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A Short Guide to Spur Your Event Marketing Business

accept-payment-for-eventsThe event marketing industry is witnessing tremendous growth even against the backdrop of digital marketing techniques. According to Market Charts, 83% of B2B marketers today leverage event marketing to boost growth and their budgets in events are increasing gradually. 56% of marketers increased their event budgets in 2016 according to a Selligent 2016 Marketing Survey.

According to a similar study by Marketing Profs & Content Marketing Institute, 77% of use in-person events for their content marketing strategy. 67% of B2B marketers believe events are a more effective marketing strategy today again highlighting the potential for event marketers.

Overcoming Unique Emerging Challenges

With these numbers in mind, it is important to reposition your event marketing strategy in order to harness the potential in the industry. Event management today faces unique challenges especially with the advent of online marketing. Some of the major challenges cited by event marketers that you have to create strategies to overcome include:

  1. Lead and traffic generation

  2. Measuring of ROI for ongoing marketing efforts for the business.

  3. Securing a sufficient marketing budgets in the backdrop of increasing costs of operation.

  4. Short lead times

  5. Retaining relevance in the modern age of distraction especially online

  6. Disruptive technology that threatens the traditional event format

  7. Targeting content for a global audience

  8. Finding the right people for your marketing team.

There are many other challenges, many of which keep changing. Two decades back, no one would have thought social media would become a major game changer in business, but today any firm that is not leveraging social media networks is on its way down. As such, it is important for an event organizer to keep refreshing their marketing strategy in order to stay ahead of the competition.

How to Stay Ahead of the Pack

While these challenges might seem insurmountable, you can leverage emerging technologies to stay ahead. Social media, video marketing and other new technologies might be labelled disruptive, but a suave marketer will turn them into an opportunity.

Below are just a few proven strategies that you can now capitalize on to get your event marketing company ahead:

  1. Optimizing Influencers’ in your Niche

Influencer marketing is now real and while this idea has always existed in business, it is now even more crucial with the rise of internet technology. Influencers are a great way to help make your events conspicuous. If an influencer mentions your forthcoming event in a blog post, you can bet many people will flock to see what you are doing.

However, you have to appreciate that influencers have multiple requests from other businesses and you have to stand out in the terms of the content you are sharing before asking for a recommendation. Take time to research the best influencers and follow them on social media to make yourself noticed. When the time is ripe, send your request.

  1. Prove Your Social Standing

The first thing people look at when they are looking for an event management company is your reputation. Who are you and what makes you the best option? If you don’t stand out in your city then don’t expect orders from clients. You have to leverage social media and remember it is not a one-off project, but a long term strategy that involves a lot of hard work.

Create your profile and nurture your social media accounts gradually as you angle yourself as an authority. Make sure your events are creating a buzz on social media by getting people to share them on Instagram and other networks. The more people get to know you, the easier it becomes for them to engage with your brand.

  1. Pay Affiliates to Market You

Truth be told, event marketing is not for the fainthearted. It is a multi-billion dollar industry where you will be competing with renowned entities. As such, you have to use the most creative avenues to market your events in order to get noticed. Start small with an affiliate program through local bloggers and businesses. Offer complimentary tickets to events and other goodies to make your offers irresistible and share your spoils with affiliates.

  1. Stay Close to the Community

As an event marketer, your target market is mostly local and this should not sound like a bad thing. In fact, with tools such as Google Maps, local SEO has never been easier. Well, research shows that customers love local brands that are giving back to the community. This means your event marketing company must do something to get noticed. Think of promoting your events and giving back part of the proceeds to a local charity or maybe hype up charitable works in your marketing.

  1. Share and Keep Sharing

Whatever you do, never forget the power of social. Everyone today is on social networks and you have to go big in order to win over customers. Use Facebook remarketing, videos in your tweets, post amazing picture of your past, current and upcoming events and give incentives to promote sharing.

Like most local businesses, you might be going through a rough patch especially due to debt. This should not be allowed to drag you down. It is however important to refocus more energy on debt management for your business to operate without undue risks. you will find a debt relief program that suits you perfectly. Whether you want to go for consolidation or debt settlement, there are many partners ready to help get you back on your feet.

There are many other considerations in event marketing and your team should always be rehashing its strategy to stay ahead. Make sure you leverage visual content marketing, social media networks, influencers, discounts and bargains to clients, blogging, customer reviews and analytics. These factors will ground your event marketing business even as competition gets stiffer.

Author Bio

Isabella Rossellini is a marketing consultant based in Chicago. She helps local businesses in event management to cope with emerging challenges such as disruptive technology and rising costs. She is also a part time debt counsellor.

 

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Merchant Category Codes: What Are They and How Do They Affect You?

MCC WPS

There’s an awful lot of data that’s thrown at merchants and consumers where credit cards are concerned. However, from a consumer perspective, knowing how your credit card categorizes businesses is a useful tool to maximize the benefits you gain from your card’s rewards program. For merchants, knowing how your business is classified will help you make sure you’re getting the best rates for interchange fees. I’ll be going over why you should know the different, “merchant categorization codes” so you can take maximum advantage of your card and get the best benefits from them.

