by Ashwin | Jun 29, 2016 | Blog, event management, Marketing
An event can be successful only if it’s a win-win situation for both the company/organization and attendees/participants. From the beginning to the end, managing the event involves a lot of things, and only money can fuel this! Efficient management of budget is the key to an event.
Event planners strive to create the most accurate budget for their events and try their best to stick on to it. Randomly surmising an amount might lead to an unsteady flow of cash either more or less than the estimate. Event planners take their time to understand, organize and conclude an amount to be incurred as expenditure. Beyond optimistically expecting a good inflow of cash from registrations, sponsors, etc., and an event planner takes the pain of reducing the expenses and consistently works towards its mitigation. Return on Investment (ROI) is a major driving factor for any event planner where investment as less as possible, but reap a large profit margin. Here are the ways to cut down on the budget for an upcoming event.
1. Avoid “the season” (for a change!)
Most of the big shots conduct their events during the most favorite days of a season. This might create a hike in the pricing of most of the services such as venue rates, staffing cost, etc. While an attempt in the offseason might sound dubious, it is, however, going to act as a moment of surprise for those who are ever interested in the theme of your event. Attendees do show up for events that are conducted at less popular times of the year, and most services do not charge exorbitant rates due to less demand thereby creating a win-win situation.
- Try to get ‘All in One’
Instead of searching for individual services like food, audio and visual system, Wi-Fi connectivity, etc., it is wiser to find a package that offers all these services.
Usually, some venues provide all services that are expected for an event, giving a solution to the searching process. Packages are generally cost-effective as opting for a single source that provides all services is way cheaper than asking individually for help.
- Be wary of the expenses on event speakers/celebrities
Beyond that fact that famous stars, celebrities, speakers allure a broad range of audiences it is highly intelligible if an event planner understands that most attendees attracted by such perks would simply be entangled in admiring the eye-catchy stardom that your event showcases and will not have the expected interest in the theme of your event.
Popularity is a major factor that acts as a marketing tool for your event to fetch attendees, however, do they bring you the right ones? A simple but knowledgeable and articulate speaker will be able to deliver his ideas and conclusively transfer knowledge to the attendees who are intrigued by the theme of your event. A significant chunk of money can be saved with simplicity.
- Hunt for ‘Free’ services like marketing
A successful marketing approach tries to shun massive investments in the same. Activities such as marketing erstwhile involved the purchase of materials for the creation of banners, huge posters, printing, etc. With the advent of technology and the dominance of social media platforms, it is profoundly inane to spend on such means to advertise. Online advertising, social media marketing are the best ways to reach a large number of people with minimal or zero expenditure.
- Pull in volunteers instead of paid staffs
There is a stark difference between volunteers and staffs. Volunteers do work for free just to gain knowledge and have an experience in the domain your event concentrates while workers are paid employees who do the same job. Although some tribute in the form of freebies can be given to volunteers as a token of appreciation such as gifts, certifications of appreciation, coupons, etc., it is never as costly as paying for staff. Sometimes if your event demands adequate knowledge in a particular field, then it is always advisable to hire staff. Otherwise, an excellent way of reducing the budget is to go on the search for like-minded volunteers.
- Rope in College Kids ( A.K.A Volunteers)
There are a lot of students who would want to participate in such events. The agenda is to provide them with knowledge and experience which will help them to add on to the resume. After the completion of an event, provide a certificate or a letter of appreciation which is of great value to a student and efficiently cut down on the budget costs too.
- Can’t pay for a venue? Go online
Many successful events take place online. With the rising popularity of webinars and the comfort that it renders from the attendee perspective, it turns out to be the ideal deal for event planners regarding the budget. All that you need is a stable internet connection and some free online tools for communication.
- Cut down on food and beverages
While food and drinks are a way to attract attendees, an extravagant dining is not required. A simple set of snacks with a steaming cuppa of coffee would be enough to keep your attendees glued to their seats and feel satisfied.
These are some means to narrow down on your event budget, there may be several other ways through which you can reduce the expenses, and these may be specific to your event and its theme. Taking wise decisions and thinking twice before spending on a service may turn out to be you a cost-efficient solution for planning event budget.
by Ashwin | May 18, 2016 | Blog, event management, Marketing
Organising an event and making it successful is a resilient task. Post the event, all an event planner or the event organiser wants people to keep talking about your event; and if they’re doing so, one would curious to know what they are talking about! Is it appreciation or criticism?
Referral Marketing is the key to increasing the number of attendees. Referral marketing can get your attendees to promote your event through all possible channels and spread positive remarks about your event to capture more people behest to them. Imagine random people helping with the process of marketing for your organisation! That would be a phase where you would not have to invest in any other form of marketing.
