Andrew Dunstan on Unsplash ">event invite, write an invitation

Event Invitation Copywriting

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Event invite copywriting – a “before” and “after” comparison.

First I analyse each paragraph – what’s it about?

The draft I was sent was structured like this

  • – The Promise
  • – Sow Doubt
  • – Question (which will be answered)
  • – List of Sales Points
  • – Speakers & event details

When I finished rewriting it, the order had changed to

  • – Open Question
  • – Sow Doubt
  • – Empathise
  • – The Promised Future State
  • – Sales Points [rewritten]
  • – Empathise again
  • – Feeling vulnerable
  • – The Promise
  • – Speaker and Event details

Why will this work better?

The emotional journey is defined and reassurance is included when the Promise comes later in the messaging.

Also the empathetic sentences help the reader to judge quickly if the event is ‘right’ for their needs or not. You don’t want tyre-kickers coming along, do you?

If you’d like to see the full text of before and after #copywriting #B2Bmarketing. Message me.

I would like to do more writing like this for #Brands who need #directresponse marketing done well.

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trade show, marketing for trade shows, B2B marketing trade, trade marketing, channel marketing,

The Essential Checklist for Choosing a Tradeshow Company

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You’ll need a lot of planning and preparation for a trade show. You must create a budget, craft your brand message, set goals for attending the event, and prepare your supplies in advance. Choosing a tradeshow exhibit company to assist you with this can help you to get the most out of your investment.

Craft your brand message

There are many things to consider when choosing a tradeshow exhibit company. One of the first steps is getting a good idea of your business and its offers. Once you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve, it’s time to start thinking about what you can do to make your brand stand out. One way to accomplish this is to build an integrated marketing campaign that includes print, online, and even electronic outreach. This way, your booth can be the center of attention while still being able to connect with your prospective customers. Another effective tactic is to offer giveaways that tie into the central theme of your exhibit. These may include promotional items such as pens, key chains, or t-shirts. However, it would be best if you were careful not to overwhelm visitors with too many choices.

Set specific goals for attending a tradeshow

You must set specific goals to make the most of your 7 Trade Show Booth Ideas for Small Budgets. While getting caught up in the event’s excitement is easy, setting goals can keep you, and your team focused. Whether you’re exhibiting your company’s products or services, setting specific goals will help you get the most out of your investment. The right goals can put you ahead of your competitors. Your goal could be to increase your brand awareness. An excellent way to do this is to make a memorable first impression. For example, you could offer prospects a personalized photo of yourself if they fill out a personality quiz. Or you can acquire a few email addresses. Identifying your goals before the event will make choosing an exhibit company that fits your needs more leisurely. Make sure your goals are in line with your marketing plan.

Set a realistic budget

Getting ready for a trade show can be a costly process. Setting a realistic budget to make the most of your investment is essential. Let’s start by planning early. One of the most considerable costs involved with exhibiting is booth space. The cost of a booth can range from twenty to thirty-eight percent of your total budget. While you may be tempted to go for a more affordable booth space, sacrificing quality can result in your trade show needing to be taken more seriously. For an adequate budget, you need to take into account several factors. These include the size of your market and your target audience. It is also essential to account for the amount of time you dedicate to your display and your goals for the show.

Follow up on trade show performance

If you are looking for a tradeshow exhibit company, you will want to ensure they can help you measure and improve your post-show performance. The best way to achieve this goal is to set objectives and metrics before the event. Those objectives should include the sales and non-sales goals of your team. Measuring and tracking the effectiveness of these goals is an essential aspect of any marketing campaign. For example, your objective may be to generate leads, but how can you determine whether or not those leads were generated through effective meetings, foot traffic management, and lead tracking? Some critical metrics for trade shows include the number of contacts invited to the show, the number of press distribution entries added, new connections made, and the progression of CRM prospects in the funnel view. However, you must note that these measures are just some of the ones you should consider.

 

Additional resources

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Shelly Davies book, sweary

“Hey Y’all…” Shelly Davies book launch

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Join us for the Auckland launch of Shelly Davies’ new book – Good Shit I’ve Learned.

Shelly Davies book, sweary

The unexpurgated version

Shelly Davies book, swear words excluded

No swearing in this version

Yes, She is a REAL WOMAN who swears not just for emphasis, but because it communicates meaning.

