7 Tips for Event Planning
There are some tools and strategies some people may want to consider when planning events for special occasions, or for corporate Event Marketing. The following is only a small collection of methods, tools, and tips I’ve come across from general experience.
Location
It’s all about location, you want to be seen, you want to stand out. If you can not be seen by potential clients and prospects, then you’re just wasting your time
Who, rather than how many
Sure, traffic is a good thing, but its not always the most important. Look at Auto shows, they aren’t targeting kids, but car buyers. You don’t want to attract a large number of adolescents to an event that is prominently featuring products that they couldn’t even hope to buy. Make sure your events are geared towards who you want to attend, you will get a much better return on investment this way.
Relevant giveaways
Say your hosting a golf tournament, and you’re a professional chef, why would you give away a car, or a computer away rather than something related to your business. This way, the leads you may generate are more relevant to what you have to offer, you may generate 10 000 leads with a car, but I highly doubt that many of them would be interested in your professional cooking ability.
Transactions
Transactions are generally not done or allowed at tradeshows, however, you can always follow up with prospects generated during these shows. You can always create a customer profile of those interested to purchase a product or service, and follow up with a transaction the following day. You can always use excel for the profile, but I generally prefer using some sort of form, usually electronic for these purposes. A great tool for this would be eFormit which is essentially an online contact form builder that you can use.
Eye contact
Save yourself a lot of time and effort by only approaching passers-by who make eye contact with you, your time is precious at these events, out of the thousands present, you can only approach so many
Follow up plan
Have a follow up plan ready in advance. If you don’t, you are wasting your time. Pretty much all your sales will come after the event, so therefore being prepared for a follow up will provide massive benefits. Using everything from thank you notes, trade show offers, and customer profiles from web form generators like mentioned above.
Presentation is key
Stand, don’t sit. Don’t eat, drink or chew gum while at a booth, and don’t spend too much time socializing with anyone else working at your booth. These will make you look unapproachable, which will hurt your leads. You should also dress slightly better than the attendees. If you go to a videogame tradeshow, a good majority of the attendees will be wearing extremely casual clothing, so you should wear slightly less casual, not an Armani suit. Similarly, if you are at a formal business conference, do not wear jeans and a T-shirt.
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This guest blog was written by Terry Kalambalikis who writes for his own blog which covers many topics from Marketing, to tech.