Sales and marketing of events have become a common phenomenon these days. One has to remember that marketing any event is not an easy task. It requires a lot of efforts combined with sales and marketing strategies. Technology has become a great friend for any event marketer today. Many event planners are taking help of various innovative platforms to market their events, conferences and trade-fairs. Some of the best sales and marketing strategies that event managers are adopting today are:
Building Strong Online Presence and Marketing on these platforms
Some of the ways event companies build their online presence are:
- Create interactive and a user friendly website: One of the best examples of an even planning company is IQPC. IQPC organises several oil and gas conferences and summits annually in United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Malaysia, India and Canada to name a few. It has a very innovative marketing strategy. It has a website called www.oilandgasiq.com . Oil and gas IQ is information based portal dedicated to provide the latest oil and gas news and columns. Through this website, IQPC offers online oil and gas events, seminars and presentations to its users. The members benefit from a culmination of accurate industry research as well as a comprehensive oil glossary. The website has more than 10,000 members. This is one of the best ways to promote events. By doing this, IQPC has created a credible platform to target its potential customers. Moreover, by offering free articles and columns, members perceive IQPC to be a reliable and a trustworthy partner.
- Promotions through social media and search engine optimization (SEO)
Social media has become a very critical part of any brand’s marketing campaign. Social media is a democratisation of media as no single person owns or controls it. Most of the major brands in the world have an impressive social media presence. Event companies can benefit from this and must create their official pages on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Considering the nature of their business, event management companies would gain more from Twitter and LinkedIn. Twitter has become one of the most prominent Social media outlets for businesses. Launched in March 21, 2006 today there are close to billion twitter users all across the world. Twitter is a real-time information sharing site which allows a ‘brand’ to generate audience in form of ‘followers’. Event management companies must try and promote themselves on Twitter as they can get lot of ‘leads’ and referrals from it. Oil and gas IQ has more than 9000 followers on twitter and generates several leads for its business through it. LinkedIn is also a very important tool where a company page can be set up, and events, webinars, seminars and summits can be advertised. Search engine optimization is a process by which a company’s name appears first on Google when searched for any particular service or product. Suppose, if someone wants to know something about oil and gas. When he searches for ‘oil’ on Google, IQPC’s name would be the first to pop up. That is the beauty of ‘Search engine optimization’. There are many companies and individuals that offer SEO services.
Targeting and retaining existing customers
Customer retention is one of the main goals for any event planning firm as it provides the easiest way to increase sales and reduce efforts for pitching the event. Sometimes, managers are so focused on acquiring new customers that they tend to forget the existing customer. The existing customers need to be reminded that they are valuable to the company. Some of the ways to retain customers and increase sales are:
- Create a comprehensive customer database: This is very important because valuable customer information and skills, interests, participation history, qualifications and company details need to be comprehensively recorded and stored. This is very important when sending ‘mailers’ and ‘invites’ for future events. Some events may not be suitable for everyone. An event based on ‘Regulation of Oil safety standards’ will not interest an individual who is into oil-contracts. Targeting right people for the right product is very important for an event planning company as it would save its time and money. Also, its credibility will remain intact.
- Provide Incentives for customer loyalty: Customer loyalty is a tendency in which consumer prefers a particular product or a brand to buy its products rather than choose products made from other companies. This is a very important aspect of buying-selling a product or service because it is beneficial to customer as well as the company. As strong customer loyalty tends to offer many long term benefits to its customers such as customer-loyalty programmes, price-discounts, good relationship and high quality service. This applies to an even planning firm as well. Existing members should be offered discounts and special privileges for future conferences and seminars. A ‘referral programme’ should be introduced where if anyone refers the company to its colleagues or peers, then that person would receive further discounts on the event fees.
- Make customer feel important by involving them: This is one of the best sales and marketing strategy for an event planning company. IQPC involves its customers by inviting them to write articles and columns for its portal: Oil and Gas IQ. In this way, many existing members contribute in creating the website content. Their articles and columns are shared by readers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Face book. In this way, members establish their own credibility and remain loyal to the company. They refer the company’s events and seminars to people they know and this increase the word- of mouth marketing for the company. Word of mouth marketing is one of the best ways to increase sales.
Targeting new customers and trade prospects
Although existing customer is important for any company, the value and profit that a new customer brings is tremendous. The best way for an event planning company to acquire new customers is to start networking with businesses that are related to its products and objectives. In this way, it can share the customers and prospects. In case of IQPC, they have an alliance with a job portal company called Oil and gas jobs.
IQPC takes lot of customer data from Oil and gas jobs and vice versa. In this way, you get the data on relevant people whom you can effectively target and engage. A person who is into fashion industry would not be interested in attending a conference on oil pricing. Once, a company gets relevant customer data, the next step is to create ‘sale pipeline’. Purpose of ‘sales pipeline’ is to identify new customers, create a database and track all interactions with them. These interactions need to be tracked, monitored and analysed. Interactions include calling prospective customers, sending them information about the company and its products through e-mails and follow up with them on set time-lines.
Role of technology in key strategies
Technology is the key for implementing the above mentioned strategies. Looking at the first strategy, a strong online presence cannot be built without embracing latest technology and tools used for hosting webinars, Skype- sessions and Search Engine Optimization. The second strategy also requires latest ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) package to manage customer database and analytics. Speaking of the third and probably the most important strategy of finding new customers, it is essential that the company acquires a robust ‘Sales management solution’ that tracks and analyses all the aspects of sales and marketing activities. Because if there is no proper tracking of sales initiatives and efforts, then it would become extremely difficult for a company to measure its sales and marketing efforts with reference to the company’s sales target. Technology, today, is the backbone of any sustained and long terms sales and marketing effort.
References
Kotler, P., Keller, L., Koshy, A.(2009). Marketing Management. United States, Pearson
The Icfai University Press, (2004). Marketing Management. Hyderabad, 338-339.
