Rooted In Revenue

There are more than 5 ways to make money on your event. We’ve already covered the Top 5. Below we’ve listed the additional sources
Ticket Sales and Add-ons
Virtual Events
Paid Speakers
Coaching Programs
Bonus Events
Live Streaming
Post Event Options
Make sure you download the full Event Revenue cheat sheet to learn more about each revenue stream and begin creating a strategy to maximize your event revenue.  https://eventsbylany.com/rootedtips

How do you know if your marketing dollars are leading to revenue unless you can track it? Even small businesses that have one or two events a year need to be tracking how their efforts pay off. Sometimes we pay for ads in directories, sponsor events, sponsor a local team of kids, put an ad in the church bulletin, boost our listings in the Chamber of Commerce or other business organization listing. Don’t you want to know if it worked? Don’t you want to know if people not only saw the ad but clicked on it? Sometimes these sites and situations have strict guidelines as to what the links can go to. 
Sometimes you need to be able to SAY the link out loud from a stage, podium, on a podcast, over lunch - don’t make it difficult. If you know you’ll be SAYING your domain regularly or one to promote your event, make sure you get a domain that is easy to spell, remember and SAY.
How many of you have ever heard on a podcast, video or show, “How can listeners get in touch with you?” and the guest stumbles out a clumsy answer, “Go to our home page: www.mycomplexdomainspelledweirdly.com and then click in the left on the button that says, “special event”.
Here’s all that’s wrong with that:
www - your domain needs to resolve with and without www.
Your domain needs to automatically resolve to the SSL version of your site - you’ll need to buy an SSL certificate and set it up properly so that no matter what page people go to without https:// it will flip to https://
Your domain needs to be LOGICAL and EASY to say and spell. None of this Eleet E - l - e - e - t Realty type of stuff. If the real way to spell a word is gone, think of a new domain. We can’t all have .com.
Your call to action link cannot require you to then explain where they can FIND the information to click again. That final destination page needs to be the domain.
Let’s talk about resolving #4.
If you have a landing page in the middle of your website for this event or promotion, buy ANOTHER domain for THAT thing and have it redirect to THAT landing page. You will then be able to easily market and track that domain and page. If your event is Health Jamboree 2018 and you are in Portland, and your website is: HealthyChoicesWeMake.com - you want to consider these options:
Create a subdirectory link: healthychoiceswemake.com/jamboree18, or just jamboree to always use the same URL year after year, but update the content.
Create a SUBDOMAIN: jamboree18.healthychoiceswemake.com
OR an entirely clean URL: HealthJamboreePDX2018 .com  that would redirect to either a landing page in your main site, or be a specific site JUST for this event with cross linking from your main site. So many options.
Your plan all depends on your vision for the event, Is it a one time, or the first of many recurring each year or in different regions. You’ll want to plan for this type of repetition or growth when you secure your unique domain so you can follow the pattern.  Keep in mind regional uses of abbreviations. Up in Portland Oregon, PDX is a common way to shorten Portland and surrounding areas. It’s the airport call letters. That won’t work well in Los Angeles - LAX because that’s also an abbreviation for the sport, Lacrosse. A lacrosse jamboree is way different than the topics in our health jamboree, but the search results may confuse and irritate those that click if it’s not completely clear.
