Measurement Tip 19

What are the Best Event Marketing Strategies for a Tepid Economy?

...How Events Can Help Solve Problems and How You Might Increase Your Own Value to the Company in the Process

2013 will bring with it many unanswered questions and by most accounts a tepid economic forecast (see the table at the bottom of this article). Most likely you are now working on aligning your event marketing activities to cover as many bets as possible, in many cases with lower budgets. Several event and trade show marketing questions are raised:

• “What event marketing goals are most important for our company to achieve at this time?” 
• “What changes can we make that will at least maintain, if not increase, our results?”
• “Are we in the right events for the circumstances?”
• "Where and how do we make cuts if necessary?"

Smart event marketing managers are making recommendations for program changes that will protect their companies.  For example, customer relationship management and revenue retention activities are of highest priority right now. Just ask your CFO! Are you prepared to make the right recommendations for your company for 2013?

We usually think of event marketing in terms of market share, new leads and revenue for the company.  When the economy is sluggish and new business is harder to find, several factors come into play.  First, we know cost control becomes a major issue.  “New revenue" from new customers often comes at a high cost, not only to sell but to fulfill. 

For many companies, existing customers are the greatest source of profit because they are the easiest and least expensive to serve and are the most likely to be sold in the future.  So, when things are tight, smart companies cling even more to their existing business. CFO’s in survival mode know that expensive sales and marketing campaigns to attract business might not be profitable right away, especially under under restricted budgets. Keeping existing customers is essential. 

How Events Can Provide Solutions 

Events provide a way to reach large numbers of people at once, for a variety of reasons, at a relatively low cost. Remember, the purpose of an event is to motivate people to act in a way that benefits the host. Here are a few ideas to consider organized generally by the main elements of marketing event value.

Revenue Retention and Customer Relationship Management

Providing your customers, prospects and others with access to your executives is a sure fire way to protect business and cement deals for new business. The savings from putting fifty or more customers and prospects in front of your executives in just a few days could reach hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings per event.

• You should strongly consider aiming events at existing customers to protect and grow their business. Customer meetings at trade shows, and user and customer conferences produce results in near term sales and reduce service costs for companies that know how to plan and run them correctly.

See the Case Study "What is Your Conference Worth to Your Company”

                   http://constellationcc.com/case_studies.htm

• Executive level customer conferences can create a platform where the top executives from your best accounts come together with your executives to collaborate on mutually beneficial solutions for dealing with an economic downturn. Executive to executive interaction is the most effective way to cement a business relationship.  These meetings may also be hosted in a trade show conference room.

Revenue Generation   
     
Few companies want to totally stop their pursuit of new business and new market share. When economics dictate a reduction in sales force or sales expense, your events can provide a cost alternative for reaching large numbers of potential buyers. 

• Be sure your exhibit experience results in qualified people experiencing the equivalent of a full sales call.

• Private events, i.e. those you host yourself, can be staged in locations close to your targeted accounts.  These events may be perceived by customers and prospects as an opportunity to find specific solutions for dealing with their needs.

•  A good multi-city road show can reduce field sales cost and be the marketing equivalent of a tent revival.

Public events often suffer from lower attendance during an economic downturn. In some cases, the absences are among lower level, less important participants who are not required to be there. As a result the remaining audience may be richer in targets and less expensive to reach.

Cost Reduction, Saving the Company Money

Events can save your company money when it is most needed. Face-to-face meetings reduce the cost of field sales because the prospects and customers have paid their own way to meet with you. 

Broaden your idea of who may be a "target" to include suppliers and alliances. Interactions with these targets reduce the cost of materials or logistics and contribute directly to the survival of the business.

• Host (see) fewer, more valuable people at a lower cost.  Change your pre-event target marketing strategy to focus on “high probability” and “high value” contacts.  Focus your resources on fewer people to whom your company can most likely sell the most profitable offerings.  In many cases, they might be existing customers. 

• Use the reduction in expected visitors to cut your space and resources.  A small private event may be more efficient than a large public one.  Meeting rooms in the exhibit or off the show floor may be your best investment.

