The Value of Exposure in a Crowded Marketplace: Five Questions to Ask when Qualifying Your Leads
By: Alyson Salem
Let’s face it—when it comes to marketing your venue, there is competition and the marketplace can be crowded. If you implemented Unique Venue’s CEO, Chuck Salem’s top tips for marketing your event venue, by now you are ahead of the game and standing out amongst the competition. Thanks to increased exposure and marketing efforts, your venue is getting more leads and now more than ever you need to qualify them…but where to start? Below we list five questions to ask that may help you when qualifying your leads:
1. Is the lead a legitimate lead? Sometimes leads can be bogus, meaning it may be a competitor trying to shop you or even could be a company phishing you. In other words, they want you to do business with them rather than the contrary. Unfortunately, in today’s world of technology, this is a reality that many companies are facing and it helps to be prepared for those situations.
2. Can you accommodate the group or planner’s needs? Read through all the details of the lead and determine if you can in fact accommodate their needs such as group size, catering requests, booking times and schedules, and note if there are any restrictions and be sure you are able to cater to those restrictions. Additionally, we highly recommend studying the planner or group’s webpage or social media and search for similar past events. This requires some research on your part, but doing so will help you to determine if your venue can offer a parallel experience in size, scope, and hospitality.
3. Is there a soft ROI benefit? Most times venues are seeking the financial benefits when booking and contracting an event and tend to overlook the advantages of exposure to event attendees, which would be considered soft ROI. In other words, give up financial gains to receive future gains. Here is an example–if your venue is located on a college campus, it can be advantageous to host a low profit event if the attendees are in the 16-18 demographic. Why? Because they may attend the event on your campus and decide they want to attend college at your university in the future. This is considered a future gain. Another example of soft ROI could be if your venue is selected to host an event to attendees who happen to be potential future clients for you in attendance. Possibly, these attendees have never been to a meeting hosted at your venue. By delivering a unique experience, you gain the opportunity for your event attendees to book a future event at your facility and market your venue by direct experience and word of mouth.
4. How far along in the planning process are they? Are they just beginning? Are they ready to book now? Having knowledge of this information will determine the speed & the action you need to take as a sales person to contract their event promptly. Unique Venues requires that planners provide this information when submitting their leads through us because we know how valuable it is to our members when booking business.
5. Will they respond to me if I ask them a question? Sending the planner an immediate response to their lead such as “Thank you for your interest in our venue, we are putting together information for you now. Are there any other details that you would like to provide?” By asking a question, you will be able to gauge the planner and qualify the lead. Here is a tip–a qualified lead is going to respond back.
These five questions will help you qualify your leads and by doing so, your time is better spent and your bookings may increase. Never undervalue exposure in a crowded marketplace, exposure may just be the key to getting better leads.
Need help standing out in the crowd? We are unique and so are you, let Unique Venues marketing services set you apart. Click here for more information.