Below are the FAQ about Referral Marketing
- How to create a successful referral marketing campaign?
A referral marketing campaign revolves around the point that the referrer must be benefited, which means the person performing the marketing for you should be rewarded in some form or the other so that it acts as an impetus for that individual to continue with the process.
- Should the incentives be in the form of cash?
Not necessarily. The speciality of referral marketing is that it has the power to bring back the long lost barter system. Most successful organisations that follow referral marketing do not promise incentives in the form of cash. In turn, they offer coupons, discounts, gifts, and goodies, etc. that are related to the organisation itself.
- What are the examples of referral marketing?
Call taxis like Uber and Ola follow a referral system that allows you to generate a link through their mobile apps, which is unique to you. If you pass on this link to your contacts and if they download the app they get a discount for their first ride, and if they use the ride you get double the discount as a reward for a successful referral.
- Do these discounts or incentives bring any loss to the firm?
The incentives given will be accounted for by the increase in the customer base and the subsequent purchase or subscription to a product or service. It is bound to expand the target market and increase revenue shortly.
- How to implement referral marketing for my event?
- QR codes on registration cards that are unique to an attendee, using which he or she can start hunting for more attendees.
- Online referral program that involves attendee generated unique links; through which their contacts can register for your event.
The implementation of this model must ensure that the referrer is recognised and validated so that he can be rewarded accordingly.
- What form of incentives can I offer my attendees/referrers?
- Discount coupons for your upcoming event
- A lunch pass at your event (free and delicious food is always welcome)
- Free passes to your event for the best referrer (maximum successful referrals)
- A selfie or picture with the celebrity or renowned personality invited for your event
- A marketing job at your event management firm for the best referrers
Referral marketing deliberately encourages your customers to advertise for you. It creates a win-win-win situation unlike a win-win situation for you (the business) and the referrer and the person referred are benefited from this fantastic scheme.
by Ashwin | May 17, 2016 | Blog, event management, Marketing, Technology
The very reason why most panoramic pictures are losing its stand these days is that it lies as a stretched strip of paper when uploaded on your Facebook wall. Instagram too chops down the image into squares, removing the purpose of panoramas. Facebook’s upcoming ‘360 Photo’ plans to convert the usual panorama photos taken using the help of your phone’s camera feature, into a 360 picture that can be viewed on your Facebook newsfeed as well as virtual reality headsets such as the Samsung Gear VR, to be precise. Facebook users will now be able to simply hold and drag the picture around to view the entire panorama. When you’re using your phone to see the photo all, you will need to tilt the phone, and the picture moves towards that direction. The alternative way of leveraging this feature is to wear VR headsets such as the Google Cardboard and enjoy the immersive experience gifted by this 360 photo.
How does the transformation of panoramas help the event industry?
- Using the same panorama feature on your phone, you could capture a picture of your well-decorated event venue, and with the support of Facebook’s 36° photo feature, you can easily entice your attendees who are following your Facebook Page. The 360 image that you uploaded on Facebook will now fetch you more attendees or Facebook followers and promote engagement on the social media platform.
- Capture the street leading to your venue and convert to 360° photos and use it to Google street view so that attendees can reach your event venue with more enthusiasm.
A good 360 picture is usually difficult to shoot and demands commendable hardware functionalities. Facebook began supporting the 360 video on its website as well as apps during the month of September last year but it hasn’t received the expected raving response, and the number of such uploads is comparatively less because the 360 video is hard to capture and edit. Now that Facebook promises the 360 photo by digitally stitching the images into a sphere that is viewable in 360 it is set to bring about quite a change in the Virtual Reality era.
by Ashwin | May 16, 2016 | Blog, event management, Marketing
We have seen plenty of event marketing strategies that act as an impetus for event organizers to go about propagating the event using those techniques. Albeit the strategies discussed enables one to understand the tricks of the game it does not give assurance to circumvent the probable errors that may intervene during its implementation phase. Here we discuss few mistakes that any event organizer can likely commit.
Unrealistic Optimism
Attendees’ expectations for an event will perpetually remain at its peak. The bountiful confidence that your event will satiate the attendees’ expectations is usually precarious. A mixture of confidence and appreciable planning skills is a must if one desires to taste success through the conduction of the event.
Human Resource
Understanding and realizing that plunging into the event industry as a single-man army is going to create an unstable foundation for an event marketing strategy is monumental. It would be foolhardy to go into any form of marketing scheme without support. Hiring staff or technical support is pertinent to sufficiently promote an event. A bigger and efficient team can bring about a stronger impact across the market.
Number of Staff?
