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Category Archives: Productivity

Sep 23
1

Event Lead Capture: 5 Things to Be Most Effective

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event lead capture

 

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” – Maimonides

A man who fishes does so by any means possible. This may be a net, trap, cage, or hook and line. Yet, anyone who always looks to the latter goes by the term ‘angler’.

As of 2011, there were over 44 million anglers in the U.S., making the outdoor activity one of the top among Americans. These people spent 17 days each doing what they enjoy. And, they’re serious about their sport. They believe in being prepared, and as a result shelled out over $15 billion for fishing gear that same year. This is $1,261 on average per person, and it doesn’t include the nearly $22 billion paid for food and lodging related to their trips. You may not see it now, but the actions of these anglers reflect those persistent with event lead capture, too.

The Correlation Between Fishing and Event Lead Capture

Before embarking on a fishing trip, an angler will seek out the best location to find his or her targeted fish. This is much like an event marketer will review data to find the best area to reach targeted consumers. Both will consider external elements, such as the season and its weather. But, the biggest factor will be traffic. How many of my desired fish (or consumers) will I encounter at this time?

Once anglers (and event marketers) have narrowed down their locations, it’s time to make plans to capture their fish (or leads). After all, it’s not enough just to show up, as they may come back empty-handed. The better prepared both anglers and event marketers are, the bigger their bounty.

5 Things Needed for Effective Event Lead Capture

With the right location, event and experiential marketing presents a big opportunity to get leads. The initiative gives brands the data they need to build on consumer relationships. And, this helps them increase their sales now and in the future. So, if your event lead capture efforts aren’t paying off, consider whether you have secured these five necessities.  Read More

Aug 14
0

How to Run Multiple Brand Marketing Events at One Time

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Brand Marketing Events

 

An 18-year old from the United Kingdom holds the Guinness World Record for “most balls juggled.” Eleven – that was the magic number of balls for Alex Barron to get the win. And, on the day he earned the title in April 2012, he “managed 23 consecutive catches.” Isn’t it amazing someone so young was able to pull off such a feat?

Alex practiced for two years before securing the record. And, it’s obvious he used great coordination and careful thought. He’s an extraordinary young man. Yet, professional jugglers will tell you their acts demand so much more. Not only must you be able to juggle well, you must also multitask to talk with your audience and keep them engaged. In doing so, you must overcome communication barriers within your crowds.

Experience, preparation, coordination, careful thought, multitasking and good communication. It seems the needs of a successful juggling career are also those of well-executed brand marketing events. But, many other stills and talents come into play when juggling multiple activations at one time.  

The Art of Managing Multiple Brand Marketing Events

Event marketers know the immense attention a single event or experiential marketing activation commands. And, managing many at one time, or even back-to-back, increases that responsibility. This may be for street teams spread throughout a metro area. Or, it may be an experiential marketing campaign at college campuses in the Southeast. Or, it may be pop-up shops in various key markets nationwide at Christmas time.

It doesn’t matter the initiative. Each activation must go under a microscope to ensure no detail goes overlooked. Yet, event marketers must also plan across all events to ensure consistency. Without this consideration, problems may arise, including:

  • Lack of on-site resources, event staff or tools;
  • Conflicting messages across events, causing confusion in each market; or
  • Missed campaign goals, resulting in a bad investment and lost revenue.

Conversely, successful brand marketing events encourage 74% of attendees to buy the promoted products. And with potential such as this, brands can’t afford to let balls drop on any single activation.

4 Tips to Best Manage Multiple Brand Marketing Events At Once

Event marketers may need to launch a campaign that involves multiple days, locations, audiences, or all three. Or, they may seek a solution to undesirable multi-event results in the past. Either way, they’ll be better able to juggle several events at once using the following four tips.  Read More

Aug 01
1

Event Staff Onboarding: How to Ease Your Burden

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Event Staff Onboarding

“Without commitment, you’ll never start, but more importantly, without consistency, you’ll never finish.” – Denzel Washington

Let’s begin this post with a disclaimer. Your HR onboarding process should never follow the lead of Denzel Washington’s character in the 2001 thriller Training Day. In fact, doing so may lead to serious problems, like it did earlier this year for a Sheriff’s deputy in Lake County, FL. And, while Washington’s quote may not be in direct reference to the subject, there is advice to heed related to event staff onboarding.

