Sell Your Business First, Not Your Product

he purpose of doing business is to sell your product/service to your target customers and yield high returns. To promote your business, you need to market your product. Just opening a shop, or a factory outlet, will not generate sales and profit. Hence, you can say that promoting your business is a prerequisite to selling your product. If your business requires instant exposure then the best way to market it is by holding an event. And what better way of doing that than by hiring an event planning coordinator!

Why an event planning coordinator?

Many of you may ask, if you are capable of managing the event yourself, then why spend that extra budget on another agency - an event planning coordinator?

There are two reasons.

1. If you want to market your business, then a professional touch is required.
2. It is not possible in today's world to plan, market and manage an event all by yourself (meaning in practice, you will need the assistance of an event planning coordinator).

Remember that marketing and selling are slightly different. The first usually takes a long time to create brand awareness, generate market response, inquiries, brand visibility and so on. But the second just signifies selling for a price. If your customers do not know your product then you cannot simply sell it by asking them to buy. The first goal of marketing is to create a desire in the customer and then meet that desire with your product. This need creation is marketing, and supplying is selling.

An event planning coordinator is required to do more marketing than selling, although selling can be also an important part of an event. As an example, consider a trade fair on computing devices. Here, the event-planning coordinator carefully promotes the main sponsor, say HP. They plan for conferences, a special showcase, and special product literature for the main sponsors for whom they are hosting the event. They also plan the creation of a few stalls exhibiting accessories that are required along with the main product focus. These stalls are actually partners' areas.

The event planning coordinator here cleverly leverages not only the partners' customers to attract them to the main sponsor but also gives the partners a stage to showcase their products, thus building a channel partnership program for HP.

A Check list

A seasoned event planning coordinator always carries a list of questionnaires for new clients. After getting the answers, they can start to plan an event. To get familiar with this approach, we present here some of the important questions, so that you may consider them before contacting your event planning coordinator.

Identify the purpose of the event, its focus, theme, and anticipated results
Develop a mailing list for business associates of the client, guests and the press
Determine how many registration people the client will need
Develop a program on small conference, invite guest speakers, or announce the product launch with a contest
Determine a budget
Determine how you want to reach your target audience to market your event - advertisements, press release, personal mailers etc.
Decide on the best format, venue and time of year for the event

If you can answer these, then you are ready to call your event planning coordinator and seek their suggestions.

Event hosting - a boost to Marketing

Marketing your product/service requires a trendy touch with a conservative approach. Trendy, because the more eye-catching your marketing method is, the quicker the exposure to your market. But conservatism is needed to minimize your investment cost. We come across events nowadays in almost every major metropolis of every country. The popularity of trade shows, fairs, conferences and events in general is because it pulls crowds, offers a short time to market, and is cost effective. Additional value generated by channel partner programs, co-branding efforts, and sponsorships have immense impact on the business as a whole.

Every event planning coordinator has become more innovative and is now offering services which cater to the ultimate marketing plan of any company. For instance, an event-planning coordinator may offer services such as MIS reporting on customer attitudes, lead generation program, query generation program, market response, media response analysis etc. These services assist the company in re-positioning its products, setting up competitive pricing, and promoting value -added services.

Planning and managing an event is not just about hiring a hall or a stage and decorating it. It's also not about setting up stalls and taking out advertisements. It's all about creating brand awareness. A professional event planning coordinator actually does much more than just hosting the show for you.

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