scenarios and examples of how you can use these scenarios to in-
crease sales for your event.
Obviously, you cannot anticipate every potential problem; how-
ever, you can generally outline the most likely conditions that will
positively or negatively impact your ability to market your event
product. Therefore, it is essential that you have at all times a plan
ready to seize potential opportunities and mitigate threats, ensur-
ing that your marketing plan remains stable and successful despite
changes brought about by new and emerging scenarios. In the past,
event marketers may have said, “I had no control over the com-
pany going on strike or three weeks of rain,” but, in the 21st cen-
tury, event marketers must constantly devise these scenarios and
be ready to embrace them with strategies to produce successful
outcomes.How to Improve Your Event
Marketing Segmentation Skills
The term “market segmentation” can be defined simply as the
process of identifying target market groups that may be available
for the event marketers’ products and services. These segments
may already be included within the current targets of the market-
ing plan in effect, but many may not be. Those that are not often
provide the fertile fields of growth and revitalization of the event
itself.
Throughout this text, you have been alerted to the self-
defeating tendency of repetition, whether it involves program de-
sign, promotional tools, speakers, event features, or marketing
lists. The clear trend in event marketing is toward a shining of the
light into new areas filled with innovative design opportunities
and, even more important, consumers who are currently not being
recruited. Those consumers may be off of your “radar screen,” but
they also may be operating much closer to you than you think.
Markets continually change, as do their tastes, interests, fads,
and priorities. For example, many companies have faced flagging
sales because they did not see the trends in their markets evolv-
ing. In every economic downturn, observers will see the sad cycle
of those corporations that became too comfortable in the sanctity178 Chapter 8 Trends in Event Marketing