Events Management – The Trust

My topic today relates to a fundamental characteristic of an event manager and that is Trust.

Events management is the act of being entrusted with the mission of delivering a successful live act, where things have to work smoothly with usually no chance for a second trial.

To start off, as an event manager you have to gain the trust of your client; this is very critical. The product being sold here isn't one that you could return if it fails or ask for a replacement. This is a very challenging decision that will put on the client the challenge of choosing the right person for the job.

Since by their nature, events are highly visible within the client's organization and its stakeholders from investor, customers and the general public; going wrong could be expensive as going right could be very rewarding.

From this fundamental aspect, it is critical that as a client you choose the right organization to run your event and more importantly the right person/team.

On a personal level, you need to have synergy with the event manager.

So as an event manager how do you build that trust?

It is very important that you listen to your customer attentively down to the finest details. Understand his business; understand why he is doing this event. What does he want to achieve for his organization and for himself. A successful relationship is one where all the parties are in a win-win situation.

At the basics of it, you need to make the event a success and the client your star; this event is not about you or your event management company, never forget that.

The most rewarding events that provided me with repeated customers and long term returns where the ones that as event management company we were totally invisible in the events. Where people believed the whole event was the work of a single person, my client.

Trust between the client and the event manager is only one aspect of the equation. Equally important is the trust among your team members and your confidence in each member's capabilities and their ability to perform and deliver according to your plan. Recruit the best talents, retain them, and believe in them.

Last but not least is the trust relationship between you and your 3rd party suppliers. This is a critical factor to the success of your event. Find people that you are comfortable to work with, that have proven professional dedication and commitment to their work and build a long term relationship with them. Maintain friendships with their key team members.

Events are full of changes and last minute modifications and accommodations, you should have extreme trust in your suppliers that they will honor any such change request; this will determine the success or failure of the event and strengthen or weakens the trust with your client.

Before you chose a new supplier, make sure to accompany them to one or more of their events and watch them closely on the day of the event. It really helps as that is the place that matters the most. Most importantly watch their reactions to when things go wrong because that could be the difference between suppliers that will make or break your event. Don't leave anything for chance.

Events managers, you are in the Trust business.

What do you think?

Direct Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

Direct Marketing and Traditional Marketing/Advertising: What's the Difference?

Awareness/Branding

Traditional marketing associated with advertising primarily seeks to create awareness for a business, product, service, organization, or brand. The goal is top-of-mind awareness so that when the time comes to purchase, the advertised brand, product, or service will come to mind and ultimately be purchased. The marketing in this case usually consists of memorable ads or commercials that make an impression on its intended target. These types of campaigns usually take a long time to become effective. It also takes a long time to determine their effectiveness.

Measurability/Action Oriented

Direct marketing truly is sales-oriented marketing. That is why most, if not all, direct marketing has a "call to action", a directive offered to the prospect to do something toward placing an order, buying something, or responding in some way. There is an expectation that the prospect will respond directly back to the marketer. Direct marketing does not offer entertainment and is not an awareness activity but has clear sales/results orientation associated with it.

 Respective calls to action such as "Call this toll-free number," "Visit this web site," or "Visit this location for your free gift" are characteristic of high impact, direct marketing advertising. It is the type of marketing that asks for your order and asks you to do it now.

Because of these direct-response requests and the shorter-term nature of this type of marketing, direct marketing is very conducive to being accurately measured. Direct marketers are not interested in how many people remember a particular ad or what their preference will be the next time they have a need for a particular product or service. Any retention, awareness, or recognition is considered a bonus and extra benefit to the direct marketing campaign. The emphasis of direct marketing is whether the recipient of the marketing responds to it or not. They either respond or they don't. It's a black-and-white situation. A response or lack of one is very conducive to accurate measurements. Direct marketing is a business of mathematics.

Targetability

Direct marketing is not mass advertising. Whereas traditional marketing is interested in appealing to as many viewers as possible, direct marketing is interested in a more focused, more interested group of prospects, which is usually, but not necessarily, smaller in number. These groups are very targeted and usually share a set of characteristics, demographics, and/or geographies.

