Power of online content in MICE sales
Dear Reader,
Welcome to issue 2 of #SupplierPost(s) ?? - the biweekly newsletter with information and thoughts for MICE marketing and sales in a changed market. Yours Peter
Content that doesn't reach its target audience is worthless. Communicating content online is easy. You choose suitable topics and the content for them, you write them down and publish them in various social networks and media. So far so simple. The challenge is to ensure that the content reaches the intended target groups - or the one target group.?
The target group profiling of many MICE suppliers is quite good, but the communication to this target groups is often poor.
Identifying target groups and reaching them in a targeted manner is a major challenge for many suppliers in the MICE industry - one that they often fail at. MICE suppliers like to categorize themselves according to "Corporates", "Associations" and "Agencies". The three general buyer groups in the MICE industry. This makes sense. It makes just as much sense to categorize by destination. E.g. associations from Germany. Because the association event planner from Germany has different wishes and ideas as a planner from England or France, Asia or the USA.?
It becomes more complicated to find the right content for the respective target groups and to identify the right channels so that this content is also received. This is where many fail, and for numerous reasons.
The organizational structure in MICE sales of many suppliers is mainly designed for sales and not for marketing. Identifying target groups and reaching them efficiently in a targeted manner is not a common task of a sales employee - with the exception of trade fairs and sales events, where this task is often passed on to the organizers of such events.?
Creating and communicating appropriate content and messages are tasks traditionally assigned to marketing. For suppliers in the MICE industry, marketing often plays only a minor role. A tourism board or a hotel chain invests a lot to reach very specific target groups, such as senior citizens or families with children. Extensive campaigns are created for film, radio, television, magazines and the Internet, but for the MICE segment it often remains with the standard advertisement and an image trailer for the Internet or one of the usual MICE magazines. Today, however, this is too little.
The MICE media are fundamentally in need of optimization - the pandemic has taken its toll on them. They are - or were before the pandemic - high-circulation, but rarely focused on specific target groups in detail. They tend to be aimed at everyone who has "something to do with events" on their business card.?However, this is not enough for an international supplier who wants to acquire event planners who actually organize events abroad as target customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Certainly not wrong, but a communication with very high wastage.
In 2012, MICEboard started to build a community with a clear target group profile. German-speaking event planners from companies, associations and agencies - mostly from Germany and also from Austria and Switzerland - who all have one thing in common: organizing or commissioning events of all kinds abroad - i.e. in international destinations. The content on MICEboard is therefore in German and exclusively about international destinations and their suppliers of MICE services.
How the MICEboard media and content support international suppliers
An average of 8,000 users per month - many more followers in social media and almost 3,000 newsletter subscribers use?MICEboard.com?and the?various communities in social media as a source for their research, inspiration and up-to-date information.
No other MICE media offer international suppliers of MICE services (tourism boards, convention bureaus, hotels, locations, congress centers, DMCs, etc.) such detailed target group profiling and selection as?MICEboard.?
International MICE suppliers do not just reach any event planners and industry players via the?MICEboard media, but the target group that is exactly the most important for them.
What are the most important advantages of?MICEboard Content Marketing?
Advertorial content marketing on?MICEboard?is proven to be the best marketing tool in the MICE industry for international MICE suppliers who want to acquire new business in the German-speaking target markets.
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The MICEboard?advertorial - an excellent sales tool
A MICEboard advertorial is an article on?MICEboard. The article is published in German. Translation from English, as well as a revision tailored to the wishes and needs of the readers (target group) is included in the service. The article remains online for an unlimited time! The numerous keywords from the content optimise the search results on Google and other search engines. As a result, MICEboard advertorials are found better and faster online by event planners. As a result of this fact, they are clicked on and read more often and this further leads to an improvement in the Google page ranking. And whoever is higher up in the page ranking generates the most clicks and thus also maximum attention.
Photos, videos, audios and presentations can be published for such an article. If the supplier of the article is not yet listed in the MICEboard suppliers directory, this entry is also included - for a period?of 12 months.?
The advertorial also includes all online marketing and PR, as well as social media marketing measures that make each publication comprehensive. This also includes the communication of the article in the MICEboard weekly newsletter.
Online, content marketing is much more efficient than ads and banners. The published content can be commented on and shared, can be pushed via social media and is much more valuable for the users because they get information and inspiration that is very valuable for their future event planning and that they can capitalize on with their existing and new customers. With such information, they win the next pitch and with it, the supplier wins important new business.
The MICE Newsroom by MICEboard the content flat for success
The MICE Newsroom is the advertorial flat for an unlimited number of advertorials via a subpage on MICEboard with simultaneous publication on the?MICEboard?homepage. All publications requested by the customer are edited, created and published by the agency. It is the one-stop-shop solution!
A MICE Newsroom by MICEboard has a term of 12 months. It is the all-encompassing solution for successful content marketing without limits. A MICE Newsroom customer has access to all MICEboard communication channels.
The customer can configure the MICE Newsroom himself according to a modular system and create sections. For example, one section for his "Events" and one for his "Partners". Or link sections directly with sections on his official website: e.g. with a hotel or venue finder.?
The goals of the newsroom are:?
Whether as a flat rate or as a stand-alone solution, MICEboard transports the information of international MICE suppliers to the relevant target groups in the German-speaking buyer markets in a targeted and efficient manner because the community has online channels that have been built up and maintained for 10 years. There is no alternative solution here that comes close to the MICEboard performance.
The future of MICE sales is online lead generation
Leads via relevant content. Suppliers do not sell better through personal leads at trade fairs and sales events, it is just much more cumbersome, laborious and increasingly rejected by buyers. Of course, selling and buying in the MICE industry doesn't work without face-to-face contact. But this is no longer the first touchpoint in the sales chain.
Active face-to-face contact, as is common at trade fairs and many sales events and buyers are obliged to attend such appointments, is an extremely difficult path to success. It is classic push selling where the seller approaches a buyer without knowing his needs and wishes. It resembles a lottery game.
With online leads it is the other way round. The buyer is interested in the seller and his offers. For the seller, this is a pull sale. And since the buyer declares his interest with his enquiry, face-to-face contact is the next step. But you don't need a trade fair or a sales event for that.
This newsletter is aimed at supppliers from the MICE industry. It aims to stimulate, criticise and confront. It does not want to embarrass anyone, but to encourage out-of-the-box thinking. To have the courage to critically question the existing and to question methods of MICE marketing and sales.
It is not about right or wrong. It's about securing the future of an industry. If you are a MICE supplier, we would be very happy to hear your opinion on the topics.
The newsletter is published every 14 days and aims to stimulate thought with an article.