Pre-launch
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.
Are your products aligned with market needs?
Good product design is about understanding your market’s needs before investing huge amounts of money in your product development and launches. This becomes even more important now, considering the way media and the web has taken shape. Consumer’s are more aware, more vocal and much much more connected. They want their value for money. And you want your profits. So, try to use different tools to analyze your markets and adjust your product and ideas accordingly.
Here are some tips that can help you gauge your markets needs:
1- If you are planning a launch, use Survey Monkey to get initial customer feedback.
2- Join Social Networks and build communities there for your target markets. Allow them to share their ideas and thoughts with you and form a relationship based on communication with them.
3- Use Google analytics and Google Trends to research for trends in the industry and domain that you are working in.
4- Follow industry leaders and authority blogs to see where the future of your industry is heading. Make sure you’re not heading in the wrong direction.
5- Alpha test samples of your market to get early feedback. Incorporate those feedbacks and suggestions into making your product or service better.
6- Plan your launch strategies meticulously yet keep them flexible enough to adjust around the market demands. I have a detailed post on step by step launch plans queued up for posting soon. So stay tuned.
Designing events - its all about the creativity
Planning events is just like designing. That is why whenever I have to pick someone for my team I look for those that have a good mental balance. Let me explain: The most ideal team members so far have been people who are meticulous planners (left brained) and highly creative (right brained) at the same time. This may sound a little too idealistic but its not. You can even get intelligent people and train them with mental exercises or activities to use both sides of their brains.
Planning events or businesses requires creativity. You need to find new ways of targeting customers, new ways of promoting events, new ways of building communities, new ways of planning themes. Everything works at a fast pace these days, which puts the customer expectation bars high. You can only expect to meet those bars if you can differentiate your services and products significantly and manage to stand out from the crowd.
So, instead of looking for best practices or easy way outs, take time out to design your events as if they were a painting. Paint out new ways of blending all of the different elements together to make picturesque memories.
Think: Backup plan
Almost everything that we plan, whether big or small - needs to have backup options for contingencies. This doesn’t mean a backup bride for a wedding, but backup venues, backup caterers, backup entertainment folks etc. The reason why I am writing a separate post on this is simply because this topic deserves the attention it mostly fails to get.
I remember when Donald Trump fired one of the best contestant in his TV show “The Apprentice” only because she had failed to consider a backup venue option for one of the project challenges. A lot of people huffed and puffed about how ridiculous that was - people who quite obviously had no idea about the lives of business managers or event planners. Truth is, just like Trump didn’t give her another chance, nobody will let such things go by. Event management is about mitigating your risks.
Everything around us is unpredictable. You have to plan to the nth degree to make sure your events are raging successes. Flights can get canceled, it can rain, your beautiful outdoor venue can get crowded with bee swarms, your caterers can mess up the food - anything can happen. Although this uncertainty can hit the nerves at times, it usually helps keep managers on their toes with adrenaline pumping through them. Handling these situations is fun for some managers. Some may even consider it a natural high.
My message to you today is simple and yet very important. When making your launch plans, make sure you have the right backup plans in place. In some cases you may also need backup plans for your backup plans.
Setting targets for your event
Set your targets first
I see a lot of people make the mistake of planning their launches or events without looking at the end goal first. I’d say, reverse the cycle. It’s important to set your event’s goals and targets before diving into the sea of planning and promoting it. Every such activity has to benefit your business in some way or another; whether in terms of increase in bottom-line, increase in brand value, greater outreach, more hype, more profits or more sales. All of these are good business objectives, but you need to narrow them down to one or two objectives. These goals set the stage for everything that follows. So always make sure that you get this right.
Measure the end-results - were the targets achieved?
Measuring increases in sales or profits is relatively easy to calculate, so I won’t get into that detail right now.
