Archive for June, 2008
Book launch themes
This is an event launch strategies blog - and I try not to go off on other topics. But when I received the third invitation to a book launch this month I just knew I had to write about this. Now although I don’t consider myself an author, I have written & sold e-learning books which has got to count as close. A book launch is an exciting and memorable step in your career as a budding author. You don’t always have to resort to launching in halls and bookstores. By using the internet you will be able to drive more attention to your launch and consequently your book than through any other medium.
Selecting a theme is an important step in planning a book launch and its no different if launching an event, a product or a book. You just need to look at your launch with the same creativity with which you used to pen your book, create your product or visualize your event.
You can have the book lauch around a similar setting to your book. If the book is about a trekking expedition have the launch atop a mountain (or hill). Get the audiences to trek all the way up. If the novel is an adventure, have it in a boat. If its a romance novel pick a beach spot or a romantic hideout.
The idea is to get creative with your launches and turn them into newsworthy events. Don’t just stick to traditional ways of launching anything. Go out of the way to build a theme that would attract your targeted audience, a theme that journalists will write about. The theme itself becomes an important part of the hype building process before your book launch.
Another interesting thing that you can do is get your prospects to design a theme for you - or you can involve them by getting them to fill out surveys or having discussions and online focus groups. If you involve your audiences in the planning process up front at this point, they will feel like they are already a part of your event and will take ownership in making it successful. This being the case they will feel obliged to attend and to spread the word out to their networks. Hey, the more people who attend, the more news worthy, the more press coverage, the more book sales.
So, to sum it up, get your creative juices flowing. Make your book launch as memorable as the book itself or if launching an event the same principle applies. The press are looking for newsworthy stories every day so they get noticed. Its not difficult to create a launch event that gives them something to work with that does not demand you to invest a lot of money.
Steps to your launch communication - Part 2
I talked about how you can warm up your lists before launch using specific emotional triggers in your email campaign. This is an extension to the same post.
The image above sums up the entire interaction process. We’re guiding the prospect through this step by step cyclical process of launching and are using mental triggers to help them make their buy-decision based on impulse or need, or a combination of both.
Throughout the process, remember to have the basic material and content prepared before you begin the prelaunch campaign. However, you can tweak and modify things as you go based on your interactions with them. These interactions are important. You have to keep your prospects involved and engaged throughout the campaign.
Whats the green star in the image? The green star before launch represents the emotional triggers that you will be hitting at through your emails and blog posts. Almost anything that can increase the excitement and can influence their buying decision can be considered a trigger. Generally, at this point you want to make sure that your triggers fall into the following categories:
a- Traction: You need to prove that there is a lot of hype and buzz around the product. Referring to examples of your communication with communities or to the hype adds to social proof. The reader needs to feel that he or she isn’t in it alone.
b- Scarcity: Creating a feeling of scarcity in any way helps people to make their buy-decisions quicker. If they know that the product is going to go off the shelf, or that a bonus is going to finish, or that they can get limited special offers - they will be more inclined to participate in your launch. If you are launching an event, then you can easily play with limited ticket supply.
c- Need: Anything that can make your readers think “I really need this..” is a bang on target. This can be done by addressing their current frustrations and by showing them how things can be different. For your events, they need to want to be part of your event. You want them to start picking their clothes in their minds.
d- Price: Up to this point, if you had built a higher price expectation in their minds, you can launch at a lower price to surpass their expectations. This is always a great way for them to make an impulsive buying decision. This is also great when you can build your events brand around exclusivity.
Steps to your launch communication - Part 1
I’m writing this post after a lot of research and analysis of whats worked for people. It has a lot of influence from the Jeff Walker’s internet marketing philosophies - and we all know how he has contributed to the success of countless businesses. He sold over 1 million dollars worth of course product in a couple of hours last launch and he and his clients do it randomly. So be sure to know that these aren’t necessarily to be followed to the bone - but they are techniques that have worked for many in the internet marketing game and are techniques I have molded to work just was well for launching an event.
