Welcome to the George Washington Event Management Certificate Blog

Word of mouth will always be your greatest marketing tool. The more events you manage, and manage successfully, the more new clients you will line up. Happy customers tell people why they are happy.

Ideally 30-50% of your clients should repeat, but with some events that is not always possible. But growing your business just on new customers is costly and most likely not sustainable. So you want to make sure you are focusing some of your marketing resources on getting existing clients to repeat.

But you need to be promoting your event management business if you want to cultivate new clients. In the second half of the second decade of the 21st century, the best marketing model is an integrated model. Your promotion efforts must be diversified and targeted. General marketing does not work, while targeted marketing utilizing content offers has a much higher success rate.

Your promotion mix would include direct mail, eMarketing, blog posts, inbound marketing, telemarketing, and much more. Most important is to have a schedule designating the method, the market, and the timeline. Very often an integrated marketing plan includes multiple campaigns to generate leads and then drip campaigns to nurture leads.

You need to be budgeting monies for marketing, normally 5-10% of your budget, and you must stay on track with your plan.

Before you get started planning a business event, you need to be crystal clear about the purpose of the event. Every decision you make will need to support the purpose or goal of your event. Are you using the event to promote a service or product? Are you holding the event to generate leads? Is the event being run to support existing customers? If you are clear about the purpose of the event, then you can do a better job of managing the event and ensuring it does not turn into more than you expected. All too often businesses try to accomplish too many goals with one event and in the end the event is not the success it could have been.

Start your George Washington Event Management Certificate this Summer at our intensive Core Skills Institute. Click Here to learn more. 

What is the appropriate follow up after an interview? Hopefully you asked at the interview what the anticipated timeline and process will be for making a final decision. This will give you some idea of what you can expect.

Beyond that, after two weeks is a good time to email and possibly call to check on the status of the decision making process. They may have run into unexpected delays that you would want to know about. Remember, if they are excited to hire you, they will contact you as soon as possible to make sure no one else hires you!

Tourism Tidbits is distributed by Tourism and More.  It is an easy read and comes monthly via email.  The April 2015 newsletter gave an interesting update on tourism security challenges and current vulnerabilities.

The founder and president of Tourism and More, Dr. Peter Tarlow is a world-renowned speaker and expert specializing in such areas as: the impact of crime and terrorism on the tourism industry, event and tourism risk management, and economic development. Check it out - http://www.tourismandmore.com

If you are applying for a job how do you decide who is the best recommender?

Consider that your potential employer is seeking evidence that you are the right fit for the job therefore the IDEAL reference is your supervisor who will describe your ability and record for excellent performance in a position similar to the one you are applying for.

The next best person is someone who can describe your skills and abilities that are similar to those required for the position, even if the work you did is in a different field.

An example might be your ability to organize and manage details that you demonstrated in an administrative position when you are applying for an event planner position.

To insure the best recommendations make sure to:

• Contact your reference and confirm their willingness to provide a positive reference 
• Provide the job description and a short statement about why this job is exciting for you and the key skills you want to emphasize
• Make sure to remind your reference who you are in case it is a past job

How do you apply for a new job and not let your current employer know? Who can be a reference?

Keep following the blog to find out! 

“Its not what you know, its WHO you know.” Networking is the single most effective means for landing a job. Over 65% of the jobs are landed through friends, family and the network of people in your field. Networking is a natural human activity – we do it everyday when we share tips for where to get a great deal, what is the best restaurant or what is the best school to send our children. Then why do we shy away from networking for our own professional next steps?

Here are some essentials:

• Set up your Linkedin profile and keep it current. Each week, use Linkedin to expand connections in your field by reaching out and joining groups – such as GW INSITUTE CORE SKILLS, MPI and other professional associations.

• Request informational interviews from people holding a job you aspire to in a few years. Ask them how they got there and what you need to do to develop skills to succeed

• Attend professional association events and bring your business card

• Volunteer at local events for organizations you care about 

PREPARE
1. Make a list of your top 3 skills

2. Write down specific experiences and activities or accomplishments that demonstrate these skills "in action". Be prepared to tell this story in a few minutes in response to questions about your experiences. This not only highlights your skills but provides a real context where you used them successfully.

3. What will you say when they ask about a difficult situation or any weak areas you have? The best approach is to describe the answer and then tell how you addressed the issue or problem to resolve it successfully or continue developing your skills in key areas.

3. Prepare for when they ask "Do you have any questions for us? " This is your opportunity to ask questions that reveal your goals and that you have researched a bit. This is NOT a time to ask how much vacation do I get. It is a time for asking about how they support on-going professional development, how would they describe the culture of the organization, where do they see the trends impacting their organizational priorities? In other words, reveal your own professionalism. You can also ask such things as what are the biggest challenges for this position?

