Events provide the best Return On Investment (ROI) of any promotional tactic.
Event and sponsorship marketing is the single most effective way to reach and move audiences, according to Promo magazine. So, to get the best ROI from your corporate, brand or organizational anniversary, use events that generate vibrant, emotional connections with customers and potential customers, and build employee pride and passion.
In a word, events can drive your marketing communications in ways traditional and new media cannot.
Events communicate in personal, powerful, interactive ways.
Knowing this, design events that help accomplish your marketing goals. You can use anniversary-marketing events to:
*Introduce a new product or service upgrade
*Announce a new company initiative
*Expand into new territories
*Integrate employees of newly acquired or merged companies
*Enhance the reputation of your CEO and your company
*Provide product information
*Celebrate a successful year or project completion
*Target your marketing
*Position your company as a community leader
Events generate understanding and involvement
Tell your employees and your customers WHY you have bought a sponsorship or created an event. You want the support of your employees so they understand why precious resources are being directed to these endeavors. Tell them how your past is the strongest criterion that people have to judge your future.
Events provide interaction between you and your audience, so structure that contact carefully.
Your competitors may already be employing events for their marketing. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store took its chuck wagon on the road with a tour by Grammy award-winning artists Alison Krause and Union Station. And Wella and Sebastian combined for a 10-city tour in which models show off the latest hairstyles and makeup products for salon owners. John Hancock Financial Services made extensive use of former baseball greats and Olympic athletes to interact with its constituents.
People love to meet stars, so put your guests in direct contact with well-known athletes or local celebrities, such as baseball players, professional golfers, media celebrities. Have baseballs signed for each attendee. Have the golfers play a par three hole at your charity tournament and have your photographer available. Have your guests mix with Olympic athletes. Create that personal experience for your guests.
Don't forget your employees. Bring the celebrities to meet your employees. Introduce them and have their photos taken. This increases employee support and pride.
Design events for your specific audiences
Sometimes you will develop events that reach a very small, specific audience, for example, electro-chemical engineers who use your product. Or your audience may be broader based, perhaps parents of young children. Fisher-Price developed its 75th Anniversary Celebration 12-city tour that features two 60' x 60' traveling play areas. Company spokesperson: "It helps parents remember how special the Fisher-Price experience was for them and how meaningful it still is for their children." Other audiences might include opinion leaders and government officials who can have major impact upon your endeavors.
Be creative in funding event marketing
Analyze your budget to find funds for anniversary marketing events: advertising and direct mail expenditures, a monthly newsletter, counter cards, boxes of logoed mugs that will end up in the warehouse. Move those funds into the powerful field of event marketing. Integrate events into your total marketing strategy and goals and they will effectively develop and cement your brand in your customers' minds and hearts. Your audiences may remain the same. You are just rethinking how best to reach and move them to action.
Help find a solution to a significant problem
Use your organization's anniversary to throw support behind an important cause. The Home Depot Foundation's mission is to build affordable homes for working families. Avon elevated its image immeasurably, and raises tremendous amounts of money to eradicate breast cancer, with the annual Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.
Get help to do it right
Don't think you can create a powerful, effective and efficient anniversary events marketing program by throwing it on an already overworked marketing department. Or if you do, get them outside, experienced professional help. Find a partner who can think and plan and act strategically to incorporate a new, long-range events-based initiative into your existing marketing efforts. Find an organization that can move you quickly and decisively into this new arena.
Measure before, during and after to verify results. This is serious business and real money, and you deserve a real, measurable return for your investment.
Finally, embrace events because they provide the best ROI for your anniversary-marketing dollar.
Ken Owens, president of Owens Marketing Group, http://OwensMarketingGroup.com, uses powerful marketing and branding tools of events and sports sponsorships, and aggressive public relations to help companies grow.
Ken is a member of the Kullberg Consulting Group (KCG) a strategic alliance of sixty entrepreneurially driven marketing and marketing communications companies, whose service, http://MarketingMilestone.com - provides effective assistance to companies celebrating company or brand anniversaries. KCG brings together the combined experience of its members working with over 585 companies, in 21 major industry groups.
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