| Are you worried about your next competitor which comes from out of nowhere? I asked my friend, industry renowned journalist and thought leader Michael Hart on his views of how to avoid getting killed by a new competitor.. Here’s what he had to say:
———————————-
You run the flagship annual event for your industry. People say you do everything right, year after year.
Everybody knows you and on the last day of every show, your favorite attendees tell you what a good job you did. “Keep it up!” they say.
Then one day you get wind of a new show that – What! – wants to compete with you. Somebody you never heard of, who knows nothing about the industry or any of the important players who are your friends, sends out a press release announcing the launch of a “cutting-edge” event that targets YOUR audience.
They even schedule a meeting with you to talk about how the two of you can “work together.” You don’t exactly say, “Not a chance,” but you signal it with your tight smile and curt handshake.
They go ahead with their plans. You learn their marketing involves Tweeting and e-newsletters when a few direct mail pieces and an occasional e-mail blast was all you ever needed to get people to your show.
They announce keynote speakers you never heard of and a hotel in a city you never thought your longtime attendees would settle for. They charge less for registration and your anchor exhibitors call to ask why they’re paying so much more for space at your show than the new guy wants.
They hold the event, it isn’t a disaster and those old friends who always told you what a good job you were doing start telling you what a great experience they had at the “new” show.
NOW WHAT!?
Relax – for five minutes – then get busy.
Here’s what you do:
- Stop listening to that handful of old friends who tell you every year you’re doing a great job and figure out how to get in touch with all the people in your industry who aren’t going to your show – or the new one, for that matter. Find out why they don’t attend and what it would take to get them there.
- Take a cold, hard look at what worked for your new competitors that you haven’t done. Promise to never say to yourself, “Yeah, but they don’t have to….” No excuses. See what they did that works, and figure out how you can do it better.
- Examine your conference program closely. How many of this year’s conference session titles sounded suspiciously like last year’s? How many speakers did you have who have spoken in previous years? Did your keynoters tell your audience something they had never heard before? Do you even know where to go to find fresh ideas that your audience wants to learn about?
- Find a way to get yourself off the treadmill, the eternal event cycle that dictates a series of deadlines that you HAVE to meet before the next year’s show. Take that time you’re saving, talk to the people you serve, find out what they actually do beyond the three days a year you spend with them, and ask them point blank what they want from an event.
- Use some imagination and come up with new ways for people to network at your event. Remind yourself that, once the show’s over, if attendees look back and say to themselves, “I didn’t meet a single new person,” they’re probably not coming back next year.
- Do some serious data collection on your attendees and feed that information back to your sponsors and exhibitors. Move them from the “People will miss me if I’m not there” mindset to the “Here’s where I need to be to meet my buyers” point of view.
- Look for ways to engage with your industry beyond your own show: subsidiary events, newsletters, blogs…whatever it takes.
- Tell the world about the changes you’re making.
- Become a part of their community, not just the guy who runs the annual tradeshow.
The idea in all of the above is to be proactive- you can bet your competitors are……
Michael Hart is a business consultant and writer who focuses on the events industry. He can be reached at michaelhart@michaelgenehart.com. |
