Quick & Dirty: Perseverance

August 26, 2009 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

per⋅se⋅ver⋅ance  [pur-suh-veer-uhns] Show IPA
–noun

1. steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., esp. in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.

Perhaps your persistence isn’t steady or even routine but the key takeaway is that you return “in spite of”.

Marketing is all about perseverance. To, without restriction or reservation, face danger, risk and failure. It’s dangerous to be different. Risky to bring about change. And the possibility of failing is the most “persistent” element you’ll find.

If you choose to persevere, you choose to accept the challenge.

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Attention to Detail

August 23, 2009 By Simren Deogun 2 Comments

Taking the time to be detail-oriented encompasses the difference between acting quickly and acting intelligently.

How you can be more detail-oriented:

   — Listen before you respond — Equivalent to “think before you act.” Listen to your peers, colleagues, superiors AND competition in order to better understand a situation.
   — Review, and then review again — Time consuming but valuable. Each time work is completed force yourself to review it from a different perspective. Textually. Graphically. As a customer. As a competitor. Etc.
   — Take notice of insignificant details — Whatever it is that you deem insignificant now — from word choice to colour to tone — inflate it with importance and take notice.
   — Understand that you can be your own worst enemy — Trying too hard, overanalyzing, and not understanding your own strengths and weaknesses will lead to your demise. Therefore, paying attention to yourself is equally as important as paying attention to what surrounds you and the work you produce.
   — Criticize — Consciously criticize your work. Push yourself to improve (even when you think it’s perfect), understand your capabilities, and incite growth. The ultimate result is you’ll have taught yourself how to pay attention to details by breaking down your work into its many multi-faceted pieces and reassembling it leaving no area unscathed to harsh criticism.

Great marketing is in the details. It is those details that make gargantuan, flashy campaigns industry successes. It is those same details that can render size and resources insignificant. It’s simply your job as a marketer to pay attention.

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Marketer’s Toolbox: HTML & CSS

August 16, 2009 By Simren Deogun 1 Comment

The Marketer’s Toolbox will be an ongoing series in which I explore the critical hard and soft skills all marketers should possess.

HTML & CSS

Whether you’re an amateur, a professional, or someone considering marketing as a career path — the skill set I will outline throughout this series is part of what defines you as a marketer and how you are perceived in the workplace.

Part of my journey in developing this blog was taking on the challenge of teaching myself HTML, now evolved into XHTML, and CSS. A daunting task at first but a supremely beneficial one given the skills I now possess.

The Basics

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language — A specialized language consisting of tags and rules used to build websites, emails, and other multimedia online.

XHTML: Extensible Hypertext Markup Language — A stricter and cleaner version of HTML that acts “as a reformulation of HTML to an XML application”.

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets — Style sheets are used in conjunction with HTML/XHTML documents to specify formatting of all content defined in the document.

The ability to code effectively in HTML and CSS is often underrated. One can possess the skill but still not be fluent in the language. It is in fact another language that appears overwhelming at first but the foundations of the two are extremely basic. It is the mastery of them that can be more of a challenge.

When I decided to learn, I already possessed a rudimentary understanding of HTML but what I wanted to achieve was fluency. I applied myself and set the goal of designing AND coding my own website. This blog has certainly evolved from its first iteration (and will continue to do so) and my coding has also enhanced to a point where I am comfortable in an HTML environment.

Websites vs. Emails

There is a stark difference between coding for a website and for an email. For a website, tables are deprecated styles and should not be used to formulate the structure of the site, instead CSS should provide that structure in terms of positioning, formatting and look.

However, emails do not follow the same methodology. This is due to the wide array of email clients available to users (i.e. Outlook 2003/2007, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.). In order to ensure your email appears as it should in all clients, tables must be relied upon with a high level of proficiency. CSS is unreliable in email clients and must be limited to a minimum until email standards are enforced across all clients.

Understanding this difference is critical to being able to work in both environments.

