Ed Davis, BBN USA
You've just spent months preparing a dazzling and successful campaign for what you think is an important trade show. The booth was pristine. A video played during scheduled presentations. The brochures were succinct and visual. Attendees flocked to the booth. The sales team collected a lot of business cards and shook a lot of hands. Some stories were shared. A few pints where purchased and you think you have done a bang-up job managing an important event?
But, if you sometimes struggle to articulate the benefits or justify the investment, then you should keep reading this issue of our newsletter.
According to Forrester Research, on average, more than 20 percent of marketing budgets are earmarked for live events (trade shows, conferences and exhibitions). It is by far the single largest carve-out of the typical marketing budget and yet more planning and discussion goes into an ad, press release or tchotchke than does articulating sales objectives for a particular event.
Events should all start with a deliberate strategy and planning session (BBN's Navigator model can be adapted to a number of situations including planning an event). The days of building a booth, printing some brochures and scanning a few badges are long gone. Nowadays you must have a multisensory experience to get attention, and hold it for a fleeting minute, just so you can have an opportunity to make an impression. It is incredibly difficult and it is compounded if you are not ruthless in your planning and setting of a proper event strategy with achievable goals. Worse, by not planning, you run the risk of hindering sales growth and that leads to a disastrous outcome. In the following pages you will read a lot about what it takes to make an investment truly an investment that has a return. From discussing how to get granular on your understanding of your customers needs, from our partner Turtl, to some pretty creative case studies of agencies successfully blending sales outcomes with marketing and promotional efforts.
The bottom line is in fact the bottom line.
In an economy where businesses want to stretch every dollar, euro, pound and dinar, events are an opportunity to unleash every tool in a marketer’s kit and actually affect the sales process in a very real way. In order to do that though agencies are able to help clients stand out, not just show up.