Why?

Rebecca and Shelly have danced around each other’s online profiles and commenting on things for at least a couple of years. And this is our first party we’re hosting together.

You might have heard… Shelly wrote a book! It’s so good that Creative Agency Secrets want to help her sell a few copies AND get you facetime with the raw, sensible life-advice which is cram-packed into this volume.  We”re organising a book launch – more on that below and link to get tickets.

** When I read the book, I knew I wanted to give copies to my friends – it’s that sort of a book. **

You know how you sit around with wise girlfriends and guyfriends and talk shit and love on each other and share cool stuff you’ve learned and just generally lift each other up, because, #love? That’s what this book is – a collection of good shit I’ve learned, that brings me joy, and has helped me become, well, ME. And I hope it’ll help you become more YOU.

This event ticket INCLUDES a copy of Shelly’s book – but wait – there are 2 versions……

Oh and FYI… YOU who’s cringing at her potty mouth…. Shelly has a NON-SWEARY VERSION. So don’t be put off – she thought of you!!  The book will be RELEASED on 22 September and costs $38.87 at bookstores. Your ticket price includes a FREE copy of the book (did I mention this already?).

So choose your ticket carefully because one gives you the warts-and-all sweary version of “Good Shit I’ve Learned” by Shelly Davies and the other ticket gives you the nicely-tidy-no-swear-words version of “Good Stuff I’ve Learned” by Shelly Davies.

And just bring a friend with you – or your teen child – or your auntie or business partner. They will thank you. I promise.

Who should attend?

Women. Women in business, women wanting to advance their careers, women who know that being self-aware is the pathway to freedom, success, joy.
Men. Men who work with women. Men who are challenged by the #MeToo and want to understand and not look like an idiot, men who want to understand their co-workers, their life partners, their children.

What will you learn that you can use?

It’s full of powerful thinking that can help us feel and behave differently in our lives, work, and careers. At the very least, it’s fucking entertaining – as is Shelly when you meet her in the flesh. 

Get your tickets to Shelly Davies live and in the flesh Auckland Book Launch. 

Oh, and you can watch Shelly’s TEDx talk “Write Like a Reader” so you can see her style.  And read her website to understand why she’s a Rockstar Writer.

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trade show, exposition, marketing B2B, trade show marketing

Trade Marketing tips

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You asked us about Trade Marketing.  This is when you sell something to another business and they sell it to the ultimate customer.  Fundamentally it’s just selling but because it’s restricted to selling within a single industry or “trade” it gets another name…. the key thing for you to know is that the principles of B2B marketing still hold true.
 

Trade marketing is a sub-type of B2B

What I love about any B2B is that the audience is individually identifiable. You can get or build a list of actual individuals who you can sell to.  The best way to start that is through identifying these things

  1. industry type
  2. sub-type of industry
  3. job title of decision makers and decision-influencers
Then you are within reach of a clearly identified audience.  List broker will sell you lists, you can research and build your own too.  If you choose the latter, please start with the trade association or professional body for the industry.  That’s a great way to short-cut list building.

After the list, how to approach

Getting a list is only the beginning.  You need to brand build with specific campaigns so that prospects recognise your business name or your product name (or both).  Trade shows can be useful here because people who are interested are all gathered into a single location on a single day and you can meet many face to face.
Getting your strategy aligned with the prospect’s need is critical.  Because it’s so easy to mess up an approach and build bad feeling against your brand.  For this reason we always create a hypothesis and we test this out before a general launch.
Today a mailing list of 100 names is being tested for a client.  When we see how it’s received [Good so far, thanks for asking 54% open rate 4% click through] then we can make decisions about whether to adapt / improve or just to roll it out to the rest of the prospect list.