However, some targets are qualitative in nature and cannot be directly calculated. For example, if the purpose of your event is to build brand recognition; then measuring the success of the event goes through a different process. You may want to hold on-site surveys to gauge how your audience feels about the activity and brand. The survey will help you decide whether you planned the right activity to meet your branding objectives and whether the event is affecting the audience’s affinity.
A few tips for online surveys are to approach the people in a friendly manner without bribing them with gifts - lest you want skewed results. Start with simple ice-breaking questions (e.g. about parking) before moving on to the actual survey. Make sure that you place the open ended questions at the end and ask for their names and contact info for follow-up surveys.
These surveys should help give you a better understanding of the impact your event had and how you can plan other subsequent activities accordingly.
Summary:
Everything that you do is business. If your activities are not helping your business grow, then there is some missing element in your planning. Setting your targets and goals from these activities helps put your team on the same page. You should never deviate from the target and should use it as a baseline touch-point for all decisions. This is important for making the most out of your events. Your events should be followed by ROI calculations to see if those targets were met. So the next time you are planning, put on your business cap and think objectively.
Event launches - whats your attention magnet?
I am sure most of you would agree that we can’t just expect people to get excited about our events just like that - they need to have an incentive to. These incentives are based on basic human feelings - joy, thrill, excitement, suspense, comfort. Understanding what causes these emotions and what effects they have on the moods and actions is important for creating the right kinds of incentives for your audiences.
When you have built the brand of your events, you will know exactly what emotional bracket you want to trigger to build hype. Different events play on different human emotions - new years eve at Times Square plays on thrill, happy family picnics play on joy, the Macworld plays on suspense and curiosity, concerts play on fun, soccer matches play on excitement, talk-shows play on comfort.
Once you figure out how you want your audiences to feel before your event, you’re already half way to creating hype. Lets call it the ‘event emotion’ for convenience. All of your marketing messages, communication, interactions, advertisements, letters - everything has to trigger the event emotion. If you manage to touch their feelings, they will form an invisible relationship with your event - whether they know it or not, you just managed to touch their heart. This will put them in a position where they will be more likely to attend the event or tell others about it. Thats your attention magnet!
This may sound like you are toying with people’s emotions - but thats not the purpose of this exercise. Always remember, the new year’s party at time square will thrill everyone present and give them a natural high. But what would happen if nobody knows what new year’s at time square is? What would happen if nobody knows what it ‘could’ potentially mean to them? Well, they’d rather stay home and watch TV. Unless you tell them what to expect from the event, you can not expect them to come. Thats it - you’re just setting their expectations straight using event emotions.
Next time you’re planning an event, make sure you find your attention magnet first. Good luck.
More about lists
This is a followup post to never stop building lists.
I felt I hadn’t stressed enough on the importance of building lists in my previous post. I was thinking of writing detailed considerations and methods for building your community lists, but came across a great article that pretty much sums it up for us. You can read the Eugene’s full article here.
Give People a Reason to Sign Up
As soon as your web site goes live, try to get users to willingly volunteer their email. Just because there is a sign up usually isn’t a compelling enough reason for users to sign up. Users are very sensitive to giving their personal information away. Think from the perspective of delivering value. Do you have something unique that you could offer to entice sign ups? In the case of an event it might be an interview with a performer, advance ticket discounts, or highlights from the previous year’s event.Treat your subscribers like gold and don’t try to sales pitch them too early. Ask yourself, would you be more likely to purchase tickets to an event after 5 or 6 interesting and trustworthy emails? Or send a sales pitch out every time you send an email. Start with building trust and credibility from the beginning. It is important to remember that most people who visit web sites for the first time, never return to the same site. Collecting the user’s email is a good way to reengage your users down the road. It turns a visitor to your website into a lead, someone who is prepared to listen to what you have to offer. The next step is to turn them into a customer.
