A Great Idea for Creating A Memorable Event

How do you get good buzz from an event? How do you ensure that the people who come to your event leave with positive things to say? And how can you get non-attendees to make sure they show up at the next event you host?

My friend, Bert Martinez, is a motivational speaker who travels the country and speaks at trade shows, business conferences and other venues. Bert sees good ideas all the time, so I asked him the questions above. Here’s one best practice Bert thinks every event organizer should use.

“Assign a staff member to take short videos of the attendees and presenters having fun at the event. Catch them in a light moment,” says Bert. “Ask each person if they would like a copy emailed to them. Almost everyone will say yes. Then while they’re in a good mood, ask each person on camera to make a short recommendation, no more than 30 to 60 seconds in length, about a workshop, a presenter, a group dinner or some other aspect of your event.”

Bert’s idea is right on target. He goes on to say, “Now you’ve intensified their emotions and created a lasting memory for them about your event. But here’s how to seal the deal,” says Bert. “Upload the videos every hour or so at the event, post them to youtube.com or kyte.com, and send them by email to the attendees. The videos will always be watched by the people on camera and they’ll be frequently forwarded to coworkers, suppliers, customers and others.”

This is a fantastic idea. Your event grows virally, your video can be used for future event marketing and you can place it on your website.

“People may think they’re attending your event for purely business reasons,” says Bert, “but they’re surprised when they leave with great, lasting memories. A small investment in a Flip video camera (about $100) will pay huge dividends with your customers, prospects — and your future success.”

Mark Travers is President of www.EventsInAmerica.com, the most comprehensive online directory of trade shows, events and conferences in the United States and President of MediaCross, a full-service advertising agency (www.mediacross.com). His phone number is (314) 646-1101 and his email address is markt@mediacross.com.

The 5 Ws for Planning Effective Meetings and Trade Shows

There’s no perfect answer or magic bullet to putting on a perfect, effective meeting or trade show. But finding the answers to five familiar questions early on will help you get started. The 5 Ws for planning effective meetings and trade shows are:

Why?

Define your purpose, right from the beginning. Why are you participating? What do you hope to accomplish? What’s the end result — your goal? Make your objectives straightforward and easy to measure, quantify them wherever you can so you can report on your results later on.

What?

Once you know your objectives, you can decide how you want to accomplish them. Are you better served by participating in one or more industry trade shows, putting on your own private event at a hotel or conference center, sponsoring a conference — or all three? What will you need for each to connect with the audience and be successful? This may be a great time to engage a professional advertising agency to help you create a display, prepare handout materials, create a pre-show marketing program to get customers and prospects to your booth, and a post-show program to ensure timely follow-up with prospects.

Who?

Now define your audience. Who do you most want to attend? As you create your meeting agendas or booth displays, remember who’s talking — and who’s listening. Speak to them, not to yourself or your board members (unless they’re the audience, of course). Make a promise your audience can relate to, one that addresses their needs. 

Where?

It’s important to learn everything you can about your exhibit space long before your event begins. Read the exhibitor’s rules and regulations before you commit because what you’re planning to do at your event may not be allowed by the venue or the organizer. Make sure your display will fit. If it’s too tall, you may have to take it down. If you need electric at your booth and don’t arrange for it beforehand, you may violate union rules at the venue if you plug in to someone else’s power. Get caught and you might get shut down. 

If you’re planning your own meeting, make sure your venue has the appropriate capacity for your anticipated audience. If your venue offers food, sample several menu items before your event to ensure they meet your expectations. If it doesn’t cater, ensure your contract allows you to bring in food from the outside. And plan to bring in extra staff to assist guests. It can be easy for event participants to quickly overwhelm staff and become dissatisfied if event staff is undermanned. A little conservative overestimating upfront on the size of your potential audience and staff will pay dividends later.

If you’re pulling attendees from across the country, you’ll also need to consider travel costs. It can be complicated to arrange travel schedules for people coming from all corners of the USA and beyond — but many times, you can also expect to have a more productive, focused meeting if people are away from the home office.

When?