Top 10 tips for trade marketing

  1. Automate follow ups – have a pre-set process for capturing and following up
  2. Time is always short – but don’t cut short conversations on the stand.  Invest in the people who do come to build relationships
  3. Connect on LinkedIn to everyone you meet if possible
  4. Be very clear about what you are promising to prospects
  5. Have a “cute” offer [fidget spinners are popular now]
  6. If you use scrolling video at a trade show, always sub-title it so people get the message from afar
  7. Put on your best smile.  It’s my biggest business success tool – people remember my warm smile
  8. Make eye contact and be the first to break contact after smiling and saying hello.  This is un-threatening
  9. Have a ‘golden question‘ or two ready for your prospect discovery questions
  10. Turn up every year – as long as the show brings in prospects, plan to be there.  Consistency pays off
Creative Agency Secrets is expert in B2B marketing.  We understand how to research trade buyers, how to build a list of possible buyers, how to present your product or service to them and how to get them to buy from you over and over again.
If you want to learn more, read this article about Trade Show Marketing.  And this case study about your business location

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Sir Gordon Tietjens – Owning High Performance

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Speaking at the EMA Managers and Team Leaders Conference. My notes.

I’m playing for Samoa and my goal to take Samoa to the Olympics in 2020 – as a coach it’s always about we not about I.  TEAM = together everyone achieves more.

When I was first appointed in 1994 I wanted to create a culture on traditional values, honesty, humour, humility, respect.  Athletes go out and perform for me – you empty the tank.

You can see humility in someone quickly.  Federer got beaten by Nadal at Wimbledon – Federer gained in defeat, losing although painful was still a gain.  it was the greatest game of tennis ever.  It hurts when you lose but it doesn’t mean failure if you gave it everything you have.

Why were the AB 7s team successful? 12 world series, 2 world cups and beaten in the quarter final at the Olympics by Fiji. I saw that as just one tournament. I didn’t have the best players, but I had the best teams.

Read more

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nz marketing summit 2017

Foster Innovation at the NZ Marketing Summit 2017

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Spark ideas, develop strategies, and add value to your brand while joining New Zealand’s leading marketers at the annual NZ Marketing Summit. Listen to our own CEO, Rebecca Caroe, in her session on “Strengthening the brand-agency partnership – how to work with an expert (when you aren’t one)”.

Attend Four International Keynotes

  • Brigitte Slattery (Head of Marketing – Lifestyle Group @ Foxtel Australia)
  • Nick Lanzafame (Head of Strategic Insights & Analytics @ Buzzfeed)
  • Charlotte Dewhurst (Global Marketing Direct @ Les Mills International)
  • Col Kennedy (General Manager – Brand & Customer Experience @ Country Road)

Explore Three Programming Tracks

  • Digital & Social
  • Brand & Content
  • Tech & Experiential

Along with the 20+ speakers featured, the Marketing Summit offers a choice of two full-day workshops. “The Content Workshop” and “Brand Building Blocks 2.0” will be held the following day on September 22nd.

Join and connect with 300+ fellow industry professionals in generating and exchanging insights to fuel brand development. You can register before 5pm on August 25th and secure early bird pricing.

SKYCITY Convention Center, Auckland

21 September 2017

8:30am – 5:00pm

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Social Media Conference 2016

Get early bird tickets for the Social Media Conference 2016

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Do you want to learn about Social Media to CONNECT, ENGAGE AND GROW?

Then join fellow Business Owners, Social Media peeps and other amazing people who have already registered for the Social Media Conference 2016.

Accelerate your learning of:

+ Social Media Strategy
+ Developing content that will rock your Brand
+ Using live video to project your presence
+ Networking and building online communities
+ Using Google apps to grow your business
+ Using social media to Sell to an International Market like China and the USA
+ How to sell to the new generation of Millennials
+ Combining Webinars and social media for added sales results

With table topics on:

+ Snapchat
+ Instagram
+ Facebook Business
+ Facebook Advertising
+ LinkedIn
+ Outsourcing
+ Pinterest
+ Blogging
+ Podcasting
+ YouTube
+ Facebook Live
+ and much more

If you want to grow your Business using Social Media then this is the place to be.

[button_5 bg=”orange” text_color=”dark” text=”register-now.png” align=”center” href=”http://socialmediaconference.co.nz/”/]

The Speakers

  • Amanda Jordan from Google
  • Tom Walter form Tumblr flying in from Australia
  • Robert C Stern flying in from the USA and known as the King of Live Video
  • Pauline Stockhausen – Speaker at the Social Media Marketing World in San Diego
  • Natalie Cutler Welsh and Wanita Z Fourie – bringing fabulous information from the Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. Both have been on TV, radio and newspapers
  • Andrew Baird – Digital Marketing and Business Growth Guru
  • Simon Young – creating magic in International Markets.