Direct marketing tends to be very informative, giving the potential purchaser enough information to make a quick, informed buying decision. This can mean long sales letters instead of short catchy ads. In many cases, a direct mail ad, letter, or marketing piece I the only touch to a prospect. The marketer therefore has to tell as much o the sales story as possible in a single instance.

Creativity

True direct marketers don't care how "pretty" their ad or marketing looks. They are not as concerned about entertaining graphics as much as traditional marketers are. They subscribe to what David Ogilvy, in Ogilvy on Advertising (Vintage Books), said:

                 I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write and advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it creative. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.

The focus of direct marketing is on results, on sales, and on response; it's not a fancy graphic, picture, or a commercial concentrating on peaking awareness and leaving a lasting impression.

Small vs. Large Entrepreneurial Orientation

It's often said that direct marketing levels the playing field for small companies vs. big companies. Just look at the pile of direct mail/e-mail you receive every day. Can you really tell if a mailing came from a large corporation or a one-person entrepreneurial business? Sometimes you can, but most of the time it is impossible to differentiate. Because of this, small business can compete with big business on a level playing field of equal opportunity to market and sell directly.

With the growth of small businesses and entrepreneurial ventures comes the growth of direct marketing.

Design

Talk to a sophisticated advertising agencies, and they rave about their winning designs and staff of graphic designers. Talk to a direct marketer, and they couldn't care less about these. To a direct marketer, if the ad/marketing produces results, they don't care what the marketing vehicle looks like. Direct marketing, many times, will use more text than graphics in the design.

Claude Hopkins, the famed marketer, advertiser, and author of My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising, said to use pictures in ads only when they present a better selling argument than the same amount of space set in type.

The goal of direct marketing design, in contrast to traditional advertising, is to keep the prospect involved. The longer you can keep an interested prospect reading, the greater the response will be to the direct marketing message. That's why you see long copy used in direct marketing messages instead of just pretty pictures. The direct marketer must keep the prospect busy until the presentation and offer is so compelling that immediate action and response are taken.

Copy

It's clear that "copy is king" in direct marketing. Copy isn't king in a McDonald's "Lovin' It" commercial or a Nokia "Connecting People" ad. Copy is king on a one-page direct-response sales-letter web site. Direct marketing is a selling medium. In a true selling medium, words are more effective than pictures. In direct marketing sales situations, the longer you can keep an interested prospect reading, the closer they get to a response or purchase. Direct marketing has often been described as being, copy intrusive, copy dominant, and copy pushy.

The focus is on how to communicate, again and again, an offer that is to be acted upon. Yes, you live in a world of interruptive messaging and marketing. The direct marketer interrupts to the point that their offer is responded to and action is taken.

It really is personal marketing as it tends to be one-on-one in nature. It is personal from the standpoint of developing a relationship. The direct marketer tries to find out as much as he or she can about the target market members, over and over. The gathered information is kept track of. This information is continually used to improve upon the marketing in place, ever aiming to a more refined target and better results.

Direct marketers want a direct response. The response may or may not be a direct sale. Direct marketers are most interested in getting a customer but not just any customer. They want profitable customers who buy over and over, more and more, with a high lifetime value. Their marketing achieves this with direct-response mechanisms and direct-marketing vehicles.

What do you think!

Direct Marketing - definition

The Dictionary of Marketing Terms, Third Edition (Barron's, 2000) defines direct marketing as:

Selling via direct contact with the prospective customer; direct marketing differs from general marketing in that the result of a promotion is measurable in terms of response. Direct marketing is also largely dependent upon the use of customer database and lists. Frequently associated with mail order, direct marketing also includes a variety of promotion media such as televised infomercials, door-to-door selling, newspaper inserts, telemarketing, take-one cards, and package inserts. Direct marketing is a more personal type of promotion than advertising.

The direct marketer often selects the individual who will receive the promotion and is the direct recipient of their response, if any. The response may be a purchase, an inquiry, or a referral that can be traced directly back to the individual. Through the use of lists and database another essential of marketing, place, is brought to the individual consumer.

What do you think!

Entrepreneurial Mindset - First Step to Strat Your Small Business

When deciding to start your own business, you have to first look at your motive.

