Experiential Marketing 2.0

As we wrap up Keith Urban’s Escape Together Tour for Kingsford and KC Masterpiece and launch into a new program for a financial services firm in 2010, I’m reminded of how complex and emotional the entertainment marketing business can be.

For marketers it can be a double-edged sword. You want to partner with artists who your audiences like, while staying true to your brand. Not to mention, members of your team and executives alike may have different opinions on who the right artist is to represent your company. Unfortunately, these decisions are all-to-often wrought with personal preferences, and sometimes made without fully evaluating opportunities against business objectives which can lead to failure in generating Return on Investment.

Here are a few thoughts to help you balance the the emotion with rational criteria as you play musical chairs with artists, sponsorships and program activation.

Audience: Do the demographics of the artist’s audience match your brands target audience? Tools like NPD music watch can help you understand what music consumers buy, where, and why they buy. This database includes market share by specific artists, genres, companies, labels, and titles as well as consumer behavior, attitudes, and demographics.

Brand Alignment: What are the key attributes of your brand? What are the attributes of the artist? What is the subject matter of their songs? Determine which elements align, and which do not. The fit should be as natural and organic as possible. The story should not feel forced. If there are any showstoppers, the artist can be easily removed from consideration, if there are elements that are not detrimental to your brand, but not necessarily aligned, that’s OK. A perfect match is extremely rare. If you can get a 70% alignment, you’re doing very well.

Reach and Star Power: What is Marketing Evaluation’s Q Score for the artist? What is the magnitude of the artists tour? How are recent music sales? How active is their fan base? All of these factors can be used to determine the opportunity of your brand along with the artist to make an impact on your target audiences.

Artist and Agent Flexibility: Is there an opportunity for your brand to truly leverage the artist as a brand advocate? Can you negotiate the right deal points to activate your sponsorship? Often the more prominent the artist, the less flexibility you have. Less prominent artists may entertain more options and view the relationship with your brand as more of a partnership where there is a mutual exchange of value. Marketers have a balancing act here, and finding the right balance can make or break the success of your sponsorship.

Cost: This is a huge factor. Even with the largest investment, many ‘A’ list artists will make more money selling merchandise during a few concerts, than you have to provide in sponsorship dollars for an entire program. Keep this in mind when trying to negotiate deal points with each artist and understand every request and every negotiated point is significant. Prioritize the elements which are critical to the success of your program and ensure these are included in the deal.

Burt Helm and Ronald Grover write in their post, BTW Celebrity Endorsers Have to Work Harder “With marketers trying to squeeze more out of every dollar, celebrity endorsers are being asked to do more than just pose beside a product.” These are interesting times in the music industry and brands offer a compelling solution to artists who are looking to reach broader audiences, sell more music or loosen the grasp of labels on the industry and their income. Whether its a presenting sponsorship deal, an endorsement or secondary sponsorship, brands can do well if they take a strategic approach to their entertainment marketing program. Remember entertainment marketing is not just about the music, its about the marketing. Identifying and exploiting an organic fit between your brand and an artist is no easy task. If done well, it can foster a mutually beneficial partnership and relationship that can drive demonstrable business success for both artist and brand alike and add value to your audiences.

Originally published on AMA Boston Blog, September 15, 2009.

Autumn is here. For many companies, this means planning is in high season. We’re all working diligently on trying to figure out the right number, frequency, type and cadence of events to include in our portfolio to drive relationships, sales and ROI. This is no easy task. There are several factors that can influence the mix. Some of these include: industry, types of suspects and prospects pursued, audience behaviors, company products and solutions offered, state of current pipeline, the economy, budget, etc. What’s even more challenging is these factors are in a constant state of flux and are changing all the time. We are trying to hit a moving target and our plans must be flexible enough to meet the changing needs of the environment we work in.

Here are 10 thoughts on how you can create an effective and efficient event portfolio plan.

1. Collaborate: Ensure you have all the right people involved in the process: brands and business units; corporate headquarters and countries or regional offices; event marketers, advertisers, direct marketers, digital teams, PR and sales; agencies; business partners, etc. Having the right people involved at the right level from the beginning of the process with help you build an integrated plan that has a much higher probability of success. This will also facilitate buy-in and help things work much more smoothly as the year goes on.