After all, whats different about launching a conference, training course, product or website to launching an event online. I believe there is no better business on earth more suited to internet launches by use of social media than event based businesses. Events come with so much human emotion, they are all about socialization and word of mouth is the most effective method for marketing a launch. Social media and the use of the internet as a delivery platform creates exponential opportunities for event marketers.
We’ve talked earlier about setting up your mailing lists and building hype all the way to launch. I often receive emails asking me about specific tactics to use to build hype. I know I have touched on my methods throughout other posts but I thought it time to walk you through a simple example case thats easy to explain. Ill use a product as an example rather than an event to show you how these methods apply to any business. Ive talked in detail about similar tactics for planning and launching events but have never formerly stepped you through the process. I will step this one out, one step at a time and leave you to see how you might best translate the example into your own businesses.
First of all, when you are building your event launch strategy, make a timeline with the exact dates for major mile stones and triggers that must all be thought out before launching. In this example we are launching a simple online “event planner specific calendar application” and will start sending the emails two weeks before launch. You can send out emails in as much frequency as you want depending on your list, I’m just going to discuss the few important ones here.
Email 1 contents: Day 1
This email goes out to your main list that you have already been adding people to. You would want to keep it simple and informal here. Initially break the ice with some comment about how you have been meaning to write for a long time, but never got around to it.
In the second or third paragraphs, very briefly touch into the frustrations that they have which you know your product solves. Don’t mention anything about your product here, but just talk about the frustration as if you have to deal with it as well. They need to be able to relate to you and the frustration. So in this example you would talk about how the all of the calendar apps out there are difficult to sync to to-do lists, or something like that.
You would also subtly want to touch on an aspiration that can give the readers a feel good moment. I wish we could have a event planner specific calendar app that could do this.. and that…
You keep talking along these lines with hooks in each corner of your email. Make sure you have a paragraph near the end that clearly describes how they can benefit from your app. You have to answer the whats in it for me question.
If you want, you can briefly mention that you are working on solving these frustrations for the longest time and are close to introducing the best possible solution to it. The idea is to set some basic level of anticipation upfront, so that they wait for your next email.
Also, you need to engage them at this point. So ask them a question related to their frustrations or needs (e.g. what do you think is the most important thing to have in online calendars for event planners). The idea here is to get them to reply and also to gather information that you can use for your product and launch.
Email 2 contents: Day 4
Get back to them after 3-4 days with an excited email about how the response to the question was overwhelming. What you are doing here, is showing them that all of the other readers on the list are really into this whole thing and are taking these emails seriously (delivering social proof). That is going to make them want to do the same.
Secondly, through this email, you are giving them proof of the importance of this issue to other similar people. This will make them feel like it is important for them as well.
Thirdly, you would want to tap into the frustration a bit more to reiterate it incase they have forgotten
Fourthly, you need to give away stuff that is of value to them for free - so a great thing to do is package up the response that you got into a pdf and tell them here that they can get it for free. OR, you can package your blog-posts on the software industry trends for then into an ebook. OR just about anything of value that you can give away for free. The way to do that would be to give them a link to opt-in for the free copy of that package. You are going to collect these email addresses that have opted in and build another sub list out of it.
These emails are playing on scarcity by showing that a lot of people are interested.
The landing page that this email leads to should reiterate the same core message and have a small and simple opt-in form for them to enter their email addresses.
Email 3 Contents: Day 8
Send out another email here to both the main list and other list that you created from the opt-in forms on the landing page. Make the email interesting. Quote authoritative bodies in the industry (e.g. Techcrunch) to gain authority for your product as well. This a subtle emotional trigger of association that works well.
Repeat another aspect of the frustration. Send them links to the landing page again. Tell them that the compiled package is available for them to download.
You can even address any objections that you think they may have later about your product. You can do this by talking about how things are not the way they should be. Essentially you’d be giving them a feel for the kind of issues your application will solve.
