January 16, 2023
Modern-day Marketers are highly equipped with countless tactics and strategies when it comes to B2B Marketing. According to a report published by the Event Marketing Institute, event marketing is one of the world’s fastest growing forms of marketing.
As we continue to grow in the business environment, there are several new strategies invented daily to hunt for the prospects and customers. But Event marketing still continues to hold its value as a true solution for B2B companies and it’s only continuing to grow more & more.
According to Forrester Research, the average B2B Marketers allocate 25% of their overall budget towards live events & trade shows in order to connect with customers, educate attendees, and generate qualified leads. Event marketing has emerged as a powerful marketing strategy and is capable of doing a lot for B2B companies.
What is B2B Event Marketing?
B2B Event marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating events to promote a brand, service or product. It typically involves direct contact with a brand’s representatives, allowing for more direct interaction. Events are also a way to win media over and could be treated as an alternative for advertisement.
B2B event marketing strictly focuses on the relationships between organizations. It is an event meant to exhibit the goods and services belonging to a specific industry to the potential buyers and businesses. Event marketing describes the process of developing a themed exhibit, display, or presentation to promote a product, service, cause, in-person engagement. Events can occur online or offline and can be participated in, hosted, or sponsored.
Implementation of B2B Event Marketing
B2B Marketers can include events in their overall marketing strategy in a number of different ways. The implementation will depend on the stage of your company as well as the desired outcomes. The type of event you choose is impacted by a number of factors. These include your:
- 1)Budget
- 2)Company size
- 3)Event goals
- 4)Company’s experience in event marketing
Some of the common ways companies by which a company can implement a B2B event marketing strategy are –
1. Becoming an Exhibitor.
An exhibitor is a person who displays works of art or other items of interest at an exhibition. The most common and useful form of B2B event marketing is attending an event as an exhibitor. Organizations use this opportunity to create a unique image for themselves and to connect with prospects who are interested in their product and services.
Give yourself at least one year to create and execute an exhibitor marketing plan. Allocate sufficient funds for your exhibitor marketing plan. Think of the cost as an investment in your event.
Exhibiting at an event can be a strong B2B Lead generation strategy that will prove its ROI once the leads successfully close as customers. Additionally, event exhibitions are great for brand awareness because companies can talk to contacts who’ve never come across their product or brand.
2. Conferences.
A lot can happen over a table.
In addition to building brand awareness and generating leads, hosting a conference will establish your presence in the industry and force others to view your company as a thought leader in the market.
Successful conference marketing takes time and an effective strategy. Understanding your market needs and the factors that motivate them are key. However, it usually takes time to familiarize yourself with audience patterns, especially if you are new to the meeting industry.
3. Conducting seminars and Workshops.
Seminars and workshops are particularly potent business marketing tools. A seminar is a type of conference or another meeting for discussion or training. The seminar business is a large and diverse industry. Every day, thousands of seminars are being presented around the world. Many are offered for free and many more are offered at great prices.
Seminars are a new, untapped marketing idea. It’s an easier way to reach dozens or hundreds of current & potential customers to show them what you do, help solve a problem for them and to build a relationship to sell more.
The best part is that you will fulfill a deeper purpose as you make a valuable contribution to society by educating the attendees. The information and knowledge that you will share with attendees will have them finding new ways to improve their lives.
Seminars & Workshops will help with the following:
• Create New Business
• Educate Current Customers
• Educate Potential Customers
• Increase Sales and Revenues
• Increase Community Profile
• Increase Public Relations
4. Awards and competitions.
If you’re planning your marketing activities, entering or organizing business awards should be a part of your strategy. Winning, Distributing or even just making the shortlist for such awards, comes with a range of benefits for the firms involved.
Make the most out of your Event Marketing Strategy
Any event that only successfully completes is not an event or a success. Success in the case of an event is always calculated by the strength of the active attendees at the event who took part in the event proactively.
While executing an event is no small feat, the main objectives should be always to improve the event ROI. To gain the greatest return from events you need to follow the below steps.
The object of this strategy is to promote customers who are excelling at the use of your products or services and to encourage others to excel as well. Thus giving you a chance to generate more revenue for your business. This strategy is mainly implemented by big MNC’s who have a special budget for the same.
The Marketing Nation Summit conducted from April 29 – May 2, 2018. is the best example of this strategy.
1. Set your objectives
Before even planning to host an event think of why you want to host it & what you want to achieve from that event. What are your expectations for that event? Set measurable goals such as the number of attendees, number of follow-up meetings, new sales, etc. This ensures that you have objective criteria to rate the effectiveness of your participation after the event.
2. Gather or train a team for handling events
Whether your team will be attending an event or hosting one, all members should be specialized for their specific roles. Also make sure that well before the event date, all team members are properly trained on their specific objectives. The objective is to be as effective and as strategic as possible and this all starts with a specialized events team.
3. Go Digital
Today, events are more than just traditional meet or a get-together. There’s a lot cooking over the internet and there are a lot of hungry people starving to eat. One of the best benefits of involving technology in your event marketing strategy is excellent brand communication that is far more effective and cheaper than what traditional channels can offer.
4. Follow up
According to a report more than 75% of the trade shows, event exhibitors don’t follow up with their ‘leads’. Follow-up doesn’t solely rest on the shoulders of the marketing team. It’s a combined effort of your sales and marketing team. It’s important to work with your sales team to design a follow-up program that includes both marketing and sales touch points.
To Conclude…
The benefits of event marketing are significant. But many organizations fail to understand and work out on all that a great event has to offer. They mismanage their event spending and end up losing touch with their bottom lines and ROI. It requires a solid strategy. Planning and executing them well plays a huge part in how successful they will be.
Events, trade show registrations are not only challenging but complex as well. Since, it is not only about higher registrations but it is also important to know the quality and quantity of leads generated through these registrations. Apprise Marketing Services – AMS undertakes an in-depth preliminary analysis of prospective registrants and makes appropriate efforts to drive them to these programs that most likely result into leads or conversions for the businesses.
We can help you smoothly overcome the following event marketing challenges:
- Attracting new audiences from social media channels
- Difficulty in converting prospects into attendees
- Unproductive email lists
- Ineffective event email campaigns
Our event marketing team includes:
- Digital marketing experts to promote your event on multiple paid & free social channels.
- Tele-callers to call & verify attendees.
- Project manager to overall manage your entire event promotions campaigns.
Visit us at www.ams-in.com or contact us to know how we can successfully generate an audience for your events irrespective of the demographic and geography.
Thank you.
Leave A Comment