2. Build Value: Relationships are predicated upon a mutual exchange of value. Remember this when working with your internal and external teams during the planning process. Understanding the inputs, outputs and roles of each and every team member will help make the process run effectively and efficiently. Respect for individual roles and establishing an environment of trust are critical. Success of the plan, and ultimately the company trumps individual needs.

3. Think of the Audience First: People do not live their lives via a media plan or event schedule. Most will only attend a few events per year. Who are your target audiences and what events are they most likely to attend? Event marketing portfolios should be built from an audience perspective first.

4. Give Every Event A Job: Some events and tactics are good for generating awareness and thought leadership. Others are better for lead generation.  Still others have strengths in nurturing and closing the deal. Don’t forget about loyalty events. While its true that few events have a singular purpose, consider the promary objective of each event in your portfolio, and ensure you have the right tactics in place at every stage in the sales cycle. Remember that large third-party events are best for the early stages of the cycle (awareness, lead generation) and smaller, proprietary engagements are most appropriate toward the end (nurturing, conversion, loyalty).

5. Act Globally And Locally: There are some industry events which have the power to attract audiences from near and far – destination events. Start with these. Otherwise, audiences tend to operate within a certain market. Execute proprietary activities regionally to nurture, convert or drive retention and expansion of your audiences. Its often a lot easier for someone to attend a local breakfast seminar than book a flight to Las Vegas.

6. Select Events Carefully: Create and adhere to a robust decision-making process. Use the right criteria. Are your target customers at the event? Can you drive the audeince? Does the event audience meet your target demographic? Is it a key industry event? Is there an opportunity to tell your story?

7. Use Data-Based Business Rationale: “We’ve always attended.”, “Our competition will be there.”, “What will the industry / our customers think if we don’t go?” Are not sound business strategies or reasons for exhibiting. Do the math. If the event has the ability to meet your marketing and business objectives, then go. Otherwise, leave it on the table.

8. Decide Which Activities To Add, Change Or Remove: Understand that some events are underperformers because they fail to deliver the right audience. Others deliver the audience, but the way in which you participated may need to be adjusted to take better advantage of the opportunity. There are also always new opportunities available to reach your audiences. These opportunities may be created by third-party producers, or you can create them yourself. Explore all options before arriving at a final plan.

9. Save by Zero: If you have an event portfolio that is filled with legacy activities and potentially frought with waste. Start from scratch. Build your plan from the ground up. Make no assumptions. Treat every event with the same scrutiny when evaluating it for inclusion in you plan.

10. Keep The Plan Alive: Remember, no plan is ever final. Event portfolio planning is a continuous process that must be monitored throughout the year and adjusted regularly based on performance, learning, the environment and your own pipeline.

Portfolio planning can be a complex and sometimes politically-charged process. The right alignment to marketing and business objectives, strong team integration and disciplined process, will help increase your chances at delivering a flexible plan built for success. If you have any additional ideas or challenges you’ve faced in creating your plan, please share!

Locked in every trade show is a number. Someplace deep inside event demographics, and underneath all the hype and buzz of exhibitors, speakers and attendees you will find it. The number of people you really want to talk to. These are your targets – people who have a high propensity to become your customers.

Often event-producer-provided audience descriptions can be somewhat biased and useless from a marketing perspective. Case in point: Aren’t we all “decision makers”? Because of this, I’ve come to respect third-party audits by companies like BPA Worldwide or Exhibit Surveys. Wherever possible, its a good idea to insist on third-party audits to drive true marketing discipline into your program and the event industry at large. All said, chances are you don’t want to attract and start a conversation with everyone who attends a trade show – You want to engage with the folks that really matter, your suspects and prospects.