Email 4 Contents: Day 10
With this email you can release a sneak peak video demo of the application. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a huge expense, but perhaps just a screencast of some of the cool features that you have.
In the email you talk about the issues with the current systems again (the frustrations). Then you make them understand how this application effects their bottomlines and should thus be considered an investment rather than a cost.
Then send out a link to your demo video for them to watch.
Meanwhile on your Blog - Day 11-13
Build the hype on your blog. Reinforce the same messages that you are giving in your emails. Discuss any questions or objections that the readers have.
In the posts, play with the mental trigger of showing them prices that are higher than your actual price so that when you launch, they find the prices lower than what they expected. The way you do it is simply by anchoring higher prices according to the value of the system or of competitive product prices. Don’t commit your own prices yet.
In these posts show that a lot of people are anxious to get their hands on your application, but try to keep playing on scarcity. You want to tell them that you are launching a limited private beta for the calendar app for the first two months.
You want to get them to be part of the people who act first as soon as you launch.
Email 5 Contents: Day 13 (day before launch)
Always send an email a day before launch. Tell them that you are prepping up for launch and everything is going smooth. Tell them how everyone’s excited about being a part of beta and how you hope they will make it to the beta as well.
Make them want to be the first person to sign up.
If you want you can share more videos here or anything to stir up the excitement again right before launch.
Email 6 Contents: Day 14 - D Day
Send them an email with the steps to follow to sign up. Send another email as soon as you launch to notify them that your launch site is live and is taking in sign-ups.
Email 7 Contents: Day 15
Send an email to tell them about the raving crowd you saw. How the numbers have surpassed your expectations. How you are grateful.
This is a sure shot framework that you can use for any product launch. It guides you how to plan your prelaunch content all the way up to your launch day - and how to place specific emotional triggers at the right times.
The steps to a mind blowing launch
Alright, so I apologize in advance for the dramatic title. There are many successful ways to launching your events & your products. In the tech sector we’ve seen all kinds of launches. Some startups launch website products into the market with a big bang just weeks before opening up for beta. Their big bang is based on the coolness of the product itself, or on a great demo video.
If you’re not offering an event that is news worthy or a product that is revolutionary, then I’d suggest more tried and tested ways of marketing your launch.
Product and website launch tactics that have been supported by some of the most influential people in internet marketing can as easily be applied to your event launches. Try them out for your next event launch and see how well you do.
First of all, the success of your launch (read: $$$) depends immensely on how well you have connected with your potential customers in the pre-launch stage. Make sure you time your pre-launch perfectly so that your launch is introduced at a point where the hype reaches its climax. Some additional pointers:
1- Start building your lists way before launch. Get people on your lists. Build relationships with them. If you want, you can build a following on an authority blog about your industry.
2- Use social networking sites to network with people with the aim of getting them onto your lists. These lists are the backbone of your launch, so work on making it as strong as you can. Also, keep the lists and social networks connected and engaged at all times - you would want to have a constant communication going on at all times.
3- This is the best time to gauge your markets response to specific elements of the event. You can either get their opinions, ideas by discussing them firsthand, or get them to fill out surveys. You already want them to be involved in a conversation before you start the pre-launch campaign (typically, in the form of email series + blog posts).
4- Once you have your lists all set up, a pre-launch phase can typically take about 2-3 weeks starting from the initial introduction to “something new is coming up”. The way to calculate the duration is to first see how much pre-launch content you have that you can spread across in an email series. One email should lead to another and help in building your launch story. You can then see how you want to spread it out for the maximum effect.
5- If you have decided on a 6 week long pre-launch campaign, then set a target date for your event launch (e.g. April 15th) and run back 6 weeks for the pre-launch campaign to begin. You would want to have the pre-launch content emails all scheduled up in an auto-responder program to start running on set dates or follow up sequences. Make sure you get the content revised and approved before signing it off (I join my list before anyone else can - so I end up getting each email days before my list does), to avoid errors which are a bad look, although if you correct them publicly - they can also make you seem more human. Make sure your content hits the right emotional triggers at the right times based on their frustrations, aspirations, needs related to your product industry.