Cross-Browser Compatibility

Along with the distinction between email and website, is the harsh distinction that exists between browsers — Safari, Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Firefox, Opera, Chrome. As with email clients, browsers also possess their own quirks and differences but do offer more standardization.

However, you should always test your code in all major browsers to determine whether or not the email and/or website appears without flaws and erroneous code.

TIP: Always start with Firefox, it is considered the truest browser in its translation of your HTML and CSS and will consistently present your code accurately. From Firefox move to Internet Explorer and Safari, and then the rest. (IE8 is now available but many are still operating on version 7 (and far too many on version 6) which can be problematic for your code, so keep this in mind.)

To learn on your own, try these great resources:

W3Schools – Learning centre for web developers

Lynda.com – Online training for all mainstream software solutions

NeTTuts – Converting your PSD Design into HTML

Cheat Sheets – For HTML and CSS

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Leader versus Team-Member

August 12, 2009 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

Not just relevant to Marketing but all aspects of life really. In what segment do you reside?

Understanding your own strengths and the environment you’re comfortable working in enhance your chances for success. Do you lead the school of fish or do you take a backseat?

Reality unfortunately insists that we all cannot be leaders — despite what our employers may or may not desire.

My definitions:

Leader – The drive, passion and willingness to set yourself apart from others around you thereby accepting any risk, any challenge, and every mistake that you may encounter. Leadership means having a voice and knowing when to use it. It means knowing how to best advance yourself and those you work with. It means winning and losing and everything in between.

Team-member - There are two options here: you follow but you follow happily OR you follow because you’re afraid to be the leader. Here in lies an inherent clause of leadership — recognizing fear and dismissing just as quickly. At some point, we’re all team-members.

Is being a team-member truly a lesser role than that of leader?

Think about it. Because reality also insists that typically one cannot exist without the other.

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Event Marketing 101 – Part 5: Execution

August 7, 2009 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

I don’t mean execution in the head-under-the-guillotine sense but rather day-of event execution.

You’ve planned for months, maybe even close to a year…

In part 1, I stated that the Development phase should begin at least 6 months prior to the date of the event. This is true if you wish to achieve desired results with plenty of lead time and not as much overtime. Timing is another one of those fluid entities determined heavily by the size of the event, number of event planners and the breadth it aims to reach. Just know that the professionals are not pulling them together last minute, so why should you?

RIght now, you’re probably 10% over-budget and nothing went as smoothly as you imagined, but tomorrow’s the big day and you are promising nothing but perfection.

   – Event Staff – Event staff will typically be made up of appropriate members of your organization — client care, marketing, sales etc. You want to ensure that you have people working with you on the day-of not against you, which means people you can trust and who can talk intelligently about your organization and the event as a whole.

Who should be attending from your organization? What roles will you assign them? From registration to speaker to networker. Equip them with key information about the event so they can answer questions when approached. Also, don’t forget the details such as dress code and event etiquette.

   – Registration – As stated in the previous section, staff will almost certainly be helping with on-site registration. They carry many roles in this position since they’re the greeters, the informers, the badge hand-outers and therefore should be well-prepared. You need to be fast and efficient in moving through registrants, so don’t leave it to just 1 person.

Develop a simple ‘assembly-line’ setup with mini stages that attendees work through and ensure that each staff member is aware of the best process and adheres to it. Set everything up beforehand for easy access and a smooth flow of bodies. Tracking attendance is very important. Relying too heavily on name badges can be problematic especially if people arrive on-site, bring a friend or change their minds on-the-spot. Finding an effective way of tracking everyone who was there is difficult but crucial.

   – Scheduling – If you’re the coordinator/manager of the event, you’re the lead which means everyone should and will follow your example. It also means you have to know anything and everything that crosses your path. It’s critical to stay on schedule, keep sessions and speakers and caterers and technicians moving.

Be the go-to person and make sure everyone around you feels at ease. If you’re chaotic, so shall be your surroundings. This is not to say you or the day-of won’t be chaotic (it without doubt will be) but you have the ability to maintain control and ensure limited to no hitches or glitches.

