Free-Agent, Lisa Block, Joins Velvet Chainsaw February 27, 2019 by Dave Lutz While many have been focused this winter on who is going to land free agents like Bryce Harper or Manny Machado, Lisa Block inked a deal to join the Velvet Chainsaw Consulting team! Lisa will join our team just in time for opening day – April 2, 2019 – as Executive Vice President, Conference Strategy … [Read more…] Filed Under: Ramblings Tagged With: , EVP conference strategy and design, Lisa Block, PCMA, rockstar, SHRM, VCC
How Much Do Sellers and Buyers Trust Our Tradeshow Environments? February 21, 2019 by Dave Lutz The most glaring reality I’ve pointed to previously in this space — that three out of four B2B buyers conduct the majority of their research before talking to a salesperson — greatly affects the sustainability of the tradeshow business model. That, and the others explored in the five realities of today’s B2B buyer post, and … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model, Sponsorship & Exhibits Tagged With: , buyers, exhibits, expo, face-to-face events, sellers, trade show, trust
The Right Rewarding Student Strategy For Your Conference January 11, 2019 by Dave Lutz Many associations struggle with the right strategy for involving students in their organization and events. Some attract students to join and participate in the organization’s programs and services while still in college. They offer significant membership and registration discounts as well as ample presentation opportunities. They usually have a “get them while they’re young” and … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model Tagged With: , conference student strategy, customer loyalty, early-career professionals, get them while they're young, job hopping, loyalty, measuring student conversion, membership student strategy, mid-career practitioner, put the kids in the show
Burn Conference Traditions Immune From Criticism October 17, 2018 by Dave Lutz People don’t trust institutions today says sociologist Dr. Josh Packard. We don’t think institutions have our best interests in mind he says. We believe they serve the interests of the professionals who created and run them, and they serve the interests of perpetuating their own existence. Your association, annual conference, and governance are all institutions. … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , authenticity, conference tradtions, servant leadership, transparency, trust in institutions
Your Conference Needs a Hub To Entice Customers and Prospects October 12, 2018 by Dave Lutz At a recent conference consultation with a client, a millennial made me think that I wasn’t keeping up with the times. We were discussing their marketing and communication strategies for their event. I voiced my strong opinion that conference organizers should embrace inbound marketing (pull) over traditional outbound marketing (push). I explained that a blog … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing, Experience Design Tagged With: , conference blog, conference marketing, conference narrative, home base, hub and spoke, hub and spoke marketing, inbound marketing, outbound marketing, outposts, pull strategy, push strategy
Your Conference Content Has Magnetic Pull July 23, 2018 by Dave Lutz Content marketing has grown by leaps and bounds during the past five years. Unfortunately, too few event organizers fully embrace the long-tail, pull benefits of content marketing. Likewise, many conference professionals have no idea what embracing the long-tail, pull benefits of content marketing even means. It’s a foreign concept to them. Most marketing and communications … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing Tagged With: , Attendance Acquisition, attendance marketing, conference best practices, content marketing, Education, Education & Adult Learning, marketing, meeting planning best practices, Session Marketing
The Market Shifts That Led to Commission Cuts May 21, 2018 by Dave Lutz Marriott, Hilton and IHG have announced reductions in group-booking commissions from 10 percent to 7 percent for their North American hotels, to take place over a period of time this year and next. Marriott’s has already begun for most intermediaries. A 30-percent cut in one’s business model is a tough pill to swallow for any … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , group-booking commissions, hotel commissions cuts, influencers, influencers with less influence, lead-to-close rate, market shifts, prepaid commissions, revenue sharing, RFPs, tarnished commission model, third party meeting planners, third-party sourcing, trusted-advisor status
Conferences Need More Sharing April 26, 2018 by Dave Lutz One of the strongest intangible attributes of a healthy conference is how much sharing takes place. Too often, competition and self-interest get in the way of sharing what’s most helpful. Professions that deliver conference sessions with a high level of sharing – not diluted or generalized from the stage – are often in fields linked … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education, Conference Networking Tagged With: , interactivity, networking, participatory learning, small-group conversations, speaker coaching
Shifting from Delivery to Discovery Conference Education March 22, 2018 by Dave Lutz So much of our commonplace practices and conventional wisdom about learning is wrong. Educators have been talking about Bloom’s Taxonomy, critical-thinking skills, executive functions of the brain and HOTS — higher-order thinking skills — for more than five decades. However, those foundational learning principles have not transferred to most adult education experiences. Conference organizers still … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education, Experience Design Tagged With: , 21st century conferences, Bloom's Taxonomy, cognitive learning, critical-thinking skills, discovery learning, executive brain function
B2B Buyers Have Changed, Expos Haven’t March 2, 2018 by Dave Lutz The way B2B professionals buy has dramatically changed, but our dependency on expo revenue hasn’t. There are two primary segments that leverage the traditional exhibit business model — conferences with an expo and expos with a conference. Based on our deep analysis of dozens of shows, the former are the event business models being disrupted … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model, Sponsorship & Exhibits Tagged With: , b2b buyers, bite-size learning, exhibit hall, exhibitors, expo hall, show floor theater, solution center, trade show
