Selling a targeted event to an employer partner

Why might a smaller group be worth more?

This is a hypothesis, not a measured result: it deserves to be stated clearly before it is used in a negotiation.

The hypothesis fits in one sentence: forty students who exactly match open roles produce more qualified interviews than four hundred who walk past a stand with no link to what the employer is hiring for. If it holds, a targeted event's cost per hire can stay competitive despite a higher price per attendee, because the number of hires follows the group's precision rather than its size.

The example below illustrates this reasoning with fictional figures but exact arithmetic. It does not replace measurement: that is exactly what the report sent after the event will confirm or correct, partner by partner.

The hypothesis has a limit worth knowing before defending it to a partner: below a certain number of attendees, even a perfectly targeted group does not statistically produce enough interviews to guarantee a hire. A targeted event is therefore built on a group wide enough to let the randomness of calendars and individual choices play out, not on the strict minimum of open roles.

What are the four elements of a targeted event offer?

A targeted event offer reads in under two minutes. It always carries the same four elements.

Element	Content
The targeted group	The number of students who match the criteria the partner asked for (programme, search stage, role type)
The places	The number of slots or interviews the partner can hold over the event
The price	Grounded in the value of the targeted group, not the number of expected visitors
The commitment	What the school commits to guarantee in attendance, when that option is chosen (see below)

Who should the offer go to, and in what form?

The offer is addressed to whoever decides the budget on the employer side, usually the schools relations manager or their line manager, not the operational contact who will attend on the day. These are two different people, with two different questions: the first arbitrates a price, the second organises logistics.

Form matters too: one page, with the targeted group and price visible without scrolling, reads and forwards internally more easily than a multi page document buried in a general school presentation.

Do you need a guaranteed attendance, and how do you compensate for it?

A guaranteed attendance is not a required part of the template: it is an option the school can choose, not a clause to impose by default.

When a school offers one, it takes the form of a floor: a guaranteed minimum number of students attending, below which a compensation applies (a credit against the next partnership, for instance, rather than a cash refund). This commitment reassures a partner discovering the format, at the price of a risk the school must be ready to bear if fewer students than expected turn out.

Without a commitment, the offer still stands: the targeted group and the places are enough to ground the price, and the results report sent after the event objectively shows what actually happened.

A school offering a commitment for the first time is better off starting small, on an event whose usual turnout it already knows well, rather than on a new format whose real attendance rate it does not yet know.

How do you set the price?

The price is discussed on what the targeted group is worth to the partner, not on room size. A useful benchmark: what the same number of hires would cost them through another channel.

Example. A general fair costs £8,500 for 210 attendees and 2 hires, or £4,250 per hire. A targeted event, at £12,000, brings 41 attendees but 4 hires, or £3,000 per hire. The price per attendee is higher, the cost per hire is lower. That gap is what justifies a targeted event's price to a partner who only compares attendee numbers.

What if the partner turns down the price?

A refusal almost always comes down to one of two points: the price per attendee, judged too high against a general fair, or doubt about the real size of the targeted group on offer.

On the first point, the answer is cost per hire, not price per attendee: offering to recalculate that figure together from the partner's last general fair results puts the comparison back on the right ground. On the second, an anonymised preview of the targeted group, shown before signature, removes the doubt without revealing student identities before they consent.

If the refusal persists, a smaller version of the offer, with fewer places and a price adjusted accordingly, often lets you test the format without asking the partner for a full commitment the first time.

Keep a record of every refusal and its reason: after a few offers, those reasons form a pattern (price consistently judged too high in a given sector, recurring doubt about a type of targeted group) that helps adjust the next offer before it is even sent.

How do you use the template?

The targeted event offer template is filled in using the criteria discussed with the partner, the matching group and the agreed price. It is sent before the event is confirmed, so the negotiation is about the targeted group rather than the date.

Pypelane is designed to build this group directly from the chosen criteria, with a live count of matching students, and to insert it into the offer with no re-keying.

Once an offer is accepted, keep a dated copy: it becomes the reference when sending the results report after the event, to compare what was promised against what was achieved.