In the advertising industry the strength of an advert is measured by:- How many people it targets, how many times they see it, do they relate to it?, do they recall what it was selling?, and most essentially, will it make them buy?
We cannot think of any other sort of advertising that is as effective as promotional products at delivering you exposure to customers and creating goodwill that leads to sales.
Consider these examples:-
1. A low cost item like a promotional fridge magnet, custom notepad or promotional drink bottle will offer your company an abundance of repeat advertising exposure to your customer. Your logo/message (or perhaps something as rudimentry as your telephone number) will always be at hand – they will not have to look through the Yellow Pages to find your (and your competitors) details.
2. Being given a mid priced item like a promotional desk clock, a branded mousemat or a logo printed coffee mug will present to your existing customers that you appreciate them, they will thank you for it, which in turn will create goodwill towards you and your business. Furthermore it will produce years of daily exposure to your logo/message. The cost of pre exposure (to your message) will be miniscule.
3. Top clients and staff are essential to our business and they will be to yours too. Reseach has shown that happy staff are productive staff and you will know how much business, say, your top twenty five customers provide. A $30 thank you gift will represent less than 1/1000 of most employees yearly pay!
It might a smaller fraction of a contract you are tendering for or the annual sales volume of clients. Some of the most successful companies we know are not huge payers but have a focus on staff contentment and showing them they are appreciated – they often use Corporate Gifts. Simply acknowledging someone and telling them they are essential is good but the act of giving is a lot more powerful.
What are Promotional Products?
Promotional Products are items that can be decorated with a clients name, logo or message on them. The industry is growing and has a value of $3.0 billion per annum in Australia. Marketers desire to brand their organisation, product, or service is the reason why they use Promotion Product’s items and services.
Many other media options are available – newspaper, radio, and direct mail to name a few – these however do not offer the accountability offered by Promotional Product Marketing. Promotional Products are successful, as not only do they present your message but your client will thank you for them.
Consider the benefits of Promotional Product Marketing outlined below:
Targeted - Promotional Products target the people you are appealing to. No non-prospects, no wasted circulation.
Longevity – A well made Promotional Product will last for years and is used on a daily basis by your client. No other media can use as much exposure.
Versatility – There are so many applications for Promotional Products Marketing that a listing of them would look like the Sydney telephone directory.
Budget Flexible – From a few cents to hundreds of dollars Promotion Products has products to fulfill your particular communication objectives.
Obligation – productive business is based on healthy relationships. Giving away Promotional Products to customers strengthens these relationships and creates an obligation towards doing business with you and your organisation.
Functional – The Promotional Products we offer are functional ensuring that your client will use the gift and be exposed to your message on a daily basis.
Promotion Products is a Brisbane based company that supplies promotional products such as promotional drink bottles and custom notepads and much, much more, call us on 1300 303 717 at anytime.
Almost every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your business will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their cash once.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible results.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each company will have its own set of strengths and flaws that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule that can be applied to almost any corporation to be used as a marketing framework. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined during the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business functions. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.
The term was later built upon to include the idea of “four P’s” that described the essential elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and efficient marketing system.
Nearly every segment in the modern marketplace is competitive, especially conference production, where good marketing decisions could mean the success or failing of the business. See our websitehere.
Product
Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most critical of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your business will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you.
Several people do not think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual product that your company is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not always the case.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application solutions in the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
Once your goods have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.
The car industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace.
As part of our individual promotion system, our business very carefully researched what made our goods stand out from the crowd.
Marketing plays a crucial function within a business strategy and shouldn’t get treated like an afterthought.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to figure out the top price that your customers would pay (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular targets your business has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the crucial factors that shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your customers, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on.
This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the release of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Manufacturers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core of customers that would pay it. By using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company can help to smooth its own money flow.
Penetration pricing
Penetration pricing is at the other end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary rewards can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.
Another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one part of the marketing mix that will generate revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or undertake.
It might seem evident that marketing is incredibly significant to a undergraduate physics text books supplier such as ours, although the ideas still must be put into practice, which isn’t always simple.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often not addressed by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your production centres and shops or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as a whole distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, many people instantly think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the arrival of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every business is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.
