How to explain Event Marketing meaning to COO?
Event marketing meaning is crucial and its significance cannot be underestimated. Even though it is still a young, developing field its understanding is already often a misconception. Some still don’t see the importance of events, there is a dozen of reasons why it should be incorporated in everyday marketing strategies of the companies. But how to convince those in charge that strategic event planning will help to improve performance and achieve the goals of the company? We are here with some answers.
Why is it important to understand Chief Operating Officer roles and responsibilities?
Encouraging someone to engage in a new method or tool is a challenge. To properly present the idea of Event Marketing to managers or those with higher rank it is vital to have basic knowledge of their position. Understanding of the Chief Operating Officer roles and responsibilities will lead to the insight in their desires and goals. Eventually, the knowledge you gain will help you choose the arguments that will meet the needs of the COO. In this article, we will try to resolve doubts on how to show the meaning of Event Marketing with all the perks of incorporating it into the marketing strategy.
Is it even possible to explain the Event Marketing meaning to COO?
Every department of the company has its own specifics and troubles to overcome. It’s no different with COOs. Chief Operating Officers, calling by full name, have goals specified by the profile of work their perform. Different aims and focus points make it hard for COOs to look for various ways to achieve them. They often focus on their field of work and are dedicated to proven methods that systematically give results. Therefore, they are neglecting other beneficial solutions.
One of such directions is Event Marketing. Not being able to see the importance of that kind of marketing may be the result of misunderstanding the term itself. Often COOs see Event Marketing as an additional, unnecessary cost. However, there are ways to explain them Event Marketing definition and its meaning. The key is to find areas where events realize chief’s operational goals and justify it with proper KPIs.
COO – the second in command
Amongst all the team leaders, managers of the department and so on, there is one person that carries the responsibility of managing the whole company’s performance. A Chief Operating Officer is considered CEO’s right-hand-man. It is a person who, long story short, oversees ongoing business operations within a company and keeps its executives and stakeholders updated on progress. It’s not an exaggeration to say that COO is a kind of a liaison between CEO and the rest of the company. Also, managing all of the company’s operations gives this position a responsibility to actually create a value to stakeholders on a day-to-day basis.
What are Chief Operating Officer roles and responsibilities?
As a second person in the company, the right hand of the Chief Executive Officer, the list of COOs duties could be the length of this entire article. Also, the problem with defining a set of responsibilities that Chief Operating Officer is facing is that those can strongly vary between the type of companies. The matter of what role COO is playing in a company can depend on the preferences of the firm’s CEO.
First of all, the COO can be made responsible for fostering a company’s strategies that are previously formed by chief executives or senior leadership. In this case, Chief Operating Officer roles and responsibilities would be to implement the strategies among employees, make sure that they’re performing it and measure the effects of each strategy. It may happen that the Chief Operating Officer’s knowledge will exceed CEO’s in terms of planning strategies for the company. Then, it would be his duty to be an advisor in creating a plan for the company.
Second of all, CEO can make COO a supervisor of internal affairs of the company, while he or she remains a face of it and is dealing with public matters. In this scenario, chief executives are made authoritative in matters of production, research, development and marketing.
Despite the fact that compositions of COO’s responsibilities strongly depend on internal agreement with CEO, we could specify a couple of the most common day-to-day duties.
It would include:
- Overseeing ongoing business operations within the company
- Daily communication with CEO
- Communicating operational strategy and policies to employees
- Fostering employee alignment with company’s goals
- Overseeing HR development.
As we mentioned before, Chief Operating Officer roles and responsibilities are hard to define, because of their company-related uniqueness. What we can say for sure though is that every COO has to be focused on many different fields of business to achieve set goals.
What does the COO want to achieve?
After outlining basic responsibilities of the Chief Operating Officers we get the insight in goals that they set. Of course, determining those goals will be based on the values of the company, current situation and business profile. The most common aims would be: increase in sales, obtaining new business clients and contacts or improvement of internal processes. Those are the objectives that can be met with efficient management of the sales and marketing departments. Also, we can measure the results in numbers and statistics rather easily.
Next to set are goals that apply to the general image of the company and employer brand. It is creating a corporate culture and promoting it – amongst employees and outside the company. Now, this is not such an easy thing to do. COOs face the problem of presenting a company’s values, especially when it comes to the external audience. They struggle in measuring the effect of the actions and often don’t see a solution other than handing old ad brochures.
Also, a general goal of a Chief Operating Officer would be management and improvement in the teams’ work. This is a matter of making a whole company’s work more efficient and therefore more beneficial for those in charge of the company. The results become visible for the leaders and stakeholders.
