“Our company is a small family owned audio visual company offering staging to corporate meeting and events primarily in the Chicago land area, but we are not prone to limiting ourselves by geography. We used to travel throughout the United States, but our business is in a major slump right now.
The employees here believe that the slump is due to the current failing economy, but I believe that we are not marketing oursleves correctly and that is where I could use your assistance.
We are currently not advertising but relying on old clients to sustain our income, but our old clients are beginning to dry up. Our market is meeting planners and producers that develop the events and we are vendors to our clients. How should we angle ourselves in this market? Should we be selling to corporations or continue selling to meeting planers and producers? Is there any way to affordably advertise that will create a return on our investment?I understand that you probably do not have the time to delve into this problem but any assistance would be appreciated.”
You pose interesting questions in a down economy. Your company’s marketing needs to be focused. This is best accomplished by introducing industry verticals. So, your focus changes from being the best production company possible in your the overall market to convincing smaller groups that you are “catering” specifically to them, thus, becoming recognized in multiple tightly knit industries.
The basic term from marketing 101 is “TARGET MARKETING.” More specifically, you will be using a multi-segment approach to your marketing strategy where you develop a different marketing mix for each segment you intend to target. While the tactical issues for each segment becomes very important later on, you are essentially building brand awareness, trial, closure, and loyalty in each different segment using different pricing, product/service configurations, promotional materials, and distribution channels.
For example, your company could target the heavy construction equipment industry vertical. The basic premise is that you attend their annual trade show, set up a booth, staff the booth with fun, outgoing people with a specific purpose (i.e, collect leads), and then work your lead list. Now, the purpose of my response is not to tell you how to run a trade booth, but to focus on the fact that you targeted a specific industry with your services. While at the show, you become involved, meet people, and work hard to find those CEOs that are going to host an annual sales convention. These are really your targets and the purpose of attending the trade show is to be in the same place as your ultimate buyers.
The following week, you take your dog-and-pony show to the electronics distributors industry vertical and do the same thing over and over. Each industry feels that you are serving only them. They feel special.
Now, here is the problem. It is not cheap, it is not easy, and it takes time. Fortunately for you, there is one place in your geographic area where you can get you in touch with a whole lot of people in a hurry. In fact, these people are actively seeking services related to your field. It is the Motivation Show. The show is being held September 29-October 1, 2009 at the McCormick Place. At this event, you can expect to find many individuals who work closely with corporate sales forces and part of their job is to motivate those people through annual meetings. Which, I believe is exactly the target market you are seeking. Good luck with your efforts and don’t hesitate to contact me if you with to schedule a conference call to clarify anything discussed above.