   – Post-Event – I wanted to briefly touch on post-event activities because how you respond afterwards can be as vital as everything accomplished leading up to the event.

You did it! The event’s done, all signs show that it was a huge success and, if you’re lucky, the compliments are flowing. Some things to keep in mind now that you finally have 2 seconds to breathe:
    – Send out a Thank You email to all attendees accompanied by an electronic survey for them to fill out online
    – Send a separate Thank You email along with a specialized survey to speakers and sponsors respectively
    – Have a post-event meeting with critical members of your company to brainstorm what you thought worked and what didn’t and what can be improved for next year
    – Analyze the success of the event — consider leads generated, ROI, press coverage, word of mouth, overall internal opinion
    – If success = yes then book the venue for next year
    and
    – Start planning all over again!

By now, you’re a veteran! If you’ve read through all five parts, then you’re really a veteran!

Know that there is so much I didn’t touch on this series, but I have tried to strike a balance between high-level, critical information and the dirty basic details. If you have comments or questions, always feel free to post and I will do my best to respond.

Event Marketing is an ambitious undertaking, but it’s always important to know that the resources around you are those that can prove to be the most fruitful. Happy Planning!

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Event Marketing 101 – Part 4: Marketing & Collateral

August 6, 2009 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

In the previous section, we discussed ‘marketing’ the event to a certain extent with respect to pre-event marketing and promoting registrants and boosting attendance.

In this part, marketing refers more to materials, swag and what you communicate and present to participants on the day of.

   – Swag – Whether or not your attendees have paid, swag is an expectation. If they have paid, swag is a must. Swag equals frills. From pens to notepads to gadgets and more. You don’t have to give them everything and you certainly don’t want swag to distract them but rather be an added bonus.

I like the idea of packaging swag altogether. For example, pass out a compact-sized leather or cloth padfolio with a built-in notepad and pen filled with the marketing materials listed below — all branded with your event and/or company logo, of course. Why not keep it simple and clean?

Of course, you have to consider the breadth of information you need to give away, maybe something bigger will be more sufficient but remember appearances are everything. You want your attendees to keep the swag after-the-fact and associate it with a high-level event. I’ll take quality over quantity any day, especially when the stakes are high for swag being thrown away. The kicker is giving them something they won’t want to toss — and cleverly filling it with crucial company/product/service/event information.

   – Marketing Materials – In your swag packages should reside all the marketing you can fit about your company! Actually, it should provide just enough. There is such a thing as too much material. Aim for adequate not overload. How much do you think they’ll read? Take the time to explore? Want to follow-up on?

Design something specific for the event incorporating its branding and communicating your company’s central marketing message. Granted your event branding will be everywhere on the day of but you want the delegates to take it home with them too!

Think brochures, pamphlets, short case studies, business cards, advertisements, etc. Something interactive is always great, a piece of material that forces the attendee to engage.

My aim is never overload the attendee, give them your exact message in as concise and creative a format as possible.

   – Signage & Other Branding – Attractive and helpful signage is a quick and dirty way to dress up a venue (without bringing in contractors to redesign everything — often unnecessary unless conducting an exhibition). Make sure signage is clear and concise — list directions, sessions, speakers and/or what you feel is important information to highlight.

“Other branding” is my attempt at covering everything else, including business cards, table cloths, banners, table-top signage or centerpieces, t-shirts etc. In what other creative ways can you showcase your branding? This is where you spread your marketing wings.

   – Giveaways, Awards, & Prizes – All of these are great incentives for attendees, but don’t let them overshadow the merit of the event. Keep giveaways in line with your industry and organization and try involving your sponsors and/or partners. Keep in mind that the gifts and prizes are not why people are attending — at least that shouldn’t be the reason why — they’re coming for you, the speakers and the content you have to offer.

   – Sponsorship Materials – Your sponsors have likely paid a lot of money and now they would like to the see benefits of their investments. This includes everything from branding on signage to providing branded swag to including marketing materials in that aforementioned padfolio.