Is this for a BOOK? A book always needs its own website with a way to purchase EVERY format: print, ebook, kindle, itunes, etc. AND you need a form that will collect information and add them to a drip campaign regarding the book, the tour schedule, appearances, tips from the book and more. BUILD and sustain buzz.
Let’s briefly talk about squeeze pages. It’s a newish, more recent term that merely describes a VERY simple, uncluttered page to drive people to ONE specific call to action:
Register, subscribe, buy, answer a quiz, watch a video, etc. Some website themes have built in squeeze page templates. Many CRM services offer squeeze pages with unique URLs for sharing and tracking.
These same rules applies to hashtags for your initiatives, products and events. It’s OK to ride the hashtag others have used for related topics, but for your unique application and tracking purposes, be very careful and make sure it’s not already in use by a competitor, something unsavory altogether or something that is viewed with disdain by all or offends your target audience. Acronyms can be a messy place to tread.
A good tool is Keyhole: http://keyhole.co/ You can utilize their free trial to make sure your hashtag is safe to use.
Hashtracking (https://www.hashtracking.com/pricing/ ) is another service.
This list of 6 is somewhat misleading. They are not free, but usually have free trials: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/hashtag-analytics/
If you are going to use a hashtag regularly, or it is tied to a trademarked name you own, you might want to register it with Twubs: https://twubs.com/p/register-hashtag
ROOTED TIP: When you sign up for free trials, you usually have to give a credit card. Mark a LOUD reminder on your calendar for the day or two before so you END the trial and remove your card from their system if you don’t want to have it automatically charge your account.
Let’s talk about tracking.
You need to know WHO is going to your landing page, using your hashtag and from where. The easy way is to add this landing page URL, unique URL into your Google analytics. If your squeeze page is contained within your website, you’ll need to add the Google Analytics code into the page code to track it. This will also give you information as to their journey from your main site and what they did after.
Remember to add it to your Search Console, as well - be specific with the domain - https:// - if your landing page is within your main site using a subdomain or subdirectory domain/xxxx  then the existing SSL you have will most likely cover it. Confirm if you are going the subdomain route: myevent.mydomain.com Some cheap SSL certs won’t cover that. Also, if you have a payment gateway associated with the event, book, etc. can you track THAT part of it?
If this is for a unique domain, you’ll need to add tracking code into the header for all pages associated with this.  You can learn more about how to do that in this article as well as tracking hashtags in analytics using tag manager: http://www.trackify.co.nz/blog/tracking-anchor-tag-hashtag-pageviews-in-google-analytics
And:
https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/113338/how-does-ga-show-an-url-with-a-hashtag
And here:
https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/single-page-web-app-with-google-tag-manager/
Get more tips on my site: https://susanfinch.com/rootedtips