There are several types of conferences; the dictionary definition of conference says “A meeting for the exchange of views”.
My interpretation of conference, being a conference producer, is a place where people meet to confer and share knowledge. In the sharing theme I have decided to detail the elements required to ensure your conference goes smoothly. Whether you are getting a conference production company like mine to do it for you, or if you are going to manage it yourself, follow this outline and you can be assured that if you have made ample allowances for each of the items then your attendees (usually called delegates) will have a positive experience. The better the feedback from the delegates the better the conference will have been received by the end client, either your MD or client depending on whether you are doing it yourself, or are an event organiser.
There are many different types of conferences, one of the most popular types are seminars which are normally an academic style forum where people go to learn about a specific topic.
I mention Forum above because this is probably (at least to my knowledge) the oldest type of meeting or conference that I am aware of. My partner Sam will cringe at this, as when I discuss my work, I always have to get the Romans in the story somehow
A Short History of Conferences
The forum as many people are aware was the centre of power in Rome for many hundreds of years, a Roman general would return from a successful campaign and he would have been received at the forum and made a speech from the rostrum to the Roman people, about what he encountered on his travels and how he overcame the challenges he faced.
So for thousands of years people have been having conferences around the world, the tools for doing the job have changed, but I can imagine and have indeed read about, the effort and organisation that went into preparing for one was as important then as it is today.
Things haven’t changed much no matter how large or small a conference is, there are some rules that we must all follow.
The Right Venue
Once you have a reason to hold a conference and an audience to attend the next step is venue selection, this is crucial as you will need a room large enough for the numbers attending, without being too large. If you are going to have a conference set with rear projection then the throw distance has to be taken into account when you are looking at the room, (I will come onto throw distance later when thing get more technical) as this uses space too.
Once you have a main meeting room suitable for your delegate numbers, you then have to consider where they will have tea and coffee breaks for networking and if there is potential for exhibition style displays. Quite often a conference you will have a large group of industry leaders and corporate decision makers, why not create a form of exhibition area to promote ancillary products or services?
An essential component for a successful conference production project is choosing the right location for your venue, for example. If you have many international visitors attending then you need to be near an airport.
Remember if you are going to do the job right you are also responsible for the delegate experience prior to arriving at the venue, you want them to have a pleasant journey and feel as relaxed as possible on arrival so venue location is very important.
Conference Production
Once a venue has been selected and it fits with all the criteria above, then it’s time to give your production company a call, they will normally recommend a site visit, so the room can be measured to check all of the conference production elements fit within the space proposed. There is nothing worse than turning up on the day to find something wont fit!
There are various different styles of the seating and this is an important consideration. There is theatre style seating where the delegates sit in rows next to each other. Then you have classroom style seating where delegates sit next to each other with a slim table in front similar to when you might take an exam. Then there is cabaret style seating which is where delegates are seated on round tables which are usually six feet across.
After your production company has completed the site visit they will propose the elements of staging you require to achieve your purpose. This will include stage and set, video projection, sound, lighting, crew levels to operate the show, and any pre-production requirements.
Pre-production
Not all conferences require pre-production, for example if your conference has PowerPoint slides you may want your production company to create them for you, a lot of companies now have the expertise to do this in-house, but if that is the case they need to be of a professional standard.
You may want a video to be created, there are different types of messages you could utilise a video for, for example, a short opening sting, like an advert, to give an uplifting start to your show.
Sometimes there may be presenters that can’t attend so you could have them videoed prior to the event and then played back during the conference at the appropriate time.
Not all presenters are comfortable with presenting, so a speaker coach may be a good idea, the coach will do as much or as little as is required. Usually they will come into your offices and asses the presenters, presentation techniques and will advise accordingly.Speaker coaches can be invaluable to the success of your event if your presenters are new to their role and do not have any public speaking experience.
The recommended event managements techniques involve outsourcing your conference to a specialist producer or production company. As with many things in life you can do it yourself, but do you really want the headache?
However, if you decide to do it yourself, then below are some useful hints and tips to creating your own successful conference production.