Why do you want to start your own business? Are you doing it for the right reasons? For instance:
1. Are you fed up with being bossed around?
2. Have you just lost a job and can't find something to suite you?
3. Do you want to slow down on your workload and work at your own convenience?

If for any of the above you want to start your new business then forget about it! You better go now take a cold shower, freshen up and forget about committing a career suicide.

I'll explain the above statement and then I'll tell you what the right mindset is.

In response to point (1), there is nothing worse than being your own boss; you are never satisfied and you will always demand more and more from yourself. Think about it, you can cheat your boss with a lame excuse but can you do that to yourself? I didn't think so either! You will always know that you could have done better and you should have done better. A famous legal proverb goes by "a defendant who has himself for a lawyer has a fool for a client"; we are not far from it if you think that being your own boss will get you the easiest boss around!

As to point (2), you have to understand that when you decide to start your own business the first thing you should be good at is selling. Right from the beginning you will be selling your business idea to attract investment; you will be selling yourself as the right person for starting that business. You will be the first salesperson in your company selling your products and services. Now, if you are not able to sell the one product that you know best and you love and believe in the most, which is yourself then how do you plan to do any well in selling your new business idea, products or services. Don't plan starting a new business while you're holding a white flag in your hand; while you are down and feeling unable to get the job that will fit you. You would be putting yourself in a fatal, inevitable crash that is waiting to happen.

Lastly, for point (3), if you think that by working for yourself you can be flexible in setting your work times and taking more time off then think twice about it before you commit that mistake. While being the ultimate boss might seem like you would be able to decide on your working hours and your vacations; in reality, being so will deprive you from any moment of personal time. Starting your own business is a very demanding task that will have you on duty every minute of the time you are awake and most likely will haunt your dreams too. If you decide to start your own business then you must be ready for very long working hours, weekends included with very limited to no vacation time.

So what are the right reasons to start up a new business?

First and foremost, you need to have the entrepreneurial mindset:

• Have a vision; make sure that your business plan fits within your vision. Where do you see yourself in five years, 10 years or 15 years? What are steps that will take you there? These are things that you don't need to share with anyone else but it is very important that they are crystal clear to you; good way to do that is to write/draw them down on your vision board. Put it somewhere you can see it every day of your life preferably the first thing in the morning. This will help you maintain your course and gives you defined targets with milestones to achieve.

• Believe in yourself; the power of faith is so great and spread across all cultures since thousands of years till our day and can make miracles. If you have faith in yourself you can make others have faith in you and this is the key to success. Don't be afraid to believe in yourself even if it made you seem arrogant; people around you will admire your believe and will follow it and will give in to it even those that hate you for it will admire that characteristic in you.

• Passionate about your business; passion is a direct follower of the belief. You cannot keep your belief to yourself; you have to show it to the people around you; you have to make them feel it in you before you even utter a single word on the subject. The positive karma, the Chi, the energy, the charisma, or whatever other name you want to give it coming out of you need to be so great and full of passion. This energy will distinguish you from thousands of people around you and will be a critical competitive edge versus your competitors.

• You have to really want to do that beyond anything else in the world; realizing so far how much commitment and energy is going into setting up a new business, you'd better be sure that this is really what you want to do and that there is nothing else you would rather be doing during that period (the period covers the time from day one till achieving the vision). Regret could bring loads of negative energy that will drag you deep in the ground. Think carefully, meditate if you need to, consult with friends, family, people that have been in such a situation and make sure that you reach a decision that you would be able to live with and be happy with, while keeping your positive energy high at all time.

• Be positive; believe that you can achieve your goal and that you will achieve them. Leave no room for negativity or reluctance. Always look at the cup half full and drive yourself in a positive direction. Surround yourself with positive people; acquire habits that foster positive energy, positive feelings, and positive thinking. Following the law of attraction, likes attracts likes, positive attracts positive.