Ideally, no call goes to voicemail. But it happens. Ideally you are alert, 100% focused, perky, welcoming and clear to all callers that call you and answer with enthusiasm and respect. That doesn’t happen. Unless you have NO tasks, NO proposals, NO presentations, quotes, marketing timeline items you are working on, you will not be able to answer every call. If you can answer every single call to your landline, mobile and video chat requests, you need more business and someone guiding you to do more than wait by the phone. Chances are at that point, you are broke, hungry and most likely unemployed.
Voicemail, answering services, phone trees have been part of business going back to the 1920s with switchboards in big companies. You see them in old movies - the ladies in a small room with perfect make-up while on a headset plucking one cord, and taking that cord and connecting it somewhere else - the transfer. The switchboard operator was the first greeter many businesses had. From there, the calls might go to the executive assistant who will decide who gets through to the target or will be sluffed off to the “take a message” status.
Fast forward to today - the age of voice over IP - VOIP. Calls from anywhere and any device can be routed with the same flexibility - anywhere on any device, or multiple devices, this includes video calls. This has allowed us to further customize that initial journey of the first time or repeated caller. We even have the ability to block callers from specific numbers so we never know they tried to reach us. We can send them directly to voicemail with a canned text message letting them know you are unavailable at the moment and will call them back right away.
We have become our own switchboard operators and executive assistants. You would have hired a professional in the past for those positions. Back in switchboard days, you hired entry level people. Why would you do that now? There is too much competition for everyone’s business and attention. Make it count if they call you. Make them feel welcomed after they’ve bothered to click on the phone number on your website to “call 800-555-1212?”. After they’ve bothered to go to your contact page, read your overstuffed business card - another topic - and actually put the digits in their device to start a conversation with you.
Now, you popular people, those with high up positions, those well-connected are most likely inundated with “strangers” calling you - sapping your time, interrupting your day. AND? Do you remember when you were hungry? Do you remember how it felt to have to make those cold calls? How it felt to reach out to someone you met briefly at some crowded event - in person or online? That is still a human. A human earning a living for their families. Give them some dignity rather than disdain.
I fully admit to being annoyed when I get an obvious boiler room call. They are spam, junk, unsolicited solicitation without any goal other than gaining access to my computer, scaring me into thinking I need their service to save me from a virus or donate to some unreputable charity. When I’ve had my coffee, and a decent night’s rest, I can stay composed, polite and quickly end the conversation without being rude.
But what about those callers we WANT calling us? We are on the other line, the call goes to voicemail, unless you have a phone tree set up with a live person answering for you as your executive assistant. You want that message to be SHORT, clean, warm, welcoming. The goal is to get them to LEAVE the message so you can call them RIGHT BACK. They don’t need you telling them what day it is, unless you are at a conference and it will affect your response time. At that point, give them another way to reach someone who can help them fast.
When was the last time you called you?
Try it. Do you like the experience? Is the message even current. Don’t you hate it when you call someone you’ve been waiting on to return from a conference, and Tuesday of the following week their message still says, “Hi, this is Heather, it’s Thursday and I’m at DreamForce through Sunday….” At that point you stop listening and most likely hangup since Heather doesn’t have her act together. First impressions, or even second chance first impressions.
Some ideas for the incoming phone call journey:
A HUMAN ALWAYS ANSWERS FIRST rather than a phone tree digital switchboard.
They route the call to your personal number.
You see the call, you answer or…
You are on the phone and it goes to voicemail or
If you don’t answer will it go back to the receptionist with a different moniker so they know it’s a call that came back to them after transferring - this would be handled with more urgency than new calls coming in as they have already spent time calling you, being routed, not reached you and routed back.
Second tree option:
Calls go right to phone tree.
Is your last name easy to spell? How about your first name? Make sure if you have that type of “dial by name” system in place, you are in there by FIRST and LAST name.
If your names are always difficult for people to spell, consider routing by department or a “say the name”. But if people can’t spell your name, they may not be able to SAY your name. Back to call journey 1.
Third tree option:
All calls go directly to you - your direct line from LinkedIn, your bio on the company site.
You answer with the attitude this could be “the one” - smile, welcome them, make sure you are in a place you can hear them, even if they have a heavy accent and are in their cars.
Here are some tips for recording your voicemail message:
Sound upbeat in your message.
Don’t rush
Avoid background noise.
Rehearse or write down your message before recording it.
Blitz Sales Software reminds us to:
Share basic information:
If you’re out of the office: - BUT change it when this isn’t true.
Be courteous of your customers’ time:
Give them a realistic expectation:
Catch their attention:
Prove your attentiveness to voicemail:

