Building on land you don't own.. A Digital Strategy Series

Everyone’s heard of don’t build on land you don’t own. Most only apply that philosophy to real world tangible projects, but what about in the digital landscape? How does that ethos translate to your businesses' place in the world wide web? Still not sure what we’re talking about, let's dive on in.

One of our founders was searching for a venue on behalf of a cross country client and began a case study from the results. As one does when searching, you look at their website to see what photos are available, any diagrams, video or virtual tours, just something to get a good feel of the space and the possibilities. Time and time again 18 out of 20 venue websites visited redirected you to another online channel to see the goods, and maybe tease you (unknowingly) with a scrap of a couple of low quality images on their actual site.

These businesses have built their entire event portfolio on third party platforms, such as Instagram or Pinterest, where even the faintest whiff of a content violation can instantly wipe away all that hard work. This can happen through being flagged and pending investigation locking the account or as far as a total ban on that channel. What could be the reasons that happened? Maybe it was because your marketing intern used just 40 seconds of copyrighted music unknowingly in a cute reel, they are an intern for a reason right? Possibly a competitor trying to take down their competition, so they smashed that report button along with a twisted friends and family campaign to create a social media mob. Regardless of how those unfortunate circumstances unfolded, the one thing you have control over is your website. Building on land you don’t own in the digital age is placing a very risky bet that you won’t end up on the unfortunate side of some of those scenarios and then being on the back foot reacting when some AI algorithm mistakenly cites you for policy violation with no immediate recourse.

So, why do venues and event producers put their most valuable asset in the hands of some third party? The same reason most small businesses use social media, because it’s easy. The average person has posted on their own personal social media before, so it doesn’t feel too intimidating. It’s practically effortless, and too easy to ignore the cost savings of skipping out on an experienced event marketer, one that can create compelling imagery on your website. So they take that risk, but they also risk alienating potential clients with that strategy even if they don’t deal with the worst case scenarios.

Many of these social platforms are walled gardens, which means that the reach you thought you were getting isn’t going as far as you’d like. Your potential clients, the ones searching you out and going directly to your website want to see the goods. You may even have done some paid ads to get that lead to your website and now you’re sending them away with hopes they’ll come back? All due to convenience from offloading the real work of building a website portfolio, and whether you realize it or not, you’ve outsourced that work to the customers on your behalf while crossing your fingers it works out.

Taking the gamble on leading clients offsite for the chance they may have that particular platform's account to sign in and see the pictures that weren't on your direct site leads to attrition. Should they have a social account, those algorithms are there to keep them engaged and pulled in deeper into their recommended content, where other businesses have paid to play and grab some face time with them. Then there’s the whole keeping a pulse on what social channels are actually worth investing time into before the next new thing pops up (anybody remember vine?). The more friction you introduce on your site the more likely people are going to close that tab and move on when your competitor is leveraging the strengths of those channels with a comprehensive marketing strategy.

Returning back to our Founder’s search, many venue’s attempted to fulfill the request. One venue sent clunky attachments in HEIC file type that required going to the app store to purchase a compatible file viewer. Why, because that venue had unintentionally locked themselves into Apple’s ecosystem without considering compatibility when sharing to clients not on a Mac OS device. The two venues that actually fulfilled the request shared a virtual walk through tour link, and another dropped a cloud link to their portfolio of spaces in addition to mentioning their socials. These 2 were the most exceptional in contrast as the rest of the venue’s just dropped their social handles and called it a day.

Only two venues out of twenty were prepared for the request. Which mind you, came only after digging around on their website to prompt the request in the first place. This is something an experienced event planner may put up with, but enough of a hurdle that your first impression (or lack of), puts off potential leads before any real conversations can start.

In this case study 10% of venue’s were ready to rise up to the serious inquiry, and of that 10% there was still some lacking in their follow up message, which we’ll dig into further on our sales segment. That lack of foresight, and polish turns off the ideal qualified lead, the kind your sales team wants more of.

Treat that social channel as the cherry on top and not the whole cake, or you may end up more than just peckish.

Need help creating a digital marketing strategy for your next event or venue revamp? Reach out to us for a consultation!