Quick Wins VS Long Term Strategy

Over the last few months, our beloved events industry has taken a bit of a battering, to say the least. All live events have of course come to a grinding halt, which for our brand Julia Charles Event Management, made up around 80% of all sales.

It does not take a PHD or masters degree to understand whether only obtaining around 20% of incoming sales is enough to sustain a brand such as ourselves. With this in mind, we had to think about whether or not we diversify our offerings to get short term wins or whether or not we take stock of the situation and prepare for the vail of lockdown to be lifted. for obvious reasons, we had to consider both options which intern presented their own challenges. Below are some examples of the challenges we have had to overcome to allow us to continue to grow in a market which is far from blossoming.

Short Term Strategy

The main focus was to speak with our clients and friends in the industry and get a quick understanding of the landscape. With live events being taken away we had to look into ways in which we can still supply some of the services we offer but in a different format. Queue the virtual event space! Virtual event platforms have taken a massive increase over the last few months and it is no surprise to anyone that this has been the case. With the need for socialising still paramount in day to day life, not just on a personal level but on a professional level as well. This was an opportunity for us to present virtual performers and event services. This has been successful in many ways, both for the cost-effective nature and the fact that we as a professional company, bring a professional element to it.

Along with this, we have presented more detailed online services to our clients in the commercial law sector. For this, we gave clients the opportunity to use online platforms to hold small and large conferences and mediating their courtrooms. This is less of a short term strategy due to the delicacy of the content however, once up and running it is smooth sailing.

After a few months of testing and getting the feedback we concluded that although there are short term benefits, the landscape of liver events would change so dramatically that perhaps our efforts are futile thus far. Don't get me wrong, Virtual events will be something that we offer to clients indefinitely. After all, technology will only improve and the virtual space will be a large part of this. But sustainable to a global brand?? I am not so sure! What I do know is that the competition is fierce and the demand is not as such. we expected an annual growth pre-pandemic to be roughly 14.5% to ￡2.3m and no matter how good the short term win would be, this is not enough to grow in the way we expect.

Long Term Strategy

Now usually long term strategising would be built up of many dates, timelines, components and most importantly, realistic goals. As you can imagine, doing this in the current climate of the events industry is somewhat difficult however, we have ideas on how to mitigate these challenges.

We had looked into where we feel the industry would pick back up again and directed our media team to take on projects which would streamline our services and overall customer experience for that particular sector. Once we chose a sector we got to work on social media strategies, PR, Website and SEO strategy and an overall plan of engagement for the next 12 months. We simply put a task force together of our brightest and discussed where our sales over the last 4 years had come from, whom they come from and what they were for. We then got started on recognising how the services we provided would help shape the future of events. How we would shape those services to become more sustainable for a post-pandemic future was the next step.

Corporate was one of the sectors in which had the most buying powers with over ￡4m in active enquiries. We were then able to get started on understanding the buying personas of those customers and how our service complimented their way of buying. As you can imagine going over nearly 12 thousand records of data was not the best way of enlightening one's senses but it was interesting none the less.

Splitting these into their categories was a process in which really told a story. From client type, event type, type of service VS how long to close, profit amount and overall cost. This gave us a true understanding of where we would potentially target our efforts. Not only from a profit margin point of view but also from what our customers like in the way of how proposals are presented to them. It is funny how market research can be done with the tools you already have as opposed to going out there and gaining new insight from scratch.

Now, this process has been finished and pondered over by top-level management, we then looked at where to invest our time and money. Was this in new systems to streamline our already streamlined service? or was this in new people? we recently put a post out for us to employ a new Operations Direct which had seen a great response. Coming up with a long term sales and marketing strategy which we are now extremely excited about is great but we must have the right people to execute the plan.

My Conclusion

This is the interesting part! there is no real benefit from each of the short or long term wins that out way the other. Companies need to be active for many reasons. Money in the bank, your brand recognition and overall sanity of everyone involved. The one thing that is fundamental is clarity and this has been our main challenge. It is apparent that as a country we are still very unclear about so much (other than the inside knowledge we have been given, but I won't talk about that just yet) I am sure most would agree is not the best foundations to grow a company. That said, the planning, the research and the understanding of our customer base are imperative so that when we are ready to provide the world with incredible event experiences, we do so more prepared than ever!