Location, Location, Location...
Marketing is both science and art, no question.
The art part is how you make people feel, but there's a science part.
One of them is when we make suggestions about locations for your event. There's a TON of data-mining and analysis that goes into this.
- where customers work
- which products/solutions play well in that market
- what the opportunity is for the right story in that market.
Admittedly, I’ve focused more on event date/timeframe/results than event location, but I noticed something interesting the other day.
100% of March MPE events and 50% of scheduled (60% have secured location) April events are taking place in DC or Reston office.
The tenets of our marketing effort are
- Do the Right Activity
- with the Right Content
- with the Right Customer
- in the Right Location
I know it's easier and cheaper to do the event at an MS facility, plus having the Microsoft brand is helpful, but I'm concerned we're all missing a big opportunity here.
I am going to investigate and see if I can prove my point with some data, so stay tuned.