With over 30 years’ working experience for many ‘sales driven organisations’ and more recently, providing consultancy support to many unique and established London venues, we’re not surprised to hear why ‘events teams’ are overwhelmed with new enquiries!

With easy access to on-line technology platforms there’s an overwhelming desire to place your venue on every conceivable ‘search engine’ and with continued emphasis to place regular ‘posts’ on social media, venue staff can sometimes feel overwhelmed!

With the endless list of ‘Venue Search’ platforms including amongst others Hirespace, Headbox, Tag Venues, Venue Directory to name but a few, the principal objective behind such rationale is to ensure that their venue is at the top of the SEO rankings! Especially in London where they are competing against 3,000 other venues trying in some cases to target the same enquiry.  

So when GFG is commissioned by COO’s/Commercial Directors to undertake a ‘Sales & Marketing Venue’ audits on their Venue and Events teams, one of the first questions we often ask:-

“How many enquiries does your venue receive in your events enquiry ‘In-Box’ every day or each week?”

The common response is often that they don’t and each enquiry just receives a standard template response e-mail, as they are often just too busy!

One question we often ask ourselves,

“How did Venues survive before the discovery of the World Wide Web?”

“How are these ‘new’ enquiries qualified and how do your venue teams respond?”

So what is the answer?? Well there isn’t really a simple one, it’s a combination of factors as a venue needs to ask themselves

• When venues ’sign-up’ for such platforms, can they pick the categories they want to be associated with? Rather than ticking everyone, be selective!
• Do the venue team undertake any qualitative research with other venues to access the ‘quality of the enquiries’ they receive?
• How do those venue search platforms ‘go to market’, i.e. how do they engage with meeting planners or target private individuals? What social media do they use? 

And the list goes on

But the fundamental point is that it takes years to establish a distinctive and unique brand! It’s easy to lose it by attracting the wrong type of customer.    

Every venue whether its historic, a museum or an Association needs to target ‘profitable’ clients which will make a ‘bottom-line’ contribution to your venues overheads, not time wasters!  Ultimately, it’s down to effective individual time management leading to an Events team working smarter!!

Over the last ten years we’ve advised many clients with similar challenges, ranging from: –

Every venue whether its historic, a museum or an Association needs to target ‘profitable’ clients which will make a ‘bottom-line’ contribution to your venues overheads, not time wasters!  Ultimately, it’s down to effective individual time management leading to an Events team working smarter!!