What is Event Marketing?
Event Marketing is a promotional strategy marketers use to promote their brand, product, or service to leverage in-person or real-time engagement. This type of marketing describes the process of developing themed exhibits, displays, or presentations. Moreover, event marketing gives potential customers the feeling of a firsthand and unique interaction with a company or brand and a true glimpse of its personality, focus, and perspective. The events can also be online or offline, and companies and brands can participate as hosts, participants, or sponsors.
Types of Event Marketing
- Online Marketing Events
- Webinars
- Live Streaming Events
- Trade Shows
- In-Person Events
- Conferences
- Seminars
- Breakfasts, lunches, and dinners
Power of Event Marketing
Increases customer engagement
The engagement provided by events is uniquely powerful because it provides an invaluable opportunity for personal interaction that ultimately increases client retention and builds customer loyalty. Engaging with customers helps humanize a company or brand and makes it more authentic, thus creating a deeper relationship with them. Since generating a big ROI depends on retaining and growing existing customers, staying connected and updated is the key. Event marketing enables this by giving customers the opportunity to experience the chance of you up selling them products and services that they may not know or realize that can sufficiently address their pending needs. Also, word-of-mouth (WOM) is the most effective means of generating new customers and this builds customer engagement. And happy, engaged customers are more likely to talk about a brand or company.
Generate leads
Becoming part of an event that can attract your target audience is one way of generating leads for your business. Choosing and planning the right events can create an opportunity for a brand or company to interact with a group of potential customers that may or may not already have an interest in what the brand or company stands for. Conferences and trade shows are powerful ways to engage with your target audience, gain insight on their pain points, and understand their buying and decision-making process. To facilitate lead generation, a company or brand can opt to organize demo stations, speaking sessions, social media events and challenges, and host a sponsored party. These different types of events will later dictate and guide the company or brand on what information to obtain and communicate further.
Builds brand awareness
Products and services that maintain a high level of brand awareness are more likely to generate more sales. With this, the power of event marketing in building brand awareness roots from being able to create a memorable experience at events with your target buyers in attendance. Event marketing paves the way for a company or brand by giving them the opportunity to gain access to a highly targeted audience and show off their brand’s personality. Participating or hosting an event establishes and builds the company or brand’s name and identity. Attendees are more likely to think of the brand first when they’re looking to purchase because of the experience it gave them. Not only event marketing impacts buyers but also reporters, bloggers, and journalists present in the affair. If done right, the company or brand can establish a relationship with them to get further press coverage.
Educate prospects and customers
Live events provide consumers with a better understanding of a product or service they are exposed to. The ability to expound information during live demonstrations surpass digital efforts and TV advertising as methods of knowing and recognizing about a brand or company. The information provided such as new strategies, trends in technology, use cases for a product or service during live events is one of the reasons people attend such events. The power that live events hold is so big that 65% of consumers said that it helps them understand products and services even better. The hacks in educating prospects and customers through live events is first, have well-trained staff who can give demos that address people’s pain points and can answer their questions with confidence and second, select keynote and session speakers who are well-versed in the topic and that their speeches are both informative and entertaining for the target audience.
Upsells customers
Upselling is a natural extension of educating customers on a company or brand’s products and services. Thus, educating consumers on their pain points and needs during live events creates an opportunity for marketers to upsell products and services. By demonstrating that the company or brand understands where their customers are coming from, it creates a bond and trust between them. This will give customers the perception that the company or brand is not just demonstrating for the mere fact of getting a sale, but to genuinely help them.
Some of the stats that back up the power of event marketing includes
- 74.5% of B2B marketers said they use conferences or trade show booths to acquire customers and 9.1% said that was their most impactful revenue channel (tied with content marketing and SEO)
- 44% of marketers experience a 3:1 ROI from event marketing
- 75% of content marketers thought that in-person events are the most effective marketing tactic
Takeaways
In a nutshell, live events provide the opportunity for one to connect directly with customers and stakeholders and clearly communicate what they mean in business. Event marketing can benefit a company or brand in a variety of ways. Aside from helping it build brand presence before, during, and after the event, it can generate leads, pipeline value, and create new opportunities in the industry it is in. The power of live events continues to grow as it is considered as one of the most important marketing tools for today’s big companies.