News & Events
High-Tech Meetings
Independent planners tap the Internet for self-promotion
by Josh Krist
Meetings South, October 2004
Independent planners, who often out of necessity play the role of marketers, generally need attention from prospective and even past clients who are floating around in cyberspace, yet they often don't have the time, knowledge or the funds to get it.
But leveraging high-tech opportunities to further marketing efforts is nothing to fear. From websites to e-mail marketing to getting ranked in a search engine such as Google, there is a veritable smorgasbord of options.
Technology: A Means to an End
First, tech-savvy planners and experts agree, it's important to realize that a website isn't a magic bullet.
"The approach that I've always had with technology is that you've got to use the right tool for the right job," says Rodman Marymor, a partner in technology advisory firm Tech3 Partners, based in Berkeley, Calif.
He says the way to find the right tool is to determine the goal of the "job"-will it be to get some attention for your new company or to reconnect with original clients? Then, he says, determine the needs of your clients-what exactly do they get out of hearing from you?
"Then, you apply the appropriate techniques to accomplish your goals and meet the needs of the customers," Marymor says.
Shelley Harris, CMP, CMM, president of Alexandria, Va.-based Harris Group, says that a website is a vital part of the marketing mix, as well as online participation in communities such as MIMlist, which could help position a planner as a knowledgeable expert in a particular niche.
Marymor echoes the recommendation to get involved with MIMlist, noting that when it comes to technology, it's important to access simple tools and assess whether or not it's necessary to get carried away by the bells and whistles.
"Answer the questions: 'Why do I need a website? Why do I need e-mail marketing?'" Marymor says. "If your clientele is a bunch of senior citizens who live in mobile trailers, do you really want to use e-mail and websites to get to them?
"I think that the fundamentals of a market analysis and needs assessment has to come first," he adds. "Then you decide what you're going to do."
Websites
Almost everyone has an address on the Internet these days-some planners use them to find business and encourage people to fill out RFPs, others use them to get lukewarm clients more interested in their company, and others use them as a way to build a community and keep people coming back.
Harris says that when it comes to designing a website, it's important to keep the 'What's-in-it-for-me?' principle in mind.
"This is a pretty good acid test, from the prospect's point of view, and helps to create the website content from your audience's vantage point," she says. "If folks visit your website, what's the hook for keeping them there, giving you their contact info, or coming back again?"
As a planner who is in the midst of redesigning her website, Jennifer Collins, ABC (accredited business communicator), president of Laurel, Md.-based The Event Planning Group, says that when she first developed her site, it served as a virtual brochure.
"But now, we want to brand ourselves more as a resource to our clients, current and potential," she says. "When I say resource, I mean that we offer them tools. I want to encourage them to revisit my site. We want to give them more information and a closer look as to how we can benefit them in the future."
However, according to Marymor, a website for most planners will begin as a digital brochure.
The beauty of a digital versus a paper brochure is that websites aren't static, but are dynamic entities capable of tracking and encouraging action. For instance, some planners say that they put their RFP form on the first page and every other page of the site. Others say that they only want to spend time on RFPs from people who have snooped around enough to check out the About Us page, for instance. The potential for this sort of control over user behavior and messaging is only possible, though, in a well thought-out site.
"They have to be very careful to not think that if you have a website, that will be the be-all, end-all," says Janet R. Pickover, CMP, president of Princeton, N.J.-based JR Associates. "It's still about marketing, marketing, marketing."
Building It
A website is almost always a tool to move a prospect from one part of the sales cycle to the next, so a good understanding of what your client needs to move to that next step is essential. Collins seems to have this down to a science.
"It's interesting," she says. "We used to go out to networking events and I would take people's cards and then send them our brochure. Now, I give them my business card and invite them to look over the site. We've built the site in such a way that it gives you a little more information but not all, so we then invite them to call.
"Our clients used to have to wait for the hard-copy brochure to show up in the mail, but now if they're interested we're probably still fresh in their minds when they look at our site," she adds.
Marymor maintains that it should be easy for viewers of the site to do what you'd like them to do, be it finding your phone number or e-mail to contact you, or filling out a profile form so you have some information on them. Additionally, he suggests that planners should be sure to have an easy-to-find section called 'Clients' or 'Look who likes us' or 'Testimonials.'
Karen Krieger is a big believer in posting happy clients and thinks it has helped secure business for Stratego, her Roswell, Ga.-based company.
"I've noticed that when people go to my website and see that BMW is on there, and Coca-Cola and other big names, they see that I can handle them," she says.
Most people agree that Flash animations that first greet a visitor to a website make it difficult for people with slower connections to check it out and can make an impatient Web surfer decide to click away and never come back.
Usability expert Jakob Nielson says that Web surfers usually only give a website two or three seconds to get an overall feeling before deciding to look deeper or moving on.
Although this might not apply as strictly to the "digital brochures" of independent planners, since most likely the surfer has some sort of special interest in this particular planner, Nielson has noted many times in his books and articles that if a website user is frustrated or doesn't understand how to navigate around the site, they rarely come back to see if there's been a redesign.
Michele Wierzgac, MS, CMM, president of Oak Lawn, Ill.-based Michele & Company, recommends hiring a savvy website builder.
"If you want to build a website, hire someone who understands marketing,ensures that the website is part of your company's marketing plan,that they know how to design something unique, that catches the reader's eye,andthey know how to write content in a marketable way," she says. "Also, make sure the website builderunderstands how to create the site so that it downloads quickly. Asking your colleagues who have a similar business to yours is the best way to find a website builder."
