“What’s in a name?” The famous Shakespeare quote is about family feuds interfering with love, but the question rings true for a lot of event industry professionals who, over the past decade or so, have increasingly questioned their titles.
It seems that more #eventprofs are rebranding as “Experience Producers” and “Live Event Designers” as opposed to Event Planners. Fewer companies are calling themselves “Event Rental” and are changing to “Entertainment Design” or “Experience Production.” Sometimes the companies are expanding their services and, to express the full breadth of their new offerings, feel that the title change is necessary. In others, the change has more to do with the hope of elevating a brand. At a recent conference I attended, one of the industry leaders expressed that event planners of a certain caliber ought to consider a change to distance themselves from those who enter the industry with no experience or skill set and, therefore, may tarnish the more common title.
Yet, it’s important to recognize the drawbacks of choosing a new title for yourself or your business when it comes to SEO. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of making your website more visible in search results. While many factors affect SEO, exact phrase matching between common search terms and your website’s title and language is a big one.
Goodshuffle Pro has run into this problem as a company that started calling ourselves “Event Rental Software.” Over time, we started meeting people at conferences and trade shows who said “I never looked at your software because we aren’t an event rental company. We’re a _____ (production, decor, design, full-service-planning) company.” In other words, they weren’t Googling the terms we have on our site and they were actually turned off seeing something that they didn’t relate to. We debated if it made sense to remove the term “rental” for fear that it would turn away some of our best-fitting clients.
However, the algorithms are mathematical. We needed to weigh the statistics of someone searching “rental software” vs. “event production and design firm software” and realized we had to lean in toward the majority, even if we continued to (and still do!) seek ways to emphasize our wide reach and customizability elsewhere.
Event planners face the same conundrum. If you call yourself “Experience Conductor” or “Full-Scale Live Event Producer,” you will indeed distinguish yourself from others within your realm. And, if you rely entirely on word-of-mouth marketing, this creativity in title may fit just fine! Or, if you reserve this language for your business cards and other offline engagements. However, if you want to attract new business via your website then the question is: Will it be worth the points lost on the SEO side when the planner down the road has their website title and H1 tags listed with “best planner in town” and the average bride or corporate event liaison won’t think to Google your creative title?