Stand Out: Event Marketing for AV Dealers (Part 1)

Our industry, along with the rest of the country, was hit hard during the recession.  Many AV dealers and integrators closed their doors permanently, while others scaled back and saw their revenues fall drastically.

Although we’re not out of it yet, for businesses that were able to weather the storm there is good news, as some indicators would suggest that consumer confidence is returning as shoppers turned out in force over Black Friday weekend, and home building returned to the highest it has been since 2006.

Even as the economy improves, we face other challenges; consumers are being conditioned to focus on price alone, as they are inundated with advertising from the big-box stores and online retailers forcing most electronics into the commodity category as they race one another towards the bottom. If you have not already, you will soon realize that you cannot and should not compete in this arena.

Consider now how you will position yourself to ensure your continued success and growth. Although many AV dealers and integrator rarely have large budgets (if they have one at all) for marketing or business development and often lack the time and personnel, actively marketing your business is vitally important. Fortunately, when you work smart you will see that you don’t have to throw money at something in order to have a great return.

Your customers and industry partners have choices about where they shop and with whom they choose to do business.

Why would they choose you?

You must find ways to stand out among the crowd (in a good way). There are several ways to do this, but this post specifically touches on event marketing. Offering events that are both interesting and educational throughout the year targeted to both consumers and industry partners is an effective way to:

• Differentiate your business from your competitors because this is something most of them will not be offering.
• Establish value beyond price. When you provide good education, you are establishing your business as a resource and you become the expert in the eyes of your target.
• Extend your reach and create opportunities for sales. You will attract people, prospects and industry partners alike, who want to learn from you. Naturally, if you put on a good event and if they learn from and are inspired by, you will close more sales.
• Create buzz around your brand. Not only will you invigorate your staff, renew interest from your existing network of clients and industry partners, but you let the world know that big things are happening with your business increasing overall confidence in your business.

Who wouldn’t want that? As we approach 2013, this is a good time to start laying out your marketing plan for the year, which should include events. The following are some tips to help you with the process:

1.       Understand your brand. All your efforts should be authentic. Ducks don’t go around pretending to be horses, minivans are not sports cars;, know who you are and be the best at that (at least to start).

1. Know your target. Who is your customer? What architects, designers, and builders do you want to work with? If you’ve been in the business a while you have a pretty good idea of who you want to target  but rather than assume, take the time to establish a profile with demographics. Where do they live? What is their profession? Income? Etc. If you have a company website, you can use a resource like www.quantcast.com to establish a profile of visitors to your website which will likely mirror that of your real customer and provide other interesting data.
2. Understand the needs of your audience. Consider questions that you are frequently asked, common issues, new technology and draw from them to create topics that will be of interest to your targeted audience.
3. Plan ahead. What events will you do throughout the year? Schedule everything including the event date, date to start planning (based on size of) and consider how you will promote the event and what kind of lead time is required, how will you follow up after an event, create a budget and enlist help.
4. Know your resources and don’t leave money on the table. Lower your out-of-pocket expenses by knowing what funds and marketing resources are available to you from manufacturers, your buying group, partnering with non-competing businesses, and know what can be done for little to no cost.
5. Create sales incentives for event attendees with a due date. Dealers need to be diligent about tracking the return on investment for marketing expenditures and that can be difficult long term. A good way to gauge the success of the event is to create a strong call to action encouraging customers to buy now rather than later.
6. Track everything. You need to be able to measure your results to determine what is working and what is not working so well. If you have a company website, definitely use Google Analytics which will give you great information about traffic on your site. But also track your email marketing open rates, social media insights, event registrations vs. actual attendance, purchases. Everything? Everything.
7. Work in progress. As with many things, there is a bit of experimentation but through this experimentation you will establish what works best for your business and focus on that. It is better to pick one thing and do it well than to do lots of things half-assed.

Hopefully this has you thinking! I encourage you to ask questions if you have them or if you have some feedback on what events have worked well or not so well for your business, I’d love to hear from you.