Since business-centric buyers in the complex world of IT want to be educated and sold to in layman’s terms (not “techy” terms) and without over-wordy documentation, it helps to explain a systematic process using a graphical diagram to illustrate the “big idea” upfront (example). Whenever you can use a graphic, visual aid, or picture to explain anything, it generally pays off handsomely. For instance, all types of personnel can understand a process much better if there is a simple graphic to anchor the team’s view of the project life-cycle and future expectations. Or, in manufacturing, a visual aid can be used to show the key elements of a process so all audiences comprehend a new method for marking assets with unique identifiers (example). Providing graphical diagrams to your current and potential buyers directly aligns sales, marketing, and delivery with your buyers’ expectations, reducing risk, and ensuring a better project outcome.
Posts Tagged ‘Marketing Best Practices’
A picture is worth a thousand words: Selling using visual marketing
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Evaluating your events strategy: Maximize your investment.
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010So 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.
Evaluating your events strategy: Allocate your dollars smartly.
Monday, January 18th, 2010Focusing 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.
Evaluating your events strategy: Think quality NOT quantity.
Friday, January 15th, 2010While 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…
Yes, there is still value in hosting traditional offline events
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010In 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.