Offer plenty of opportunities to your sponsors to showcase themselves depending on the level of sponsorship. The sponsors (along with the speakers) are the secret VIPs, meaning behind-the-scenes they’re treated like royalty but on the day-of you want your attendees to feel like true VIPs.

NEXT: Execution

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Event Marketing 101 – Part 3: Launch & Registration

August 5, 2009 By Simren Deogun 1 Comment

Certain aspects of Parts 2 & 3 can overlap and therefore offer some fluidity. However, by Part 3 your Agenda should be as close to 100% complete as possible. Sponsorships and Catering are more fluid areas because those deadlines have more impact on internal operations than external. Sponsors can be continually added throughout the launch process, and catering usually only needs to be confirmed a few weeks out from the event.

Your launch date has been set, so here’s what you need to know to launch successfully:

   – Event Webpage – Develop a website, landing page or dedicated section of your website for your event. This should include access to basic event information, the agenda, speakers, feature sponsors logos and advertise the big day.

This is where your branding is most important. Where you must textually and visually define your event. Develop an event-specific logo with the name of your event and design the event pages around it. Make the information easy to access and navigate. Consider issuing a press release. And ask prospective speakers and sponsors to post information about the event in the news or blog section of their website. It’s all about building traffic and awareness.

   – Email Marketing – Design an email invitation to send to your target audience (see Part 1 below). The email needs to advertise all the key selling points of the event: when, where, who will be there, content, benefits, name-dropping and lastly how much.

Please keep the invitation clean and simple. Don’t sacrifice design. And don’t overload the recipient with too much content.

Once again capitalize on your network. Think about your customers, partners, speakers, sponsors, news contacts, venue contacts. Who do you know that could pass this invitation on? Depending on how many people you are hoping to attract, the size of the invitation list can be integral. Plan out a schedule to send out repeat invitations in the weeks approaching the event. Reminders are great but don’t be excessive,

   – Print & One-to-One Marketing – Certainly more outdated and costly methods (particularly, print) but not completely unimportant in their approach.

Is the timeline long enough for print brochures to be effective? Also, consider the industry and whether or not print documents will be well-received.

Picking up the phone and making a few calls is highly personal and sets a tone of importance. Contacting big industry players and names with whom you have strong relationships is a perfect way to entice multiple registrants from a single organization. Remember that you want the best-of-the-best speaking AND attending. These calls can be time consuming but they can make a significant impact on the quality of the event.

   – Online Registration – The e-invite is ready to go, your list of who to call has been distributed and now you need to register everyone. Whether paid or unpaid, there are many gateways that will integrate with your current website’s infrastructure to create a seamless online registration process beginning at your event webpage.

Registration should be online and quick and easy. Provide a secure payment gateway to receive payments and issue electronic receipts with all relevant event information emailed to the registrants. Also, if registrants have the ability to choose what sessions they would like to attend, the online registration process must accommodate the selection process and include all details in the confirmation email.

   – Lanyards & Nametags – Part of the registration process is ensuring the creation of name tags for all those that will be present at the event. This can be a bit of a logistical nightmare, so plan in advance on how you will tackle the design, production, printing, stuffing and distribution of the tags.

Purchase lanyards in excess to accommodate for extra registrants or, perhaps, a speaker that unexpectedly decides to bring a friend. The same goes for name tag badges and holders, order more than you will need to be safe.

Setup a design template highlighting name, company and title and use badge ribbons (my preference) or different design templates to differentiate speakers from sponsors from partners etc. Order them alphabetically and having them printed and cut out-of-house can help simplify things.

—-

Now that you’ve launched, what other marketing techniques could be used to promote the event — social networking is hotter than ever as is multimedia (think video and podcasts) — what else?

NEXT: Marketing & Collateral

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Event Marketing 101 – Part 2: Pre-Planning

August 4, 2009 By Simren Deogun 2 Comments

Now you have the basics. Your event has a name, a purpose, a prospective audience, a budget, and a date. But did you forget that your date needs a venue?

