Can Hospitality Teach Us About Event Marketing?

Event marketing has similar aims and intentions to hospitality or customer-service work. It can also have similar metrics for success: returning visitors, customer satisfaction, and brand recall, for example.

Now, some brief clarifications.

By 'hospitality', we're referring to businesses with a day-to-day customer focus, like restaurants with waiters, or high-street shops with front-of-house staff, and spas or hotels with staff dedicated to promoting a calm, relaxed atmosphere.

In the events industry,  we can learn a lot from the people who talk to people every single day. These are the sectors where 1:1 connections with visitors are a day-to-day occurrence, necessary to the businesses' existence.

Let's look a little deeper...

We’re in a Connection Economy

People are, on the whole, looking for more authenticity from businesses and more connection with the people behind the brand.

It’s called a ‘Connection Economy’ and it's a response to a world in which ads are found in almost every medium, a great deal of what we see is created by AI, and a lot of purchases are conducted through faceless interactions with a payment gateway.

In response to this world, everything has changed. It goes both ways: businesses that primarily function online need to ensure that they have moments in their calendar set aside for direct, face-to-face meetings with customers.

Meanwhile, businesses that function in-person, need to have a good online presence. With that in mind, even hospitality has changed! For example, being a barista has become an art form in and of itself, publicised through social media. Expert latte-artists attend big coffee-themed events, or partake in competitions to show off their talents. By competing under the umbrella of their employer, they publicise their abilities in an Instagrammable way, and bring their employer-cafe a little bit more money and stellar reputation.

Like that, coffee has become about connection, in new and different ways.

The Connection Economy: A Norwich-Based Latte-Art Competition at Wright's Cafe.

What Does the Connection Economy Offer?

What this world offers is an opportunity for business to really think about the ways in which they can create moments of connection in a world that seems keen to push connection to the back of people’s minds.

It is, therefore, an opportunity for businesses to take a leaf out of the book of those in customer-facing roles, in order to really make the most of a busy events landscape.

You might, for example, refer back to the interviews we conducted as part of our Experiential Edge series. Here, we spoke to people who are experts in the concept of ‘brand experience’; people who work with people every day, be it at a nature reserve or a sauna.

These businesses have a real focus on the experience of individual customers. What makes it special? What makes us stand out? What makes people come back?

In that way, we’ve seen that businesses can learn a lot from the ideas that get thrown around in hospitality and customer service. This is especially true when it comes to crafting experiences and events, where you have only a few hours or days to represent your brand as a whole, and to make those all-important connections.

So, what can we learn from the hospitality industry?

Wel...

1. It's About Experience, More Than it’s About Products

Don’t get us wrong; that doesn’t mean your product is unimportant. It just means that, across all sectors, regardless of what the product is, the thing that sells those products is the experience that comes as a result of buying them, or investing your time in them.

Think about your own experiences.

Picture the scene: you go to two cafes and eat decent enough meals at both. Are you more likely to remember (and therefore return to):

a) the one where the waiter made you laugh, helped you personalise your experience, and connected with your grandmother over her likes and dislikes?

or

b) the one where you ordered from a screen and didn’t talk to anyone?

Sure. Same!

In this way, hospitality shows us that we are in an, ‘experience economy: it optimises for memory, not meaning’. It’s not about how efficiently you can churn your product out or how quickly you can generate leads, but how much you can grab hold of their attention and keep it.

And that comes down to novel, immersive experiences, personalisation, and real human connection.

Mielle's O2 Pop-Up Experience: A Masterclass in the all-encompassing experience (PHOTO: Image Experiential)

2. In the Moment, Every Moment

Key to that feeling of human connection is employing people who are good at responding to the situation in hand with calmness, compassion, and a sense of fun.

Having worked as a maitre-d at some of New York's finest establisments, Michael Cecchi-Azzolina, ‘compared restaurant service to Broadway theatre’. In hospitality, like in events, there’s a script, and an idea of where the story goes. You immerse people in an environment you’ve created, and you even tell a story.

If the Connection Economy is about prioritising experience over products, then the people who talk with your stand visitors are representatives and custodians of that experience. They should be briefed on ‘the script’: the sorts of solutions your business offers, but also the sorts of connections you want to create, and the story you want to tell.

But things shouldn’t be entirely scripted. If your event staff are just reeling off a list of things they're supposed to say, you lose that sense of humanity at the heart of a connection economy.

The people in a restaurant need to be able to improvise and play around, as they see fit. If a customer brings a particular vibe, they need to be able to deviate from the script enough to meet that vibe.

It’s the same with events: you may have an idea of where a conversation is going to go, but the thing which makes events different to digital marketing is that it’s live. People are there, in the flesh, and they may surprise you. Not only will meeting those surprises head-on give them a better experience, it will also allow you to make the most of the medium of events marketing, as distinct from your other communicative endeavours.

That is to say, don’t be afraid of a little improvisation within the remits of your brand’s messaging! It's what makes the event fun for everyone involved!

A unique offering, a point of connection, and a conversation starter (PHOTO: Image Experiential)

3. Personalisation: Show You Care

Connection happens—in life as well as marketing—happens when people have something in common.

That’s why personalisation is so key in a Connection Economy: it gives your customers something in common with your business, even for a moment.

It comes down to intentionality.  Crafting little moments and little interactions which show a genuine interest in individual customers. Customers who experience a feeling of genuinely being valued by a business are 54% more likely to make a repeat purchase.

In hospitality, this looks like asking visitors a question: ‘are you guys having a nice day?’ or ‘what have you been up to today?’, and then using that as a moment of connection, subject to tone, energy and vibes.

In events, it might look similar, but you can be more specific on the basis that you’re all on the same page when the event begins. They have, after all, made the commitment to attending an event that specialises in the sector your business is in.

So, you can ask, for example, ‘what brings you to Crufts today?’ or ‘Tell me a little something about your business, so we can get you started.’

A little bit of interest shown in your visistors goes a long way. People love to feel special. And, isn't it nice to make them feel special?

Ready to Connect?

If your business could do with some events in order to make some human connections, get in touch.

We'd love to hear from you.