6- In the middle of your pre-launch campaign you need to start to build momentum and give them more and more information about your event. A nicely made video intro can be placed in this time-period to get the market talking about something pertaining to the event, or just a little more detail about the event. They need to know what to expect by the time you get close to launch. This is also a great time to answer questions that people have raised about the product through your blog posts.
7- You may also want to give away the price of your tickets a couple of days before your launch. Some people prefer to make it a surprise till the launch date, and thats perfectly OK as well - as long as the surprise isn’t coupled with “that much..?” . If it is much, you need to have subtly built a sense of value during your pre-launch campaign.
8- As the launch date draws nearer you need to have your market sensing scarcity in ticket availability as well as feeling like if they miss this, they could be the only ones. Make it clear to them exactly how to make the purchase a day before the tickets go off ons sale. You want them to be talking about the big launch amongst themselves. You want the authority blogs in that field covering the upcoming launch. You would also want interesting stories within your launch story, to make it in the news. Don’t shy off from these things - allow this excitement to rise.
9- Send emails to your list on launch day. Make it exciting and momentous. Ensure to make it clear just how much demand you’re receiving on ticket sales & inform them that once ticket sales hit a certain number the curtain comes down. Make sure everything is in order and all queries are answered as quickly as possible.
10- Depending on how many days you want to keep the launch open for, make sure you keep sending them an email a day with updates on ticket sales and reminders of your capacity. These emails can also include triggers relating to, early testimonials from purchasers, more insights about the event itself - anything to keep them in the loop. People who haven’t yet made the buy-decision will know just how much time they have left to avail the launch packages. They will play cat and mouse with you and themselves as although people want to buy, they don’t want to be sold to. If uncertain they will wait until the last minute looking for you to give them a reason or an excuse not to buy. Play it cool and hit the right triggers at the right time and they will buy.
11- Show your list social proof that the response to your launch has been dynamic. Point them to your blog where people are commenting. Of course all these strategies are dependent on you having executing the pre-launch effectively, you must have comments in your blog and ticket sales to deploy them. I don’t recommend these tactics if you have no comments in your blog or have made few ticket sales throughout the first day of a launch. People will always want to follow a buzz, its human nature for us not to want to miss out one something that we sense a majority of the tribe (like-minded people) will participate in. You just need to create the buzz and entice early adopters to commit.
12 - You can also hit the final day of a launch by offering major bonuses to all ticket purchasers that you had not previously mentioned. This ploy is two fold in its effect, it leaves ticket holders with a sense of “thats cool”, I already paid for my ticket they didn’t need to give me that, but did. It also serves as a final boost for those sitting on the edge looking for that something extra to buy. Its important that you offer these bonuses to ticket holders and anyone else who buys before a certain time today. Don’t give them a lot of time to think about it, put them under pressure to buy immediately.
13 - Soon after the bonus time period is up - close the gates. I like to put a sign on our ticketing pages that says “Sold Out”. Send a message to your list informing them tickets have sold out and that you are processing all your 3rd party distributor sales before locking the doors permanently. Make it known that depending on your final count on tickets sales that there is a chance more tickets may be made available again, for a brief period. This sets you up for a mini relaunch where you reopen the doors to sell a hand full of tickets your count has confirmed are still available. This relaunch is designed to get all the people who experienced a sense of loss when the doors close last time across the line. Make it clear the second round of tickets will sell out in a short period of time. They wont miss out this time.
13 - After your launch is over, don’t forget about your lists. Keep the conversation going. Make sure you keep your lists warm by launching a post launch campaign thats all about the event, peoples testimonies & the success that it was. Keep your list warm until you are ready to execute a relaunch (e.g. a second event or some T-shirts commemorating the event or a video series of the night as a special offer).
You should always be pre-launching, launching, post launching or re-launching an event of some kind. Its business and the way to build success.
Good luck.