 
When you decide to add events as a revenue stream into your business the normal thought process is to focus on ticket sales to make money.
Ticket sales are extremely important as that is your indicator for 1) How many people are attending your event and 2) Where you need to adjust your marketing efforts to increase “butts in seats”
Here are the Top 5 ways to bring in event revenue that go beyond ticket sales.
Sponsors - Creating partnerships and collaborations with sponsors is one of the most profitable revenue streams for events. Find companies and brands that are in alignment with your message and who have a similar target audience.
VIP/Upgrade Options - Create high end options that will provide more benefits and value to your audience.
Product Sales - Upsell your attendees to your next event, your coaching products, books, masterminds and more.
JV/Affiliates - The best way to sell tickets is to have a solid business partnerships with influencers who will promote your event to their audience and increase the visibility of your event.
Speaker Sales Splits - Allow your speakers to sell from stage and agree to a split of their sales because you are giving them an opportunity to be in front of your audience...a new audience.
Download ALL of your Event Revenue Sources at eventsbylany.com/rootedtips

One of the takeaways from this episode is that many of us take courses, attend seminars and more, but it's up to us to implement the take aways. Even if we only get one tip we can apply, WE need to apply it ourselves. 
Nancy talked about creating her companies’ future - their revenue generator - is their new virtual course option. This is an 11 week course to immerse into and then develop the habits for collaborative selling.
Now to our topic and Nancy’s tip: People need to ask for decisions - ask for commitment, in every buyer interaction. People put so much work into getting in front of the right prospect. Then they know they need to explore the possibilities and solutions, but they leave that time together with nothing specific, or worse, the unknown, "OK, I'll send you something and follow up with you later..." WHAT!? ASK the question. Give a close to the "episode" with that prospect. Are you ready for?... Is it the next meeting? Is it bringing someone else into the conversation? Are they agreeing to review a recommendation? Don't agree to put in time if they are not giving you a specific commitment to meet again. There is no commitment on their end if you just send something without a specific next step on their end.It might take you hours for each to put together something to send. Nancy tells this story at about the 4:45 mark in this episode.
ASK FOR SPECIFIC COMMITTMENTS OR DECISIONS BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE MEETING!
Without it, you've let them off the hook with a stall. You have lost control of the meeting or conversation. You have to guide them. They are looking to you to be the expert. They want you to be the expert. Act like one who has confidence. There is more, but you'll just have to listen to this episode.
And at the 15 minute mark, Susan Finch gives a challenge to anyone who has gained success and REVENUE by attending a workshop, signing up for a training series - pay it forward. If you increased revenue by a few thousand dollars last year as a direct result, or closed a big deal after learning from a $1250 seminar series, why not pay it forward and create a scholarship of sorts with that event or series host - 10% to go to help someone else attend and gain insights? YOU can be part of their success. It also shows your appreciation for the knowledge beyond the event tuition. There would be no greater compliment. 
About Nancy Bleeke (pronounced Blay-key), CSO and President of Sales Pro Insider:
Sales is definitely part of Nancy’s genetic make-up. She has spent years in the trenches as a sales professional, sales manager, a sales coach, and wrote the gold medal winning book Conversations That Sell which has been declared a “must-read” for sales teams around the world.
About Nancy Bleeke (pronounced Blay-key), CSO and President of Sales Pro Insider:
Sales is definitely part of Nancy’s genetic make-up. She has spent years in the trenches as a sales professional, sales manager, a sales coach, and wrote the gold medal winning book Conversations That Sell which has been declared a “must-read” for sales teams around the world.
Connect with her on LinkedIn  Twitter and her website.
Get more tips on Susan's site: https://susanfinch.com/rootedtips