The question of when to hold your event is a matter of logistics as much as it is psychology or practicality. Of course, in many cases you may be bound by an existing trade show schedule. If you’re offering product demos or performances, be sure those don’t conflict with what the organizer has already planned for keynote speakers, social functions or special events.

If you’re planning a larger, sponsored event of your own, you’ll want to consider several factors that could impact attendance. The first consideration, of course, is to avoid weeks around major holidays. If your industry has any seasonality considerations — for example, the fourth quarter in retail or March and April for CPAs — you’ll generally want to avoid those periods. And while you’re in the planning stage, call other hotels and events in the city where you’re going to host. Find out who else will be hosting events at the same time as yours. If you avoid conflicts with other events (including sporting events), you’ll increase your chances to get the people you most want to attend.

In addition to the season, pay attention to days of the week. Research has shown that Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays are generally not the best for attendance or attention. Wednesdays and Thursdays are the most popular — which means they’re traditionally the most effective, but you may also have some competition.

Plan, Plan, Plan.

Of course, securing solid answers to the five Ws doesn’t guarantee your event will be a success. But it does give you a solid start for success.

Mark Travers is President of www.EventsInAmerica.com, the most comprehensive detailed online directory of trade shows, events and conferences in the United States and President of MediaCross, a full-service advertising agency (www.mediacross.com). His phone number is (314) 646-1101 and his email address is markt@mediacross.com.

Got A Niche? Scratch It.

By giving under-served niche markets the attention they deserve, your business could reap incremental revenue now and for years to come.

It’s an inevitable consequence of success: You’ve found the largest markets for your products and services. You’ve served them well. And justifiably, you’ve assigned them the lion’s share of resources – your prized employees, advertising dollars, customer retention efforts and more.

But sooner or later, these markets mature, competition increases and margins dwindle.  As a sales or marketing professional, where do you find new revenue opportunities without some of the competitive pressures inherent in the larger segments?

Take a close look at niche groups.  You may find that in certain vertical markets, trade associations, geographically-advantageous areas and buying consortiums, you can realize double-digit percentage sales gains and lifetime customer values that rival those of your most profitable accounts.  And in today’s challenging economic environment, this one idea may mean the difference between the year ending in black ink or red.

Does your business have a new customer opportunity in these areas?

• Sectors of primary markets where smaller prospect numbers discourage in-person selling.
• Classes of trade where the emphasis needs to shift from commodity pricing to added value.
• Exploratory or new markets where direct sales people lack contacts or experience.

By directing highly-focused marketing programs to these niche groups, you just may find new long-term sources of revenues and improved share.  Ask yourself these 3 questions:

1.  Do you have customers who provide only a small amount of revenue to your firm right now but who, potentially, could provide much more?

2.  Are there industries or geographic regions which you suspect could represent good revenue potential if you had the time or resources to direct toward them?

3.  If you could be shown a customer acquisition program that promised a rate of return in line with your business case analysis, would you allocate funding for a test?

If your answer to any is “yes,” you’ll want to carefully consider the following case studies.

3 Studies in Fulfilled Potential

Case Study #1 – Insurance

A national insurance broker handles the property and casualty insurance for a trade association of 4,500 engineering firms.  The broker built up the business to cover 950 members – about 20% of the total – but couldn’t get beyond that threshold.  So it engaged its marketing partner to research a sample of the total, qualified non-participating members through outbound telemarketing, develop specialized advertising and direct mail programs, handle incoming telephone inquiries and put the broker’s agents in touch with only the most qualified candidates.

The result:  After one year, the program added 105 new members to the association’s insurance plan and generated $1,004,736 in new premiums – its best year ever.

Case Study #2 – Energy

A natural gas marketer operated in a section of one city in which the company’s gas mains ran parallel to those of its competitor.  The marketer’s objective was to acquire its competitor’s customers – those who were proximate to the parallel main.  While small in number, these accounts represented good gas volumes and excellent long-term incremental income.  Its marketing partner developed a program to identify prospects, verify the gas decision maker in each company, create direct mail and advertising to compel prospects to consider the marketer’s product, help the sales force with appointment setting through follow-up telemarketing, and assist in new customer orientation.

