Strategic Summits: Worth the Climb

Derse | May 12, 2019

It can often feel like you’re staring at an impossible mountain when faced with improving your face-to-face marketing program.  You don’t know what to focus on first; a new customer experience, enhanced measurement program, or perhaps a need for a new lead-retrieval system. For many, it feels like an uphill battle. But, we’re here to tell you, it shouldn’t.

If you haven’t participated in a strategic summit, don’t be intimidated. Strategic summits can help target initiatives that matter the most to your face-to-face program by evaluating your past performance, setting new KPIs, and ensuring your program can be measured.

Here are three ways strategic summits enhance your program and point you in the right direction for your journey.

man holding a compass and pointing to the trail ahead

1. ALIGN YOUR STRATEGY

The ultimate goal is to connect you to your customer, and your customer to your brand. But, in order to connect your customer to your brand, you have to understand the customer’s needs and wants. Strategic summits, lead by experienced face-to-face marketing strategists, evaluate your past show performance and perform competitor audits. Evaluating past trade show performance focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of your program, whereas competitor audits focus on how you stack up against competitors. The result? A strategy that aligns your key product launches and trade show programs with the needs of your target audience.

man looking through a telescope into the green mountains

2. VALIDATE AND MEASURE YOUR PROGRAM

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring. Take it all in – the past, the present, and the future. Strategic summits dive into your past program success and identify if your set method of measuring is relevant or if changes need to be made. You want to ensure you’re measuring the right things and not comparing apples to oranges. The result? A personalized performance metric plan built around your KPIs and ready to measure.

man tying rope around his waist for rock climbing

3. PROVIDE A PLAN OF ACTION

The ideal outcome of any strategy summit is to walk away with a documented plan of action. Without a detailed path to implementation, even the most innovative strategic ideas never reach the mountain’s peak. The result? Think of this as your guide for tackling your trek up to the summit. Having a plan of action and measuring your progress against it frequently is essential for anyone staring at a mountain of change.

If you have your own mountain to climb, contact us for more information on how we’re helping clients reach new heights in their face-to-face marketing programs.

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