Yes, we all know a guy, or a kid or a neighbor who “does” websites and can help us for $12/hour and a case of beer. But is that who you want maintaining your site? You are building a business, a division, launching a product, a book and event - don’t trust the results of your efforts to someone who only has evenings and weekends available to you to keep it running smoothly and efficiently. Your website is more than your online brochure, it’s your first impression, the gateway to your sales funnel, and ultimately your revenue.
Recently I took a website over from someone who had very little time to keep things current, make simple updates and never considered teaching the client how to do simple text and content updates. This is typical of “the guy”. Typical of “the lady, the gal, the girl” who is MIA is that they just disappeared, stopped working on sites, took a job, etc. “The guy” is usually a control freak who is so afraid of the impact of imparting knowledge on the client because it will cost him money. This is my favorite type of new client because one of the tasks I love more than anything is TEACHING clients how to be in control, or at least understand their websites, online marketing, profiles and how they all play together to help generate REVENUE! I love smart clients and clients who want to learn how to do things. BUT, I also think that knowledge and energy needs to be weighed against the tasks that need to be done by the client in order to continue generating revenue. Sure, DIY your website and you save that monthly maintenance fee, the periodical overhauls, the check ups, the time to test forms, links, security, SEO. Are you starting to see the issue? YOU are GREAT at meeting your customers, opening doors, developing your product, marketing, so why would you want to add website maintenance to the day? Many of my real estate clients completely accept this. Their business ebbs and flows, so we adjust our budget accordingly. They have me do the basics no matter what to keep their site and marketing efforts worry free. AND during fat months, we add bonus items - preparing drip campaigns, cleaning up social profiles, enhancing the website with new features and more.
I had a frank talk with one that was stressing about having to do it all. I asked, “How about you focus on your job, getting listings, closing deals and make enough that you don’t have to do the online maintenance or skip it because you are being cheap?” They appreciated the frank talk, and question. They laughed and agreed. One deal pays for my services for a year, easily. Money well spent at that point.
Here’s another situation, I made the mistake of assuming a small business understood that a website requirement maintenance. I made the assumption because we ended up in a client/vendor relationship because he had a site, HAD one that lapsed and then disappeared because he hadn’t continued to pay for hosting. It was a do-over. When we rebuilt it through the Wayback Machine version of his site to get the basic content back, we talked about why it happened, and how to prevent it. I thought it was understood that after I was done, SOMEONE still needed to update the site, make sure the theme, plugins, hosting, security, links, feeds were all current. We TALKED about it, I did not have it in writing. When things needed to be updated and I asked if I could do it and told him what it would cost he was furious. We have mended, and he understands now that it will cost money. He hasn’t wanted to pay to do this regularly so now it’s been 7 months on two sites since the admin has had any maintenance. This kills me, but I can’t give it all away just because I care and it bugs me. I’m a professional, so is he. So here’s the takeaway:
First time entrepreneurs - good for you for choosing to pay a pro create your site. That is EXCITING, but, it’s way beyond building the site. You’ve paid the pro, you’ve launched - now what? The part that’s on you is maintaining the website or hiring someone to check in and maintain it monthly, or at minimum quarterly - it’s more than clicking “update” of the plugins. Just because you paid to have your site created, doesn’t mean it’s on that original vendor to maintain it forever as part of that agreement. Things change with online security regularly. Browsers update, plugins update.
Even a very small maintenance agreement will keep your site updated regularly and made less vulnerable with this tune-ups. Spend a small amount each month to check you are not blacklisted, that your theme, plugins, links are current and that your site is being submitted properly to Google Analytics.
Your site is not a one time deal. It’s a living, breathing marketing tool. Get a pro to help you keep it current and keep it useful. It’s super embarrassing to launch a marketing campaign and they go to a link on your site that returns a 404 error, or your site gives the white screen of “scary” because you are not HTTPS:// compliant.
You get one shot when you reach out to people through a campaign, through a business card when you meet them in person, through your profiles on LinkedIn, Google My Business and more. You don’t want them doubting your capability because you didn’t want to spend between $45 and $100 a month to keep it all working smoothly. Do what you do best. Interview and hire a pro to do the parts they do best. Ask your peers:
Who do you use for website maintenance, not content?
How much do they charge?
How often do they work on your site?
What’s the turnaround time for update requests?
Has your site ever been hacked?
Would you recommend them to me?
What do you like BEST about this company/service provider?
And visit their site to see if it’s fast loading, if it’s logical, easy to navigate. Get more tips and free guides at: https://susanfinch.com/rootedtips

When planning an event, meeting, retreat, workshop or conference you will want to build out a timeline for your event. Certain elements of your event need to be reserved, contracted, ordered and paid for by a specific time frames prior to the event. If you have a member of your team managing this part of your event, you will want to ensure that they have the proper information and authority to complete tasks and sign contracts on your behalf.
Most large events are planned 12-18 months in advance, but here is a good guideline to follow depending on how often you are running your event.
 
Annual Events - Start 12-18 months out
Semi Annual Events - Start 9-12 months out
Quarterly Events - Start 6 months out
Monthly Events - 3 months out
 
If the event is an annual event, you will start planning your next event almost as soon as your current event is completed.
The shorter the lead time on an event, the tighter the deadlines and potentially the higher stress.
Lofty dreams and goals for events don’t work to create a successful event.
I had a client come to me wanting to create a 300 person event in 60 days from scratch.
The event idea was amazing, but they had no idea how they were going to put it all together, pay for it and get butts in seats in that time frame.
Doing a smaller event in a short time frame is definitely doable, but you need to be super realistic when it comes to deadlines, money and attendance goals.
The greater the lead time to plan an event, the higher the success rate.
 
