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Successful Marketing Events
By: Joel Klebanoff
| Joel Klebanoff, is a copywriter and marketing communications consultant specializing in the information technology industry. He is president of Klebanoff Associates, Inc. |
Introduction
Which is more successful: marketing event
A, which attracts only one person, or event
B, which attracts 400 people? The intuitive
response is "B." The correct answer
is: It depends.
 What if:
- The person at event "A" shows considerable
interest in placing a million dollar order.
- The order is for software with an 80% profit
margin (i.e., $800,000 gross profit).
- Your sales people spring into action and
close the sale.
- Total lifetime sales to the 400 people at
event "B" are zero.
Now which event is more successful? Clearly,
the answer is "A". It's profit
of $800,000 - x (x is the cost of the event)
compares quite favorably to the $x loss of
event "B".
Cause and Effect
When "bums-in-seats" (a figure
of speech, not to imply that attendees are
bums) is the primary metric, there is a tendency
to celebrate upon reaching some benchmark.
What follows the celebration is, too often,
complacency.
When an organization sets bums-in-seats as
the ultimate goal, it typically does not
plan what to do next and fails to convert
prospects into customers.
Furthermore, success in the bums-in-seats
measure often leads to a false sense of security.
"If we sell to just 2% of the 400 people,
the event will be profitable. No problem!
We'll just wait for the calls." ...
And wait, and wait, and wait.
The Proper Measure
What is the proper measure of success? The
easy answer is profitability, but events
are only one link in a chain toward increased
profitability. Unless you sell low-priced
consumer goods or services, you likely won't
close new sales at an event. Instead, it
is a way to:
- Create an impression of industry leadership
and company strength;
- Increase market awareness of your products,
services and company;
- Generate qualified leads;
- Accelerate the sales cycle; or,
- A combination of some or all of the above.
Accurately measuring fulfillment of the first
two objectives requires before and after
research using statistically significant
sample sizes -- an expensive exercise. If
you intend to roll out the event at several
sites across the country or around the world,
such testing is prudent. Trial runs in one
or two cities may make the difference between
an expensive failure and a multimillion dollar
success. In addition, for that scale of campaign,
the cost of the research is small relative
to the cost of the full program.
Even with a "one-off" event, you
should still measure success. The results
will help in your decision and planning processes
for future similar events.
If your marketing communication budget is
small, dedicating a high percentage of it
to research -- to the point where you can
no longer afford to act on the results --
does not make sense. Since the reasons for
increasing awareness and industry stature
are to enhance the sales environment, a surrogate
and virtually free measure of success is
increased profit over time. However, since
some sales will occur whether or not you
stage the event, you must count only incremental
profit.
When using increased profitability over time
as an approximate measure of success, take
the sales lag into account. If it normally
takes three months to close a sale, the event
likely had at most a minimal impact on sales
closed the next day. Furthermore, if the
primary objective of the event is increased
awareness, success might take considerable
time to show up in profitability.
In addition, remember to factor in other
conditions. The event cannot account for
all changes in profitability. For example,
if you added a new sales person immediately
before the event, some sales can be attributed
to that person's unrelated cold calls.
Forecasting Profitability
Measuring profitability after the fact is
one thing, projecting future profits to decide
whether to hold the event is more difficult
-- and more valuable. A useful, simplified
formula for projecting profitability is:
Profit = (BIS * PP * AP) - PA - Cost
- Where:
- BIS = Bums in seats
- PP = Probability that an attendee will purchase
- AP = Average profit from each sale
- PA = The profit from sales that would have
closed without the event
- Cost = The cost of the event
Unfortunately, there are no hard-and-fast
rules for predicting any of the factors in
the formula. They depend on the nature of
the product or service being promoted, recognition
of the speakers and the sponsoring company,
the theme of the event, and the promotion,
event, and follow-through activities. Experience
is the best guide. What makes the formula
useful is its illustration of which factors
you can influence to improve event profitability.
Achieving Success
The Event Continuum
Now that you have a clear sense of your definition
of success, how can you help to ensure it?
The most important advice is to not view
the event as a single moment in time, but
rather as a continuum.
Planning
The continuum begins with the development
of a detailed plan. The plan should answer
the following questions:
- Who will manage the various aspects of the
event?
- What are its objectives (qualitative and
quantitative)?
- Who is/are the target audience(s)?
- What is the theme?
- Which marketing messages do you want the
audience(s) to walk away with?
- In which cities will you hold the event (you
will need specific locations before you can
get very far into promotion)?
- Who will the speaker(s) be?
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- How will you promote the event?
- What tools will you use to generate and capture
qualified leads?
- What on-site personnel will you require at
the event?
- How -- in detail -- will you follow-through
after the event to ensure that it fulfills
its objectives?
- Who will be responsible for the follow-through?
- How will you track the follow through to
ensure it is done?
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Promotion
The primary objective of promotion is to
draw as many of the target audience to the
event as possible.
This objective seems contradictory to the
warning against focusing on bums-in-seats.
However, while maximizing bums-in-seats is
not the ultimate goal, it is an important
intermediate step. This is true for two reasons.
First, events are a numbers game. As the
profit formula shows, if you increase the
number of attendees (assuming they are all
from your target market) while holding all
other variables equal, profitability increases
proportionately.
