You get what you pay for … and sometimes a little bit more.

What do you tell price shoppers when they tell you they can hire somebody cheaper? Here’s what I’d show them if I were a DJ ( and they had a sense of humor).

While you’re here be sure to download a free copy of  “More Clients Now” by putting your email in the box to the right.

As an Event Planner, you “know,” you don’t guess.

You know the facts. The exact dimensions of the party venue. The precise head count for meals, including the band. The event budget to the dollar. You know when the music will start, where the limos are and how long the speeches will be. You know the purpose and the vision for every successful event you produce.

Smart event planners don’t guess, they make fact-based decisions. Any event professional, from a caterer to a decorator understands the risks of “winging it.” I’m sure you’d agree, the more important an event is, the more you require accurate facts.

So why are you winging it when it comes to planning your future and the success of your business?

Do you schedule time to think and plan your marketing a regular basis? Most event business owners don’t. It’s no wonder so many run themselves ragged.

They stop thinking and planning proactively. Instead of accomplishing important tasks that will create growth, income and stability, they fall into the habit of responding to whatever seems
most urgent.

Your business can consume and control your life, or it can serve you. It’s your choice. If you want to avoid long, stressful work hours, erratic income and uncertainty you must do what most people refuse to do, that is “Think and do things in the order of their importance.”

You can run a prosperous event business and still have time and energy for a fulfilling personal life. You can make a nice steady income, take long vacations and have a wonderful retirement too.

But only if you think and plan methodically and consistently.

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”

Just the simple act of gathering objective marketing data and regularly reviewing it can transform your business and lifestyle.

Marketing your event business is simpler when you have a system. Here’s how to grow your business with fact-based marketing.

First, create a Fact Book. It can be a 3-ring loose-leaf binder, a leather bound journal or a word file you keep on your desktop, PDA or online. Just make sure you have easy access to it when
inspiration, curiosity or nuggets of data appear.

Next, schedule one hour a week to review it your Fact Book. Every week works best. Schedule one hour of uninterrupted thinking time on a regular basis. Block off the time in your calendar and keep this appointment at all cost.

“Thoughts lead on to purpose, purpose leads on to actions, actions form habits, habits decide character and character fixes our destiny”

Keep your Fact Book accessible and begin to construct by dropping in bits and pieces as you discover them. Online tools, like Google’s Notebook makes it easy to clip websites, articles and
thoughts into an easy to search database you can access from anywhere.

“Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

Keep your Fact Book limited to, well, facts. If you can’t back an entry up with objective data, leave it blank until you can. Compile information on your competition, customers, your market and your own business.

Competition

Continually gather the answers to questions about your competition. You’re not doing this be a cutthroat competitor. You’re doing this to learn how to better serve and attract client.

• Who are my strongest competitors? List local event planners that directly compete with you.
• Who are the industry leaders? List the top dogs in event planning who have accomplished what you aspire to.
• What are their strengths? Well connected? Great advertising?Large sales staff? Low overhead?
• What is their competitive advantage?
• What are their weaknesses? List objective observations, not list of insults.
• How many employees do they have? Are you sure? How many full time?
• How do they price their services? You can find out anything if you really want to.
• How fast are they growing? How do you measure that? Number of events? Number of press mentions? Pick a metric.
• How long have they been in business? Look it up.
• What type of events do they specialize in?
• Who are their top clients? Dig!
• How do they attract new clients? Get on their mailing lists.
• Where do they advertise? Make time to find this.
• What is their promotional budget? Number ads x cost per ad.
• What do their customers think of them? Call around, keep notes.
• How well does their site rank in the search engines? Do they outrank you when you Google “event planner” plus your city name? Why?
• What does their latest marketing campaign include? Gather samplesof all their promotional materials.

Customers

Gather information about your customers. The act of compiling this information on a regular basis will help keep you focused on your clients.Include answers to these questions:

• How large is our customer base?
• Who is our average client?
• What do our best clients have in common?
• How did we acquire our best clients?
• Why did our newest clients choose us?
• Why did we lose the last one?
• What demographics define our best clients?
• What is the average size order?
• What is our profit per order?
• How long do customers stay with us on average?
• What is the Long Term Value of a new client? (LTV = Average revenue per client per year X average client retention years)

“The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.”

Your Business

• How many sales leads did we generate this month compared to last year?
• Is my sales & marketing data accurate?
• How many hours did I spend marketing this week?
• How many sales calls did we make?
• How does that compare to last week, month, year?
• Which one of our ads produced the best returns this quarter?
• Am I sure I’m tracking my results accurately?
• Can we scale up our best campaign?
• How can we systematize our marketing?
• How many appointments canceled?
• How profitable was our average job?
• What went really well this week? Why?
• Where did we make mistakes? How can we remedy that?

The Fact Book will grow and grow. The questions above are only suggestions and are in no way complete. As you answer one question, it will lead you to another. Spend your time filling in the blanks. Have your assistant do a good chunk of the data gathering, but I must emphasize, only include FACTS.

Selling and marketing your event business, like anything else, goes smoother when you have a solid plan. Start scheduling time to think about your event business using the Fact Book system. You’ll grow faster and better than ever before.

