Previous Pro Tips
Marketing
When you’re creating print pieces, it’s important to be eco-conscious. Finding high-quality, soy-based inks and post-consumer recycled paper is easier than ever.
Don’t forget print marketing! So much focus is put on digital marketing that the power of print is often overlooked.
Create exciting native video to highlight the unique facets of your organization.
Actively engage not only with your social media followers but also with those that you follow to build awareness of and recognition of your brand.
Regularly review your digital statistics. It’s one thing to keep updating your website, posting on social media and pressing send on your e-newsletters, but you need to look and then prepare to respond to what resonates most with your audience.
It all goes back to your mission. Everything that you’re selling needs to relate clearly back to that.
VIP Relations
Find out what food or beverages your top ten VIPs like most and have those waiting at their hotel when they arrive to meet with you. Or, if they’re based where you are, send them one of these things at the start of a new season with a thank-you for being a great client. Unexpected gifts are often the best gifts.
Truly be a resource. If one of your VIPs is traveling to your city or to another city that you know well, put together a list of must-sees for them.
Create experiences that are adjacent to those that you specialize in that will be both new and exciting for your clients.
Your focus should be on providing a smaller number of special, personal moments not a large quantity of less personal ones.
To help you refine what you offer, ask a small group of your VVIPs what’s most important to them. Make sure that this group is as diverse as possible to gain as broad of a range of intelligence as you can.
Take the time to get to know your people. Thoughtfully engage not only your current VIPs but also those who have the potential to be VIPs one day.
Partnerships
Always invite potential partners to select key events so that they can experience what you do and how you do it, as that will pave the way to engage them in the years to come.
While you or your team may be responsible for securing partners, the entire team should be encouraged to reach out to their contacts to see if one of the opportunities that you have to offer would be the right fit for them.
Create media partnerships with not just marquee titles but also with up and coming publications that have a fresh new energy and audience.
Remember the importance of smaller local sponsorships. With large, national and international sponsorships becoming more difficult to secure, looking to those who want to and can more directly serve your local audience is key.
Instead of looking at the competition as competition, figure out how you can do something together that’s mutually beneficial for all of your clients.
Synergies are only effective when they’re genuine. If the match isn’t right, it won’t pay dividends over time.
Events
Everyone loves a good gift bag, so choose the item or items that you choose should be of the highest quality possible to ensure that your guests will truly enjoy and use the gifts.
Photography is important for documenting your big moments and sharing them with your clients and the press, but some of the most special moments are created camera-free.
Have entertainment that’s exciting and unexpected but also well explained. If something is outside of what’s easily understandable, introduce it clearly leading up to and at the event.
For seated events, create moments for guests to be able to interact other than just during cocktails and when they’re leaving.
Create diversity in event type and in those represented.
A gala, or the opening of an art fair, is but one moment. Invest in a year-round calendar of engaging moments.