Download your Quick Start Timeline at eventslany.com/rootedtips

Susan's guest, Laura Patterson, President, VisionEdge Marketing dove right in with her core belief: It's always about customers, or members, or your community.Without those relationships you don't bring in the money.
When asked the most valuable services she and VisionEdge Marketing brings to their clients, Laura responded, "Data analytics, data insights, measurements and an action plan." When she started in 1999, those terms were foreign to most. 
Data analytics, measurement and process are their basic elements for their customer success. Data that you cannot derive insights from, is just data. You need to convert it into actionable insights to make strategic plans after analysis. BUT people are now using data as an excuse for inacction - we too much data,we do not have enough data, we areanalyzing the data - none of this is action.
You can make big insights from little data. You don't have to have volumes of data to get valuable insights. It gets back to action. Two groups: More medium or smaller size and very large enterprise companies.
BEST REVENUE TIP: It's always about customers. She asks of her team every day, "What are you going to do today that is going to help our customers be or become more sucessful?"
Think about the tasks on your list: C next to the ones that have direct impact for the customers, and then everything else. The priorities need to be on those with the C.
BONUS TIP: For small to medium size entities: Have a really solid network that you can pull in as needed, like a spigot on and off. This resource network can help you serve your customers better. It's one of the benefits of a boutique marketing company or supplier. One company can't specialize in every need, but they can be a source of valuable resources that can work together toward your goal.
Get the rest of the tips by listening to this episode. Subscribe to all episodes here and on iTunes and visit: https://susanfinch.com/rootedtips for more from these shows.
About Laura Patterson
Laura takes a practical, no-nonsense approach to proving and improving the value of Marketing. Laura began her 25+ year career in sales and had the great fortune of working across functions spanning customer relationship management and Marketing with a capital “M”.  Today she is at the helm of VisionEdge Marketing, founded in 1999, and is recognized as one of the pioneers and authorities in the Marketing Performance Management (MPM) discipline. The company specializes in helping companies apply data, metrics and proven best-in-class practices to improve Marketing effectiveness, deliver business impact, and enable better business decision-making.  Laura and VisionEdge Marketing are all about making Marketing an engine of growth for organizations. Martechexec selected Laura as one of the top 50 women in marketing technology. Laura serves on the University of Texas McCombs School of Business Masters of Marketing Science Advisory Board.
About VisionEdge Marketing
Since 1999 VisionEdge Marketing (visionedgemarketing.com), a data-driven metrics- based strategic and product marketing company has specialized in improving marketing performance and helping organizations make better fact-based decisions when it comes to markets, products, customers and competitors. Our passion is to help companies of all sizes solve four critical business problems:  How to acquire and keep profitable customers, how to successfully define and launch market-leading products and services, how to create performance-driven marketing organizations, and how to accurately measure and improve marketing’s contribution to the business.