The selection of goals is an individual choice of every COO. The aims to achieve vary and they’re both – easy measurable and hard to evaluate ones. The common thing for all of them though is that strategic event planning can be a way to complete the objectives. That is why it is important to raise awareness of Event Marketing meaning in company strategies.
Before you’ll explain it to COO, learn the true definition of Event Marketing?
While surfing through the Internet you may notice that the definition of Event Marketing is not clear. There are multiple interpretations of the term. Recently, at Eventory, taking into consideration the importance of the events we decided that it’s a high time to make Event Marketing meaning clear.
A common misconception is considering an Event Marketing as the activities related to promotion of a single event. Nothing further from the truth! Such description could be an event promotion definition, not Event Marketing. It’s not the same thing and we’re here to rectify!
What may be surprising the phrase was already studied in the 80’s. Then the Kotler’s definition came out and that was a true breakthrough. The American professor described Event Marketing as a tool that helps in the process of communication between the customer and the seller. And that’s pretty much where everything started.
To explain Event Marketing meaning to COO leverage its similarity to content marketing
Trying to find the right definition for the Event Marketing phrase, we started to notice some analogies with content marketing. Sounds crazy? Not so much if you think about it.
Content marketing was used to promote various things from ancient times. Just think about all of the messengers with invitations or news! People were writing, what we now call pitches, to advertise their products or themselves since forever.
At first, it was nothing more than just a bunch of nice things addressed to a certain object but it was working and they learned the patterns that worked the most. Then, the evolution of this craft created a separate field of advertising which was later called content marketing. Ok, but what was next? Content marketing became a way to create an interest in consumers’ minds. The process became a meticulously scheduled strategy that was made to provide constant exposition to the advertisement. But there still was no hard proof of how it works, what the results are. That’s where a variety of analyzing tools and platforms appears.
From years back to nowadays, we know the power of the content and we have hundreds of ways to check the audience needs, plan and analyze the effects of the content. A similar cycle of evolution can be noticed when it comes to Event Marketing.
Event Marketing as explained through its analogy to Content Marketing
The same thing is happening when you think about promotion through events. It’s happening ever since, right? Olympics – organized to promote the local leadership and give some hype to sportsmen. Open discussion on the market squares? Well, let’s promote democracy. Then, somewhere in time wise man noticed that it works and, the same as in the case of content marketing, tried to transform random events into something systematic.
Strategic event planning may be still crawling, but as a component of Event Marketing strategy, it becomes a great tool supporting traditional marketing actions. Ok, but what about the last phase that creates real tools for measuring the effects of our actions? Content marketing is something material, you can measure it and have all the analysis. Luckily, the evolution of Event Marketing leads to the creation of adequate platforms and tools that provides hard data even from the least material aspect of the events.
As you can see, there are quite a few similarities between the evolution of content and Event Marketing. This comparison lets to understand Event Marketing definition. Seeing Event Marketing as a tool to use in the creation of brand image brings out the real meaning and advantage of using strategic event planning in the marketing process. We can surely say that the key to understanding the true meaning of Event Marketing is to notice how it can realize set goals.
How to explain Event Marketing meaning and importance of events to COO?
Now, let’s wrap up all the information and think how to serve it to COO in a digestible form.
Chief Operating Officers have their burden that may make them reluctant to any new ideas. They have their goals to achieve and they report directly to CEO (or stakeholders). Consequently, they don’t want to waste their time on things they consider not contributing to their cause.
Therefore, to convince COOs that strategic event planning can make their work more efficient you have to work with specifics. Telling that Event Marketing works fine is not a go. You have to show examples that will speak to the goal-oriented mind of COO. The easiest thing to do, in order to show the importance of events, is to present Event Marketing as a tool to complete the goals. To do so, you can base your presentation on a comparison of KPI’s that COOs use – how events fulfill them.
How events can help COOs to reach their benchmarks?
It’s no surprise that events can be an amplification of the actions, whether it is a recruitment process or getting new leads for your company. However, to convince chief officers about the importance of events you need to show them what impact it will have.
First of many COO’s goals you can address is an increase in sales and numbers of new closed deals. Now, you can start explaining that strategic event planning provides a systematic stimulus to your offer presentation. Also, events help the company to create more meaningful business relations in a short time, by face-to-face interactions. By the proper organization of conference and fairs participation, COOs can set separate goals at each event and later easily check if closed deals met the target.
The second thing a Chief Operating Officer is responsible for is creating, incorporating and promoting a corporate culture. So, the goal here is to make an employer brand visible outside of the company and to actually communicate its values to the employees and audience. Now, there’s no easier tool to promote such soft aspects than through events. Conferences, job fairs and well-planned event promotion work as a medium that, with just a little help from the COO, communicate a message about a company. In times, when measuring events became easy and accessible, it’s an effective tool that can be evaluated, for example by the number of mentions in social media which are monitored by dedicated websites.
