Tag: Events
We’ve just had an incredibly busy two weeks here at SMEketing. One of our clients required us to organise their AGM (Annual General Meeting). They’re only a small business – with 30 or so employees, and needed a team building activity in the afternoon that wouldn’t cost the world.
They tasked us here at SMEketing to come up with some creative, fun ideas. And that’s exactly what we did! The final choice was an orienteering event at a local country park. The company was split into four teams, and were sent off in different routes. Once they arrived at their target, they called base camp (a SMEketer) for a general knowledge question, and another question of which the answer was the number of the post they needed to head to next. Ten posts later (and four miles!) there was a final race back to base camp. Winners were awarded prizes, and there was a trophy for the best dressed (I forgot to mention that they were all dressed as woodland animals!).
It was a great day, and although the teams were all very competitive, everyone had fun! And luckily the sunshine held out for us too.
So here are our tips on organising a small business event on a tight budget:
- Ensure you manage your time effectively
- Make a thorough plan, and constantly update and review it
- Shop around for the best value – you can often find items much cheaper online, and even online the price can vary massively!
- Make sure you maintain great communication between all those involved
- Keep an eye on the budget at all times
- Find cheap ways of catering for your delegates/staff. We negotiated with a local pizza place to provide pizza’s for all, and supplemented this with salad and side dishes bought that morning from a supermarket
- Keep any themes simple. We had a woodland animal theme – supported with basic fancy dress props for staff
- Create a list of any lessons learnt that can be used for next time
- On the day, make sure everyone knows exactly what they are doing and where they need to be
Planning events can be stressful and very time consuming. But ensuring that you plan effectively and monitor your budget, you can still hold fantastic events on a shoestring budget.
For more information on this event, or any other event that you’d like SMEketing to manage, please read our Event Management page or just send us a quick email: info@SMEketing.com.
September 7, 2009
This week’s blog topic is all about O2 and the new iPhone 3G S (current model is iPhone 3G, new model 3G S).
Apple unveiled the new iPhone 3G S at yesterday’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. Rumors of a new iPhone have been whirling around for months and months, so this came as no surprise. As detailed on the Apple website, the new features of the handset are:
- 2x Faster: The fastest iPhone ever. Load web pages, launch apps and more – faster
- Built in video camera: Shoot video, then edit it right on your phone
- Voice control: Use your voice to place a call or play music
- Compass: Let iPhone 3G S point you in the right direction
- Spotlight Search: Search across your iPhone from one place
- Messages: Send text, photos, videos and more
For those of us in the UK, the Carphone Warehouse and O2 will be supplying the phone to consumers from the 19th June 2009. However – anyone who already has an iPhone 3G (like myself) will face a huge charge if we want to upgrade.
There is limited information on the new iPhone 3G S on O2’s homepage; all current communication on the deployment of the new iPhone 3G S has come from their official O2 Twitter feed. From this, they announced that existing customers will have to buy themselves out of their existing contract, then purchase the new iPhone 3G S on a new contract. This is unlike the time of the previous iPhone 3G launch, where in order to make up for the disappointing performance of the first-generation iPhone, O2 allowed customers to break from their existing contract and upgrade for free.
For anyone who has a current iPhone 3G, the minimum their contract can have left is 6 months (for those who bought the iPhone 3G on the day of release, anyone else will have even longer). On a mid-sized contract of £35 a month, this equates to more than a £200 charge. Now many of you may think that this is pretty fair – why should people on an iPhone 3G contract get out of it, just because a new phone has been launched. And in a way you’re right – if I had a Nokia and Nokia released a new phone (which they do often), I would be laughed out of O2 if I demanded to be released from my contract just because I wanted the new version of my existing Nokia phone.
So why are O2 not repeating this offer of getting out of your contract for free – it’s because they know that they’ve got money coming in regardless. By forcing people with the current iPhone 3G to sit out their existing contract, they get a steady £35 (or whatever) a month from them. They can they can then provide new customers with the new iPhone 3G S, so their new stock of iPhone 3G S go on new customers, rather than existing ones. The iPhone is exclusive to O2 so we don’t have a choice. O2 know that even if they make current customers really, really angry – it’s tough. We can’t exactly take our business elsewhere.
But the problem here is that the majority of iPhone users are (or were) fiercely loyal to the iPhone – these are the people you saw on the news queuing up overnight to make sure they got their mitts on a new iPhone 3G on the day of release. And why did they do that?? Because O2 had allowed them to get out of their existing contract with the first-generation iPhone and just pay the money for the new phone alone. These people made the iPhone 3G (and in turn O2) a huge success. These are the people who blog about it, tweet about it and convince their friends that they can’t possibly live without one! But do you think these same people will be queuing round the block in the rain if they have to pay £200+ to get out of their contract, plus the £274.23 to buy the new phone?? We’re in a recession, and even the most avid of iPhone fans are unlikely to be willing to drop that amount of cash just for the prestige of having the latest iPhone (the new features really aren’t worth that much money, and anyone on with an iPhone 3G can get a software upgrade free anyway). And anyone who doesn’t already have an iPhone is unlikely to be mad enough about them to queue like that.