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising, which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”

Brian McGovern

Numbers. If you want to book bigger and better events, if you want to make more money this year than last year, you’ve got to know your numbers.

Show me an event professional who consistently and accurately tracks their vital stats, and I’ll show you an event pro who’s making money.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” goes the saying. You can’t improve your marketing and sales process when you don’t have your facts.

Can you produce hard data answers (and not guesstimates ) to these important questions?

• Where do most of your inquiries come from?
• What percent of your inquiries develop into leads?
• What percent of leads book appointments?
• How many appointments does it take to produce a sale?
• How have your percentages trended? Are you getting better at producing and converting leads? If not, why?

You must measure every part of your marketing process. Know what your return on investment (ROI) is for every single promotional dollar you spend.

Know When To Hold ‘Em, Know When to Fold ‘Em.

Once you know which advertisements are producing the highest ROI it’s time to cut your losses and let your winners run.

When times are tough, we cut back. It makes sense to cut your most expensive advertisements … but only if you truly understand the difference between “expensive” and “lowest cost.”

A $1,000 advertisement can be more expensive than a $5,000 ad. When an advertisement produces less revenue than its price, it’s expensive. When an ad makes you more money than its price, it’s no longer a cost – it’s a solid investment.

Effective advertising (that which generates more than its price) is the equivalent of buying dollars for dimes.

Dimes for Dollars.

Here’s a pop quiz. Which is more expensive; a $5,000 ad or a $1,000 ad? Your Yellow Pages ad costs $5,000 a year and generates $10,000 in new event booking. Your ad in The Local Paper costs $1,000 and generates no business. Which costs more?

Seems obvious, but most business owners don’t seem to get it. When cash is tight they cut the higher priced / lower cost ad and continue to use lower priced / higher cost ads. Why? They don’t know their numbers.

When I create an advertisement that costs me $4,000 and generates $40,000 in new business, the only question I ask is, “How can I scale this ad campaign? How can double or triple my spend on this ad?”

But only 1 out of 10 event business owners thinks that way. Most of your competition doesn’t think of advertising as “buying dollars for dimes,” because most of them have no idea which ads are producing positive returns and which ones are losers.

Stop Guessing

Any knucklehead can grow an event business when the market is booming and demand is outpacing supply. But when the demand drops, only the smart marketers will survive.

Brian McGovern

Wow! What a great turnout for the conference call. You can listen to a replay of the call (running time is about 1:12). You may want to download to your iPod – we hit on a couple of really solid ideas. I hope you will implement some of these ideas right way.

Remember – just listening to this won’t make any money. You’ve got to take action.

Thank you to everyone who participated. I know a lot of you wanted to be on the call -

To download to your computer, iPod or CD Burner: Right Click to Save to Download Audio

Slides From Today’s Talk

This much is obvious: Your customers are canceling events because of the economy, the fear of negative publicity and government interference. Competitors are stealing your clients away with crazy low bids.

But, maybe there’s a bigger reason your bookings are down – and things may not return to business as usual once the economy picks up.

It’s been happening slowly for years but it’s only just hit critical mass and has forever changed the way we will do business.

If you recognize, understand and exploit this shift your business can grow, right now, even in this lousy economy.

Those biz owners who are blaming all of their woes on the economy are misdirected. They end up reusing the playbook from the last recession, depending on marketing strategies from the last century.

What’s the bigger shift, which will have a longer lasting effect on your future than a recession? The big shift I’m talking about is web 2.0 – where most of our clients start every event project.

Transparency and honesty in your business practices is no longer just the right thing to do. It’s the only way to survive.

Those event people who think they can exist in the brave new world with less than scrupulous practices and stellar service will not last long.

I hate to tell you this, but you’re naked.

Your customers can see everything. They’re pricing your sources. They’re reading testimonials about you that you can’t control. They can request and compare quotes faster than ever before.

The bad news is Web 2.0 is no place to be when you have something to hide. However, it’s absolute nirvana to those event pros that put their clients’ needs first.

It goes beyond what they’re saying about you. It’s how well you attract, connect, engage and convert shoppers to buyers on your website. Is your website reaching your market? They’re searching for services just like yours online, right this very minute.

Can they find you? Will they find your competition first? Will they bother to stop on your site? Will it motivate them to contact you? Will they like what they see?

Don’t assume the economy is the only reason your business is down. It could be a fatal misdiagnosis.

If you want to grow your business using the most powerful marketing tools in the history of civilation … for free no less … download a copy of “More Clients Now.” In this report I show you how to attract tons of clients using 10 breathrough tools for business growth. Download your copy here.

Craigslist is a great source for event leads of all kinds. Sure, there are lots of bargain hunters here … but also a lot of great bookings too.

To make it work, you have to act fast! If you don’t respond quickly, the lead goes cold fast.

But who has time to check Craigslist every ten minutes and sort through lots of junk to maybe find a qualified lead? You do!

Here’s an easy way you can automatically check Craigslist for sales leads without having to log on and search it yourself.

Here’s how to automate Craigslist so you never miss out on a sales lead. I made a quick video that shows you how to set it up. Hope it helps.

Click here to watch a quick video tutorial.