Nibletz Staff
As a promotion tactic, you cannot go too far wrong with an event. The common business event is a way to get new people interested in your products, create and sustain relationships between the customer and the brand, and get your company more suitable clients. As a startup, the importance of nurturing new relationships in every single facet of your day to day dealings cannot be underestimated. And while there is a massive difference between startup success and
startup failure, the amount of startups that don’t see past the first year will blame their lack of funds as the reason they didn’t take off. How do you get funds? By forging worthwhile relationships with your customers and clients! So, what is involved in an event, and how do you use it to your advantage?
The Preliminary Matters…
The first place to start is to figure out what sort of event will benefit you the most. Do you think you can set up your own event and get enough people to come? Or would you benefit more from setting up a stall at a trade show? If you go down the avenue of a trade show, which show(s) would benefit you the most? You need to examine specific details, such as the typical number of people who attend those shows that could be potential customers, the demographics of these people, and what other businesses tend to be at these shows. If you have other, very similar, businesses setting up camp and you’re at the start of your business life, and they’re a few years ahead, can you feasibly compete with them? What you need to do beforehand is to speak to other businesses that have been there before you to get the lay of the land. You have to find out which ones have the best ROI? Once you have done your research and sized up the competition, register for the event. Do it as early as possible if you can to save some fees. Registering for a trade show could save you thousands of dollars, so it’s worth trying! Once you’ve got these set up, you can get ready for…
The Run-Up To The Event…
While advertising might be the first thing your mind will jump to, before you head there, start to think about what you really want to achieve by being at this event or holding this event. Do you want more knowledge and recognition of your brand? Do you want to interact with future clients? More customers? By boiling down an overall goal into smaller sections is how everyone solves problems, and this is how you can solve the problem of what you really want to get out of your event. With these goals in mind, it’s time to prepare your strategy for the event. This will consist of the standard marketing, promotion through social media, and what your presence at the event will be like. For example, are you going to hold an event outdoors, such as a fayre or a big live event/mixer to get introduce new customers and clients to your business? Choosing the format of how your event will pan out does a few things; it communicates your ethos and attitude (laid back, serious, dynamic, rustic, etc.), it shows how you really run an event, and it shows people the kind of clientele you would like to associate with. And this is very difficult to attain when you’re a coltish startup without proper knowledge of your target market. In which case, you need to pinpoint exactly who you want your business to cater for. The definition is key, and the cliché of appealing to a broad canvas of customers isn’t what will get you the custom, it’s targeting the kinds of people that will go to this type of event (like your demographics) and then focus on them.
Once your audience/target market are decided on, it’s time to get everything you need. Make sure you have enough supplies available, and it’s always best to overestimate than to underestimate, but you don’t want to overestimate too much and waste lots of money on documents that will end up in the store cupboard. Pick your stalls or marquees if you are holding the event outside, and look for ones that will hold up in all weathers. You can check out eventdisplay.com.au/tents-shades/event-marquees to get an idea of what to look for. Decorating your stall or marquee is a harder task than you might think, so either get a design company to help with this or make the most of an artistic employee.
Have you thought about the technological aspects of an event? While we all use the internet to market our companies, one really useful aspect that you can take advantage of is to bring different platforms and interweave it with the event. Although the event is live, you can take advantage of those that cannot attend by streaming it online. It’s a common thing for music festivals and if you are going down the route of preparing a huge event, but low turnout hampers some of the atmosphere, you can still have people view it on the internet. Even the standard live tweeting methods and having a dedicated Instagram account where people can upload their own videos of the event is a simple way to get people talking about the business, and it doesn’t cost you anything! Working with tech in this way is gold if you can get it to work in your favor, and once you’ve got people talking about your business, that’s free (and easy) publicity for the event.
Preparation…
As the event momentum builds up, it’s time to start promoting the business as much as you can to the confirmed attendees of the trade show, or to your existing customer roster. Go for all the common methods, from email to blogs, and even mention it in the signature of your email. Be sure to note where your stall is so people can locate you. Once the customers are covered, the potential clients are next on the hit list. Email your ideal clients in advance (3 weeks at least) and inform them of your attendance and when is a good time to have a quick discussion. Many other companies will have the same idea, so make your email as catchy as you can, and another nice little trick is to offer a meetup time that is somewhat unusual. For example, 1.43 will stick in the mind over 2 o’clock.
After all the basic details and the admin is sorted, it’s time to get the right staff members that will represent your business. Even if you have flashy images, catchy slogans, and even celebrity endorsements, they will never replace the good old fashioned knowledge of the services and the products. Making sure that you choose staff that is clued up on the brand is paramount. Either choose people from within the company or get specialist workers. If you go for the second option, you can go via agencies like on www.jvainc.com/, but you need to make sure that they are adequately knowledgeable of every aspect, right down to the facts and figures. If you have people being the face of your business, they’d better be good. You can do a lot of damage if you have the wrong person fronting your stall.
On The Day…
Everything has been prepared, and now you are ready to go! If you’ve done your homework and got the right staff members to work the event, they will be energetic and full of detail. While the designs and approachable people can entice potential customers, it’s the detail that will keep those customers hooked. They need to be aware that they could be speaking to Joe Public or a leader of a rival business. New products, market trends, competitors, and future plans need to be at their fingertips. It’s all about building a real rapport with customers and clients alike. Once that relationship has been established, the staff can get contact information using a leads qualification survey, and they can visit other stalls or marquees to feedback key information about how the competition are handling themselves. And once the day is over, that doesn’t mean the work is done! You will have to follow up with your contacts to get honest feedback and fine-tune the next event to cater to people’s tastes. Be kind and thank them for coming, and offer an incentive for attending the next one, this could be in the form of a discount or a something they can redeem.
Using a business event to market your company can very easily establish you as a thought leader within your industry. Trust is the key notion between businesses and customers, and an event, where people can be approached and engaged with, is infinitely more effective than an impersonal email. Remember this the next time you use email marketing as your sole tool for promotion. An event is a bridge builder in many ways, so use it to your advantage.