I’m always amazed at the size and scope of the spend many companies make at major events to drive awareness and audience. I wonder if anyone ever bought anything because of a 24-story building wrap. I’m not saying awareness vehicles have no value. On the contrary, awareness is critical in driving pipeline. My point is: each and every tactic and investment at every event should be scrutinized and prioritized to ensure it is the best tool to accomplish your business objectives with your targeted audiences. Event marketers don’t have to have the largest budget, the biggest booth or the most impressive sign to win. They just need to be strategic in their approach and apply intelligence to their process. Here are some ideas that can help you own the show without breaking the bank.

BYOA – Bring Your Own Audience: The audience is the most important part of any event. Don’t rely on someone else to provide it. Be sure to link with sales organizations and have them personally invite key customers and prospects to the event. Design experiences just for them when they get there. Leverage business partners to participate in your presence and ask them to do the same. Use search (both standard and social media) to identify and invite suspects. Engage in a direct marketing campaign with key media properties to drive awareness for targeted audiences that meet your demographic and psychographic profile requirements. Its a lot easier to catch the right fish if you stock the pond.

Get The List: Negotiate sponsorships with event producers that include the pre registration, registration and attendee lists. Sort and parse the list to ensure you’ve boiled it down to just your target audiences. Communicate with this audience before, during and after the show. Ensure you build a communication stream well-before the event to determine how you will handle opt-ins, hot, warm and cold leads and ensure this process is followed.

Engage The Press And Media Early And Often: An event is not the first time you should contact the press and media. Its imperative you build relationships with key media properties well-ahead of time. Remember, if you can provide content that is relevant to their audience and is easy to execute you will go far. Just like any business relationship, press and media relationships are predicated upon a mutual exchange of value. Make sure your content is newsworthy and you spend time helping them succeed. Its not always about your company, brand or products. Hold a press conference before the event to drive mindshare and monopolize the media. Remember to invite prominent bloggers in your industry who are respected by your target audience – they often have greater pull than mainstream media.

Be Everywhere That Matters: Fill educational tracks with experts that can provide high-value content in sessions relative to your companies niche in the subject matter of the event. Secure a keynote speaking opportunity. Participate in panel discussions and roundtables. Remember, audiences spend far more time in sessions and attending speaking opportunities than they do on the show floor.

Get The Smallest Booth Possible: That’s right, I said smallest. Your largest investment should be in engaging with your audiences. You don’t need to bring every product in every product line. You don’t need 300 signs scattered throughout the booth. You don’t need every employee in your company to staff your booth. What you do need is enough space to manage flowthrough of your targeted audience over the course of the show. You also need space for the appropriate number of staffers to manage these attendees.  Ensure your experiences and demonstrations have enough room to comfortably be executed. Other things to consider include business theater and meeting space. Take advantage of off floor or off site meeting space. The cost per square foot is often less and you can control the experience more effectively. Above all, make sure your booth is open and inviting, and most importantly, efficient.

Use Time As A Competitive Weapon: Create experiences and engagement activities that monopolize the time that your suspects and prospects spend with you. If you have days filled with demonstrations, booth tours, speaking engagements, meetings, etc., audiences will spend more time immersed in your brand and will have less time to spend with competitors.

Leverage Social Media Or Virtual Technologies: “What happens in Vegas…” or more appropriately, “What happens at the event often stays at the event.” This is unfortunate considering the huge investment made. Use social media to enhance, expand and extend the event experience for attendees and outside participants as well. Videos (YouTube), Photos (Flickr), Blogs, Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, private social networks, etc. can all be potent additions to your strategy. Remember an event is a point in time, relationships are long-term. Engage and interact with your communities both on and off line to improve the ROI of the event.

Follow Up Quickly And Consistently: Remember the communication stream? Execute the plan to follow up with and engage opt-ins, hot, warm and cold leads. The reason for investment and participation in the event was most likely to obtain these suspects. Don’t waste the investment by dropping the ball when the event is over. Leads are gold. Covet them. Communicate with them. Build relationships with them. Now.

Creating mindshare and heartshare doesn’t have to be expensive. Recognizing and engaging with a targeted audience is more effective and efficient than betting the farm on broad-based awareness efforts. With the proper alignment of tactics to business objectives, and the discipline to scrutinize and prioritize each and every investment, you’ll be well on your way to building the right share of voice to own the show.

Have other ideas? Please share!