Business owners have a tendency to fall in love with the solution they have built.
It has taken years of experience and expertise to create.
BUT
Does it actually solve the pain, problem or desire of their Target Market?
If it doesn’t
THEY WILL NOT BUY IT!
Understand what your Target Market needs
And then tweak your solution to fit.
Fall in love with your Dream Customer, not your product of service.
The T of TABS stand for Target Market.
Mark is an accomplished hospitality professional with 30 years’ experience within 5* luxury hotels, prestigious private members clubs and premium brands.
Having been at the heart of two of London’s major hotel restoration and opening projects, Mark specialises in event management, sales and operations with a hands on and visible approach. He has a proven track record in operating multi-outlet F&B divisions whilst employing, motivating and coaching highly professional teams.
Venues that Mark has worked with include The Savoy, The Hurlingham Club, Berry Bros. & Rudd, Coutts & Co, Rosewood London and The Ritz Carlton, Bahrain.
A member of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts, Mark has advised, amongst others, The British Olympic Association, UBS & Hiscox Insurance on their event management strategy.
David is a Price Waterhouse qualified Chartered Accountant and holds an MBA from Warwick Business School. He has worked extensively in the Venture Capital and Private Equity environments and headed his own accountancy and tax practice for a number of years. Latterly he was appointed Chief Financial Officer of a major cyber security firm.
David’s expertise is in working with start ups and SMEs and in developing appropriate, commercially based financial and management reporting systems to complement the overall strategy of a business. He is highly experienced in assisting businesses with debt and equity fundraising and is well connected in the market.
Kate has been working in exhibitions and conferences for over 20 years. She has been responsible for the successful delivery of brand strategies and campaigns for hundreds of events, including the largest B2B event in the UK, Spring Fair, and the multi-award-winning New Scientist Live.
She now runs her own successful and award-winning event support agency servicing hundreds of event organisers, from Emerald, Informa, Clarion and Reed to corporates, start-ups and launches. Her team are also building a portfolio of media brands of their own.
Kate continues to advise clients on market position, brand strategy and tactical delivery. She also provides best practice training, templates, and guidance for inhouse teams.
What is it that draws customers towards you?
Generating traffic to your profile pages or website is easy.
Making sure it engages when it gets there is where so many people let themselves down.
You need 2 things:
✔ Great Positioning – you look like the expert you are
✔ Credibility – you are able to back up the positioning with valuable opinions and insights
We call this Leadership Marketing and it is a key part of our TABS Framework coaching
Do you want to get better at converting leads to customers?
Do You Really Care??
I speak to so many people about the Marketing and Lead Generation and so many times they believe that their marketing message should be all about them.
The reality is that is not the case.
“Do not fall in love with your product or service.
Fall in love with your dream customer.”
Take time to truly understand the Pain, Problem or Desire that they have.
Put yourself in their shoes.
Have Empathy with your customer and they will be drawn to you.
The last 12 months has completely decimated the live event agency environment as all of us the event industry struggle to negotiate the new landscape that’s been forced upon us by COVID-19.
Many agency owners are looking to transition skills, reposition their businesses, re-structure and batten down the financial hatches in anticipation of the lifting of restrictions and some kind of a return of the industry that we all know and love.
One thing is certain though – the industry will never be the same again.
Whilst all this turmoil continues, it’s remarkably easy for agency leaders to lose sight of the things that made their businesses successful in the first place. In my experience a successful agency is built around a great culture and common purpose. Get that right and pretty much everything else becomes a whole lot easier.
The challenge at the moment is that teams are not getting together regularly, if at all and we all know that zoom and the like, useful as they are, cannot replace the value of a great team meeting, brainstorming session or an informal chat in the kitchen between friends.
Forward looking leaders don’t let the current challenging situation impact on their agency culture. In fact, they use it to emphasise and build their internal values and the general vibe in their teams.
Why is this important?
So what are your next steps?
Find out how your people feel about how your culture has been impacted over the last 12 months or so – perhaps perform a culture audit. Your goal is to discover what your people value most, support that and guide it in a way that is aligned with your longer-term business objectives
If the engine of your culture bus is already running, congratulations you’re one step closer to creating an extraordinary workplace.
Guy has worked in the events and hospitality sector for over 30 years. In 1989 he founded The Ultimate Experience which later became the growth engine for The Concerto Group. As a Director of the Group, Guy was closely involved in Sales and Business Development – developing new projects and sales across venues, catering, teambuilding and private client events.
Since the sale of The Concerto Group, Guy has enjoyed success with a number of businesses in the events and hospitality arena including; Berry Brothers & Rudd, Leading Venues of London, Oxygen Events Services Ltd, Kirtlington Park and Costa Coffee.
Guy unashamedly admits he enjoys working on business growth rather than logistics. Guy brings a contagious level of enthusiasm which inevitably leads to growth.
Why you should never say, “I need more clients.”
That isn’t a goal, and you can’t build a plan to achieve it.
What you should think about is, “how can I make more money from my existing clients?”
Build strong relationships with your clients and they will keep on buying from you.
If you understand their value to your business over a 2–3-year period
And you understand your sales process and conversion rate
Then planning and budgeting for lead generation to find new clients becomes easy
The Three Little Words that mean everything in Marketing?
Lifetime Customer Value.
Peter Jackson gives his insight on what the future holds for the event buyer post Covid.
If you’re thinking about engaging with an event agency or issuing a brief, RFI or RFP, you need to read this before going any further.
The Pandemic has changed everything.
Over recent Covid-19-affected months the UK and Ireland agency and supplier landscape has changed significantly and navigating the new ‘normal’ can present a potential minefield for unwary brands, clients and event IP owners.
As an event industry professional, I ran my own highly successful agency, Clive, for over fifteen years. I now help clients avoid the potential minefield that event planning will be in the future.
Skills & Capabilities – Almost all agencies have endured tremendous challenges just to stay afloat throughout the various lockdowns and restrictions of the last 12-months. Skillsets have been eroded, core capabilities undermined, brand values and culture have been put on the back burner. Lastly financial probity of many agencies has been massively adversely affected. Couple all this with the headlong race towards virtual connections in a new market where almost all agencies present some kind of digital offering or capability and inevitably some will clearly be more capable than others.
Brand Fit – Even if we weren’t enduring these current challenges as an industry, I would still be encouraging brands to engage wisely and cautiously with their supply chain. With Clive we had an agency with a personality, offering and unique set of capabilities that resonated with particular market sectors and industries. Clearly, we were never going to be the right agency for everyone, nor did we want to be. But the clients with whom we built that special connection and who understood our personality as a business, received in return a level of service, creativity, commitment and ultimately results that was second to none.
Pricing Structure – In my experience agencies adopt vastly different pricing structures when it comes to charging for their work. Some charge a percentage mark up, some charge a flat fee, some charge for time, some charge a retainer and some try to do all four! Knowing when you’re getting value for money from your agency and having a transparent relationship as far as budget is concerned is vitally important. Access to specialist insight, experience and knowledge of the tricks of the agency trade you will ensure you’re achieving maximum ROI from your partners.
So, with these three points in mind, now more than ever wise brand and event IP owners should be interrogating their supply chain intelligently and diligently in order to make sure that they engage with the agency or supplier that is right for them and will deliver effectively on their objectives. Sounds easy doesn’t it?
But without a knowledgeable and experienced friend on your side, it’s easy to unwittingly step roundly in the proverbial s##t.