Another problem for O2 is that as well as the rumours of a new iPhone launch, there have also been rumours that other networks will soon be allowed to sell the iPhone. If this happens, O2 will soon find that all these unhappy iPhone 3G customer may well up sticks and leave to a provider that will be more competitive and who treat their customer with a bit more love and care. So by angering their existing iPhone 3G customers, O2 are taking a big risk.
So, watch the news on 19th June – will people be queuing outside (hopefully not in the rain – come on British summer!!) all night long to get their hands on the latest release? I doubt it – and if they are they’re probably actors/O2 employees etc, who’ve been paid to do it! I can just see the new launch being a flop – because O2 are alienating the people they need to make it a success.
The moral of this story? Just because you may have your customers held over a barrel, it doesn’t excuse you treating them badly. This is a lesson that can be applied to all businesses – large and small. If you’re a small business providing a service that no-one else does, or if you’ve got customers locked into a contract – it shouldn’t affect the way you treat them. Never assume that you can ignore them or give them a second rate service just because they have no choice. Customers are king as far as small businesses are concerned and you should treat every single one like gold-dust!
June 9, 2009
Heard of a little thing called Twitter? I hope so! At SMEketing in Hampshire, not a day goes past where we don’t read some kind of article on it. They’re not always positive articles – like most success stories, there are people who love it, and people who loathe it. But at the end of the day you can no longer ignore it. Twitter is here to stay, and it can help your small business.
How? Well, many of the articles I read surround success stories of Twitter – how it has directly helped businesses gain more customers. And you know what? They’re always small businesses – these are the people who are using Twitter to maximise their product/brand awareness and as a result are generating new businesses and boosting the spend of existing customers.
Here’s a couple of Twitter success stories:
Hubspot, a fantastic source for online marketing, recently wrote about the Kogi Korean BBQ taco truck in LA. They’ve been using social media, and in particular Twitter, with astonishing affect. They identified that their young, techno-savvy customers were using Twitter, so they got involved too. They now have a community of over 14,000 people. They used Twitter to broadcast the locations of their trucks, solicited new names for their trucks and are also designing new company t-shirts via their blog and Twitter. As a result, they now have constant queues of people, lining up to get their hands on one of their tacos. Considering the current state of the economy, that’s a pretty nice position to be in!
Another, well documented Twitter success story is that of CoffeeGroundz, a coffee shop that has credited Twitter with almost doubling their clientele! CoffeeGroundz owner, J.R.Cohen registered with Twitter and started following members of his local Twitterati (definition: the tweet elite, whose feeds attract thousands of followers and whose 140-character spews capture the attention of the rapt who doggedly monitor them) – he soon build up over 1000 followers. One day one of his followers called Sean, sent a direct tweet to Cohen, saying that “I want to pre order a bkfast wrap so I can zip thru drive thru to get back for gas man. C’est possible?”. Cohen replied straight away saying ‘Wi. What do you want on it?”. Ten minutes later Sean had been through the drive-thru and had picked up his breakfast wrap. This simple exchange generated a lot of buzz on Twitter, and was hailed as the first time a to-go order had ever been placed via the medium. Grasping the opportunity with both hands Cohen started taking to-go orders via direct messages from any of his Twitter followers.
CoffeeGroundz has also expanded on their Twitter success by hosting a Tweet-Up – an event where local Twitterers meet up to chat, network and generally get to know people better. Not only did this generate great PR for CoffeeGroundz, but they also kept the 100+ Twitterers well fed and watered – lining their pockets even further!
There are many examples of how small businesses are using Twitter for their advantage. It can be as simple as confirming an appointment, offering some advice, or just commenting on other people’s conversations. The point is that you can’t gain from the benefits if you’re not there. Twitter is perfect for small businesses – it doesn’t cost a penny, and it allows you to reinforce one of your key USPs – your individual character and personal touch to business.
What else can you use Twitter for?
- Understand your customers - by using Twitter polls, you can gain insight on your followers that can be fed back into business
- Form valuable business relationships - it’s not just your customers who are using Twitter. It’s likely that journalists and body representatives are using it too, so use if to build relationships with these key people
- Events and reporting - if you are hosting an event, create buzz about it by broadcasting details via Twitter
- Offer exclusive offers and promotions - offer discounts to Twitterers only
- Reputation management - use Twitter to make followers aware of your service levels, answer customer questions and engage i conversations about your offerings
If you’re still not sure if Twitter is right for your small business, come and talk to us at SMEketing. Based in Southampton, Hampshire, we can help you plan your Social Media Marketing campaigns to ensure you receive best possible results from your investment. Get in touch, even if it’s just for a quick bit of advice! Of course, you can always reach a SMEketer on Twitter – follow us at http://twitter.com/SMEketing
If you’re already using Twitter to great success then let us know. It’s always good to hear from small businesses that are doing well – especially in the current economic climate. Leave a comment at the bottom of the post…
For information and advice on setting up a Twitter account – stay tuned. This will be the subject of the next SMEketing blog post.
April 14, 2009
