Visits in total: 228611
Visits this month: 1509
Visits in total: 228611
Visits this month: 1509
Events are about to change how they function, which means for many event suppliers major changes will have to be made. Adapting to survive the new normal is essential.
As you make these changes to ensure that they coincide with new guidelines its extremely important to let your industry audience know how, why and what’s in it for them.
Communication as we move into this new way of corporate and public events will be essential and it will take more than just a one off email to let your audience know, as corporate event bookers are not all buying and hiring at the same time. If you update someone now, but they are not planning their event for another 8 months, expect that its more likely they would have forgotten about your update at that crucial time.
So how can you ensure that your important ‘update’ message is constantly in view to your potential buyers?
We explore a few options here…
You or a member of your team could call everyone on your database and keep updating the news every month. This can be a very effective method as you get feedback in real time, as long as you get to speak with the relevant person. Telesales can be very time consuming to find the relevant person and quite an expensive method with a full time salary and phone charges. Cost will also be determined by the size of your database. The likelihood of calling that person just as they are looking to buy is pretty unlikely also.
With the aid of a good quality CRM (Client Relationship Management) system you can contact all your database contacts in one swift hit. You can time campaigns and plan several months in advance. This method is very efficient, doesn’t take long to organise and can be seen by 1000’s within a few seconds, however, emails can also be easily ignored, some will go into junk folders and could never be seen. People do not tend to keep too many emails on a system so if it’s not currently of interest it will get deleted. People can also become frustrated with emails arriving every few weeks if it’s not currently relevant and may leave your mail list prematurely. As a recommendation of CRM we have found ‘Keap’ (formerly Infusionsoft) an amazing product.
Another quick and efficient way to share news and links back to your main website, but some social media channels only show your posts to people who are constantly engaged with your content so the reach may not be as strong as you’d like. You need to develop 1000’s of relevant, engaged followers for best success here. Some platforms do not have the search facility in advertising campaigns of ‘job title’ which really is the best option for business to business sales in a bid to hit the most relevant people. LinkedIn seems to be one of the best for business to business and Facebook for business to consumer by searching for people through their listed interests.
Dedicating an engaging, informative page on your website giving guidelines to your new way of doing things or your new product or service is highly recommended. You’ll also want to ensure that your contact details are clear on that page so that buyers can contact you instantly, rather than having to navigate your website for it.
Your information should be permanently in place, allowing buyers to see it when they are searching for the service you offer. You can use some of the other methods above to share the link direct to this page for people to learn more if they have an interest. Go for shorter amounts of information on your links, but enough to make buyers click through, then have loads of engaging yet simple to follow details, videos and images available for event organisers to easily understand what they are buying and how it will benefit their event.
These can be directories or industry media sites which have more than just an address entry facility and of which can act as a second website to your own. These sites should do a lot of the proactive marketing groundwork for you included in your subscription to ensure key people are using the site and searching for suppliers like you.
These sites are used all year round so keeping your details up to date is vital to catch buyers when they are actively looking. When these users have a requirement, they simply search the service they require and input the location for their event. With the world changing so rapidly sites like www.EventServiceCheck.com are highly used by organisers as they know that the suppliers on offer are vetted and have the basic credentials to be compliant in the corporate events industry.
These sites are trusted so the suppliers that subscribe benefit from that. Its an option of relatively low marketing spend, but high impact results and flexibility. You can also track every movement here too, who has been to your page, emailed you, called, visited your site and your social media channels or filled out an enquiry webform on your page.
To be fool proof you should really be performing a degree of all of the above methods and there’s no time like now, whilst it’s a little quieter in our industry to plan the reignition. Start to build your content ready to launch through the channels mentioned, but keep in mind that one off information won’t be enough, your changes will need to be seen for 6, 12, 18 months into the future, so plan long term strategy as well as short.
To help this reignition, EventServiceCheck.com have a special ‘bounce back’ offer to join in 2020. Click here for details, call us on 01793 374 430 or send an email request to smile@eventservicecheck.com
