MICE Industry: communication is sales
The meeting, incentive, congress and event industry (MICE) is collapsing worldwide due to the current pandemic situation. It is a misbelief to believe that it will be the same again sometime. That will not happen at all. The number of suppliers and buyers alone will be reduced - probably very drastically. This also means that ?the cake“ will become smaller.
Digitalisation and digital meeting technologies - many times cheaper than any real meeting or event - will not disappear again, but will completely eliminate numerous real formats from the market and successfully replace them. Not only agencies have long since recognised this, but every day more and more suppliers are doing so. Hotels and congress centres are upgrading their technical equipment in order to be able to offer services to companies and associations. Under no circumstances do they want to and will leave the leadership here to intermediaries - such as event agencies. In the coming months there will be a battle over who will secure the new business with virtual events. There will not be just one player but a multitude of providers: from online agencies, event agencies, communication agencies, congress centres to hotels and many many more...
The battle for hosting virtual events has begun
In the long term, however, even a "big player" model is possible - online casinos are leading the way. A player that offers the possibility of holding a virtual event with just a few clicks, worldwide and thus around the clock. Facebook is just beginning to make its streamings available as a business model for its users, including a billing model via PayPal, credit card etc.. In the next step they will professionalize and offer this to the companies. Then Facebook will become much more than a technical implementer of virtual events. Facebook will become a competitor for every seminar room. The games have begun and many companies will enter the ring to participate.
Virtual events force suppliers of conference rooms and event spaces to act
This will inevitably have an impact on suppliers and buyers. It will be big influence on the suppliers products and offers. First and foremost, suppliers such as conference hotels, hotels and congress centres must build up trust and give good arguments to the buyers if they do not want to stay away and/or prefer to hold the event online.
But what are the suppliers currently doing?
Instead of building trust and deepening customer relationships, covid clauses in contracts shift the responsibility onto the customers - especially the financial responsibility! And instead of looking for creative solutions to make sure that business travellers come back again, hotels are turning to yielding. Currently, hotel rooms in major German cities during the week have never been as expensive as they are now. The answer from the hotel industry is current: whoever still has to go on a business trip (and we are talking about only 25% of the previous volume of the usual weekly business trips!) has to pay higher prices. This is not a solution, but stupidity. The yielding principle.
In this way they chase even more customers away from their hotels towards virtual alternatives. In this way, they do not build up trust and do not provide any arguments to come into the hotel as guests or participants.
MICE is the most lucrative form of tourism
MICE is ultimately a form of tourism - per capita/guest/participant much more lucrative for the providers than any leisure guest. In view of the higher indirect returns, cities, local authorities and federal states are getting involved in this segment. This is why congress centres and exhibition centres are promoted and built by the public sector. However, the business only works if guests / participants actually arrive and spend money on site (approx. 2.5 to 3.5 times as much per day as a leisure tourist). Such indirect returns cannot be achieved with virtual alternatives to real meetings.
MICE Sales is not collecting business cards
Changing markets also require changed sales and marketing measures. MICE sales is based on lead generation. Here the old acquisition wisdom applies: Business can only be generated through an appointment / personal conversation. This is the basis of the so-called sales calls. In this process, enquirers - such as agencies, associations and companies - are called by suppliers to get an appointment with the enquirer. Furthermore, trade fairs and sales events rely on this method. However, it is no longer a question of specifically contacting buyers and suppliers who have something to say to each other, but rather of the number of appointments and less of the quality of the content. Put simply, MICE Sales is essentially nothing more than collecting business cards according to the principle: the more are collect as higher the probability of business. The only problem is that this theory is long outdated because the behaviour of the demanders has changed a lot. And that this form of sales is currently not possible in practice, because it is not easily implemented.
Regardless of how the next few months will develop, it should be clear that many of the remaining players in the MICE market will avoid larger sales events and trade fairs - out of justified fear and also because there are alternatives: online and real in a framework that is many times safer and that does not require having to meet with someone every 15 minutes because the organiser demands it. It is foolish to adhere to methods in which conversations are forced between suppliers and demanders in order to serve the supplier's desire to have as many conversations as possible in order to get the data of the interlocutor. Either I have an offer that generates demand, or I don't have one. Blackmailing business cards is no proof for a good offer.
MICE sales is awareness -> consideration -> conversation
MICE sales today works like any other sales: Getting attention -> being considered by customers -> conversations - online and offline, getting opinions - online and offline -> decision !
In an increasingly digital world, all this needs first and foremost a digital alert and this can only be generated by digital content marketing. This is the first step into the sales funnel: digital Awarness via Content Marketing and it needs a lot of it and continuously. But it not only needs the right content, it also needs access to the target groups that are looking for and want this content. In other words, the right target groups for the MICE supplier and these are not the same worldwide. Therefore, it needs content that is tailored to the respective wishes and needs of the target group, otherwise it has no relevance within the target group. The target group "event planners from Asia" has completely different wishes and needs than the target group "event planners from Germany" and this has to be worked out via the content and successfully passed on to the target group.
MICE Sales begins with content
MICE Sales begins with content marketing and is all the more successful the more reach the content achieves. The interest of the buyer can be awakened through content marketing.
If a supplier succeeds in presenting its offers, brands, products and services in detail online, the desire for a joint discussion is based on genuine interest on the part of the buyer and not on the compulsion of a discussion by the organiser of a trade fair or sales event.
Many suppliers are currently transforming their sales calls - i.e. actually planned visits to the customer's office - into virtual meetings between supplier and customer. Gifts such as wine or cakes are often sent to ensure that the buyer participates (it would be rude to cancel after the cake has been delivered - even if I am not interested in the products of the supplier...)
What is forgotten is that virtual sales calls do not (cannot) have the same effect as real meetings and therefore the revenue in no way justifies the effort involved. It would make more sense to generate a broad attention within the desired target groups in order to get into sales calls where the customer has a real and serious interest. The information of such a sales call with one person (or maybe a few more) belongs online transported to the target group and not in a closed webinar room - where it cannot generate any reach at all. But why is it done that way anyway? Because during a virtual meeting in a closed virtual room, the supplier can make a note of the data of his interlocutors for his reporting. This brings us back to the "business card collecting method" with which the supponier feels comfortable but also shows that he has not learned anything new.
In addition, this stuffing up with webinar dates has the same effect in the medium term as the newsletters and mailings to the buyers - an ever decreasing opening rate, because of a constantly growing disinterest in unsolicited information.
MICE sales would therefore be well advised to fundamentally rethink its approach and use budget and resources more effectively. Today, attention is not only the task of marketing but the first task and duty of sales. MICE sales should understand this as soon as possible, if only because marketing is also hard hit by the current situation. Media for distribution are either limited or no longer available. And although it is possible to reach already known customers digitally, it is very difficult to develop new markets with relevant target customers. But this is exactly what the suppliers need to do now.