Ups and downs - Things I learnt from my first 2 events continued...

Ups and downs - Things I learnt from my first 2 events continued...

I hope you all had a nice Christmas break and enjoyed some downtime ( if you got any!), I think Christmas is a great time to reflect on things and enjoy hopeless amounts of food in the process!

I thought I would add some extra bits I are learnt from running my first 2 Live Sport Talks events, if you haven't already, check out my previous post where I give my opinion on things such as Facebook ads and Google Adwords. Here are a few other things that I picked up that you may find of use ( if you don't know them already)

Don't be afraid to pivot, but stay true to your concept.

So the heading above may be a bit confusing, so let me explain. It is important to have a good balance with your original idea and the logistics of getting the idea working. When I came up with Live Sport Talks, I had all sorts of bright ideas on how I could run the event and attract sponsors, but the reality is that things don't necessarily always work out the way you would have liked. When things like this happen, it is important to explore opportunities to pivot. I learnt about the term 'pivot' from a great book called the The Lean Start Up by Eric Ries. Eric explains how sometimes for a business to survive, it may have to pivot from the original idea. Ideas where to pivot normally come from early experiences, so I have certainly picked up a few ways that I can change a few things to make the events better and more sustainable. A good example of a large company performing a  pivot is Starbucks. Before Starbucks became a public coffee house and the biggest in the world, they used to sell coffee beans and espresso machines. Current Chairman Howard Schultz decided he loved the concept of selling fresh coffee in a European style coffee house. I would urge you to try and stay true to the original concept though, and not let the external influences take away your idea! 

You don't ask, you don't get! 

So my full time job is a sales officer at a University, where we sell the Universities estate. I have dealt with many clients, from large corporations to start ups to charities. Everyone has their background story and it is rare that they don't try to get a bit of a deal. It a funny way, it put me off asking for discounts or deals when starting up Live Sport Talks. I wanted to be taken seriously and wanted to do everything correctly. It soon dawned on me, it was more about the way you approach a venue, a supplier or an agency that will dictate whether they would be willing to negotiate. When I am working with a company that are looking to get a deal with a University venue, I would be rather work with a client that is honest and open about their situation, then someone who is trying to 'get one up on you' so to speak and isn't being fully truthful about their intentions. I managed to get a bit of a deal with a venue for one of my talks, I was honest about really liking the venue but the cost was too much for me at that time. I looked at another venue, which was cheaper but not as professional looking but was cheaper. I told the preferred venue what I had, and they were happy to match that cost to get the event in. It was very basic negotiation, was really barely any however it was a success! Here is a great article about negotiation with some great examples - http://lifehacker.com/five-tips-to-negotiate-better-with-just-about-anyone-493106085 . It is worth asking if there is any wiggle room with costs, as the worse they can say is no. It may not be worth going to the Ritz and asking from a free lunch for 300 people though, unless you are a complete pro!

So there are a couple more pointers for you, I hope it has been of some use. Will be putting some more togehter as well in this reflection period too!

Enjoy your new year everyone and thanks for reading! 

Ups and downs of a start- up – what the first 2 events have taught me.

It has been a while since I have wrote in this blog, so I thought I would give an update on how my first 2 events went and big and little things I have picked up. I have read and listened to a lot of different business people about what to expect when starting a business, and how you REALLY learn about starting a business once you have started. I have read a lot about event promotion and things to try and endless blog posts from so called experts on how to really create a buzz about your event. I am going to share a few insights I have since starting this venture. I want to be clear that being a start up, I am certainly no expert and I am still learning the ropes, so please feel free to share your insights with me too!

Facebook ads – great tool if used correctly

As we all know, Facebook is a big part of modern day society and we are all guilty of maybe spending too much time strolling through our feeds. Facebook make BILLIONS through advertising revenue, so when you see these groups which say ‘sign here to keep Facebook free’, pay no attention to them. Why would Facebook cut their user base, which they make so much revenue advertising to via big brands? And even if they did start charging people, a competitor would snap all the users that would refuse to pay. You probably notice all sorts of stuff coming up on our feeds, such as an exciting event happening near you or the new pair of Adidas trainers or even showing you that a cool new indie band are playing a gig near you. Facebook have a wealth of information on every single user, such as things they ‘like’, things they ‘share’ and even pages you look at. We used Facebook ads to promote the event with an Olympic gymnast Beth Tweddle. To set up your advert, you choose your audience, this includes: location, age, pages you like and things you have shown interest in. Our advert targeting all ages in the Manchester area who are interested in gymnastics, sports and the Olympics. In theory it is a marketers dream, unlike the old days where you would have to put in a great deal of research to find this market it is literally at your fingertips with Facebook. Facebook are very good at budgeting, you can set a budget (as little as £10 ) and put the amount of days you want it to run within that budget. I ran quite a few different campaigns and got some good response as you pay per clicks. I did find that you can exhaust the advert a bit; I mean you may notice that you get the same ad in your feed every day so it isn’t the set if new people you are advertising to. To counter that, there is a theory that people on average need 3 interactions with a brand before purchasing from them, so maybe repeating the ad to the same people eventually will lead to ticket sales. I found the key thing about a Facebook ad is that your ad needs to stand out from the rest. We are in a situation where we can be overwhelmed with information through the internet so some things do get lost in translation. For future events, I think I will look at doing shorter bursts leading up to the event to create awareness.

Google Adwords

You have probably noticed when you google things, you get suggestions at the top and on the side. This is Google Adwords, where companies basically pay Google to show people their businesses when putting in keywords. It is clever business, if you google ‘Italian restaurants in Cambridge’, then it is in the interest of an Italian restaurant in Cambridge to have their ad on show. It really helps if your website isn’t very high up at rankings in Google. It shows that 91.25% of Google traffic goes to first page results, so it imperative to get your website to the first page, so Google Adwords is a good idea to assist with that. You do pay per click, which naturally doesn’t always equal to sales so doesn’t guarantee sales. It is very important to make sure your ad sticks out though, as just like Facebook ads will get lost with all the other ads. If copyrighting isn’t your thing, may be worth trying out FIVER, to see if someone with more experience can write something up for you.

Press releases

A great way to get information about your event is sending press releases to local, regional and even national ( depending on size) newspapers, news websites and radio stations. A few pointers I have from my experience with dealing with the press. So you work hard writing up a well worded press release, ready to send out to all sorts of publications. Here are a few things to bear in mind:

      Don’t send an attachment, put the press release in the body of the email. Seems simple, however something I didn’t think of. When you think about it, some editors may not like to open an attachment from an email address they don’t recognise.

            Make it stand out. Stats show that 1,759 press releases are distributed daily, that is a lot of information to get through for editors. Make yours stand out, maybe put an image in the flyer too.                  

F    Follow up with a phone call. Emails are great of course, however are easily ignored. I also found that my emails were going into people junk boxes, even if you have interacted with them previously.  It is worth picking up the phone to check if they received the press release or offer them more information. You may get response along the lines of ‘we aren’t interested’, which happens. Don’t take it personally, just a part of it!

So just a few pointers for you, again not an expert and always learning but if any of it helps you on your venture then it’s a good thing!

Will upload some more later this week too!