The result:  Out of 576 prospective accounts, the program generated 110 new customers, representing $140,000 in annual net incremental income.

Case Study #3 – Automotive

A major automotive parts manufacturer competing for a $77 million contract felt the 79 members comprising the prospect’s buying consortium had an incomplete understanding of the company’s capabilities.  Its marketing partner developed an image modification plan and executed a complex direct marketing program to change the consortium’s view of the company.

The result:  The program worked so well, the manufacturer won the full $77 million contract.

Program Costs and Lifetime Customer Value

These case studies are impressive as far as they go.  But when one factors in lifetime customer value (LCV), one can really see the payback that niche group marketing promises.  In case study #1, the insurance broker’s LCV is approximately 10 years, so it will generate $10,047,360 in premiums from the 105 newly acquired participants.  The costs to execute the customer acquisition marketing program were about $72,000, or about $686 for each new participant - up to 6.1 times more cost-efficient than the traditional personal sales call customer acquisition method.

Over the entire 10-year LCV period, the insurance broker’s investment in the program will represent a minuscule .0071 (0.71%) of total premium dollars earned.  Case studies 2 and 3 – using more conservative LCVs of 5 years – also show impressive revenue returns.

Your company may be able to generate similar results.  In this difficult economy, it pays to look at every opportunity.

 

What is Your Brand?

If you were to ask fifty people the question, ‘What is a brand?’ you’d likely get fifty answers. I know, because I have asked that question, hundreds of times. And I often hear these and other responses: ‘A brand is a logo’ ..or.. ‘an ad campaign’ ..or.. ‘our sales force’ ..or.. ‘the sum total of all impressions’ ..or dozens more.

All of the above are symbols or elements of a brand. But the brand, itself? Sorry. None of the above quite hits the mark. Here’s the answer:

A brand — your brand — is a promise to your customers that your products or services will meet or exceed their expectations each and every time. All of these other elements — the logo, the website, the sales force — are merely distributors of the brand promise.

Companies with strong brands work very hard to integrate the brand promise throughout every aspect of their organizations, so when customers have an encounter or transaction with the brand, that promise is continually reinforced. And then that continual reinforcement ultimately creates a belief system among customers.

BMW owners, for example, have bought into the belief system that BMW is ‘the ultimate driving machine.’ And that promise is reinforced every time they drive, by BMW’s precise handling, quick acceleration, exacting engineering and fine appointments. John Deere owners have bought into the brand promise of durability, because ‘nothing runs like a Deere.’ The consumer who enjoys a Budweiser has bought into the belief system that Budweiser is the ‘King of Beers.’

Bold promises (backed by facts) create strong believers. And strong believers create strong brands. What do your customers believe? What’s your brand promise?

Mark’s email address is markt@mediacross.com

Maximizing Sales Leads

Okay, you’ve exhibited at your industry trade show. You’ve collected scores of leads. Now what happens? If your company is like many, those leads get distributed out from the sales manager to one or more salespeople — and then they end up under a pile of catalogs, sales plans and other crap, never again to see the light of day. Want a better solution? Hire an outside call center or marketing firm to make the follow-up calls for your company. Afraid the outside resource won’t understand your business well enough to make an intelligent sales call? Well, you could always train them to do the job. Or you could limit their role to asking 3 or 4 key questions of each prospect to further qualify each lead.

Ed Overy, Business Development Director for MediaCross, an integrated marketing firm in St. Louis (www.mediacross.com) says this method “eliminates all the dead ends in sales prospecting that bog down sales departments. You want to put your sales guys out in front of bonafide prospects, doing what they do best….and that’s selling,” says Overy. “You don’t want them wasting their time on prospects who have no interest in buying your product or service.” Overy’s firm, MediaCross, provides sales lead follow-up calling programs. “We’ve had great success for clients — giving them a daily feed of prospects who absolutely want to do business,” he says. “A company spends a lot of money participating in trade shows and events,” says Overy. “This is just the smart way to maximize its investment.”

Ed Overy’s email address is: edo@mediacross.com