January 19th, 2010
Category: Event Management
So now you’ve selected your events carefully and allocated your dollars wisely. Now be sure to get the most for your money. Here are some ideas to help make your investment go the distance.
- Split the costs and assess what your partners are doing. If they already plan to invest in a trade event you are considering, sharing the cost/resource burden can get you into a first time event inexpensively.
- Be creative: work the event not just the booth. Your exhibit contract often includes basic/limited ways to promote your company unless you can get in early with expensive sponsorships, but traditionally small and mid-sized business get lost among the popular brands. Use out-of-the-box thinking to conceive new, cost efficient ways to reach your audience who are already about, such as private hospitality or demo events leveraging co-ops with participating trade associations or industry luminaries. Direct marketing tactics via nearby hotels and restaurants work also.
The bottom line? You must be able to justify your company’s events participation, especially when marketing budgets are in flux. Be smart, pace yourself and follow these sound strategies to ensure your events are effective in yielding the highest potential for sale opportunities.
Tags: Event Planning Budgets, Event Strategy, Marketing Best Practices, TME Communications
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January 18th, 2010
Category: Event Management
Focusing on quality not quantity when it comes to your events strategy is the key to wise management of your marketing dollars. Take the time to prequalify! Assess (or reassess) the events you are considering—those you’ve previously attended and new possibilities—with an increasingly discerning eye while keeping these suggestions in mind:
- Make qualified chooses before you invest. Pay for one sales guy to walk the exhibit floor and attend a few conference sessions to determine if the event is right for you. If it is, be the first to sign up for the next event (at the current event) with a great booth location and a lead on speaking opportunities. If it’s not, you had an opportunity to hand out a few business cards and save your company lots of money.
- Cut the bad ones loose. Events that used to yield success may no longer prove valuable. Do not continue to invest in these events out of fear that absence suggests instability. Today, demand creation supersedes brand equity in an event, so unless you have a free speaking slot secured, you should reallocate your marketing budget.
So, now that you’ve built your events calendar with the pre-qualified events you’ve deemed worthwhile, now what? Be creative to make sure you get the biggest bang for your buck. We’ll discuss this in greater detail tomorrow.
Tags: Event Management, Event Planning Budgets, Event Strategy, Marketing Best Practices, TME Communications
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January 15th, 2010
Category: Event Management
While online and offline events have proven successful in yielding a competitive edge for most business, without an events’ strategy they consume marketing budgets and resources. For this reason, we recommend formulating an events’ strategy. Consider these ideas as a starting point:
- Build a trusted community with recurring events.
- Make qualified choices before you invest.
- Cut the bad ones loose.
- Split the cost and assess what your partners are doing.
- Be creative: work the event, not just the booth.
Over the course of the next few days we’ll elaborate upon each of these points. Today we’ll just focus on the first recommendation:
- Build a trusted community with recurring events. If you host seminars and webinars where attendance should be purposely limited and carefully screened, its best to lock-down a calendar (frequency) so that you can predict costs, subsidize with select co-sponsors, secure quality presenters and target lists, and allow time to promote only the topics that offer the greatest sales opportunities. More insights Monday…
Tags: Event Management, Event Planning Budgets, Event Strategy, Marketing Best Practices, TME Communications
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January 6th, 2010
- Practical insights by: Marybeth Profrock, Anexinet (systems integration & technology management company)
Category: Event Management, Sales Process
In the world of technology consulting, current and prospective customers who are serious about investing in enterprise-wide IT solutions from a strategic viewpoint, often prefer traditional events—executive roundtables, seminars, etc—where the attendance is purposely limited and that offer the greatest potential for peer-to-peer interaction. But, in order to justify the expense for higher value/lower quantity attendance, getting the event off the ground involves key steps even before any promotions are factored. Here’s my checklist:
- Build a “power-team” by actively involving your sales team in each phase — while planning, during joint event promotion, during the event to spur networking discussions, and during attendee follow-up. Gain firm cooperation, and hold them accountable.
- Together, identify a compelling topic that is most pertinent to expediting the sales process.
- Align with co-sponsors for co-funding to keep costs predictable and reasonable, and boost brand power to attract the attendees you want in the seats.
- Select a convenient, unique venue and appropriate time slot. We all like an excuse to check out something out of the ordinary, and talk about it later.
Aligning sales and marketing throughout the event planning process will help reduce or even eliminate common disconnect that can occur, and keep focus on driving quality attendees to push the sales pipeline along.
Tags: Event Management, Event Planning, Lead Generation, Marketing Best Practices, Sales Process, TME Communications
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December 22nd, 2009
Category: Sales Process
Yes, I said marketing. When it comes to B2B product sales, we believe that sales and marketing should work as a team, with separate roles but a shared aim—shortening the sales cycle. The way we see it, marketing’s primary role should be prequalification of suspect lists to build the sales pipeline and provide cleaner databases. Marketing should focus on suspects, freeing frontline sales to concentrate on customers and prospects already in the pipeline and ready to purchase or upgrade. So how does marketing prequalify and warm up those suspects? With integrated lead generation programs—like webinars, trade shows, partner marketing, sponsorship with trade affiliations—or isolated online and offline tactics, or timed teleservices with pre-call tactics (NOT “script-read” cold calling). Know your role and success is yours!
Tags: B2B Marketing and Communications, Business to Business Marketing, Database Management, Database Marketing, Integrated Lead Generation, Lead Generation, Marketing Best Practices, Partner Marketing, Sales Pipeline, Sales Process, Sales Support, Sarah Pyle, Sponsorships, TME Communications, Trade Affiliations, Trade Shows, Webinars
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