Hitting mental triggers - its all about the perfect timing
In an earlier post I talked about how to hit mental triggers. Today I just want to elaborate a bit on when to hit. See, just like any marketing effort, your emails are messages that are going out to your prospects. If you have been following this blog, you would know the importance of building lists of prospects that can you then target for your launch.
When mapping out your event launch strategies, you need to plan how to build hype and anticipation until it climaxes at launch. You launch just when the curiosity has peaked and Bam! See the fireworks happen.
This is analogous to movies - we’re trained to allow the tension to build within ourselves when we are watching a thriller. A thriller movie wouldn’t work if they just give away the plot in the first ten minutes. Who would want to watch it through then? Similarly, when you are building hype towards your mega launch, make sure you spread out the campaign into weeks of little swallow-able chunks of information at a time. They need to take it in and then come back for more.. and more.. until you launch. Until their tension is released. Until they attend your event. Until they buy your products. Until they get to benefit from whatever it is that you are offering.
So this sequential timeline is one in which you slowly build their trust, give them little bites of information, get them to share their needs, give away free things or content, work on your relationship with them. Here is another great analogy to think about: try meeting a girl (or boy) and propose to her (or him) the same day. How would they react? Well, in most normal cases, I’m guessing they’d freak out and would want to stay the hell away from you. Important things require the effort of building a relationship of trust. Your launches are as important as anything else. So invest the time to plan it well.
A good thing about this is that while you are communicating with your prospects and lists, you can get early feedback and ideas from them. If you want to make it formal you can even ask them to fill out survey forms survey money, otherwise you can measure it from your conversations with them. Another good thing about this timeline is that once you do your initial launch, all subsequent relaunches and other revolving door activities can even be done over weekly (or even shorter) timelines.
You’ll have to plan your email content well and then schedule it up in your auto-responder emails. If you don’t have enough people on your prospect lists, then use social networking sites to find them. You can read our social media marketing strategies here.
Your launches can take anywhere between 2-4 weeks of prelaunch hype leading to a week long massive launch. In your subsequent launches, you can have shorter timelines of 3-8 days using the exact same sales cycle.
Launch Stories - make a perfect blend and serve it hot
Stories have an important role in making a launch a raving success. Your launch story is simply how you present information to your prospects. What are you about? Why should they care? I’ve always wondered why some launch stories hit it big and others just fizzle out like they never even existed.
We all want big successful launches, and it turns out that a lot of it is in our hands. All of this assumes that the product or event that you are about to launch is worth the hype.
I’ve written about how to build your stories here and here. Today, I’m just going to expand on it a bit more. If you are marketing your services or launching products, you need to really know how to tell effective stories. Story telling is an art that you can learn and adopt for your businesses and it helps define complex things into simple words. We come across countless situations where we can benefit from this skill - when you’re in an elevator with a potential business partner, when you get a chance to meet an investor, when you’re pitching to your clients, when you run across an old school friend on a weekend getaway and most importantly, when you are about to launch products or events in the market.
Telling a launch story is about summing everything up nicely and presenting it in a way that can influence your potential clients or audiences to take action. This is done by hitting the right mental triggers to the right people at the right time.
The mental triggers that you choose to hit will depend on your individual products, but we can safely say that the old tested rules of “hero play” still apply. And boy do they work! We, as humans, are attracted to stories of drama, intensity of emotions, shock, winning. We want that adrenaline rush. We want that human to human association. We want that heroism. We want to listen to people who understand where we come from. If you can incorporate these into your story, you’re bound to have a greater impact and response from your targeted audiences.
Make your key message (verbal or email) as informal and relatable to your audiences as possible. Make it like a conversation between two people. Here is a structure (also proposed by Industry leader Jeff Walker) that you can use for your message:
1- start with reiterating the fact that you are just like them. That you have a lot in common. The purpose of this intro is to get the attention of your key targeted audience and make them think “hey this guys just like me..”
2- Then name a few frustrations that you have (related to your launch). E.g. “I’ve been looking around for cool places to hangout, where I can just take my mind off work and network with likeminded people.. but there is just no such place in the entire town…”. This should make them think “yea. I totally get it”.