• Handle your existing business volume with fewer people by holding customer conferences, training sessions and support activities conference style perhaps in association with large public events such as an industry tradeshow.  Customer education is a great sales strategy.

• Hold internal meetings around marketing events.  Put executives, product experts, sales management and sales team, even channels, from various geographies together for meetings that reduce future travel and meeting cost.  This can amount to a huge cost savings for the company. Utilize presentations, demonstrations and conference facilities to maximum benefit. For example, hold product training for the sales team using the presentation or demos in the exhibit during off hours.

Promotion Value

Many events provide fertile press opportunities and communications resources such as press briefing facilities, scheduled access to press, distribution of press materials, media and communication technology and more. 

• Use a major industry event to launch a new offering using the event press facilities and resources in place of hiring your own in another place.

• Events with a rich incidence of targeted individuals present may offer a more cost effective opportunity than does advertising in trade publications to introduce a new offer or position products.

• Plan to generate “free press” at every event where by proactively managing the opportunity.

Tighten Up Your Approach

How you approach marketing events should be different compared to how your company normally conducts business at trade shows:

• It is even more essential to identify, by company and title, if not name, everyone at an upcoming event who can improve your results.  These include not only customers and prospects, but suppliers, partners, channels, influencers, regulators, etc.

• Next, contact and arrange pre-scheduled, face- to- face meetings with those targeted individuals to discuss mutually beneficial approaches to dealing with a slow economy.

• Attract and consistently "brief" targeted individuals who visit your stand. If you are able to accomplish the equivalent of an important sales call with targeted individuals in your booth, you will reduce your cost of sale.

• You must have a specific outcome (one of the most important steps in the sales funnel) in mind for these targets, and you must get them to commit to participate.  The step must be valuable for them and focus on improvement of their business results.

• This approach fills the sales funnel with prospects committed to a step in the sales process, ones that may not be coming from a reduced sales force and may help to lower the cost of doing business.

Selecting the Right Events and “Right-Sizing” Investments  

Another clear source of cost efficiency is tailoring the investments you make in each event to the associated sales opportunity.  Even in good times we consistently find about 30% of event marketing expenditures should be reapplied to more productive investments.  Also, your legacy schedule of shows and events may not be the best mix for these economic times.  And even for events that are on target, your tactics might need to be changed.  

If your company revises the sales forecast in terms of products or geographies, the event schedule should be reconsidered as well.

Comparing events against a performance standard such as a payback ratio and “cost per” indexes (e.g. cost per visitor, cost per engaged visitor or lead and cost per square foot), will allow you to rank events from best to worst.  This will tell you a great deal about which events should be scrutinized for budget reductions.

A Real World Example

Due to market conditions a major client preemptively implemented a 40% reduction on the cost of their largest and most important show. We applied considerable effort to revise facilities design, devise a new visitor management plan and develop specific staff skills to deal with a very different approach. Thanks to a successful targeted invitation process, accomplishments in attendance, meetings, documented impact on relationship management, business development and virtually all other key measures were comparable to those obtained previously. This company was cited in industry press and among their peers for having figured out in advance how to make the most of the unfavorable market conditions. Similar changes have been applied across their entire show schedule for the remainder of this show cycle.

What to Do Right Now 

Talk to your sales and customer support executives about how carefully chosen events could help your company deal with the restraints associated with the current economic climate.  Get them on board.

Frame your planning opportunities in terms of impact on company profitability, i.e. Revenue Retention, Revenue Growth, Cost Reductions and Communications or Promotion Value.  Change your plans accordingly.

Evaluate, compare and rank your current shows and events. “Right-size" your investments in budget, staff, exhibit size, properties and other expenditures for the circumstances for each event.  Target changes in event marketing activities that will pay off.  Make the adjustments now.

Your importance to the company is about to rise rapidly.

Ed Jones

If you need assistance with your event marketing measurement program, please give me a call at +1.770.391.0015 or email me edjones@constellationcc.com

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