Hospitality Ink, Cris Canning, Marketing for Meetings, Conventions, Events, Small Business and Individuals

Do You Need to Market A Meeting or Event? | Your Small Business? | Yourself?

The mission of Hospitality Ink:

To be an enthusiastic and ethical resource to individuals and organizations trying to increase their credibility and visibility.

Where are your marketing needs? Do you need to increase the credibility and visibility of:

Your Meeting or Event?

Your Small Business?

Yourself?

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Hit a Bull's Eye with Target Marketing

The first commandment of marketing is "Know thy Audience." By thoroughly defining your markets, you'll hit a bull's eye with your communications.

Marketing companies spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours each year to study their customers. But what have you done to get to know exactly who your target audience is? What do you know about their habits and needs?

It is difficult to be all things to all people. For this reason, when determining your target market, avoid the concept of the general public and focus on the particular segments of the population that are really interested in what you have to offer.

Actually you have more than one target market. It is important to consider everyone that will have an interest in or be impacted by your event or company, either potentially or currently. Each has unique needs and wants to be addressed. Each will have a different view and be interested in different aspects of it. So be creative during this step as increasing attendance or business may only occur as a result of addressing all applicable groups.

Target audiences should be segmented by demographics (gender, age, ethnicity, geographic region, family status, occupation, hobby, etc.), psychographics (lifestyle, opinions, values, beliefs, desire for status) and behavior (buying habits, where they go for information, how they like to be approached).

Study prospects until you get to the point where you know them so well that you can literally see them sitting across the table from you.

How do you get all this information? Secondary research is available online, from industry publications and from non-competing organizations like yours. Also, check you current databases since there might be a goldmine of information there. And when all else fails, ask your prospects. This is primary research and can be done by adding a few extra questions on registration materials, inserting polls into your newsletters and with digital or live surveys.

Being able to segment your target audiences into groups with shared interests and motivations can help to determine program content, special events, pricing, location, timing, family components, entertainment/speakers and more. A thorough analysis of each segment will help you in designing a promotional program to attract their attention. And when a commonality is revealed, then you will have the anchor for your integrated promotional mix.

A relatively new tool in making target marketing more usable by everyone in the company is Buyer Personas. But that's a topic for another day.

Cris Canning CMP^© is a prolific speaker, writer, and teacher. Via her company Hospitality Ink^®, she is dedicated to helping others increase their personal visibility, and the visibility and credibility of their organizations and meetings. She has published four booklets – “199 Networking Tips and Tidbits,” “Coming to Terms - A Primer of Terminology for the Meetings and Conventions Industry,” “Buzz Marketing,,” and “199 Social Media Tips and Tidbits.”