New Year's Resolutions Smart Marketers Are Making in 2008

Dear Marketers:

Ahh, December - The time of year for reflection and retooling. Step up your sales and marketing and reach a higher level of efficiency with these tips from the team at TBA Global:

1. Extend the message.

Don't look at your experiential marketing program as a "one-off" or you'll miss a huge opportunity to build relationships with a highly engaged audience. The content from your events can be leveraged to create year-round campaigns. Read how a leading brand applied this to its wildly-successful consumer program here.

2. Be the audience.

Is your experience engaging? If you are giving the audience exactly what they expect – chances are you aren’t delivering that ‘aha’ moment, especially with events that happen annually. Time to shake things up! Revisit your location, staging ideas, and creative themes. Take a look at how you invite attendees and promote your event. You'll be glad you ditched the 'same old thing' and moved forward to the 'next big thing'.

3. Green is the new black.

Not only are environmentally-friendly programs a good way to showcase corporate responsibility, but a ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ mentality both saves the environment and may save you money. For links to several green meeting pages, click here.

4. Don’t even THINK about holding an internal meeting without training.

A live event is a tremendous way to get employees engaged and re-energized. But if they aren’t taking away valuable information to apply to their jobs, you are wasting this opportunity to enhance your brand and retain key employees. Effective learning programs can be simple or extensive, but they are always engaging. Read more about training here.

5. Measure, measure, measure.

Don’t go into a program without a clear outline of success benchmarks, both objective and subjective. And don't just measure what happens onsite - measure the long lasting program impact. We like the Event Marketing Institute’s ROI calculator, which includes everything from event attendees, PR, and subsequent word of mouth pull. Check out the EMI site here.

6. Align marketing tactics.

We call it connective marketing, some call it integrated marketing, but either way - you've got to build a holistic message. Are you connected? Take the quiz.

7. Try something new.

If you have to say you are an innovative company, you aren’t. Step out of your safe zone, and try something new.

8. Embrace Word of Mouth.

If you know your attendees want to share the experience, make it easy for them by leveraging digital media. You'll enjoy the incremental sales and expanded base of customers and prospects, plus the reduction in cost-per-touch. Read more about the EMI study here.