It’s not enough that you are a skilled event planner yourself and that you have built up a really solid event planning business with a reliable team of talented individuals working under you. Of course, there are already many challenges that accompany running an event planning business. You have to stay on top of market trends, recruitment, event management hong kong, networking, accounting, and so much more. However, you have to pay a lot of special attention to marketing and promotions. You might have built a sophisticated event planning machine here. But you aren’t really going to make an impact if people aren’t aware of your existence.
It should be one of the primary goals of any business identity to broadcast their brand to wider audiences so as to increase awareness of their products and services. These days, as the world is getting filled up with more and more people, that signifies an ever-growing market. And as the market grows, so does the demand for specific industries. This is especially true for event planning. As a business owner, you have to take it upon yourself to reach out to untapped segments of the market to make sure that your business is visible and accessible. You are operating in a very volatile and competitive market. Your business is going to have to find a way to gain any competitive edge or advantage to stay afloat.
Growing your client base is especially important when you’re thinking about scaling your business. Of course, the more successful you become as an entrepreneur, the more elaborate your dreams and goals are going to be. You are going to want to grow your operation more in order to meet a growing demand. However, it’s going to get to a point wherein the rate of growth of your business is going to surpass the rate of growth of the demand. When that happens, it means you have to start being more aggressive in generating demand by penetrating new market segments.
However, generating demand is a lot easier said than done. In fact, this is the aspect of business that most entrepreneurs will struggle with. They have the capacity to provide great services or create quality products. What they lack is the demand from the market to generate sales or income. Organic growth of demand is great. It means that you have a solid business model going on and that people really trust whatever it is you sell. But in order for you to crack that glass ceiling, you must also occasionally dabble into inorganic methods of promoting and marketing your business. Your business can only be as big as the market that it serves. And when you limit yourself to a closed-off portion of the market, you are effectively limiting the growth of your business.
Sometimes, it’s just a matter of venturing into other niches within the industry. Others will resort to setting up branches or stores in new locations in order to tap into a new market. There are truly many different ways in which one might go about marketing or promoting. It’s all a matter of you determining what your business goals are and what the best course of action for your company would be.
Don’t worry if you’re feeling lost in this regard. You’re an event planner. You’re not a brand strategist or a marketing specialist. You’re not a promotional expert. You know how to organize events, but you don’t have much experience in promoting businesses or penetrating markets. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should just give up. While the world of promotions and marketing might seem intimidating and cutthroat, you don’t have to be scared.
This chapter is going to help broaden your knowledge on the world of promotions and what techniques you can adopt for your business to reach wider audiences. It’s important to recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. Different techniques are going to work for different businesses and their respective audiences. It’s merely your responsibility as a business owner to really acquaint yourself with these different approaches to marketing so that you know what methodology would work best for you. And you don’t have to be bouncing around from one source to another in order for you to find what you need. This chapter will highlight some of the best practices in promotions and marketing for event planning businesses in this modern age. Of course, that isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be looking into other sources as well. By all means, exhaust whatever resources are at your disposal. Again, it really pays to gather perspective and gain more insight into specific segments of industry so that you gain proficiency in all of them.
Expand Your Network
It’s all about who you know. In any industry, networking is important if you really want to stimulate growth for your business. When you are consistently looking to expand your network, then you are also effectively expanding the reach and awareness of your brand. Of course, while you shouldn’t be snobby in your approach to networking, there are particular groups of people who you definitely should be looking out for when it comes to networking. It would be best for you to double down your networking efforts to reach these kinds of people:
Politicians
If you offer corporate event planning services, then you really want to get to know local community leaders and politicians. A lot of the time, these are people who are consistantly attending and organizing events. Of course, this is a market that could provide you with a lot of business. On top of that, having friends in government can help you when it comes to securing permits and whatnot for specific events.
Entrepreneurs/Business Owners
Again, if you’re in the corporate event planning niche, then you really want to meet as many entrepreneurs and business owners as often as possible. Whether they’re handling start-ups or Fortune 500 companies, these people might be in need of your services. Reach out to local business owners and entrepreneurs. Make sure that they know of you and your business so that they have you in mind whenever they need to organize events or parties.
