Blog posts from September, 2012

Rental Management Magazine recently featured an article about Party Reflections based in Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham, NC. They used their creativity to not only help employee morale by fostering a friendly in-house tabletop contest, but also help refresh their showroom and gain web traffic. Originally, Party Reflections let outside clients judge the anonymous tables based on creativity, use of budget, and function. This year, they expanded the judging pool and created a way for this contest to generate more web traffic. Douglas Crowe, CERP, Party Reflections director of sales states:

“In a day and age where the most face-time you get with certain clients is on their Facebook page, the tabletop competition has given us a unique opportunity to draw clients into our store and reiterate the strength of the organization’s staff members and products.”

With today’s market becoming a buyer’s market, event rental companies must think outside the box to attract attention and generate demand. In fact, according to Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch, up to 95% of qualified prospects on your website are there to research and are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, but as many as 70% of them will eventually buy a product from you – or your competitors.

So how did Party Reflections go about getting the attention of their website visitors utilizing this in-house contest? Photos of the contest were posted online and those who receive the company e-newsletter were invited to vote for their favourite via an online poll. It seems to be working for them also – with over 341 votes online and an uptick in website traffic. Another great way to promote the contest would be through social media like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or Pinterest. Asking people for their opinions is a great way to start a conversation.

This contest has major business benefits associated with it including increased employee morale, the ability to showcase new and notable products like folding cocktail tables, chivari chairs, or wing bowls, both in your showroom and on your website to better entice new and existing clientele, foster participation and retention of existing clientele, as well as creating an uptick in website traffic. Who doesn’t like those benefits?!

Do you have an offline contest like this you could bring online? If not, why not consider creating a contest similar to Party Reflections?

To get started on a contest of your own, you’ll need some solid and reliable tables such as the 6-ft NES Reliable Rectangular Plastic Folding Table with Adjustable Table Legs. These tables would allow your employees to think outside of the box with their ability to adjust from regular table height to a bar table height. You might be pleasantly surprised with the designs they come up with. If you would like additional information about the table, or if you would like to receive a quote on any of our other products, don’t hesitate to contact us!

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The National Event Supply Tradeshow Team is getting ready for a trip out west to the beautiful City of Edmonton for the 2012 Alberta Foodservice Expo. We were at last year's Expo in Calgary, and knew that we couldn't miss this year's show. The 2012 Alberta Foodservice Expo is being held at the Edmonton Expo Centre on September 9 & 10. National Event Supply will be in booth 434 and would love to see you!

Five reasons to stop by our booth!

We'll have our new Crystal and Glassware on display

We've had our Serenity Crystal Wine Glasses for a couple of months now, and they have been flying off the shelves. From a 12 oz White Wine Crystal glass to a 22 oz Red Wine Crystal glass, we have a wide assortment of crystal wine glasses to meet your needs. We also just received our Eclisse line of glassware this week, and the Alberta Foodservice Expo will be the first trade show where we'll have it available for viewing and for order. We know that if you take a look at our Crystal and Glassware, you'll love the design and the price.

We'll also have our new porcelain bowls in our booth

We showed these bowls off in a previous blog entry, but there is nothing like seeing them in person. Available in three different sizes, we have slanted bowls and wing bowls that can add a flair to your table. In addition to our new porcelain bowls, we'll have a wide selection of our porcelain dinnerware, platters, and bowls for you to examine and get a feel for.

You'll get a chance to examine the cutlery being used in the Culinary Stage Competitions

National Event Supply is providing the cutlery to the judges for the Culinary Stage Competitions. Our Maria Line of 18/10 Stainless Steel Cutlery is our most popular line of cutlery and designed for the rigours of a busy restaurant. With its clean lines and well-balanced heft, Maria Cutlery would make a fine addition to any restaurant's table.

You're thinking about purchasing Chiavari Chairs

National Event Supply has NES Resin Chiavari Chairs available in five colours (black, white, silver, gold, and mahogany) in addition to the gorgeous NES Crystal Chiavari Chair. We also have fabric and vinyl cushions as well as plywood-base cushions. If you visit our booth, you can see how strong these chairs really are, how great they look around a table, and how comfortable they really are.

You'll get a chance to talk to Dennis about your needs and find our why National Event Supply is right for you!

Dennis will be representing National Event Supply and he always loves talking to customers and visitors to our booth. So stop on by and have a chat with Dennis. He can help meet your needs and show you solutions that you might not have thought of.

This past week Dennis and I were in Boston for Inbound 2012 hosted by the inbound marketing firm Hubspot. In a previous blog entry, I talked about the dangers of using black hat SEO techniques to boost your organic search ratings. Hubspot is all about raising your organic search ranking the right way. We think their software is pretty good and provides loads of information that will help you develop your website and increase the number of organic visitors to your website. They are currently rolling out Hubspot 3, and if you think you might be interested in their software and their solutions, I would highly recommend checking them out. They provide all sorts of information about their product on their website, and have a demo that explains what their software is all about.

4 things I learned at Inbound 2012

Social Media is Incredibly Important for Raising Your Search Rankings

Sometimes it's hard to get excited about tweeting or facebooking or using any of the other social media networks. When you start out and you don't have a lot of followers, it can feel like you're talking to a wall. But if you create amazing and engaging content, and listen to what others say and provide your comments, you can build relationships with both current and future customers. An interesting factoid, Facebook currently has more than 900 Million users and Google + has more than 200 Million users. So think about the potential…

Social Media is Hard to do Well... and That's a Good Thing

If social media wasn't hard to do well, everyone would be doing it. It requires time, thought, and creativity. It's not something that can be automated and still pass the sniff test. People can tell when you aren't being authentic. Originally the sales activities for your company were all about face to face conversations and relationships. As we moved into the cities, stores became larger and customer service fell by the wayside. Social Media has begun to turn this trend. Conversations and relationships are once more becoming more and more important thanks to social media.

By 2014 more than 50% of all Web Traffic will be from Smart Phones and Tablets

Does your website use Flash animations for navigation or for banner ads? If you do, the most popular tablet on the market (the iPad), one of the most popular phones by market share (the iPhone), and most Android-powered smartphones won’t be able to see everything on your site. Last month (July 2012), according to the Google Analytics for our web site (www.nationaleventsupply.com), 6.22% of all our web traffic came from iOS (iPads, iPods, and iPhones) powered devices with another 1.5% from Android and Blackberry powered devices. In July of 2011, they accounted for 2.1% of our web traffic. We're currently working on another redevelopment our website, and you can bet this new release will definitely be mobile friendly.

Google+ is Important because of the Six Letters in front of the + Sign.

Google+ isn't as popular as Facebook, so it's not as important, right? Except that Google has tons of money and still has a big push behind Google + and is starting to roll social media into its search results. If your friends have +1'd a page, that page will show up higher in your search rankings, and you'll see that your friend has +1'd it. These endorsements matter, because you're more likely to choose a result that your friends have endorsed. And, I don't know about you, but the majority of our search traffic still comes from Google.

I'm not a marketing expert and I won't pretend to be one. If you're looking for help with your marketing, I would highly recommend talking to Hubspot, and checking out what they have to offer. And of course by all means please, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and/or subscribe to our blog.