If you are not a legitimate company, don’t value your credibility and reputation, please stop listening and go back to your tutorials on shady telemarketing techniques.
If you are in the other camp and deeply care about reputation, customer service, being of value, building revenue for the long game, this is for you.
Have you been to your company’s contact page lately?
What did you learn? As a new visitor, potential customer, investor, what did you learn?
More and more companies seem to be opting for the basic:
Address
Contact form approach.
There is nowhere on their site of who runs the company, who the PEOPLE are behind the company, how to reach them, ways to contact them. WHY would you do that? What are you hiding?
Are you embarrassed by your team? Then get a new team.
Are you afraid others will steal your team? Then you suck as an employer. Be better.
I understand if you have a PRODUCT site. You want to keep people focused on buying or signing up for trials, etc. but SOMEWHERE in the footer there needs to be a link to the corporate site with the contact information.
Consider a page for investors, support team, sales team, who covers which region?
A map of how to get there if you want us to visit, phone, email AND contact form.
Why would you limit how people reach you?
I had a client once say she didn’t want her email or phone on her site because she was getting 4 emails a day that weren’t client related. She blamed that and the junk calls on the site. Her site that she treats like a static brochure and never posts anything sharable. I wish that’s all the junk I got each day!
I have clients in the past actually say they didn’t want anything other than an email and voicemail listed because they had so many complaint calls. Sigh. I decided that I couldn’t work with that particular client any more due to a misguided focus in their level of customer service.
With rare exceptions, all of our businesses and products are OPTIONAL! Rarely are we the only, necessary solution, so stop acting like it. Have some respect for the time people take clicking to get to your site and then to your contact page. Oh, and name it something simple like CONTACT or CONTACT US. This indexes very well in Google, as opposed to the clever titles such as “REACH OUT”, “TALK AT US” - stop it. Just make it simple and complete. Quit hiding your staff. At least have your leadership listed on the site with photos and way to reach them and connect on LinkedIn, Twitter, direct line, or contact form that goes directly to that person.
Here’s your check list for a thorough contact page:
Full company name that checks are made out to.
Mailing address
Main phone
Main fax if you use one.
Main email
PHYSICAL address if people visit for ANY reason and map to make it easy.
Directions from major freeways, and public transportation mention if that’s a thing for your visitors, vendors, volunteers, clients.
HOURS you will answer phones, help lines, be in the office.
Great place for support chat link, or you can go to a support page, if you need one.
Then, a new section for LEADERSHIP - you can link to a leadership page, or list it here with HEADSHOTS, Name, title, LinkedIn link, direct line/extension
Calling it LEADERSHIP allows you to show only key people who are your spokespeople. Some companies put their full cast in there. At least have key leadership. If your leadership is impressive, don’t send them to LinkedIn so fast. Have a bio page for them and THEN link to their linkedIn page. Ask them to link to a company overview/call to action page in their LinkedIn and other bios/profiles. Just linking to a home page doesn’t ask for further contact. ASK for their name, email and phone. Why not? They clicked. Create a landing page specifically for this purpose - linking from social profile. They can be prompted to do this so you can follow up. If you are tracking your pages, you’ll see how they are finding this special call to action page. You can update it regularly, perhaps with tips, get an ebook, etc. Just get their info!
Another handy item on a contact page is a department table:
Department | Extension | Email | if there is a different address | if hours are different than main hours.
You can choose to hide, be cryptic or “cool” but it doesn’t get you speaking to people, seeing what they’re interested in or converting them faster. Challenge yourself to convert someone trying to sell to you. I dare you! Post links to your contact pages in the comments if you want feedback or to show off.
Get more free tips on susanfinch.com/rootedtips, sign up to receive marketing tips and to be notified of new episodes. You can also contact me on my site so we can talk about your best online face of your company!
 

Are you making money or losing money? You MUST have a budget. You must forecast your expenses and plan out your profits to give you an idea of what your numbers may or may not look like. You can’t wish on a star and hope it will all be ok.
How much money do you have to spend for this event?
Are you receiving donations from vendors?
Will you be looking for sponsors?
Do you plan on having exhibitors?
Sponsorship is a GREAT way to cover the cost of your event and I know that topic is covered in this summit, so I hope you paid attention.
Do you plan on generating a profit from your event?
If so, make sure you calculate that into your numbers, so that you’re not fighting to save your profit at the end.
Do you have a contingency in place?
With everything you do in your event you will need to have a contingency or backup in place, just in case something (inevitably) goes wrong or costs more money than you had originally planned.
Always budget at least 15-20% contingency
Did I mention that things inevitably go wrong? If you don’t have room in your budget, then you could be costing yourself more than just money. Think stress, overwhelm, fear, anxiety...yes...you will create a huge burden of stress. So, let’s just eliminate that right from the beginning. Plan to have a contingency (or buffer) in your budget for the unexpected.
Let’s look at what you need to budget for….
Venue
Decor
Design
Event Tech
Group Activities
Entertainment
Furniture Rentals
Licensing
Insurance
Wifi
Electrical
A/V Equipment & Setup
Staging/Lighting Rental/Vendor
Food/Catering Services
Hotel Accommodations for:
Team
Guests
Speakers
Attendees
Stipend for:
Volunteers
Staff
Speakers
Ground Transportation for:
Team
Guests
Speakers
Attendees
Speaker Honorarium
Advertising/Marketing
Print Services
Staffing
Shipping
Storage
Taxes
Fees
Clean up
Union Fees
Deposits
Cancellation Fees
Get your Quick Start Budget Template or your Full Event Budget at eventsbylany.com/rootedtips