Dress professionally but BE COMFORTABLE

Remember, you are interviewing them as well - is this a good fit for you?

Salary and benefits are discussed with an offer - watch for my next tips on Negotiation!

TIP ONE: Make sure you are highlighting your relevant experiences and transferable skills by putting these to the top of the page. You can create headings that illustrate these and help you cluster similar types together. For example "Event Coordination Experience" can include both volunteer and professional activities.

TIP TWO: Make sure to use action verbs when describing what you did in your position. DO NOT say "duties included" instead use action verbs such as: coordinated, collaborated, developed, responsible for, trained, created, etc. every work should communicate something about your skills

TIP THREE: Design the document so it is easily readable. Avoid jamming too much onto the page and use bold and italics to highlight your job titles so that a 30 second scan can easily see where you have been and what level of positions you have held.

Today's Event Planning Professional needs to select key organizations to tap for trends and emerging technologies and practices that can help us do our job better. Selecting which organizations and resources are the best fit for your focus is up to you. And whether you want to access subsciptions, meetings, social media is also a personal choice.

Here are some resources to consider - add some of your suggestions below!

ASSOCIATIONS

check the Convention Industry Council provides research, guidance on best practices and loads of resources to connect with associations

http://www.conventionindustry.org/index.aspx

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Meetings & Conventions is a source for the meeting, trade show and convention planning professional, providing practical how-to features and destination guides; all aimed at helping you plan successful events.

M&C Hosted-Buyer Events; and your subscriptions will offer you preferred invitations to the industry’s most desired events.

In 2015, look for these special features and more:

    * January - Working With Third Parties

    * February - Medical/ Pharmaceutical Meetings

    * March - Working with Resorts

    * April - Best Places to Work in the Meetings Industry

    * June - Second-Tier Cities

    * July - Top 25 Women in the Meetings Industry

    * September - Affordable Meetings

    * October - Financial/Insurance Meetings

http://mcmagsubscriptions.com/portal/deployforward/Forward.jsp?YK3031pDMFzpHno97onoQ8AIFcDiGUUkA

What are your top suggestions?

Most event planners have a good handle on time - in fact it is very satisfying to lay out the timeline and use the classic working backwards approach to your event. Once the date is set, many actions can be plugged into your timeline. But getting the date set can be more challenging than you anticipated. Some of the issues that can impact your schedule start with finding a date that fits well with your audience and also venue availability. It is important to consider the competing activities for your audience before settling on your date. 

• is it the right season?
• are there competing professional events during the same time?
• is travel more expensive during this time?
• are there liesure activities such as school breaks, holidays etc. that might interfere with attendance?
• is there a traditional date/season that this event has run?
• are there other unique competing factors for your group?

Finding a venue for the date can also be tricky so you want to make sure you have as much flexibilitynwith the date as possible if you are targeting a particular location or venue. Keep in mind, you may get a better rate for off season or low demand dates. I will talk about the RFP process in another future post.

Once the date and site are set then you can put your activities in motion - from marketing campaign to registration and site logistics, there are many moving parts to track and make sure are on schedule. What are some of the possible delays that you can anticipate to stay on your timeline, and what should you do about it?

• marketing delays - design approval process slowed, printing problems, mailing list errors, etc. 
• budget cuts - loss of funds for resources
• staffing changes - retirement, termination, illness
• venue issues - construction, weather, strikes

Those are just a few broad areas to be aware of and be prepared by adding as much buffer time in your schedule as possible AND being ready with a PLAN B. The best event planners work with trusted partners and vendors who work with you on a regular basis and can help when the going gets tough with resources and flexibility.

TIP of the WEEK: anticipate the unpredictable and be ready with a creative solution

What are some o YOUR examples?

How can you anticipate the important trends that will impact your events over the next year? What are the kinds of trends that would have an effect on your success?

Keeping an eye on general economic trends, locally, regionally and nationally certainly is a wise move. You can track economic forcasts through these resources. The census is a great place to start - growth in the occupation, means increasing demand and resources.

Job Outlook

In 2012, there were 94,299 meeting, convention and event planners employed across the country, reported the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). At that time, the BLS predicted that employment opportunities for these professionals would grow by 33% from 2012-2022, which is an increase that's much faster than the average. This will result in 31,300 new positions being created over the decade.

Event Types

What are the trends in the types of events people want? Parties, corporate meetings, festicvals, conventions and conferences? What growth are YOU seeing in your area?