event Follow-up

After the event, we focused on leveraging the relationships we built:

• Following Up with Influencers – Engaging with key opinion leaders (KOLs) to encourage further promotion.
• Evaluating Our Efforts – Analyzing what worked and what could be improved for next time.

Key Learnings & Areas for Improvement

Reflecting on our first event, we identified several takeaways:

1. Missed Opportunity for Lead Collection – While attendees enjoyed the event, we didn’t effectively collect community signups as leads. We had planned to but didn’t fully execute, leaving our PR efforts underutilized. Next time, we’ll ensure we capture more than just discount codes from influencers.
   
   
2. Personal Engagement Had a Big Impact – Since our influencers were smaller and the event was intimate, we had genuine conversations with attendees. This helped create a strong connection and sense of belonging.
   
   
3. Understanding Event Sign-ups – While we had a full house, many attendees were friends or existing contacts. To expand our reach, we may explore running ads, partnering with larger brands, or tapping into established communities.
   
   
4. Strengthening the Community-to-Sales Pipeline – Our product selection wasn’t broad enough to maximize post-event sales. While we gained social media followers from influencer posts, we realized that having a wider, more accessible product range would have increased conversions.

Final Thoughts

Hosting this event was an eye-opening experience, and despite some missed opportunities, it reinforced the power of community engagement. We learnt a lot and managed to get product feedback from a community that really cares about the product. Involving early users to be part of the product development allowed us to refine the product and learn about what we could do better. As a small business, having genuine supporters was crucial to our early success. Moving forward, we’ll refine our strategies, enhance our product offerings, and continue finding ways to bridge the gap between community and sales. We are excited to host more community hangouts in the future.

If you’re a small business looking to host an event, we’d love to hear about your experiences! What strategies worked for you? Let’s share and grow together.