"Start communicating to replace the information flow. You could take some of the seminars that were going to be presented at the show, the educational tracks, get them videotaped and release them drop by drop throughout the course of the year, and have people who would have been buying booths sponsor them through your media."
That quote comes from an article last week by media consultants
John French and
Jim Elliott titled
A World Without Trade Shows. There have been a lot of suggestions the last couple weeks on how best to replace revenue from events in the upcoming months, and we will be focusing on many of those here.
Here are three ideas—two directly bring in revenue and one brings in leads that lead to revenue (pitching a Writers Guidebook and, commendably in 2018, a book on crisis management):
Recognition initiative. Putman Media puts on an annual
Influential Women in Manufacturing Program. The 2018 version won a 2019 SIPAward for Best Product Launch/Relaunch Success, and a quick look at their website shows that the program is still going strong. "Nominate a woman you feel is effecting change in manufacturing. Learn more and submit your 2020 nomination." Nominations are due by April 10.
There's also an IWIM blog and podcast series, showing Putman's commitment. The last podcast on Jan. 29 was titled
How We Can Get Past Proving and Perceptions. I also love that they provide a transcript for the podcast. Looks like a lot of the credit goes to
Erin Hallstrom, IWIM co-founder.
Said Putman Media CEO John Cappelletti: "I am proud that Putman could play a role in shining a light on the extraordinary work being done by so many women in the manufacturing field." In addition to the 2018 IWIM 50-page program profiling and featuring comments from each of the 22 honorees and an IWIM webinar featuring three honoree as panelists, the new website was launched. Along with that came new social media channels, an awards breakfast at their annual Smart Industry event, and—through a sponsorship signed six months in—a five-digit amount of unforecasted revenue for Putman Media.
A quiz - lead-gen heaven. Who doesn't want a little fun injected into their day now? On Access Intelligence's
PR News grammar quiz, a Scrabble-like image of "G R A M M A R" emerges with the headline, "How Good Is Your Grammar?" "Do you correct others on their grammar? Or do you get corrected? See how you stack up..." I'm in.
I click "LET'S GO" to reveal the first question. It's a multiple choice about how concerned with grammar I am. The fourth choice is, "I should probably repeat my 5th grade English class." Five more questions appear testing my farther/further and it's/its knowledge.
At the end, I give an email and a country, and up pops a tough-looking little boy with the message, "You passed by the skin of your teeth. There's always room for improvement, right? Check out the PR News Writer's Guidebook and you'll never miss a typo again! If you don't think you need any more writing tips...how are your crisis management skills?" Talk about prescience!
"Data shows that 39.4% of people who view this quiz are completing it, 49.7% of people who begin the quiz are completing it, and 99.2% of people completing the quiz are entering their email addresses," wrote Megan Sigg, marketing coordinator for PR News, in her 2019 SIPAward-winning entry for Best Lead Generation/Nurturing Campaign.
The campaign exceeded expectations bringing in more than 700 total leads (as of a few months ago); 523 unique leads were uploaded into the PR News database where 289 completely new names were added and 234 existing records were updated."
Compensation survey. Coleman Report's
Bob Coleman wrote me last month to tell about the annual
Lender Compensation Survey Report they do for their small business banking and loans industry. "Very simple stuff," he wrote. "We ask eight different job descriptions to self-report their income. Our promise is if you fill out the survey, you will get a FREE report for your classification. I slice and dice the outliers and confirm the results with trusted sources. [Then] we bundle all eight surveys for a $1,495 price point. This is becoming one of our best selling products."
Data is collected in two ways: First, they invite SBA lending professionals to participate in the survey. They may report their email address for a free copy of the survey results—so published results remain anonymous, but identification disclosure probably leads to more accurate information. Coleman Report then validates these results with direct interviews with a number of lenders and compensation experts to obtain as accurate picture as possible of salary ranges and compensation packages.
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Nevena Jovanovic.
Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 and SIIA in 2013 as editorial director…