3- When you’re sure you have that nod, talk about how you aspire for things to be different. You can throw in ideas and thoughts and let their minds wander off. Don’t limit their thoughts to specific examples, let them imagine as much and as far as they can.
4- Finally, when you know that they are excited about how all of this can turn around, present your solution and discuss how it can benefit people like you (i.e. him).
It takes very little time to come up with the good meaningful stories that you can use to turn your business around. So get down to work and get creative. Let me know if you need further inspiration or assistance.
Its all about the buzzz..
Having the right strategy for your launches is important for the success of your ventures. If you don’t plan your events well, you may not be able to draw the attention that it otherwise deserves. Remember how we discussed that events are like revolving doors of launches and relaunches? The more hype you can create in your launch, the more revenue you will generate for even bigger and better launches.
You have to make your events news worthy to create the initial buzz. Have stories within stories. Make people want to share the “did you know that….” stories about your event. A great way to do that is to have interesting themes for the event and streamline your entire promotions based on those themes.
The more different and unique the themes are, the more interest they will generate. So, think creatively. Look at it this way, if you can get people to blog or talk about you - you are getting free media coverage worth thousands of advertising dollars. Its a win-win for both you and your targeted audiences. They want something interesting to talk about, and you want to be talked about.
You can also create videos and demos to generate buzz. Good videos spread around a lot faster and are great tools for marketing. I’ll add a post on how to use videos on the Social Media Strategies blog soon. Teaser ads or messages are also a great way to attract attention. Anything that leaves questions in the viewers minds will make them wait for and talk about you.
Whatever marketing strategies you apply, make sure you can get your audiences buzzing way before you launch. The reason why I am repeatedly talking about creating hype is because I really want you guys to get your pre-launch preps right. Just want to make sure our basics are covered before we dive into details of launching.
Segmenting your lists
When you are communicating to your lists, its important to send messages that are directly relevant to them. The more they feel that the email is “custom designed” for them, the more likely they will be to buy from you. Since this effects your conversion rates and hence your bottom-lines, it becomes important to divide your list into sub groups or chunks.
List segmenting is a crucial part of email marketing. You should try to tweak your messages to speak to specific chunks of your list directly in terms of what your products offer to those individuals.
This is not as difficult as it sounds, all you have to do is to think about the basic categories that you can divide your list into and use your auto-responder system to build those groups into sublists. You can segment them based on your businesses, your campaigns, your relationship levels with them, your specific niches, etc.
This will enable you to send targeted and focused messages to those groups who will benefit from the email message the best. You will also be able to target your current and potential customers accordingly.
You could start with a lead generation opt-in form on your website that offers a give away, something of value in relation to the event your promoting in return for a new visitors name and email address.
By giving it up the people on this list would receive a series of emails written with the sole purpose of leading them into wanting to know more about the event. Our testing has shown that you get the best conversions by sending an e-mail every day for the first 10 days or so. At ten days we find its best to offer subscribers another document or discount (something of value) that indicates a willingness to attend the event.
Its called list segmenting where those people who sign up to receive the second giveaway become hot leads for that event leaving those who don’t on your initial leads list. It’s best to pull the foot off the gas for the people remaining on this list. Cut the frequency of emails that you send them back to one per week for another four weeks at which point offer them the second giveaway again to see if they opt-in.
For those who don’t scale all communication back to a monthly email so that you stay in touch without annoying them for the next 12 months.
For your hot leads list you should elevate them into a secondary email campaign where they receive updates about the event every few days leading into it. The objective of this campaign is to have these people buy tickets online early. The more people with tickets in hand early the more people will want to attend in the run down to the the close date for ticket sales.
You want your plan to include all the attributes of a good launch with a scarcity play built in to effect the maximum conversion rate.
Those people who do buy tickets should be elevated to your customer list which is the next most important list in your life, outside of friends and family and it should be treated accordingly.
