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Promoting An Experiential Marketing Service Online

Marketing, social media, advertising

mwimmersive

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I run a company that creates immersive tech installations for events and showcases. Sometimes we get really exciting projects (working with brands like Adidas and Nike to showcase new footwear), but our new business has been ever declining recently. Over the past few months, we've been using LinkedIn to send many many connection requests to a target audience of event specialists. That's actually how we've been getting most new business, by trying to get interest out of, and send these LinkedIn connections back to our website. I don't know if anyone here is familiar with the law of shitty click-throughs, but LinkedIn as a 'new business' tool has been progressively getting worse for us. We've been doing some content marketing, producing short videos about the Augmented Reality tech (headset-based, mobile-based, and projection-based) that we work with, but we haven't seen much from that recently either. We're always doing referrals, creating relationships with the agencies and brands we've worked with to pursue new deals, but it's been slow as well. Obviously, something in our business model is off, it's not JUST a marketing problem, but there are other experiential marketing firms like ours that are small and picking up traction... If you run a service business or event-based business, what are some clever ways you've executed your marketing strategies?
 
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Dami-B

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I run a company that creates immersive tech installations for events and showcases. Sometimes we get really exciting projects (working with brands like Adidas and Nike to showcase new footwear), but our new business has been ever declining recently. Over the past few months, we've been using LinkedIn to send many many connection requests to a target audience of event specialists. That's actually how we've been getting most new business, by trying to get interest out of, and send these LinkedIn connections back to our website. I don't know if anyone here is familiar with the law of shitty click-throughs, but LinkedIn as a 'new business' tool has been progressively getting worse for us. We've been doing some content marketing, producing short videos about the Augmented Reality tech (headset-based, mobile-based, and projection-based) that we work with, but we haven't seen much from that recently either. We're always doing referrals, creating relationships with the agencies and brands we've worked with to pursue new deals, but it's been slow as well. Obviously, something in our business model is off, it's not JUST a marketing problem, but there are other experiential marketing firms like ours that are small and picking up traction... If you run a service business or event-based business, what are some clever ways you've executed your marketing strategies?
I'm hoping the more experienced guys would chime in, but my campaign for service biz as been a simple 3 stage process.

1. What are my relevant search terms for Google and targeting + interest data for Facebook

2. Building my landing page that converts and generates leads

3. Converting my leads to customers with phone calls and email follow up.

As long as the margin justifies the spend I'm always good.
 

Chris McCarron

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It's difficult to say one way or another without being able to check out your website.

Do you just send traffic from LinkedIn and stop at that?
 

lowtek

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For what you're trying to do, Google Ads are going to be a non starter (in the States). CPC is going to be astronomical, and you'll go broke just trying to optimize your landing page. LinkedIn is a reasonable place to be, it seems, but your approach is amateur. You don't need clever strategies. You need to master the fundamentals of sales and marketing.

Let's look at this from a high level. Assuming they go to your website and like what they see... what's the next step? An email, leading to a phone call? A phone call directly? Either way you're getting them on the phone, yes?

That raises the obvious question.

Why would you bother with the website? You've already got a nanosecond of attention on LinkedIn. Get them on the phone and sell them. Sending them to the website only creates friction for the sale. They have to decide to click off linkedin, decide to explore your website, decide that it looks trustworthy, decide they like what you are offering, decide they want to take the time to reach out to you, decide to go to the contact page and then decide to try to reach out to you. So many decisions and each one has an overwhelming probability of losing the lead.

How are you connecting to them in the first place? The message you send sets the tone for the relationship. If first impressions matter in the real world, why wouldn't they matter online as well?

The first point of contact is the invitation to connect. If you can't be bothered to write something personalized, what does this say about you? Obviously you're not too busy to be sending personalized invites, otherwise you wouldn't be on Linkedin. The only logical conclusion is that you don't care about the person on the other end. They are just the means to your ends.

The invite must be specific to them, even if it's just mentioning their business. I know characters are limited, but you must make every single one count. They may not even read it, but if they do, it damn well better hit home.

The next step is the follow up message. This must be short and to the point; it must be personal to them. Meaning some portion of it needs to be about them and their business specifically. Ask a question.

How to do that? Find press releases by them, read one of their articles, find them on twitter, find an interview they did on a podcast - anything they've put out there. Yes this means you must consume some quantity of their content, but again, you're not that busy.

It must convey that you've read about them and their business, and see how your service can fit in to help them solve one of their core business problems. This part should be as personalized as possible. Describe your experiential component will enhance whatever it is they are selling.

Do this and the top of your funnel will shrink, while simultaneously growing the bottom.

If you think I'm full of shit, then ask yourself why you can sell referrals but not cold traffic.
 
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Andy Black

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What @lowtek said.

Engage people, one at a time.

Go where they are. (Not necessarily physically ... if they’re on LinkedIn then engage with them there.)

Spend time on them.


It seems you’re forgetting each person you send a connection request to is a person?

That’s the biggest mistake I see with marketing strategies that involve getting “traffic”, “clicks”, and “signups”.


This is how I’ve grown my business to date:
 

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