Networking

Fabulous opportunities to network. People have made significant business connections during the conference and friendships which extend beyond professional contexts.

Audience

Solopreneurs, small and medium size business owners, and people working in social media roles either within corporates or externally, community managers, bloggers, podcasters and anyone wanting to expand their knowledge and understanding of social media.

EARLY BIRD SALES END JULY 31. Book your ticket today for $560.00 which includes GST, full buffet style lunch for both days, refreshments, access to recordings of the conference speakers, prizes and much more.

Because the audience is geared towards the small/medium size business, payment plans are available. You can see the selection of plans here.

There’s a large contingent of International Business Owners booking and people from all over New Zealand. The seating is limited and is selling fast. Don’t miss out.

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Conference wrap up

The BEST conference wrap-ups engage

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Just been to a conference and got sent the self-congratulatory showreel wrap up of vox-pops from speakers and attendees.  2 minutes of my life wasted.

Take a contrast for Conferenz and Spark’s CIO summit – a slide deck which has real insights and learnings which I can take away as a non-attendee.

The only thing they’re missing is a sign-up form to encourage me to ask for more information and an invite for next year’s event……

To be fair, they had a show reel too…. so not yet a perfect performance!

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How do you know that your business website is performing?

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Business websites are no longer a ‘set-and-forget’ business asset. Any website which you haven’t touched for months or years is depreciating faster than melting ice cream in summer. It is not helping your business.

The race to perform on Google was thought to be an un-winnable chase for small businesses who don’t have huge marketing promotion budgets.

That is no longer true.

All businesses run on Key Performance Indicators and so today I am going to run through a few important measurements that you can use to see if your website is performing well.

Going Web Mobile

The first one – and the most important is mobility. Google has announced that it will be including mobile-friendliness as part of its algorithm from 21st April.
Test your website here 

If your website fails the test – get in touch with your developers and build a mobile friendly website.

Machine readers for key words

The second one is a quick test to see how a “machine” reads the words on your website. We all know Google, Bing and Yahoo are search engines. What we forget is that engines aren’t human. When machines read web pages they find different emphases than we humans do.

Here’s a test you can do – take the words from your website home page and paste them into the Open Calais Viewer  Click ‘submit’ and then they tell you which words and phrases a machine thinks are important in what you’ve written. If those words are not the most important key words for your website – re-write them until they align.

Clever humans have written another machine reader which also shows sentiment analysis – what subtle messages are communicated using the tone of voice and context of your home page texts. Take the same words and paste them into Alchemi API Language . The keywords tab on the left is colour coded to show positive (green), negative (red) and neutral (grey) sentiment. The size of the squares shows the perceived importance of each phrase.

Expert copywriting for the web combines both human and machine reading – it’s very worthwhile getting these right.  Creative Agency Secrets are copywriting experts.

If you can write clearly about what you do, show off pictures and short articles and work with social media, email marketing and old-fashioned direct mail then your business can stand out.

Get local

Did you know that Google, as the premier search engine, is getting increasingly local? You do not have to compete with a huge national firm who does the same thing as you. It’s easy now just to set your search horizon to the local geography that you serve.

Let me prove it to you. Open up a search engine (Google, Yahoo Search or Bing) and search for “Your business name” and “Your suburb”. Do you show up? Probably yes.

Now change the search to “Your business type/profession” and “Your suburb”. Same answers? Or not?

Narrowing the search terms you show up for allows local businesses to shine as beacons to the local prospective customers they want to work with. And for New Zealand business owners, this is a godsend. Google’s Webmaster Tools are free supports that allow you to register your physical location with them so you can include a Google Map with a red pin at your location. Then customers can easily find your premises and load directions into their mobile phone maps for driving directions.

The hard part of web marketing

There was always going to be a “BUT” in this article…. well here it is.

You cannot get the search results you want with a static website that hasn’t been updated or changed for months.

This means that business owners need to learn how to rub and maintain their websites, just like driving a car – this means acquiring a knowledge of how to present your business to its best advantage, how to show off your skills, how to find the right audience and encourage them to come to your website – not just once but over and over.

In short, you need to learn how to Drive Your Website.

We are running training during May 2015 in 5 cities in NZ to teach you how to do this.  Blogging Concentrated NZ starts on May 1st in Auckland and ends in Christchurch on May 9th.

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