Strategic Event Marketing

Notes
Event Branding & Strategic Event Marketing — Beyond back-end Logistics and Planning

Match your event/sponsorship program to your company’s sales initiatives and business objectives.

Event marketing is all about facilitating, easing, opening, accelerating, and shortening the sales cycle. That’s it.

Always bring a knife to events, but not to gunfights lol

The better you know your audience, the better tailored and better your message will resonate with your audience. Understand the customer journey.

Giveaway Programs: The antiquated gift bag, aka, swag bag, PIP, can be an effective sponsorship benefit and can be trackable. Promo items should be tied back to your business objectives. They can have a lot of power and using the right items at the right time is the opportunity. Eg, Toyota giveaway of seat pads that concert goers can use at the concerts at the Fair. Promo items can also deliver the call-to-action–see pg 104.

Business relationships should not be based on what the customer can do for the business, but what the business can do for the customer first

Logos are great, but what your company does is critical.

Tie-ins, built-in viral element, influencers and advocates, social media chatter, the Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing-most influential people in advertising, echo chamber effect, building a buzz. – phrases from article about Anchorman 2 media blitz

Start blog documenting sponsorship benefits at events

Events create awareness for a company. Sponsor/event objectives are brand recognition, lead generation, and thought leadership (EventBLT). Thought leadership is about evangelizing, advocating, and championing the message.

This approach follows the classic push/pull strategy all the way through the process.

Event branding is something that you gain in one event. Brand awareness is something that you work on over the course of years. Events/Sponsorhips should amplify brand awareness as well as project brand image.

Face-to-face sales and motivation are the most important aspects of communication.

Lead generation and lead capture is bigger than just a single event. First, it’s about the relationships you build, then it’s supported by the process you put in place, allowing the event to lead through the sales cycle.

Touch point marketing activities: pre event mailers, digital tactics, etc. see pg 11.

Discovery is everything– real questions provide real answeres to guide your program as a whole. Q’s: within your target audience who are your top ten customers or prospects? Who are your competitors? What makes your company unique? Without real discovery, you are at risk of creating ‘purpose-less marketing’.

Always keep in mind: only a voice can inspire someone to take a calculated risk. Be good, be bad, but never be boring. Schedule a discovery session with your clients.

Your sales force is the pulse of the customer. They are on the front lines and know your target audience better than anyone. They go deep inside the customer profile. Your sales force should be an integral part of your event.

Tailor your touch points to your audience, so they are meaningful and resonate with them. Know who they are, integrate your company’s goals and objectives with your audiences goals and objectives, be able to measure the success of your program. Touch them with your brand and company messaging every place you possibly can. Getting inside the head of the attendee gives you the path to reach them in other ways.

Although there are multiple reasons for investing in an event, the target audience is the decision driver. See pg 64 for entire list.

Positioning and Messaging:

When you work in events . Your job is to communicate your company’s message in 25 words or less (and much less). These words become your message and how you conduct your efforts in the live presentation environment. See page 76 for guidelines on messaging: objective, target audience, key benefit, support ,and tone and manner(products personality). The bottom line is to communicate your company’s key objective in a consistent repeatable fashion

Maximize the brand throughout the event cycle, including pre-event activities, on-site and post event marketing. It is the constant reinforcement of your message that will set your company apart.

THE EVENT MARKETING HANDBOOK—BEYOND LOGISTICS AND PLANNING
By Allison Saget
Event Marketing is all about facilitating, easing, opening, accelerating, and shortening the sales cycle
Creative Materials, Promotional Items, and Giveaways
Maximizing the brand throughout the event cycle means working in a parallel path within the event cycle which reflects the pre-event activities, on-site and postevent marketing. Within the cycle your efforts will include: direct attendee mailings, PR, adverts, online comm., giveaways and promo items, incentives, etc…With events, it is the constant reinforment of your message that will set your company apart. Through visual materials, you have a plethora of ways in which to get your message out. The same look and feel provides you with consistency and consistency is what resonates with your target audience. The creative materials you produce for events are different from giveaways and promo items, as well as sales literature and collateral. They identify who you are and what you do. They reinforce your brand and image. Giveaways and promotional items are used to enhance your brand. Understand your company’s brand, objectives, and audience to integrate the components accordingly.
Sales Collateral
The advantage with events is the face-to-face interaction for communication. The networking or talking that people get on-site with their peers, customers, partners, press, and event competitors, is vital. Your audience will also get information about your company. These forms of communication are put in the following categories: sales tools, sales collateral/sales literature. Within the two categories you will find everything from ad and article reprints to brochures and catalogs to ROI calculators and white papers.
Leads
Lead capture, also known as lead generation, goes hand-in-hand with brand recognition. People buy your product because they recognize the brand and there is a benefit match. In broad sweeping generalization, there are only three hard objectives you can expect to accomplish at most events: Brand recognition, lead generation, and thought leadership. Leads are not always a company’s number one objective, but if lead generation is on the list, a cohesive plan is essential. Lead generation goes outside of the realm of straight marketing and moves into the realm of sales. Events uncover the opportunities; they open the dialog; they create a perceived need of the role of Sales to further define and more importantly CLOSE. When you bring sales and marketing together at an event, you have the potential fo real power. There are three fundamental reasons most companies invest in event marketing: to inform, to demonstrate, and to capture leads.
Event Measurement and ROI
Events do not enjoy the same case in which PR and Advertising metrics and ROI information is communicated. Event measurement has to be done. Lead capture, attendance are two ways to rate the success of an event. Like Measuring ROI for brand awareness endeavors, measuring the ROI on an event is a soft metric. ROO: return on objective, ROE: return on experience. “I typically advise event marketers to pick one or two objectives and measure them, otherwise it gets too confusing. In a nutshell, there are two types fo methods for capturing attendee data that support the RO (return on something) Qualitative Research: focus groups, interviews. Quantitative research: pre and post-event surveys conducted by phone, email, mail, etc..Sales should be included in the measurement and ROI process. This is done for accountability. See seven steps for measuring success pg 176
Thought Leadership
What is a thought leader? Is a recognized leader in one’s field. What differentiates a thought leader from any other knowledgeable company is the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.
Thought leaders are evangelists for your company, and thought leadership is here to stay. Determine who will represent your company as a thought leader. The person selected will be at the forefront and will be able to live up to what they claim. Events do not create thought leaders, the SHOWCASE thought leadership. With events, as it relates to thought leadership, the key is leveraging the body of work developed and output from the PR and analyst relations side. The most successful events happen when the PR engine runs parallel with and integrates into the event strategy.
Meeting Technology
Event management is a planning solution. Features include: event framework, sourcing hotels, air, and other suppliers as well as managing a budget.
Putting it all Together
Events require a lot of attention to detail and an understanding of the logistics component. The littlest thing can become your biggest nightmare. It is important to understand that something will go wrong. Your state of mind will carry you through an event program. being calm and solutions oriented is a critical component of the success of the logistics implementation.