Join us for a valuable revenue tip from Deb Calvert. We are also talking about her new book, Stop Selling and Start Leading. Her tip revolves around the fact she's been in sales her entire professional career. She has inbound and outbound strategies for generating revenue. Tune in to take notes! Be ready, she's a firm believer in good old-fashioned cold calling. Outsourcing is not HER solution. Keep your skills honed.
Revenue Expert: Deb Calvert
Deb Calvert has been named by Treeline as one of “The 65 Most Influential Women in Business” and consistently appears on lists of Top Sales Influencers and Thought Leaders. She is UC-Berkeley Instructor, field researcher, trainer, instructional designer, speaker, and author, and has worked as a leadership program architect, sales productivity specialist and researcher since 2000.
Deb’s newest book is Stop Selling & Start Leading, co-authored with leadership gurus Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. Her bestseller, DISCOVER Questions® Get You Connected, has been named one of “The 20 Most Highly-Rated Sales Books of All Time” by HubSpot. Deb is the founder of The Sales Experts Channel and of the movement to Stop Selling & Start Leading®.

It’s so exciting when we outgrow our office space or buildings and need to move to bigger digs! You have a prep list for the move that probably includes utilities, ISP, updating the post office. But did you think about your online address that has been there for a while? That needs to be updated EVERYWHERE and consistently.
I’m talking about NAP - Name, Address, Phone number. For search credibility, your business listing needs to be consistent in every directory and with every search engine that indexes your content and site. By precisely I mean that if you have a suite number, and you list it sometimes at Ste. and sometimes as Suite or # or Unit those are not the same. Your phone number. It’s great to have an toll free number on your site, but for this purpose you need a LOCAL phone number that a human answers. The SAME number everywhere. You can add additional numbers in listings in directories, but the MAIN number needs to be local and formatted precisely: 503-555-1212 vs. (503) 555.1212.
A great place to start is Google My Business. I’m assuming you already have a profile set up for your company on Google My Business. This is what shows up in the right column boxed info when people search for your company. It has hours, location, reviews, photos. You need to take control of that first. Then, you can search out the rest of the listings to see how you are listed.
A quick hit list includes:
Google
Yahoo - yes it still ties to and feeds other directory listing sites.
Bing
There are about 80 more in the list - many are fed by these three, but you still need to make sure they are all matching precisely.
Once these are cleaned up, and you start to post to some of your profiles 1-4xs per month with images, recommendations, strategic partner news you’ll start to see an organic rise in your search rankings.
Just as moving an address can affect things, so can changing your domain. Long-term domains hold some credibility. If you’ve used the same domain for years and years and suddenly you want to change directions, had issues with hacking or other reasons, you will lose a ton of traction from your old search results. You want to make sure you account for the change through redirects from the most popular pages in old domain to changing the content on the old site to thin it out and then a custom 404 page to redirect to the new site or content. Without careful planning, making this one change in your business can have you fall off the face of search results and it’s a long road back. Be aware of and regularly review your search console on Google to see where errors are happening. Where are people trying to get to in the OLD domain. Do NOT remove the old domain from analytics or your search console - not yet. It doesn’t hurt to keep it all running to track traffic and come up with redirect solutions. If you can, retain the old domain to use it to your advantage in the redirecting. You can change your hosting plan to something tucked within another account if money is the issue, but do not delete the domain or the site - at least not all the way.  Be careful with a domain change that the mail is set up with the change, as well. Auto responders are handy for a transition such as this. You want people to use the new email account? You’ll have to have your entire staff find EVERYWHERE they are listed with the old domain email and have them update it. They’ll need autoresponders. You’ll want to set up forwarding for a while. You don’t want to pay for 2 mail plans indefinitely, but at least let the dust settle.
You now have a good list to start with.
If you would like me to dig around for you to find your entire list and see where things need to be corrected, let me know. It’s one of the discovery packages I offer through Exit Power Strategies.
http://sfs.tips/epslist