Caterers/Stylists/Musicians/Entertainers/Party Rental Companies
You might not realize it but expanding your network of suppliers can really help in the promotion of your business as well. Sure, you have your roster of caterers and stylists there to help you out whenever you need them for events. But you never know when they can serve as your potential marketers as well. If you establish good working relationships with your external contractors, then they might return the favor and recommend you to their clients as well.
Event Space Managers
One hot tip that you can do is to link up with event space managers and offer your services to them. A lot of the time, these event space managers will not have an in-house coordination or management team to handle their events. This is exactly where you can come in. Offer potential partnerships to event space managers and have them recommend you and your business to their clients.
Invest in Marketing and Advertising Experts
In order to earn more money, you’re going to have to spend some money. That’s an old adage in the world of business and it still rings true today. While it may seem counterintuitive to be spending on something for your business that doesn’t guarantee immediate returns, you still have to consider investing in marketing and advertising campaigns. Of course, the whole point of this chapter is to help familiarize you with the many ways you can handle your own promotional strategies. However, if you feel like you don’t have the time or the knowhow to directly oversee these campaigns, there is another solution for it. It’s just that you’re going to have to shell out some cash to do so.
It’s okay for you to actually invest in the expertise of other people to run your marketing and promotional campaigns for you. This is something that plenty of large and successful businesses do all the time. As you are going to scale your company, you will have to dedicate your time and attention to more things. This means that you won’t really have the luxury of spending more time thinking about possible promotional campaigns that you could run yourself. This is why it’s perfectly within reason for you to invest in dedicated experts in the field of marketing or advertising. You can do this in one of two ways:
Create a Dedicated Marketing or Branding Department
The first thing that you can do is create an in-house branding or marketing team for your company. Technically, these individuals would work under your business as a part of your overall team. And their sole purpose would be to design, oversee, and execute branding or marketing campaigns for your company. This way, you have a group of people working directly under you who will take a bunch of the workload off your plate. However, keeping a department like this under a company’s payroll might not necessarily be the most cost-effective method for a lot of businesses, especially start-ups. This leads us to the other option…
Hire a Brand and Marketing Consultant/Agency
You don’t have to employ people under your company to handle marketing & brand agency hong kong. You can also outsource these services from dedicated consultants and agencies. Essentially, these experts would be able to provide all of the same services that an in-house branding and marketing team would without having to be on the company’s monthly payroll. You can choose to hire these agencies on a retainer or contractual basis, depending on your needs as a business. This could prove to be the more cost-effective method to hiring branding experts. However, the only caveat to this method is that you don’t have the same kind of accessibility that having an in-house team would be able to provide you.
Get Business Cards Made
Sure, making use of a business card might seem like such a primitive and outdated endeavor. But you shouldn’t be so quick to underestimate the power of this tiny promotional device. Sure, we all live in the digital age where everything that needs to be read should practically be on a screen now. However, there is still a place for well-designed and professionally printed business cards. In the business world, having a business card handy is more symbolic than it is practical. Of course, these days, you can look anyone up online and find out everything that you might need to know about a person. But a business card is what lets other people know that you really do mean business.
Of course, while you do have some creative liberties in designing your business card, you still want to make sure that you keep things professional and practical. The basic information should still be included. Otherwise, people won’t take your business card seriously and they won’t take your business seriously as well. Be sure to input your name, designation, business name, business address, field of expertise or specialization, logo, and essential contact information (email address, contact number, social media handles). If you really want to embrace the digital world, a lot of people are embedding QR codes into their business cards. Typically, these QR codes will lead to the company website or social media pages once they are opened.
Remember that a business card is also a great way to start off or end a conversation with someone. You can approach a person, introduce yourself, and hand them your business card as you make a pitch for your business. You can also make a quick pitch for your business as you end a conversation with someone by handing your business card over to them casually. One of the best things about business cards is that they are small and easy to carry around. It’s always best that you have a few business cards on your person at all times. You never know who you’re going to run into or when you’re going to have to make a quick pitch to someone.
In any industry, business cards are important. But they are especially important when your field of work requires you to really network and interact with a large group of people. This is why event planning businesses should always invest in proper business cards for their teams.