Let’s discuss the Pre-planning or pre-launch logistics of the event:

   – Workback Schedule – Before proceeding any further, develop a workback schedule outlining all the major milestone tasks and activities that need to be completed and the date they need to be completed by. The level of detail is a personal preference but having one place you can consistently refer to helps simplify the process. Try project management software to help you along, see Basecamp (popular) or AtTask (my preference) or a handy Excel spreadsheet.

   – Venue – The venue is the perfect opportunity to set the tone and level of expectation for the event. I have a preference for professional, high-class and all-inclusive. Venues must be booked well in-advance, 6-12 months to ensure you get the date of choice.

Consider how many people in total will be attending the event (including registrants, non-paid attendees, staff, speakers etc.), your venue must accommodate them all comfortably. Conference-style rooms with the ability to house theatre-style chairs or round tables with a stage and appropriate technology including podiums, projectors and screens, mics, sound system, internet access, video recording, and temperature control. Higher-class venues will have all this included but be prepared for a hefty price tag.

Also consider the location of the venue, geography is important and the venue must be accessible to local attendees and those travelling from abroad.

   – Launch Date – You should now have the day of your event and the venue. Next step is to set a launch date. When will you begin marketing the event externally? When will registration for the event open? Set a soft start date and a hard start date. Ideally, if all goes smoothly, launch will occur on the soft start date but ultimately cannot start any later than the hard date!

   – Agenda – I believe the agenda is the heart and soul of any event. It’s why people are coming, it’s why your organization is spending all this time and money, and it’s a built-in marketing tool.

The agenda should be complete (or as close to complete as possible) before registration is opened and the event launched. Prospective attendees want to know what they’re paying and, to be blunt, they deserve to.

The agenda planning process involves developing the day’s schedule by timing out registration, breakfast, sessions, breaks and other applicable occurrences. Session titles and topics must be brainstormed and refined and scheduled accordingly. This can be an exceedingly lengthy process because at the core of these sessions is the message you want to deliver — content must be interesting, relevant, novel, and exciting; it may also need to be technical, interactive, and demonstrative.

From here, prospective speakers must be proposed. Create a collaborative list of who would/could readily grab hold of a topic and make it their own, which leads us to….

   – Speakers – By now, you should have a list of possible speakers assigned to possible topics. The hard part is convincing these speakers to take the time to not only present on the day of the event but also construct entire presentations around possibly spoon-fed topics.

Use your network. Use your executives. Call, make personal requests and sell the brilliance of your event. Elaborate on the the marketing opportunity it provides to the speaker’s organizations and the networking interaction they will benefit from.

Remember, big names from big companies never hurt!

Keep in mind the logistics associated with speakers such as cost, hotels and accommodations, flights, presentation templates and approval and special speaker perks. What will you be responsible for and what onus is theirs?

   – Sponsors – Sponsorship packages are a lovely way to entice attendees. It is also an effective way to foster strong relationships with partners, customers and the like within the industry that do not mind lending their name and their money to your event.

There should be packages of varying price ranges with respective levels of branding opportunities. Packages can include everything from lanyards to name tags to signage to targeted speaking sessions. Determine what branding and co-hosting opportunities should be made available at each tier and then assign each a price tag.

Again, that network comes in awful handy. Contact companies with the means and capitalize on strong relationships where mutual benefit can be emphasized and the event as a marketing opportunity can be highlighted.

   – Catering – Catering can easily become a negotiating nightmare. With often too many options to choose from and inflated pricing structures, the decision is a difficult one.

Some venues offer preferred caterers, which helps refine your options from the get-go. Acquire preliminary menus and determine what style of food you will be offering for breakfast, lunch, breaks and/or even dinner. Continental or Premium? Cold or hot? Beverages per person and staff service at the event.

Retrieve quotes and negotiate the price down. Choose your preferred caterer and you’re done! I’ve outlined this to be much simpler than it is. Rely on recommendations from others and do not be easily caught up in the swirl of menu options. Catering will quickly become a large part of your budget, sometimes rearing the ugly 30% mark! But food’s important, so don’t skimp.