Advance Sale Tickets
Consider offering early subscribers the best price on event tickets. A few years ago I attended an air show conference in Belgium. One of the presenters outlined the ticketing strategy they used for their event. Their advance sale tickets were discounted by almost 50%. A number of event organizers might think that the process is counter intuitive,”We’re going to lose too much money by discounting ticket prices that much.” Ironically the presenters methodology worked. Their event was paid for before a single person walked in the gate. In addition, the event broke records for attendance and revenue.Remember the more people with paid tickets in hand when it comes time for “what should we do next weekend”, the more of their friends will paying full price.
The Best Event Marketing Investment
Helping your own targeted subscriber list to grow is the best single investment you can make in your ongoing event marketing. Even if you don’t have something to offer your consumer right now, think about the future. Lists can be used to target the people who have identified themselves as your target market. You can spend less on traditional advertising if you already have a qualified list of people interested in your event, product, or service. Use your subscriber list to your advantage.
Remember the cost of a gaining a new customer does not have to be spent time and again, a new customer is a one off cost. Your list building process should start by capturing a visitors lead information. You are asking them to invest time to listen to what you have to say in return for quality information or value. If after listening they determine what you had to say was worthy of the time they spent listening you are well positioned to convince them that by becoming your customer, they will be better off than if not. Once you earn the customer your focus should shift to ensuring they become a happy customer with a view to converting them into loyal, recurring customers over time.
Using mind-mapping software to plan events
The power of mind maps. Ever wondered how our mind segments thoughts in little pockets and somehow manages to form links and relationships with them in real time? Ever wondered how multi-dimensional relationships spark up and roll like a movie in our minds every time a thought is triggered. It’s amazing, and yet next to impossible to physically capture all of that information.
Mind-mapping software options: Although its impossible to capture everything, people have tried to come up with softwares that can help us organize our thoughts in a more structured way. A few notable ones are; Mind42, imindmap , mymind (for mac users), Brainmine (for MS Windows), Mind Meister, Wise Mapping, and FreeMind. You can see a more detail list here and here.
Benefits of mind-maps: Being event marketers and planners we’re always juggling thousands of elements or thoughts in our minds at all times. We also manage to train ourselves to multi-task without making it feel like a burden. So, having useful softwares to plan and launch events is actually something I recommend to most of my friends. A few benefits off the top of my head are;
- Its great for your entire team or clients to get together and brainstorm in one place
- It ensures all stakeholders of the event are on the same page
- It is a great way to map out ideas and find possible alternative options for different things, e.g. venue backup plans, etc
- It give a complete picture of the event and makes clients understand the dynamics of the plan
- It gives you a good reference guide while implementing the plans
- It is easy to come back to it after the event to see what things worked best and what didn’t. For example, if you’re marketing your services online, you’ll be able to see which of the social marketing tools helped in building more pre-launch hype.
- It makes us marketers feel important and intelligent when we look at the complex structures formed after weeks of brainstorming
Find a mind-mapping software that fits best around the way you work and start mapping your thoughts.
Creating scarcity in tickets and merchandising
I am sure you have heard about how marketers often play with certain emotional triggers to entice people to act quickly. You can use the same principles of scarcity when selling tickets and merchandising to your audiences. Creating scarcity implies restricting the supply of the things that you are selling to create a perception of shortage. This becomes even more effective if it is bundled up with a promotional offer, such as a discount or bonuses.
Some people are indecisive or slow about making their decisions and often end up being too late. Scarcity puts them in a spot where they become more inclined to jumping for it rather than “thinking about it later”.
If they are on your lists, they already are interested in your services. Give them a great offer for a limited time and they might say “heck, why not”.
I have even used scarcity for high demand markets by increasing the prices up by 25%. This happened in an “open theater concert” that we were planning a few years back on the East Coast. It was going to be the first concert of that summer and people were already looking forward to it. Regardless of the prices, we would have sold a total number of 980 tickets for 980 seats. We decided to play with the scarcity approach to increase the prices up 25% from our usual rates for a limited time short supply. This trigger helped us sell all of our tickets in a record time and earn 25% more than we usually do from such events.
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