Are Corporate Events Effective?
Many corporates are quite hesitating when ask to join the corporate events like exhibitions, trade shows or fairs. This is because most of them are thinking that such events are not so effective and simply a money-wasting event.
If you are having the same thinking, then it may not be so true. Because there are some aspects that you need to look into in order for you to grab the whole picture before you make your own assumption.
Starting Wrong
Do you ever experience such a situation where every time you plan an event, you just think about what routines and games you can have?
And you didn’t pay much attention to the title and the theme of the event. Most probably you only come out of the theme when the deadline is approaching.
Why every time the planned activities for your corporate events are not effective, I think it should be wrong at the beginning.
Title and Theme are Important
Most corporate love to use the title like “The Best xxx in Malaysia”, “The Top Brand All People Want”, “The Fastest Growing Company in the Industry”, and etc. All these are self-complacency and do nothing good to the consumers. If the theme and title of your event are not conveyed appropriately, then the effectiveness been discounted by 50%.
The theme of the event is a summary of the whole event. It is only the first layer that needs to be achieved by letting the consumers know what the activity is about in one sentence. It is the theme we need most to attract users to participate in the activity. It means that we have an insight into the real needs of the target users.
Take a look at the example of successful titles:
- Lose weight with the right diet
- By spending a little, you will have a fair skin
With these catchy titles and theme, it will trigger the curiosity of the visitors.
In the planning stage, I suggest that you think about the theme of the event when you identify the theme of the event and try to combine it with the following 4 points to determine the dimension of the event.
1. Crowd/Industry
Who is the target customer of your product? Or who is the customer for this event? Categorize the visitors’ information from age, gender, occupation, city, income, family situation, hobbies, and education.
2. Service and Selling Point
The service of each product should have a corresponding story for the usage of the target user – what the user wants, why he wants it, what problems he has encountered during the period, and what service can we offers to him.
The selling point is the most differentiated or most dazzling of your many services, and it can be a priority for your event theme.
3. Hotspots
Hotspots are the simplest and easiest way to increase the attention of the event. When planning an event, be sure to think about which hotspots in the current time period can be utilized, or which celebrities can be cited in the topic, or is there any similar type of trendy service that can be compared.
4. Resonance
All the views and copywriting are not groundless, and a deep insight into the user’s resonance can really come up with a solution to their problems. Resonating topics can make users act (read, buy, spread, collect)
When thinking about the theme of the event, if you can put through the above-mentioned points, you will be able to improve the effectiveness of the event.
However, in order to ensure you will have an even more effective event, you can combine these four points to explore the theme of the event. It is recommended to try and dig deeper for all feasible ways to come out with a successful event.
Taking the operation of Valentine’s Day activities as an example, I can use the following steps to come up with the theme of meeting the pain points of a specific group of people.
By having a good theme and thorough preparation, that will make you more expectant of the event.
What makes a successful corporate event?
How to come out with an effective event plan is a problem that many companies are concerned about. Whether it is a fair, trade show, or national exhibition, You can use the following points to measure the effectiveness of the events.
1. User experience is the top priority
The purpose of the marketing campaign for a corporate event needs to be as clear and simple as possible. Many people like to integrate multiple marketing purposes into one marketing campaign and this can be rather confusing. You should try to avoid it at all.
2. Data analysis to measure the effect
The effect of a well-designed marketing campaign and the corporate event should be measurable, such as how many potential visitors will come to your event, how much traffic can the event brings to your company, and how many products you sell.
3. Limited prizes and rewards
Limited your prizes or rewards in an event. We always heard some marketers said if you can give me xx amount of budget, I can also make a grandiose event as the big company did.
However, if you make a successful event by spending 10 million, while others spend only $5 million but getting the same effect. Do you think this corporate event is successful? Limited prizes or rewards should be controlled in corporate events, and once it is uncontrollable it will become a huge risk.
4. Fun and interesting
If a corporate event is designed with a lot of fun, most of the visitors will be willing to participate. And sometimes event without giving any rewards, they will also love to participate because they have received the spiritual rewards when they participated.
Visitors feel happy when they are taking part in the event. Why? Because he has been rewarded spiritually when he participated in the event. Therefore, make sure visitors are having fun is very important so that you can have a good chance to convert them into customers.
5. The threshold of activity needs to be low
Generally speaking, according to your target visitor, the lower the threshold, the better. In addition, the low threshold also includes the formulation of the activity rules, the rules should be as simple as possible. The more complex the rules, the fewer people would want to participate.
The return on activity is high: The activity must benefit the visitors and they should get enough benefits. Because of only the high return rate of the event with decent prizes and rewards that can mobilize the visitor enthusiasm.
Interesting: The activities need to be as fun as possible. Only the fun and interesting activities can attract more people to participate, and the atmosphere of the event can be created.
Today, with the rapid development of new technologies, what new trends should we pay attention to when we participate in or host exhibitions?
