By Steve Ashkin, The Ashkin Group

This article is the final one in our 3 part series on marketing your company (and yourself) by conducting an educational seminar on Green Cleaning. If you haven’t already read the previous articles, I would highly encourage you to do so. In this article we’ll cover picking the location, greening the event, marketing the program and perhaps most important, planning the follow-up with your invitees.

Picking the Location: Some manufacturers, distributors and service providers have terrific training rooms, but others don’t. To me, doing an event in the back of your warehouse might be good for a customer appreciation or hands-on training event if you need lots of room to try-out that new auto scrubber. But if you want business owners and senior decision-makers as your primary target, unless you have a good place to impress them, I would encourage you to find a different location.

My personal preference is to do it at a venue that will help you attract attendees. For example, you can do it in a Green Building and as part of the event, give the attendees a tour. I have also had good experience with this in other types of buildings as well, such as an event that we participated in at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. As home to the Green Bay Packers, the new stadium brought senior decision-makers to the seminar just to get the chance to see the field and their museum (since I live in Indiana I am an Indianapolis Colts fan, but even I enjoyed the history and it really is quite an impressive building).

Other opportunities include museums, arboretums, universities and religious organizations often have buildings that can host an event. But finding an interesting venue can help build your attendance and can make the event more interesting and fun. And don’t forget to ask your co-sponsors if they can help find a great location. And if all else fails, you can always rent some space at a local hotel.

Green the Event: If you’re doing a “green” event, don’t forget to consider some of the simple things you can do to green the event itself. Invitations and printed materials should be on recycled paper or maybe even get creative and find some kind of “tree-free” fiber for your invitations such as kenaf or recycled blue-jeans. Or maybe instead of paper hand-outs of presentations, brochures and other vendor materials, consider creating a CD that you can give to each attendee.

Other things to consider are eliminating the disposable chinaware (i.e. cups, plates, folks, knives, etc.) and replace them with reusable washable items. Consider using food that is from local farmers or organically grown and donating leftovers to the local food bank. And don’t forget to recycle those name badge holders.

Invitations and Marketing the Event: The intent of this section is not to get into a lengthy discussion about graphic design. Rather, I want to encourage you to develop a strategy for contacting prospects and customers for your event. Remember, this event is going to take a lot of time and expense regardless of whether you end up with 20 or 2,000 people there. But there are some things you can do to increase attendance.

I recommend that you work with your sales people and develop an invitee list --- and please don’t forget to have your customer service people participate as well. But more importantly, I would like to encourage you to make a plan to contact the invitees at least three (3) times. Experience proves that a single contact is almost worthless and a combination of mail, email and phone calls work best.

You can begin with a simple “save the date” postcard approximately six (6) weeks before the event and conclude with a phone call a couple of days before the event. In between you can send the agenda with the names of the speakers and titles of their talk. But as mentioned in the beginning of this article, focus on a Green Building or Green Facilities event to attract the senior decision-makers and make sure your invitations clearly articulate this nuance.

Keep in mind that many of your invitees have already attended similar events or conferences where there have been green sessions. So make sure you tell them ‘why they should they come to yours’. Thus I would encourage you to include in your invitations and messaging “that something is new” such as a new revision to LEED or the Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools or 10 Steps to Green Cleaning Implementation in Healthcare or some new legislation to give even the most experienced “greenie” a reason to come.

Finally, if you are working with some other groups to co-sponsor the event, I recommend that you “help” them promote it to their constituencies. Do not take it for granted that they do a good job with promotional matters and let’s be realistic, these organizations are very busy and your event while important to them is not nearly as important to them as it is to you. So make it easy for them by providing them with promotional materials or information that they can simply “cut and paste” into their templates or onto their letterheads and send out.

Day of the Event: I recommend that you make sure that everyone within your company knows what they’re supposed to do. Have signs in the parking lot so attendees know where to park. Welcome tables with name tags and registration should be well staffed to minimize waiting. And more than anything, make sure the entire sales team including customer service knows exactly what the agenda is, where restrooms and telephones are, etc., and that they only have one chance to make that first, positive impression.

Follow-Up: I have never spoken with anyone developing any type of educational event that didn’t understand the need for prospecting and a good invitation strategy. And most also understand how important it is to plan for follow-up. Unfortunately, we often do a poor job with this last crucial piece of the puzzle.

Thus, plan your follow-up before the event. Develop a ‘thank you’ postcard or email and send it out within 48 hours of the event. Also have packets of materials already assembled and ready to mail. And if you have vendors, prepare a form for them to fill-out so that you can capture who they talked to, their interest level and required follow-up. And do the same for your internal colleagues.

Finally, keep in mind that your follow-up plan should include those who didn’t attend the event. You need to be a little “sensitive” with this group, but don’t miss the opportunity to stay in contact with them as well.

Just remember, you don’t need to do a huge event and in my opinion it is better to start small then never doing it due to the complexity of the undertaking. But whether you do a small or large event, I would encourage you to do it well. And perhaps as important --- you do it soon. After all, Green is really happening and since your customers and prospects are going to attend such an event, we’d prefer that it’s yours.

Good luck selling.

Steve

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About the Author:

A 25+ year veteran of the cleaning industry, Stephen Ashkin is the author of Green Cleaning for Dummies and a tireless advocate for environmentally preferable cleaning products. Often referred to as the “father of green cleaning,” Ashkin has played a pivotal role in setting industry standards, promoting environmentally preferable products, and advocating for socially responsible practices.

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