History of Merchant Category Codes

Back in ’04, the IRS required that businesses be classified based upon the market segment that they occupy. An MCC Code is a four-digit code that a business is assigned once it starts accepting one of the two major credit card brands; Visa or MasterCard. Businesses that purchase some kind of service are required to report it on a 1099 form at the end of the year, while purchased goods don’t have the same requirements. Certain businesses are also tagged for lower interchange fees depending on the type of business that it is.

How MCC Affects Consumers

While a consumer doesn’t have to worry about interchange fees for their business, MCC still affects consumers by the codes assigned to the stores that they frequent and how that comes into effect with their rewards programs for their credit cards. Say your Visa card gives you 5% cash back on groceries when you use it, you’re going to want to know what stores qualify as a grocery store according to Visa. For example, Target, qualifies as a grocery store, so knowing this, even if you purchase things that aren’t considered grocery items, because Target is a “grocery store” according to Visa, you will still receive the 5% cash back for your entire purchase.

Conversely, however, you should keep an eye out to make sure that a business that you think is in one category, is in fact, in another. For example, you may think that 7-11 might qualify as groceries, but in fact it actually falls into “service stations” category. A great resource to use to find out what businesses fall under what MCC is to use Visa’s Supplier Locator website.

How MCC Affects Merchants

While how MCC affects consumers is relatively simple, for merchants, it gets a little more complicated. MCC can affect a merchant’s interchange rate, now we’ve spoken about interchange briefly when we discussed tiered pricing v. cost plus pricing. However, there are a few factors, some of which are outside the business owner’s control. For example, the type of card, how your payment processing account is configured, as well as what steps you take to complete each transaction can all affect your interchange rate. For the sake of brevity, we’ll just focus on how your interchange rate is affected by how your business is categorized.

Certain industries qualify for special incentive programs that mean better rates. For instance, card associations may feel that these specific industries have a markedly higher growth potential and want to encourage card use. Or, the special rate could be an incentive offered by Visa or MasterCard to promote card acceptance. Some examples of these industries include: charities, supermarkets, insurance providers, and gas/service stations. However, some businesses that do qualify for a better interchange rate don’t receive it because their accounts haven’t been properly categorized by their payment processor’s systems. To make sure you’re getting the best rate, talk to your payment processor and make sure they understand: what industry your business operates in, that your industry classification is correct, and whether or not your categorization qualifies you for a special interchange rate. These programs can lower your rates by 10 to 30 basis points lower than standard retail rates, saving merchants between $1.00 to $3.00 on every $1,000 processed.

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Welcome ICVerify Customers!

As some of you know, ICVerify has recently shut down their business. As such, many businesses are now being left without a payment solution for their businesses and merchant accounts. From us here at Web Payment Software, we would like to welcome any and all former ICVerify customers to our business. We would love to become your payment gateway solution. If you look over our site, you’ll see that not only do we offer great rates, we are half the cost of our competitors. We offer cost-plus pricing for all of our merchant accounts with rates as low as 2.25% which can’t be beat by our competitors.
Interchange-plus pricing

Curious how Web Payment Software can streamline your merchant account and payment gateway services? Learn why Interchange-plus pricing will save your business money! Contact Us Today!

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Mobile Commerce: Issues To Watch In 2016

mobile commerce Issues to watch in 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With a new year, comes new trends as well as new issues. One of the new trends that has a lot of merchants concerned is the rise in popularity with mobile payments. Mobile payments and its recent rise in popularity has spun the traditional payment system on its ear. Even further, companies, especially those in the retail space have had to adapt their marketing strategies in different channels, change their approach to the consumer, and has brought an evaluating light on their data security and fraud protocols.

Why Concern About Mobile Payments?

Before we begin, you might be wondering why businesses have begun worrying about mobile payments. Here’s why; In 2014, mobile payments accounted for $52 billion in U.S. transactions alone, the early numbers for 2015 account for somewhere around $67 billion. That’s a lot of money, everyone from Uber and Starbucks, to big box retailers are seeing the benefits of having their customers leave their wallets at home.

However, where the money goes, crime follows. Mobile fraud now makes up 21% of the $6 billion that fraud costs merchants and card issuers in the US each year. The crazy thing, mobile payments only account for 14% of transactions amongst merchants that accept mobile payment.

The Cost To The Merchant

For each dollar spent on fraudulent purchases costs the merchant $3.34. Thats slightly more than the cost of card present fraud and 27% more than CNP fraud from a PC. Additionally, mobile fraud is harder to track for two reasons: First, the IP address is assigned from where the smartphone is purchased, not its current location. Second, most companies and investigators aren’t equipped to trace mobile Ips.

Despite the high fraud costs, mobile commerce merchants are still keeping overall fraud costs low, but that’s mainly because of the relatively low volume of purchases in comparison to online and in store. However, as the popularity of mobile commerce increases this model will become unsustainable unless proper anti-fraud measures are put in place.

In the mean time, if you are a merchant who accepts mobile payments, make sure your fraud measures are up to date, and make sure to set up some verification system to determine that purchases are legitimate.