Also, COO’s job is to supervise the work of the whole team. Events will make it easier by integrating employees. They’ll be feeling more like a part of the bigger community and therefore, they’ll be more willing to give constructive feedback on the teamwork.
An important thing to remember is, Event Marketing meaning will be clear if the definition, examples of use and its help in achieving goals will be visible and well known.
How to open the eyes of the COOs when it comes to Event Marketing meaning?
One thing is to present a true definition of Event Marketing and show benefits of incorporating it to the company’s strategies. But the other thing is to actually make COO conscious about the impact it has on general company’s operation. As we mentioned before, Chief Operating Officer roles and responsibilities are to spot every occasion to fulfill their aims. Therefore, they set specific criteria to measure the effects. Setting Key Performance Indicators, in short KPI’s, is a crucial thing in almost every operation. Thus, the most efficient way to explain COO the meaning of the event will be to recall to KPI’s of the Event Marketing.
What KPI’s address you should address to while explaining Event Marketing meaning to COO?
Now, when you’re about to explain to COO Event Marketing meaning you need to choose corresponding key performance indicators in order to visualize the value of events. When it comes to KPIs that can be used when measuring event you’ve got a rather broad spectrum of indicators. The thing is to find those who may appear interesting for Chief Operating Officers.
It can depend on the responsibilities of certain COO but here are the examples of the most common ones:
#1. CHURN rate
What interest COO is how the company is doing, long story short. Changes in client base are one of the factors that will draw their attention. How can events help in this area? How this KPI apply to events? While launching a company event, it’s easy to create a base of the clients that we acquire and then the company can monitor how the interaction with them is going.
#2. Number of qualified sales leads
One of the COOs duties is to make sure that the number of sales is increasing and that the company is evolving. Therefore, using the events we can boost the sales simply by participating in profitable conferences. Then we can measure the number of leads we won over and how it affects our sales level.
#3. Follow – up activity
This KPI will also give the chief organizing officers an insight in the influence that strategic event planning has on sales of the company. By showing at conferences we advertise the product and thus get attention and potential clients to buy it. With this indicator, it will be easy to determine the impact of the event strategy.
#4. Sponsor recognition
Strategic event planning also contains event participation as sponsors and partners. This gives a massive shout out to the company’s brand image, its values and policies. Sponsor recognition index can get the idea on how well perceived the company’s presence was
#5. Social media mentions
As well as sponsor recognition, this KPI applies to create brand awareness and promoting its image, employer brand and values outside the company. Social media mentions will help classify whether the events are efficient in spreading a good word about the company. This way your COO will be able to notice that Event Marketing strategy can boost their actions and will save him a great deal of time.
#6. Recruitation feedback
The amount of the applications for an open position may be one of the KPIs that will appeal to COOs as one of their responsibilities is human resources management. Nowadays, events are one of the most effective recruitment method. It’s a fact that many neglects, so showing an actual proof of the strategic event planning success in this field may visualize the effect of Event Marketing to officers.
#7. Revenue
The basics of KPI – the revenue. Organizing event can help not only with building brand awareness but also with increasing the incomes of the company. Sale of the tickets, packages or conference materials can be a great addition to the revenue from regular sales. Also, the return on the event (both organized or attended) will be a very graphic example for the COO, whose job is to take care of general company’s performance.
#8. Turnover rate
This indicator can also be count as a classic one. You can use to explain Event Marketing meaning in the most simple way that is possible. By comparison of previously accumulated data of sales from before and after an event. The event can boost the sales and the increase in sales, thus the financial situation of the company, is something COOs are very pleased to see.
Those are just examples of how to choose performance indicators used to measure Event Marketing strategy that will also appeal to the goal-oriented minds of Chief Operating Officers. Of course, the selection should be thought through as Chief Operating Officers roles and responsibilities vary. The whole point of comparison is to get the COO interest and as a result, explain Event Marketing meaning in a way that will get to them the most.
Summary
Event Marketing meaning is often misunderstood because of different interpretations of the term. It’s a developing field that carries a huge potential. Thus, seeing Event Marketing as a tool leading a company to achieve its goals is one of the steps to improve the performance of the companies. To incorporate event strategies into marketing plans the potential of strategic event planning needs to be noticed by those in charge. Chief Operating Officers, who are responsible for a variety of company’s internal processes, need to be made aware of the perks of using events to fulfill set aims. In order to do so, the idea of Event Marketing should be presented in a way that will address the personal goals of the COOs. Therefore, simple advertising the Event Marketing won’t do, you need to reach their soft spots and show examples that are close to their minds!
