Month: March 2020

Venues may be temporarily closed, but the majority of the industry hasn’t stopped working.

Data from venues and buyers is signalling that despite the sudden slowdown, coupled with postponements and cancellations, they are still receiving enquiries for later in the year and even receiving bookings.

But while the industry carries on, we’re all still confined to our homes other than for food, medicine or exercise. This puts site visits out of the question, but they are an important step in the venue buying process and will play a part in making sure the industry returns to its full glory. After all, would you risk choosing an event space you hadn’t seen first?

Aiming to find a solution for buyers, the event, leisure and hospitality marketing agency Patch started talking to its network of venue clients and buyers to find out what they were looking for. Jackson Clark, Managing Director of Patch said: “What I’m hearing from buyers and venues is that without events taking place, they have more time than ever for training and research. The industry’s sentiment over the last few weeks has been very much about sticking together and helping each other during these tough times. There’s no cost for venues or buyers to attend Virtually London Live as it’s designed in the spirit of the industry to provide a lifeline for both venues and agents.”

Hosted on Zoom, the Virtual Fam Trip of London (named “Virtually Live London”) will give those venue buyers working from home the chance to see several London venues, discover the surrounding neighbourhoods and get familiar with their transport links.

Patch will take the crowd of buyers on the virtual tube, down virtual streets, until they arrive at a venue’s virtual door. Then it’s over to the venue to present, using their own 3D tours to walk participants through their venue room by room.

So far there are 15 venues confirmed, including; Congress Centre, Central Hall Westminster, the Barbican, the HAC, 10 – 11 Carlton House Terrace, The RSA, Old Royal Naval College and Prince Philip House. Confirmed buyers include Hire Space, Canvas Events and Trinity Event Solutions who in addition to their own team will be inviting their agent partners who use their Edge platform.

Co-founder of Hire Space Edward Poland said “We’re still placing bookings for later in the year through Hire Space Professional so the need for our Venue Experts to keep learning about new venues hasn’t gone away. We’re really excited to be a part of this and hope it’s something that will bring the whole industry together.”

CEO of Trinity Event Holdings Ltd, Jacqui Kavanagh said “It’s a great initiative and will enable our Agents to continue expanding their venue knowledge at a time when they otherwise couldn’t. Every Trinity agent needs to visit 100 venues per year so this will contribute to that continuous knowledge building that is essential to us as an agency”. 

Virtually Live London takes place at 11:00 on both Tuesday 21^st and Wednesday 22^nd April 2020 and will last for approximately one hour and a half. If you’d like to register as a buyer or venue get in touch with Patch on virtuallylivelondon@patchmedia.co.uk

In the midst of the Coronavirus outbreak which is affecting us all, it is becoming apparent that this is not only a huge challenge on us professionally but personally as well. The very nature of our industry means that we are social creatures used to speaking to numerous people, attending events and being part of a busy office environment with our lively team across the two companies.

Adjusting to working from home hasn’t been easy but team updates, daily video conferencing and supporting each other are helping us through this process. 

We, as a company are continuing to develop and grow our business and lay the foundations to ensure we emerge together, stronger than ever. Although we are facing challenging short term issues we are confident that being technologically advanced and better connected we can pull together as a team to continue ‘business as normal’. 

Alongside developing our business, we are taking the time to speak to each and every one of our customers to see how we can support them and work together as one industry. Our industry has a vast supply chain involved and it is important we reach out and support each link to the chain where possible. 

Let us all stand together as an industry and encourage each other to move forward through this challenging time. 

Marketing tactics during Coronavirus needs to be reactive to changing situations and creative using existing resources rather than external paid sources. With Coronavirus causing such uncertainty our businesses are all facing challenging times as the impact is starting to bite. Friday’s Government announcement regarding the support they will be providing to businesses will help ease the situation.  As the financial aid packages unfold over the course of the next few weeks now is the time to start planning your marketing strategy for the long haul.

It is time to work smarter, be creative with our resources and get ready to tackle the challenges ahead.

Five steps every business MUST take to prepare marketing activity during the Coronavirus downturn:

1. Retain your existing customer base
2. Be visible in front of your target audiences
3. Drive conversions (business is still being placed for the future, even in this challenging time)
4. Measure results
5. Learn and test

Over the coming days, we will be going through each step and providing you with marketing advice to help shape your strategy to get your business ready for the future, so you are at the forefront of your competitive marketplace. These marketing steps do not have to eat up what will be a very reduced marketing budget, instead, it utilises free tools, tactics you will already have in place and existing staff to carry out the activities.