Segment your lists early in the planning stages instead of waiting to do it later. I would advice you to look for good auto-responder or ‘mailing list management’ softwares for your business.
Your companies blog - an investment or cost
Earlier last week, I was having a conversation with some people about blogging, and was surprised to see that most people still consider it a cost rather than an investment. So, I decided to write a small post on this topic to let you guys know my thoughts on it.
I agree, random blogs with unauthentic or irrelevant content are pointless. But if you are doing business, you need to have a strong blog presence, and here’s how:
1- You need to have a personal voice for your business that people can relate to, communicate with and understand. One of the best ways of doing that is with a good content blog. For authority blogs you have to provide value and insight, instead of following the crowd. Your posts should be authentic, original and unique. Thats the best way for you to make a mark on the niche and get a following. Whatever business you are in, make sure you have a good voice for your community.
2- Its a platform for you to connect with people. Once you have people reading you, try to engage them in conversation. Get them as involved and connected with you via the blog as possible. An active community is one that spreads the most. If you are an event manager, cover your events or engage your audiences in activities through the blog.
3- You can also use your blog as an effective messaging board. Turn it into a key source for your company information. Use it for answering questions or giving clarifications. Use it for announcements and updates. Use it for publishing case studies of your clients.
4- When you are connecting with other bloggers, try to give away links or look for points of synergy. Its good to open and friendly with the blogosphere at large. This helps to make your blog stronger and more visible to potential readers.
5- Make sure your content is relevant to your niche and that you keep posting to it frequently. This is where good resource allocation skills come into play. Don’t think that you have to do everything yourself - get over your inhibitions and get a team onboard. Did you really think Donald Trump writes his blog posts himself?
6- Set realistic expectations and goals for the blog. Your blog has to have a long term plan and shouldn’t be sporadic or spontaneous. Know exactly what your goals are (whether its something measurable like direct increase in traffic or something unmeasurable like brand awareness)
7- Have a good feedback mechanism in place. Get hold of a good trackbacking software and actively engage in comments and responses. This is as important as writing the posts itself, so make sure you can schedule dedicated hours to it.
Purpose driven events
Just a few quick thoughts for those in the event management business. This is a preliminary step before we dive into launch details. People often ask me what I mean when I ask them to plan “purposeful events”. This may seem like basic 101 level stuff for most of you, but I just wanted to get it out before we head towards posts on detailed launch planning.
For every event - whether public or private - whether a baby shower or the Oscars, make sure you have enough time for precise planning. Bigger events, like conferences or launches can take up to a year’s worth of planning; whereas smaller private parties can take just a few months. Make sure you get started way ahead to make the most out of your event.
Importance of purpose-driven events:
Deciding the purpose of an event is as important as finding faith. Without it the event can be synonymous to wandering in forests without direction. The purpose of the event has to benefit everyone involved: your clients (or the “owners” of the event), your corporate sponsors and your audiences. Your purpose should ideally outline the goals and objectives of the event for each of the stakeholders. As an example, the purpose of a fundraiser could be: raising funds for clients, increasing brand awareness for the sponsors, an opportunity to connect with interesting people for your audiences, a chance to get creative for your management team.
Do your homework:
If you get this part right, you will be able to make good decisions hereon for the right venue, the right date, the right launch strategies and the right promotions. Make sure the purpose for the event is understood properly so that the time and expenses needed to properly stage, publicize and evaluate the event are justified and accepted. Do you want to reach out to new users? thank your supporters? Raise funds? Create awareness? Have fun?
Make it measurable:
Develop ways to evaluate the event’s success. Measurable event objectives may include attendance, the amount of money raised, etc.
At the end of the event you should be able to answer these questions:
1- Were the goals and objectives met? Why or why not?
2- What were the things that worked and what didn’t.
3- Which of the vendors and entertainment options should be used again?
4- Was the event well attended? Did you manage to get the targeted audiences to attend?
5- Was informal and formal feedback about the event positive?
The answers to these questions should become the corner stone of your next events launch strategy.
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