Having discussed about the importance of human resource the issue that will arise eventually is the quantity that is required. The process of hiring is always tricky and can let you slip into an impasse. To overcome these hurdles you need to plan on the designations of the staff that you hire and the responsibilities that they will be taking over. Once you have formed a hierarchy you will be able to boil down to a number that you should select. Beware, the number you select should be a tad more than what you have estimated, so that you can account for the dropouts. Balancing the headcount is important any day.
Great Reach but No Registrations
Your marketing techniques are amazing and you have reached an enormous number of people, but have you still not met the number of registrations required? You might not be reaching out to the right set of audience. Your event’s theme and the audiences’ preference may not be congruent. Comprehensive market analysis and discovery of target audience will give you an upper-hand.
Wrong Venue
Setting up your event venue and then searching for a target audience is disastrous process. Instead, once you’ve identified your target market, you will discover the area where you should conduct your event. A posh event venue located far away from your prospective attendees will nullify your marketing efforts.
Lack of Tech Support
Since almost everything in today’s world has gone online attendees would expect at least a part of your event including event details or information, registration process, ads to prevail online. You name it and you have an app for it today. A great mobile app with commendable user-interface is the need of the hour. To avail these perks you might need a tech team to work with you irrespective of your technical knowledge.
Not Asking for Help
Convoluting problems by looping it around yourself and your team will take keep taking you in circles. Approaching industry experts for advice, seeking technical support from a tech team, and general moral support would help clear your path of hurdles.
by Ashwin | May 13, 2016 | Blog, event management, Marketing
The fact that content creation around your event’s theme or just events in general is pertinent to create and maintain awareness among people so as to generate and amplify the count of event attendees, advocates the idea that the created content needs to be presented to the audience in a legible manner with the aid of a platform that would support the desired design and orientation.
This post aims at furnishing the details and intricacies of the different blogs that are renowned for content creation and management.
Here are some of the best platforms available not only for creation of content but also for getting leads.
WordPress
WordPress, from its inception in the year 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes, since then has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the globe, used on millions of sites and viewed by tens of millions of people every day. WordPress just has 299 employees managing the whole Open Source project.
Wordpress allows you to add plugins to your blog such as Facebook, Twitter etc., there by integrating social media to the content that you generate so as to generate leads.
Blogger
One of the first blogging platforms, Blogger was initially known as BlogSpot. This Google-owned service is most popular among casual bloggers who write or share online for fun. Blogger is best-known for its quick setup and user friendly interface. With more than 500 million users Blogger provides a large number of people to whom your event-related content would reach.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website founded in the year 2007. Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything; it allows you to post photos, text, links, quotes, music and video from your browser, desktop, email, phone etc. When you start your blog you will be able to customize everything from colors to your theme’s HTML. There are in total 294.2 million blogs on tumblr and around 120,000 average sign ups per day with 550 million monthly users. All of tumblr is managed by just 377 employees.
Medium
As the tag line goes, medium is the perfect place to read and write. Through a combination of algorithmic and editorial curation, posts on Medium get spread around based on interest and engagement not because of mere popularity of a person. Medium is not about who you are or whom you know, but about what you have to say. It’s a place to blog if you want your words to be taken seriously, and if you favor a polished, streamlined experience.
Ghost
Ghost is an entirely open source content writing platform which has the facility to get a live preview of how your post will end up while you are writing it i.e., editing is facilitated using a split screen display. Ghost content platform is codded in JavaScript and designed to simplify the process of online publishing for individual bloggers as well as online publications. This platform might act as a worthy alternative to WordPress.
Weebly
Weebly is another blogging platform that is great for businesses who want to maintain a blog on their website. It is a web-hosting service featuring a drag and drop website-builder. By using Weebly one gets the access to customizable layouts, a set of free themes, and the usual sharing features that you can expect, to spread your words far and wide.Since Weebly can be used for blogging and web building, business experts find this platform more expedient in terms of use than other platforms where blogs and websites are created separately.
Typepad
Typead is deliberately marketed to non-technical users and includes additional features like multiple author support, photo albums, mobile blogging etc. The service is available in several languages and countries around the world. A major drawback to using Typepad is that all of the blogs are hosted by Typepad itself on their server, so you do not have the choice of using the platform with your own blog host.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a comprehensive platform that provides multitudes of options in terms of customization. It is a content management system that is composed of a website-builder, blogging platform and hosting service. One does not require coding-knowledge to change the content or layout or anything for that matter, which makes squarespace completely user friendly.
Wix
Wix.com is a cloud-based web development platform that allows users to create web sites and mobile sites with the help of their online drag and drop tools. Its predominant aim is to build websites, but it can also be used to start a blog. Although Wix uses a user friendly interface it has its own drawbacks in terms of search engine optimization (SEOs).