Your onboarding process is critical to your event staff’s ability to begin their job. And, how thorough it is impacts how effective they’ll be moving forward. When they’re not successful, they lose confidence and may jump ship. Your approach must also be consistent for all event staff. When it’s not consistent, your event staff share different messages and confuse your attendees. In turn, experiential marketing activations suffer. So, too, could your brand’s perception and your business as a whole. This makes companies with solid event staff onboarding processes better positioned to reach their marketing goals.

Why Onboarding is So Important to Event and Experiential Marketing

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports companies lose one in six “new hires each month for the first three months.” Consider the time and effort that goes into screening and hiring individuals. That is a considerable waste. The biggest reasons for their leaving is not having “clear guidelines” on expected responsibilities (23%) and the need for “more effective training” (21%). And, that’s why employee onboarding is “key to retaining” and “engaging talent.” Read More

Jun 19
0

Employer of Record Services: What You Need to Know

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Employer of Record Services

“Businesses grow or die based on the quality of their people, so the human resource executive role is arguably the most strategic in the company.”  – Owen Mahoney, CEO, Nexon, as reported by Harvard Business Review

It’s a widely-accepted truth that how your employees feel is a good indicator of your customer experience. It’s why successful businesses make employee engagement a top priority. Connections are important, both internal and external. And, this has made human resources much more than an employee-centric role.

HR leads are getting involved in decision making at the highest levels. In fact, a survey reports 71% of HR heads “are spending more time on business issues not related to HR or talent.” They’re updating corporate governance rules, “managing relationships between board members” and more. The unfortunate effect is the focus on their most valuable asset – their people – has diminished. Plus, their reach has spread thin. This made the top 2017 resolution for HR professionals to increase efficiency and pare down processes. And, many organizations are finding a solution in employer of record services. 

What are Employer of Record Services?

Employer of record services (EOR) can fulfill these HR goals. They let organizations offload several administrative HR tasks. The EOR partner can assume many HR burdens after the client recruits new hires. These include on-boarding and off-boarding, payroll, insurance and benefits. In experiential marketing, a similar service is Experiential Employee Management Services (EEM), wherein a staffing company acts as a co-employer for it’s clients’ internally-recruited field teams.  Read More

May 09
1

3 Big Reasons for Expert Payroll Outsourcing Companies

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Payroll Outsourcing Companies

“Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.” – Peter Drucker

Though born in the early 1900’s, we know management consultant and professor Peter Drucker as the father of modern management. Drucker believed individuals and their knowledge to be a company’s most important assets. Yet, he also knew how to streamline processes. And, this often meant outsourcing critical functions, which Drucker promoted as early as 1989 in a Wall Street Journal article. He said, “If clerical, maintenance and support work is done by an outside independent contractor, it can offer opportunities, respect, and visibility.”

In the event and experiential marketing industry, agencies and brands often want to hire their own field teams and manage them directly. This is especially common in the case of market and field managers. However, in directly hiring field staff, especially on a nationwide basis, there are many challenges and considerations. In addition to offering in-house payroll, other HR issues such as benefits, compliance, insurance, employee classification, and more can be daunting. And if done incorrectly, can open a company to additional costs and even legal liabilities. Hiring HR and payroll outsourcing companies to Experiential Employee Management (EEM) services for event teams can achieve Drucker’s benefits.

The ABCs of Payroll Outsourcing Companies and EEM Partnerships

The role of a payroll partner or experiential employee management provider is more complex than just processing checks. First, teams must be hired in a way that is compliant both with the IRS and on a state-by-state basis. In event marketing, the risk of employee misclassification is high when it relates to these on-demand employees. And when executing across the country, it is important to be extremely well-versed in employment laws as it relates to each and every state. Healthcare laws and other federal employment regulation must also be considered.

