Eventopedia combines the best of technological automation with the best of human skill and expertise. Lots of venue platforms offer listings within their search functions and expect this to drive high quality enquiries. From our 20 plus years of venue management and marketing this does not happen on most platforms. In fact, this is one of the reasons we set up Eventopedia as I was not that happy paying for some venue listing sites when at The Brewery. Eventopedia does it differently by using inbound marketing that uses technology to help drive engagement but also to measure the success of that activity. This in turn helps us improve the inbound service to deliver higher and higher returns on investment.
There are different business models in the market with some platforms charging a commission on bookings, some charging a subscription fee and others operating an advertising model. Eventopedia operates a subscription model and the reasons around that is covered in another blog and can be read using the link here.
Our service uses our knowledge and expertise of the industry to promote the client venues across multiple platforms and not just Eventopedia. We have unique partnerships and communities that allow us to cost effectively distribute our client stories around the globe. We use technology to help drive this process but also to measure the engagement of the lead generation activity. As with all marketing, you need to test and measure to understand what is working and what is not. There is not a magic button that can be pressed to drive the types of enquiries that our client venues are looking for. One size does not fit all so our clients have a human account manager with expertise of the meeting and events industry.
For our most popular package, the Jeroboam, we also use targeted pay per click or re-marketing techniques across different platforms to drive high conversion on the industry measure Click Through Rate. The cost of these advertising campaigns is included in the fee that you pay through the subscription service. We do operate additional services that allow our clients to pay extra to run more campaigns across these channels. As these are cost per click business models they only pay when someone is interested in the client property. Our expertise in this space combined with our knowledge of the industry combines to produce above average results for our clients. Of course, this is combined with our own curated community of event planners that is currently over 200,000 across all channels.
Eventopedia is therefore offing the perfect mixture of technical automation and human experience and account management. We feel this is the best way to help the growing number of venues that don’t have a dedicated internal sales and marketing resource for MICE (Meetings, Incentive, Conference & Events). Hotels are great event venues as they often are far more affordable than people think because much of their overhead is covered by the bedroom bookings. However, many hotels, especially at Group level rely on the web presence, sales teams and Group marketing to drive their corporate and private MICE bookings. Most 3rd party agencies are too expensive for a hotel or venue to contract so our dedicated MICE packages are a cost-effective way to promote the event spaces.
Eventopedia’s products including the unique Video Site Inspection is an optional upgrade that can be used within the inbound marketing package as video is now a widely accepted media across most marketing platforms. You Tube now offers its own video editing feature that quickly creates video for advertising that really helps to engage and convert users into enquiries and direct bookings.
In conclusion, the inbound marketing and lead generation packages that we offer to hotels and venues are optimised for the meetings and event industry using our extensive experience and leading technology platform. This does come at a cost above the usual listing sites but our services are generating huge value for our clients with a much greater ROI than listing sites. Usually between 20-60 times.
If you would like to know more about marketing your event venue to the global event planner community please do get in touch with one of the team venues@eventopedia.com