NEXT: Launch & Registration

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Event Marketing 101 – Part 1

August 3, 2009 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

This week I will be featuring a five-part series on Event Marketing, in which I will explore the many areas of planning a conference-style event. I have had the opportunity to manage – from beginning to end – a full-day professional 250 attendee conference featuring 22+ speakers, 7+ sponsors and 12 information-style sessions.

Event Marketing is an aggregate of event coordination, management, promotion and execution. It can also be referred to as Event Planning or Event Management. Since there are a plethora of areas that fall under the Event Marketing umbrella, I have split up my discussion into five sections:
    1. Development
    2. Pre-Planning
    3. Launch & Registration
    4. Marketing & Collateral
    5. Execution

DEVELOPMENT (At least 6 months prior to event date)

The development phase consists of the initial stages of the event planning process, wherein the purpose, goals, and founding principles are laid out. Before you can begin discussing venues and catering, your team must collaborate on the fundamentals of the event.

These include:
   – Event Focus – What is the purpose of this event? Is it to sell your product/service? Stimulate knowledge and awareness of your business? Draw attention to the growth in your sector or industry? Or, perhaps, all of the above?

Without knowing the direction of your event, nothing else is possible. Clearly define its purpose and its goals.

For example, The Simren Marketing Event (better title TBD!) will delve into 3 critical streams of Marketing which will include digital, direct and guerilla, each stream will explore current trends, past successes and failures and the opportunity to hear from the greatest in the field.

This is a working thesis. It defines the purpose of my event — to bring marketers together to learn in a knowledge-based environment brought to you by yours truly.

The goals can range from increasing ROI by x% to garnering x number of leads or simply making x number of new contacts. You must be the expert in your field. As such, you must know what is most feasible and likely to succeed.

   – A Name – So, you just witnessed my crass attempt at coming up with a name for my event. At some point during the Development phase, a name should be decided upon. Acronyms are great, many organizations use them but it doesn’t mean you have to. Be clear and concise and avoid being long-winded (which is where most acronyms are born, by the way!)

   – Target Audience – Who will you invite to attend? Customers, Partners, Business Associates, Thought Leaders, Journalists? Do you have a large enough network to extrapolate from or will you need the assistance of a third-party company?

Again, define your target audience. Parse out the implications of demographics, psychographics and geography. How many are you aiming to attract? In my case, it was 250 and we successfully exceeded that target. But remember to be realistic and consider the economics involved.

   – Budget, Price & Money – If your organization is even considering hosting an event from a mid- to large-scale I will take the leap of faith and believe it can handle the costs headed its way. Events are not cheap, especially when planned correctly and professionally. Pre-plan your budget with the appropriate departments and determine what number is feasible to spend. In the coming days, I will breakdown the specific areas to focus on but you need to know your limits beforehand.

Also, pre-plan a buffer into your budget for the possibility (the very-likely possibility) of incurring overages during the process.

Lastly, will you charge attendees an entry fee? How much? $60, $100, $150, $500 +? Do you plan to earn a profit from the event? Once again, consider the economy and the industry and what makes your event worthy of purchasing a ticket.

   – When? – The ‘when’ can really come at any stage during the Development phase, not necessarily at the end. There are politics involved in what date you choose, much of which is based on industry norms concerning downtime and seasonal fluctuations. As a rule-of-thumb, summer is a disadvantageous time to hold events because numerous people are on vacation thereby de-prioritizing your event and negatively impacting its influence as an industry standard.

Registration during the summer months is also exceedingly difficult though not impossible, so keep in mind what unwritten rules your industry abides by.

Also, in terms of days of the week, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are considered prime for single-day events, since Mondays and Fridays are write-offs as they bookend the week and Thursdays are often tossed due to their proximity to Friday but not entirely inadvisable. Multi-day or exhibition-style events are not the focus of this series but many of these fundamentals are fluid and can still be readily applied.

NEXT: Pre-Planning

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