Once staff are onboarded, much detail goes into managing the payroll and benefits process every single pay period. For some companies, this is weekly, bi-weekly or otherwise. Wages are calculated, including overtime pay where applicable. HR teams must manage withholdings, such as taxes, insurance, 401K contributions and more. And, since these on-demand employees can come and go, teams must keep details for each person up-to-date. It is a challenging job that requires immense resources. But, what does it contribute to your bottom line? Many companies find here is no direct correlation. So, is managing this task internally worthwhile? Read More

Nov 04
0

How Relational Energy Helps Boost Performance At Work

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. Relational energy helps boost performance at work

How are you feeling right now? Do you regularly feel energetic and able to tackle 8 hours of work without stress? Or is a low energy level dampening your performance at work?

It can sound strange, but almost everyone experiences this. It’s important to know that these energetic states go beyond traditional sources of human energy such as food, water, and sleep. There’s actually another source of energy that can be found when you are surrounded by others, both at and away from your place of employment. This alternative form of energy that comes from the people around us is called “relational energy”. Read More

Sep 07
1

9 Tips That Will Make You An Expert At Building Rapport

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9 Tips to Be an Expert in Building Rapport

Building rapport and influencing people is important across all industries. The art of building rapport is not as simple as smiling and making small talk. It is about creating a sense of understanding and mutual trust.

In event marketing, building rapport is especially challenging. Brand ambassadors do not have the luxury of developing a relationship over time. Event and street teams need to be capable of building rapport with event visitors in minutes. They need to connect with consumers and event attendees almost instantly in order for a marketing event to succeed.

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Aug 29
0

Do You Know How To Set Goals For Your Event?

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Do You Know How to Set Goals for Your Event?

Events are one of the most best ways to market your business. In fact, one report found that in-person events are the most effective marketing tactic you can use. Events were ranked higher than blogs, social media, and infographics. But, while you know how to set goals for digital and traditional marketing initiatives, do you know how to set goals for your experiential marketing event?

Successfully navigating traditional marketing promotions and creating an effective experiential event are two completely different beasts. Too often, companies provide talking points, logistics and their target audience to their brand ambassadors, then set them loose to engage with event attendees. When executing, street teams sometimes the talent receive less. While giving the talent specifics related to their responsibilities, it’s unusual that the event team is provided with the event’s goals and how to work towards achieving them.

Even if you set goals for the event, that doesn’t necessarily mean you did things right. An unrealistic goal will rarely be achieved, and will only lead to an unmotivated team. The wrong goals can spell failure for an event.

To plan an event well, you need to know how to set goals that are clear and actionable.

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Aug 15
0

How to Make Better Instructions That People Remember

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how to make better instructions

Whether you are training new employees or teaching a potential client or customer how to use your product, effectively communicating information to others is critical. If you understand how to make better instructions that people remember, your team will perform better and your clients will get more out of your partnership. In short, everyone is successful!

Marketing events are finite experiences, and by nature require different instructions based on campaign, location and more. Over the course of a year, an event marketing professional creates an immense amount of different instruction sets. In addition, when working with temporary staff members who may not be familiar with your brand, you must instruct them in a way that allows them to, in turn, educate potential customers. To create an effective marketing event, you need to make better instructions. And to do that, you first need to understand how the human brain works.

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Jul 27
0

Making Good Decisions Faster: A Helpful How To

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Making Good Decisions Faster

All marketers need to be experts in making good decisions. Often we think this means carefully weighing our options and taking the time to develop an answer. While a thoughtful approach is key, in today’s fast-paced marketplace, the world cannot wait.

If you are worried that spending too little time making a decision will have negative consequences, don’t. According Deborah Mitchell, researcher at Temple University, while most people believe that spending more time on introspection improves decision-making, data suggests otherwise. And consider this: Americans make an average of 70 decisions per day. If you spend just 10 minutes on each, it would consume 11 hours a day (and the majority of your waking hours)!

Making good decisions quickly is possible – you just need to know how.

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