How to market your Corporate Event, Conference, Association Meeting, Tradeshow or Exhibition.

Marketing face-to-face, or “Event Marketing”, traditionally has fallen into the vague category of “below the line” or unmeasured media. Typically, events have been poorly measured or under-measured. So while Corporate Events are among the oldest marketing tactics around, many senior executives aren’t entirely sold on their value, or where and how they can fit into a truly integrated marketing mix.

But a new focus on marketing, as well as increased spend in this area, means that Event Marketers need to come to the table ready to define and defend the value of events. According to Meeting Professionals International, total spend on events topped $100 billion in 2005, an estimated 50% of marketers spent more on events year over year.

Instead of simply trying to justify their event spend, marketers should begin by defining an event strategy, thereby shifting the conversation from one in which value needs to be defended to one where it is clearly measured and understood.

The following are 7 key strategies for hosting a successful corporate marketing event strategy.

1. Have a solid idea of what you want to accomplish.
   It sounds obvious, but surprisingly few organisations begin their event strategy by defining goals.
   • Defining goals can be as simple as creating a calendar that maps out short-term needs as well as long-term opportunities. For example, if you are launching a product that won’t be available until the second quarter, your first quarter event goals might be “creating understanding and alignment” among internal, sales and channel audiences, measured in terms of how successfully your events equip them with knowledge of the product that will later fuel sales. Your goals for the second quarter, when the product becomes available, should shift to “creating awareness” and “increasing consideration” among key customers and influencers.
   • At the very least, begin your event strategy by mapping out the long-term picture – as far out on the horizon as you can see – taking into account what you will need to accomplish, when you need to accomplish it, and what your available event “media” (e.g., trade shows, conferences, exhibitions, corporate meetings etc.) are.
   • Once you have this event plan in place, you should re-evaluate progress and update your plan once a quarter. It’s not rocket science, but it’s critically important to know where your event spend is leading you.
2. Keep an eye on the competition.
   Once you’ve mapped out your own plan, it’s a good idea to establish and maintain a database of what the competition is doing.
   • What events do they exhibit at or sponsor?
   • What are the messages in their current advertising campaigns?
   • What kinds of influencers are they engaging? Having this insight will ensure that your events are differentiated from those of your competitors and can only help you do better.
3. Understand how events fit into your current marketing and brand campaigns.
   Too often, companies choose to invest in certain events based on history (“we’ve always been at this show”).
   Identify 3 or 4 key areas that you can consistently measure across all of your events so you can compile “apples-to-apples” metrics.
   • Past precedent should certainly inform your thinking, but more fundamental is whether a particular event works for the campaign or brand message you’re promoting now. If you start by working with your non-event colleagues to map out current marketing and brand initiatives, it’s much easier to ask – and answer- questions like “Is this the right event for our current campaign?”
   • If you have a strong message you’re trying to promote, and you know how to capture your target audience’s attention, you might find that it’s more effective as well as efficient, to create your own event instead of showing up at the same old conference again.
     
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4. Gather the right business intelligence about your market.
   Know the “big picture” but also go deep into understanding how corporate events fit into your on-the-ground sales picture. Work with individual sales teams – defined by region, product or service – to understand their goals and challenges. Identify what are the strong opportunities, and where events can fuel success.
5. Research your event audience (s).
   Conduct audience research to ensure that your event strategy and messaging truly connect with, and convert, your key audiences.
   • Audience research doesn’t have to be complicated, or even expensive. A simple online survey as part of an event registration site for example, can go a long way toward helping you segment out audiences by seniority, maturity of understanding and current perceptions of your product/brand.
   • You can also talk to your sales force – the people who deal directly with your customer base all the time – to get a good picture of audience demographics and psychographics.
6. Know what events work for which audiences.
   After you’ve segmented your audience, it’s important to prioritise events according to what kinds of events work for which of your targets. Some general rules apply…
   • Manager-level and tactical buyers are best engaged via trade shows, road shows and specialised sales calls, where the emphasis is on selling the product or service.
   • C-level customers and influencers are more appropriately engaged by proprietary events and industry or media-sponsored conferences, where the emphasis is on making higher-level connections and driving conversations about key business trends.
7. Have a plan for measurement – and carry through on it.
   It’s a paradox of event marketing that so many organisations do not measure their corporate events. That often reflects a lack of understanding about how to measure events, or a perception of measurement as a “nice-to-have” expense (rather than a “must-have” cost of doing business) that’s all too easy to cut out of a tight budget. Interestingly, data gathered by MPI and George P. Johnson have consistently demonstrated that organisations that measure corporate events are more likely to increase their event spend than those that do not.
   • Identifying three or four key areas that you can consistently measure across all of your events, so that you can compile “apples to apples” metrics enabling you to compare ROI from event to event and year to year.
   • Depending on your organisation as well as your events, you might want to focus not on quantity (how many attendees, how many leads) but on quality (attendees by seniority or purchase influence, impact on brand or product perception).
   • You should consider time as a factor: for example, how much face time, on average did you get with your target audience? How quickly did leads convert to sales? Once you’ve set these key metrics for your event program, establish a database so you can evaluate on an event basis as well as a year to year basis.

Thanks to Liz Bigham, Vice President and Director of marketing for Jack Morton Worldwide.