Retain your existing customer base

It is cheaper to keep an existing customer who values and engages with your products than to attract new customers – the relationship is already there; they know your business and they know your product, so customer engagement and loyalty is higher with existing customers. Therefore, these are your most valuable customers, let’s not lose sight of them and turn to panic marketing to try and attract new business just yet.

Out of sight means out of mind for many – over the coming weeks, your competitors will be looking at you and their other competitors and waging their own marketing war. If you are not prepared, they may be able to entice your existing customer base away.

The easiest marketing function to help retain existing customers is marketing automation. Personalised, contextualised targeted messages sent to existing customers who want to hear your news and future developments. Email campaigns, if used correctly, are a great marketing resource and many email platforms allow you to send a certain amount of emails per month free of charge.

We are not talking broad brush sales messages or generic mass campaigns; we are talking personal. Your customers will not be thinking about buying in this present period of uncertainty, but they will value your loyalty and your support. We are all in this together so engage with your customers and let them know you are thinking of them. Building brand loyalty and engagement will almost certainly lead to a higher retention level than a mass sales campaign in the current climate.

It is worth checking with email automation companies to see if they can offer discounted services in this time. Hubspot have announced that for the next 90 days they are suspending marketing email limits to help businesses stay in touch with their customers.

Content

This is essential right now. Your existing customers are likely to be browsing your website anyway so ensure they have a valuable reason to visit by providing relevant content. Share updates, industry news and also what developments your business is making that will make you better than your competitors. If you can share offers or new products and services then go for it. Sales focused content on a website will be better received than in an email campaign as it will appear on the website in your customers journey – not pushed upon them.

Social Media

No doubt you have all seen the rise in social media engagement recently. With people working from home, self-isolating and social distancing social media platforms have become a valuable resource for conducting business and staying in touch. Engage in conversations with your existing customers on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook – these are where your customers will be reviewing your products, looking at what you are doing right now and speaking to like-minded contacts.

If you can become a voice of reason and support to your existing base it will again build your brand loyalty. Social media doesn’t have to be about paid advertising to reach the masses, utilising hashtags and creating valuable and thought-provoking content will reach your audience if you plan correctly. Engagement is critical to building awareness and will help to contribute to the reach of your content allowing you to break into new audiences.

Marketing during the Coronavirus phase is going to be tough but we are building the foundations for a solid future. We will be exploring more ideas over the coming weeks to help your marketing tactics during the Coronavirus. If you would like to sign up to our newsletter to get up-to-date industry news and advice please contact us.

The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan is now open for applications from small and medium sized businesses with a turnover of up to £45m. Eligible businesses will be able to access government-backed finance of up to £5m and interest payments on these loans will be covered by the government for an initial period of up to 1 year.

The scheme is available through a large list of lenders which can be found on the British Business Bank website. For larger firms, the Bank of England has a new lending facility called The Covid Corporate Financing Facility that is also open for applications from today.

Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England Governor comments, “On Monday [23 March] a new lending scheme, the Covid Corporate Financing Facility, will open to help businesses manage through this period of uncertainty. Combined with steps taken by the Government, this will help companies through this difficult time and support the needs of the people of this country.” 

Information on both the Covid Corporate Financing Facility and the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan is available on the British Business Bank website.

Jacqui Kavanagh, CEO of Trinity EDGE Holdings Ltd comments, “After such an uncertain week it is a great relief to see that the Government are listening to us and putting procedures in place for businesses to access vital funds to help ease the pressure during these challenging times. We can only hope that the financial support continues to allow us to concentrate on getting our businesses ready for the future to bounce back from the Coronavirus impact. ” 

We are all watching the recovery of the Chinese, and we should all be very aware that our markets will be a target for all of these economies as they emerge post virus. Let our business invest in the future by keeping our workforces. We need our staff to get ready for the future to make our economy great again post virus and ensure businesses are ready to fight off fierce competition. Both demand and supply will be high, which will result in a fiercely competitive world – if our industry loses our workforce, we will not be in a position to fight for our market share and contribute to the UK economy.