Technology is fast penetrating the way events are being planned and executed in India. Now hunt for good vendors is just a few clicks away. With social media influenced customer expectations, coupled with increasing professionalism in the event industry, it has become one of the most dynamic industries in the market. Technology is fast transforming this hugely offline business into an online giant.
Technology has largely solved the problem of “customer hunting for right vendors” but “vendor hunting for right customers” as per their potential is still a major problem that needs attention.
Companies like UrbanClap, Sulekha, Justdial have made a strong move to address this problem through technology. But issues with online leads such as — too many irrelevant leads, problem in lead conversions for new and low online presence vendors, are areas which if solved, will contribute to raising the standards of ‘still offline’ and ‘non-tech savvy’ vendors economically and operationally.
Event technology firm ‘Eventila’ recently conducted a survey with about 1000 vendors from event industry to identify major operational problems vendors are facing on a day-to-day basis. Here is a broad summary of the results:
Low lead Count:
“Low social media reach”, “Less website traffic” or “No website” collectively contributed to 73% cause of low lead count mainly for medium and small service providers. Vendors who already have a huge fan following (count) on social pages also reported less lead count issue ‘Seasonally’. Among them, 60% attributed the reason for the low season lead count to “No time to manage website and social pages” or “irregularity in postings”.
Too many lead sources, difficult to manage
Managing too many leads was found as one of the major problems that vendors face in the event market. About 53% vendor with handsome lead count said that fruitfully managing and tracking leads internally is a major challenge. As per one another study from the industry, 65% of walk-in leads get wasted due to ‘superficiality’ and ‘irregular response’. Operational management of too many leads from numerous lead sources has now become a tedious task for the vendors.
Lead Progress Tracking & Conversions
When we asked about one big problem in managing leads, almost 90% of vendors agreed that tracking the progress of each lead has become a pain in the neck with too many lead sources. As per market research by Ken Krogue, Businesses lose 71% of market leads due to “low responsiveness”.
Which lead is relevant to me?
The normal proportion of lead conversion in the industry is around 1 out of 15. It means vendors generally waste 93% of their time on bad leads. Which lead to focus? And which to ignore? It is one of the most vital problems that every vendor faces in this industry.
Low brand Awareness — Website/Social
About 80% of the vendors who responded to the survey reported having “no website”. Among those who have a website, 98% website don’t match to the event industry website standards resulting in less website traffic and customer session time.
A marketing guru has said, “Website is now a necessity, not a luxury”. If you have a business and don’t have a website, you are probably losing significant great opportunities necessary for the growth of your business.
The similar type of results was found in the Social media related questions. Increasing visibility among customers is one major factor that makes use of social media important. 95% of vendors have social media pages, but only 2% among them have the type of fan following required for mass reach. This is true for all types of vendors across all major categories including photography, makeup, event planners etc.
Business Data Management
Managing data is known to be one of the biggest challenges in the world. Traditional methods of managing data on Google Drive, Dropbox, flicker and other online storage options or personal hard drive have many issues. Generally, data gets scattered and it becomes a task in itself to remember and find images and videos as per the need and intended work. It hinders quick sharing of relevant data to the client, organizing images as per quality, identifying eye-arresting work for social media sharing etc.
Companies who learn the trick of efficiently organizing data are productive and create numerous happy customer experiences.
Little idea of competition:
Competition tracking is key to succeed in business. Any vendor tries to keep all the know-how of their competitors on their fingertips but when we inquired on the key business numbers like the difference in the number of queries and executed leads, social media postings, why they are doing better/not so good they were literally blank. In this data age, having competitor knowledge is key to outsmart your competitor and get conversions.