Set and Staging
A conference set is usually a timber framed construction covered in a material of a colour that fits the client’s corporate colours, normally this would have an aperture in it for rear projection with a screen, the screen should be large enough for all of the audience to see the content on the screen without too much trouble.There is nothing worse than being on the back row and not being able to see the screen, especially if it forms a major part of the presentation.
The base of the screen, known as the under panel, needs to be at least 1.2m (5ft) to ensure the audience has a clear view over the heads of the people sat in front of them.
This is where the ceiling height comes into play. For example if you had a screen height of 2.5m, a screen base of 1.2m and a screen header, above the screen, of 300mm the minimum ceiling height required is 4m, be sure to take into account any staging or steps in your measurements.
There are many different styles of set you can use, many companies have a stock set option which is pre-built, when it is used it is recovered to suit the client’s corporate branding. Other styles of set include a bespoke set where you consult a designer who will take a brief from you regarding the theme of the event and come up with a purpose built set with various options. This is of course more expensive compared to the standard stock set options. Provided you use a competent production company a stock set will do the job fine, unless you need something really different.
Whether you decide on a stock or bespoke set it is advisable to have some scale floor plans created to ensure all the elements fit into the available space and most production companies will do this in-house. if you went for the bespoke option you would receive some 3D drawings so you can visualise what the set will look like in the venue.
Once the set has been decided upon then the stage will also need to be included in the plans. The most cost effective stage option for corporate events is a standard stage the width of the set, which is normally about 2.5m deep and 450mm high.
The size also depends on what you want to have on stage during the conference, for example if you are going to have just one lectern or two, or if there is a requirement for a top table or some comfortable chairs and a coffee table to facilitate a more relaxed question and answer session at the end of the presentation.
Video Projection
Video projection is required if you want to put an image on the screen behind the speaker. The image can be data or video playback or indeed both. At small conferences this may just be a data projector and a laptop, controlled from the lectern, either with the client pushing buttons or with the help of a remote mouse so a presenter can move around the stage area freely.
You can also use a stage monitor screen so the presenter can see the slide changes without having to turn and look at the screen, the presenter should never have their back to the audience. To enable this you will require what we call a VCA DA this piece of equipment splits the signal from the laptop to both the projector and the stage monitor screen.
If the presenter is more akin to speaking than using a computer and doesn’t want to control their own slides then a cue light system can be used. This is a hand held controller that when pressed sends a signal to a light backstage and a technician then forwards the slides for the speaker.
If you want to play DVD’s you will require a DVD player with a preview monitor and a switcher. There are many different switchers you can use but it is recommended that if you’re going to play a lot of videos during your event then a good quality data switcher should be used. By using multiple DVD players each video can be queued up whilst another is playing and then the switcher changes the signal from one player to the other, this avoids the audience having to wait while the DVD’s are changed and makes for a very professional presentation.
So you’ve got your data projector, your cue light system, your stage monitor and your DVD playback.
What other event planning techniques can we use to enhance the experience of delegates at your conference?
Recently I did an event which had a live camera feed. Much the same as you are used to seeing a music concerts, where there is a large screen showing the view from a live camera.
The client wanted this for two different reasons firstly there was a presenter that didn’t have any PowerPoint slides except a name slide, so when he was presenting we had a live camera feed on the screen so the audience had a more up close and personal experience with the presentation. Then we utilised the live camera feed during the question and answer session for the same effect. By using two cameras we were able to switch between the person asking the question and the speaker responding to the question so everyone could properly see and hear both the question and the answer.
The second reason was that the client wanted to use some footage for the internet like a webcast, to be run after the live event. Certain elements of the conference were edited out and compressed for the internet so that delegates who were unable to attend could get a feeling of the content of the conference|, simply by watching it on their PC’s}.
Sound System (Public Address PA)
The sound system can range from a couple of speakers and one microphone in a small conference for say 50 delegates, or multiple speakers and microphones for up to thousands of delegates.
The basic sound system requirements are speakers, amplifiers, microphones and a mixing desk.
The speakers are generally on stands, however if you are organising a large conference they may be able to be flown from truss above to give an even coverage in the centre of the room.