• Be energetic; maintain a healthy lifestyle. From what you have read so far you would probably have realized that you have embarked on a long, tiring, and very demanding journey; you need all the energy that you can get. Adapt a positive and healthy lifestyle. Start your day with a small workout to activate your blood circulation and keeps you fresh and puts your body in an active state ready to tackle the day's chores in a more dynamic attitude. Watch your diet, adapt a healthy diet (check with a dietitian for best diet), and eat small portions in multiple intervals; avoid a heavy lunch that will leave you lazy and sleepy the rest of the afternoon.

• Be persistent; work determinedly. Do like the Energizer ad "Never Say Die"… This is hard work and requires hard working individuals to handle it; you have to be that person. You have to come to work day in and day out and work beyond the working hours and even on weekends if needed. All the energy we talked about acquiring this is where you need to spend it. BE PASSIONATE, BE POSITIVE, BE ENERGETIC, BE PERSISTENT!

• Gain support of your household; this is very critical. You have to make sure before you embark on this journey that you have the support of your household members. This job will exhaust you mentally, physically, and financially (some times or for some time) and will keep you away from your family for a long time. It is very important that you and your household members all realize these factors and that you have the consent and support of these members before you go ahead; otherwise, the future problems that will fall of this new venture on your household could be detrimental. And a supporting household already puts on halfway on achieving your goal with all the positive energy that this will provide you.

Interesting links for related topics:


I really liked the testimony of Alicia Hodges in her interview with Travis Fitzwater on The Entrepreneurial Mindset, dated 19 Feb 2010 (30 minutes).


I also like to share with you this article, from Liam McCauley, on How to Adopt a Positive Entrepreneurial Mindset

What do you think!

Developing the Direct Marketing Mind-Set

Mention the word marekting to most people, and immediately they think of sales or exotic advertising. Mention direct marketing and most people are unsure as to the distinction or what it really is.



Direct marketing, a subset of all marketing, requires different thinking, different ideas, and different approaches. Having this "fixed mental attitude" is as important as having the right offer, the right marketing piece, and the right target for your marekting. A direct marketing mind-set is different than a general advertiser's or traditional marketer's mind-set:

• As a direct marketer, you know that your product or service is your identity. Fancy ads, entertaining commercials, and graphics-intensive marketing are not what you think about.
• As a direct mareketer, you have the mind-set that you will market to interested prospects. this goes beyond permission or opt-in marketing. Interest is researched, defined, and ultimately targeted by the direct marketer. With this mind-set, you know that your best prospects are current customers, past customers, or prospects like them.
• As a direct marketer, you play the numbers game. This is an important component of the direct marketing mind-set because a large percentage of the marketing does not produce results. If the response rate is 2 percent, which isn't bad in the direct-mail world, 98 percent represents a "no response" rate. It takes a certain mind-set to accept this.
• With the emphasis on numbers, percentages, and data, as a direct marketer you will use the power of technology to organize and manage information. A database to a direct marketer is like gold. As a direct marketer, you would rather lock up your database or mailing list at night than protect your expensive wares and merchandise. As you talk like a direct mareketer (with the proper mind-set), you will start saying things like compilation, segmenting, and sorting, as if databases are your whole life. Direct marketers are passionate about databases, and that's the mind-set you should work within.
• As a direct marketer, you have in your mind the three-step formula to marketing success: test, test, test! Armed with quantitative databases and playing the respective numbers game, measurement and testing are easilty at hand. Testing one variable vs. a control will become a game with you. As a direct marketer, you're always trying to "beat" past performance, making changes to things like headlines, offers, and copy, to find the optimum marketing formula to meet your marketing objectives.
• As a direct marketer, you will also know that if, through all this testing, something is proven to be ineffective, you will fix it or scrap it and move on to the next campaign or idea.
• As a direct marketing, you will possess a mind-set that starts with a visualization of what words will be used in a message, not how pretty the pictures and graphics will be. Copy is king. That's what works in direct marketing, and it's the habit and mind-set you will have.
• As a direct marketer, you will have interactivity on your mind. Because response or an actual purchase is the primary objective, interacting with and involving the prospect is key. This has implications for offers, messages, and the related calls to action.

It is clear, then from these mind-sets that direct marketers know how to convert prospects to paying clients. They know how to fulfill responses quickly, and deliver sold goods and services. Direct marketeers know how to collect and use the right data and information in the right way.

What do you think!