Tech3 Partners' Marymor agrees and strongly suggests hiring a professional to build the site.
"You need to be careful about the look and feel, it needs to reflect the style of the planner," he says. "If you go out and hire a cheap designer, they'll give you a cheap design, and someone who visits your website will probably think you're not on the level they're looking for. On the other hand, if it's way too slick, it could work against you in the other way. You need to have an overall architecture; it needs to be put together professionally, because that's a reflection on you. So, don't cheap out, which is what a lot of planners do."
Marymor also cautions planners to make sure they are able to update the site themselves.
"You need to have updated materials on the website, which you should be able to do by yourself, without having to pay someone a lot of money every time you want to do it," he says.
Expanding on a site and keeping the content fresh and up-to-date is "a constant battle," The Event Planning Group's Collins agrees. She should know, as she is undergoing a site redesign now so she can more easily add new sections.
"You need to truly go in knowing what you want," she says.
Search Engine Optimization
To optimize, or not to optimize, that is the question. There is a whole sub-industry in the Web world concerned with getting people toward the top of search engine listings. Most planners probably don't want to be found by random people searching for meeting planners, though there are exceptions to this rule.
"I really don't think that a lot of people are going to go to Google and look up independent meeting planners," Marymor says. "We might like to think that they would, but that's really not how our industry operates. It operates on word-of-mouth. You know, an 'I know this really great person' type of communication."
Krieger says that she utilizes some search optimization strategies, including trying to make sure that anyone who is looking for a "meeting planner in Atlanta " can find her. In her case, she explains, it makes sense.
"Usually by the time my clients get to me they have typically already scheduled the meeting and need creative and production help," she says.
Krieger has utilized "pay-per-click" programs-Google AdWords is probably one of the most popular-where her website shows as a sponsored link alongside someone's search results.
"That was a little expensive," she says. "Many times when I had the pay-per-click, I'd get a lot more traffic but not necessarily more people who really wanted my service. They'd click in and click out right away."
Cathy Clifton, CMP, CMM, president and owner of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based C2 & Company Meetings and Events, says her company comes up in a few different Web searches.
"I've worked really hard on that; I've sat through classes for that," she says. "I've also bought several other domain names; I own 10 other names so that when people type in they're redirected to my site."
E-mail Marketing
Jim Kelly, president of San Francisco-based Dialog Works, says he starts a lot of heated conversations at cocktail parties when he tells people his profession is e-mail marketing.
"Everybody starts talking about spam," he says.
Kelly maintains that e-mail can be a great way to build relationships, but that there should be some sort of relationship between the sender and the recipient of the e-mail. In other words, mass e-mails are a poor cold-calling technique.
"I think it's better to focus on generating your own list, through referrals, by giving people something of value in the message," he says. "The spam approach is to cast the net as wide as you can and who cares if the response rate is extremely low. I think it's much better to work on a good quality list, start with your network, start with your contacts. Give them useful things and your list will grow."
Harris Group's Harris suggests offering something of value, such as a free consultation or the promise of a useful newsletter, in order to garner contacts.
Kelly agrees that there are a lot of ways to grow your list and to be on the lookout for opportunities to sign people up.
"When you meet people and get their cards, tell them you have a website and ask if it's okay to sign them up," he says. "If you're at a trade show, have a sign-up sheet for new registrants. It's a guerilla marketing thing-just constantly be aware of opportunities to build your list, but do it in an ethical way."
E-mail newsletters, as well as fostering community, can yield pertinent information about recipients.
There are a number of easy and inexpensive Web-based e-mail marketing companies out there that will let the planner see who opened what message, and what parts of that message interested them. Doing an online search for Constant Contact ( www.constantcontact.com ) or Cooler E-mail ( www.cooleremail.com ) will yield a number of the lower-cost e-mail services.
Chances are, the majority of the e-mail newsletters you receive help the sender understand your "explicit" (basic demographics such as city and state) and "implicit" (your interests, time of day you usually read your e-mail, how often you actually open this particular newsletter) information, according to Kelly.
"That's the beauty of e-mail," he says, "compared to other forms of communication-it's all trackable. Of course, you have to be careful with all this because you have to be aware of people's privacy. So, you don't want to say, 'Because you clicked on this last month, this month we're sending you this.'"
Over time, Kelly explains, you can build up a database to understand the interests and demographics of the people you are mailing to, so that you can better offer them information they can actually use.
"For instance, you might have a certain amount of people who are living in a certain state, but you don't want to focus on them because you're trying to do something in another state or another zip code," Kelly says.
Tying it All Together
An independent planner's website, e-mail marketing list and current information should exist as an integrated whole, Tech3 Partners' Marymor says. This goes back to having marketing goals and then using the correct tools to make that goal a reality.
"If you are going to utilize the Web to market yourself and communicate, there are three areas that are really critical: One of them is content management-you need to be able to have control over the content of your website."
The second element is profile management, building that database of contacts, he says.
"Your online world should include some way to keep track of people who you care about. You should be able to divide them into groups, or any way that would be important to you-prospects, colleagues, friends, maybe family, vendors, and so on," he says.
"Third, you want to have a way to connect all those people that you're managing with all the information that you're managing. It can be done by e-mail, but there are more sophisticated integrated content management systems that can be used, which you could find if you type in 'content management system' in Google," he says.
A quick search online shows a number of free or inexpensive content management systems, though they appear to take more work to set up than the more expensive out-of-box systems.
For planners who simply want to control the content of their site, Macromedia's Contribute (www.macromedia.com/software/contribute) seems like a good option. A download of the free trial version was impressive because of its ease of set-up and ease of use.