In the event that you do have a very large audience than a delay line is required, this ensures that the signal reaches all of the speakers in the various locations around the room, or venue, at the exact same time removing any echo there might be.
There are various different types of microphones, the most commonly used these days are the tie clip radio microphones which enables the presenter the freedom to walk around the stage cable free.
If the presenters are going to stay at the lectern then lectern microphones which are wired are more suitable.
With regards the amplifier, most professional amps will run four speakers so if you need eight speakers for good coverage then two amplifiers will be needed. When the amount of speakers and amplifiers is specified, the next piece of equipment required is a mixing desk, generally people who are doing their own event don’t plan for this, but it can be the one piece of crucial equipment that makes the difference between an amateur and a professional event.
The mixing desk takes in all the signals that need to be heard through the speakers, such as the microphones, CD players and video playback. Once the equipment is plugged into the Mixing console, a feed is taken out of the desk and into the amplifiers, then from the amplifier to the speakers.
After this has been done the sound engineer then equalises the system which in layman’s terms means making it sound good in areas of the room. A well equalised sound system will have the feeling for the delegate, that the presenter is seated next to them not shouting from the front of the room.
All mixing consoles have a basic equaliser on the unit itself, however a professional conference producer will know it is advisable to get a separate graphic equaliser which has more options on it.
In a very large room it is recommend having what is called a multicore which as the name suggests is a cable with multiple cores inside it that carries the signals up and down the room from the control position from front of house to the control position backstage.
Lighting
Lighting is one of the most important visual elements of the conference. If you don’t have the luxury of a bespoke conference set then lighting can make all the difference.
There are several different types of lighting available, there is up-lighting normally provided by Par 64 floor cans, which you will recognise from seeing any professionally staged event. These can have coloured gel in them to add a set wash. There are also Fresnells which is a type of lamp which can hang from a truss or floor stand and again these can have a coloured gel in them to provide a set wash or coloured lighting effects. Profile lights are used to highlight elements of the set such as logos, steps or other details.
The most modern type of lamps on the market are LED lights. They are the most expensive type of lighting but they are worth it if you have the budget, the beauty of this type of lighting is that it can change colour at the press of a button|, which saves having to use gels to set the colour, and of course is a much more flexible for of lighting. I am sure you have seen LED lights being used all over the place these days, in torches, in mirrors, in cars, there are even some new cats eyes in the road that use LED lights.
Once the Lighting type and style is specified then it’s a good idea to get a lighting designer involved.
The designer will specify the type of lamp, where it should go, and what it’s going to do, if possible it’s best to hang lighting on a truss in front of the set, as opposed to using floor mounted stands. After the lighting has been decided on then it will need power, this usually comes from the venue supply via a dimmer rack to the lamps.
Crew
The crew is very important as they pull all the elements of the show together, professional conference production companies will know the value of a crew communication system which comprises of headphones and belt packs for each crew member allowing them to communicate with each other, and the production manager or producer.
On larger shows we have a production manager and if required a conference producer, either one of these will show call, which means they will tell the crew what they should be doing and when they should be doing it. For example, when a video is due to be played they will let the video engineer, the sound engineer and the lighting engineers know in advance so they are ready when the caller say run VT.
Transportation
Again transportation is a crucial aspect of any event, or else how is everything you have ordered going to get there at the right time on the right day? The size of the vehicle is dependent on the size of the show, it can be anything from a transit size van up to an arctic with a 40ft trailer. It is the responsibility of the conference production company to decide on the type and size of transportation, but remember if you are booking a venue and it’s a large show that requires an arctic then make sure the vehicle can get into the loading bay! Fortunately it is not from my own experience that I have learnt this but from watching a competitor learn the it the hard way many years ago at an event I was working at!
In Summary
Organising a conference requires a lot of forward planning, the more you put in to it before the event the smoother it will run on the day.
Remember to look after your crew because they are the ones who enable it to all happen, look after your presenters because they are the ones it is happening for, and most importantly look after your delegates if you want it to happen to them again in the future. If you follow these basic rules that then you will have a successful event, good luck!