The band-wagon effect is another advantage
gained from a large audience. Even if you
are a small, little-known firm, if you fill
up a large hall, everyone will look around
and think "this is an important company."
The band-wagon effect can, therefore, have
a positive influence on the probability of
purchase.
Only a small percentage of the people who
see event promotions will attend. Therefore,
ensure that the promotion vehicles feature
your product and company name prominently
and, at least subtly, begin to advance your
message.
If you do not charge a fee for the event,
expect that a high percentage of the people
who register will not show up. The number
of no-shows is generally at least 10% of
registrations. Typically, the number is considerably
higher, often ranging from 15 to 40% and
sometimes as high as 50%. To keep the no-show
ratio low, include a registration confirmation
program in your promotion plans. However,
do not expect to eliminate no-shows, they
are inevitable for free events since there
is no tangible commitment on the part of
the registrant.
Event
The two variables in the profitability formula
that you can effect on event day are: probability
of purchase and the average profit per sale.
That formula buried all selling costs and
revenues in the "profit per sale"
variable. However, because of the potential
for significant gains, the following discussion
looks separately at the ability of marketing
events to compress the sales cycle.
Probability of Purchase
Clearly, a primary purpose of most marketing
events is to deliver your marketing messages
and, in doing so, make it more likely that
the attendees will buy from you. Taking the
time to properly hone your messages will,
therefore, pay significant dividends.
You must, however, place those messages in
the proper context. While you likely won't
charge a fee, attendees still expect some
return on their investment of time. The event
should, therefore, include educational content
that provides value to your audience. While
your prospects realize that you are staging
the event for promotional purposes, they
want to get something in return for volunteering
to be recipients of your advertising.
Another way to improve the probability of
purchase is to provide easy channels for
prospects to reach you and you to reach them.
Collateral pieces provided at the event should,
therefore, engage the audience and begin
a two-way exchange.
Average Profit Per Sale
All marketing communications battle the double
threat of information overload and general
skepticism. In this atmosphere it is difficult
to effectively communicate even a single
message. You should, therefore, focus your
marketing event on one key message. However,
within that primary message, a marketing
event can effectively deliver a number of
supporting* messages.
These supporting messages can serve to add
to the average profit per sale. If you have
multiple offerings within a product/service
family, demonstrate how they combine to leverage
the value of the product/service that is
the focus of the event. If you only offer
one product/service, make sure that the attendees
leave, if not with a clear understanding,
at least with a glimpse of how it might add
value throughout their organizations.
Demonstrating yourself to be a company that
is dedicated to keeping its customers informed
can increase customer loyalty. Thus, in addition
to increasing profit per sale, marketing
events can also increase total lifetime sales
to each customer.
Compressed Sales Cycle
All other things being equal the shorter
the sales cycle, the higher your profitability.
This is true for a number of reasons:
- A dollar today is worth more than a dollar
tomorrow.
- Work expands to fill the time allotted to
it. The longer the sales cycle, the more
marketing collateral and sales calls it will
include.
- The longer the sales cycle, the greater the
probability that a competitor that was previously
unknown to your prospect will find him or
her and win the sale.
Marketing events can help shorten the sales
cycle in several ways:
- In selling to a new name account, much of
the early effort is expended in getting acquainted
and building the prospect's confidence in
your company. A well staged event that positions
your company as an industry leader can build
significant trust while offering an opportunity
to get acquainted with a number of prospects
at once.
- You can, at one time, deliver to a wide audience
much of the information that would otherwise
be delivered in the first few sales visits.
- If a number of different interests are represented
in a purchase decision, by properly structuring
the event, you can meet all of the constituents'
information needs at once, using a single
common framework. Your marketing event might,
for example, include a plenary session for
all attendees that delivers the corporate
rallying cry. That session can be followed
by streamed sessions to meet individual decision
makers' information needs. For example, one
session might be for executives, one for
technical staff and another for end-users.
Follow-Through
Follow-through is the most important, yet
often most neglected, element of the event
continuum. Follow-through is how you turn
prospects into customers.
There is no magic to event follow-through.
It is a standard sales process, which may
include direct sales and other activities
such as telemarketing. The difference is
that these activities start with qualified
leads who are already primed with an interest
in your products, services and company. The
trick is to take aggressive action to ensure
that the follow-through leverages the event
and is seen through to its conclusion in
every case. Sales and marketing people cannot
merely resume their regularly scheduled activities
to the exclusion of the event follow-through.
Summary
Meeting your marketing event objectives takes
considerable planning and the strictest attention
to detail. There is no one thing you can
do right to guarantee success -- you must
do everything right. That requires commitment
from your entire company. There must be an
executive commitment to dedicate the resources
-- people and dollars -- to stage an effective
event. Marketing must be willing to commit
sufficient time to get the job done. Product
marketing and engineering staff must dedicate
the time necessary to get the messages and
educational content right. Someone, or more
likely a variety of staff must assume responsibility
for managing the myriad of logistic details
surrounding the event. And, sales staff must
be willing to commit considerable time to
attracting existing prospects to the event
and following through with all prospects
after the event.
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| * |
Do not take this as an excuse to pack several
unrelated messages into a single event. You
will confuse your audience, with the result
being that they will take none of your messages
away with them. All supporting messages should
contribute to the primary message. |
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