The essence of corporate events and activities is the efficiency and effectiveness of information dissemination. This is consistent with the core values of the Internet. Therefore, in order for the event to be more successful, it must be integrated with the Internet.
In addition, no matter what kind of corporate events you are planning, the focus is very important. The positioning of the event must be very clear: what is the content of the event? What are the goals to achieve? Who is the audience? What level should I expand after the meeting?
All these questions are required for you to make them clear first.
What People Who Involve in Corporate Event Need to Know?
For those who are responsible for corporate events, they need to learn to understand the data. Therefore, you need feedback or a questionnaire and you need analysis tools.
Remember, each corporate event, regardless of size, requires a summary report to help evaluate the results and improve the next event. After all, companies have to invest a lot of money in conventions and exhibitions.
The following are the 10 key points for companies to conduct an effective event that is worthy of your reference.
1. Customer Experience
Customer experience is at the heart of every industry’s marketing. All successful companies today adopt a customer-centric philosophy to create effective marketing strategies and positive digital transformation. This is especially true for the convention industry.
Although your venue may be unique in the local area, you can’t turn a blind eye to customer experience. To come out with an effective event, it is recommended to follow the Robert Rules of Procedure, which is to emphasize the effect and try to reduce the meeting time.
2. Active and effective measurement
The era of analysis has arrived. Although some venues have now deploy WiFi, and some even have big data collection and analysis systems, but some of the main practitioners of the event and exhibition industry still stay in their thinking for 20 or 30 years ago. They still capture and analyze the exhibition data in a traditional way.
The general significance of the exhibition big data analysis system is difficult to directly relate to the corporate event and exhibitor’s marketing system, but this situation is changing greatly recently.
The purpose of the corporate event will be stronger, and the assessment of profit, customer retention and satisfaction will be more scientific and reasonable. Enterprises should actively use the big data services provided by venues or third parties to make the exhibition more transparent.
3. Learn from marketing technicians and data analysts
Today’s executives must be data-driven, and even he needs “internet thinking.” If the company does not have excellent marketing technicians and data scientists, then it is difficult for them to grow their companies.
Today, many large companies have established jobs like CDO (Chief Data Officer), which is worth learning from domestic companies. The marketing department of the company should have an analytical function, not only to obtain competitive intelligence in time but also to get the first hand and useful information from its own corporate event and exhibition activities.
4. Everything will be personalized
The era of mass manufacturing and personalized manufacturing has arrived. For businesses, this means you have to think about how to meet the individual needs of channel partners and consumers. Of course, this requires optimizing your procurement process and workflow.
5. Better videos and live content
Yes, the content is still the king. Social content, reviews, blogs, essays, and e-books are still important aspects of marketing, but video content will be a frenzy that will lead the way in any corporate event.
Whether it’s during or after the corporate event, you should take advantage of video marketing.
6. Pay more attention to social media marketing
We need to change our perception of social media. In the eyes of traditional marketers, social media is full of vulgarity and lies, and it is difficult to target the right audience.
But today’s social media is no longer the case because, through the portrait and analysis of social media users, you can customize your corporate events and get a very high return on investment.
You should think of giving up advertising that doesn’t make sense on printed media! The key to learning to use social media is to learn how to use event marketing skillfully.
7. Embrace the Internet of Things
The Internet of Things is actually a very early concept, but development has been at an early stage. If the people who are involved in planning corporate events don’t know about Bluetooth, RFID, and various other sensors, then it’s too bad!
A lot of products are getting connected now. Not only TVs, refrigerators are connected, but also cars and bicycles. All of these networked devices are huge data entry, and you need a data processing platform to receive, classify, and process these user data and provide users with further value-added services as needed.
8. Chatbots and AI
Providing a positive customer experience and service means you need to make use of advanced technology. If you want to know whether a visitor likes your event or not, you need to chat with them.
However, without a chatbot, how can you take care of so many visitors? In fact, AI is the brain of a chatbot. In addition, you need to understand concepts such as deep learning and neural networks, which will be the main force for changing the exhibition industry in the future.
It is conceivable that in the near future, enterprise customer service will use chatbots, which have greater patience, uniform caliber, sweet voice, and understand the customer’s needs in the first time, and solve their problems in a targeted manner.
9. Right-time marketing instead of real-time marketing
In recent years, the concept of real-time marketing has been raging. This may be caused by the weak economy and the eagerness to make quick money.
Each of us is receiving many harassing calls or Whatsapp almost every day. But the effect of this kind of marketing has little effect on corporate events.
You must understand the needs of the end-user, give them the right solution at the right time, and never play the battle in the dark.
10. A degree in marketing digital transformation
Many people have suggested that the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) should first carry out the digital transformation and then over-correct corporate marketing, thus developing the digital transformation into a “Great Leap Forward”.
This can be dangerous progress because all traditional or digital marketing strategies are just techniques. But the key to an effective corporate event is actually your customer satisfaction and the lead of your product. Without this, it is impossible to talk about marketing.
