Alexander Kesler is the founder and CEO of INFUSEmedia, a leading demand generation firm. Alexander leads a team of digital marketing experts who specialize in B2B lead generation, content marketing and syndication, ABM and intent strategies, data processing and validation, programmatic media buying and brand amplification.
In an increasingly digital world, the in-person experience of an event can be a significant ROI-boosting differentiator. In fact, 80 percent of marketers believe live events are critical to their company’s success. For that reason alone, events should be a meaningful part of your overall B2B marketing strategy. But how do you make sure your events are a success? Read on to discover some essential tips for marketing your events to maximize attendance.
You can harness the power of inbound marketing to attract the right people to register for and attend your event.
To engage the right people, you need to start by creating target audience personas based on your market research. Once you have a good idea of what your ticket buyers look like, it will be much easier to plan and measure your campaign. Through inbound, you can continually leverage new data to fine-tune your strategy.
Automated campaigns can do everything from capturing and nurturing the lead to pushing them further down the funnel before they commit to your event. You can adapt these campaigns to a variety of purposes, such as inviting leads to your event or reserving seats.
You’ll also want to take advantage of drip campaigns. Once you’ve inputted all your leads into a CRM tool and have assigned them different labels based on the persona or buying stage they represent, drip campaigns can periodically remind the lead of your upcoming event, send them relevant material, or nurture them after the event if they aren’t quite ready to commit.
Nothing makes the attendees roll in like a well-planned social campaign. To be more precise, according to Eventbrite, 25 percent of traffic to ticketing and registration pages comes from social media. One big reason for this is that social media posts can quickly reach a broad segment of your target audience, especially through hashtags and sponsored posts. For example, you can target relevant professionals with paid Facebook ads.
Social media also allows higher degrees of engagement since users can easily comment on your posts or message your company directly to get more information about the event. They can also save the event on their profile to get reminders and share it with friends who fit your ideal customer persona.
There are two reasons why these benefits should be front-and-center in your marketing materials. First, people clearly need to know exactly what they should expect to gain from attending your event, aside from learning about your company. Focus on how the program will enrich their professional knowledge and propel their career forward, whether it’s early access to a revolutionary new product or service or the chance to network with prominent people in their fields.
Second, a lot of attendees come to your event via their employers, and they need to make a good business case for why it would be beneficial both to their professional development and the company. Having the perks laid out for them makes their job easier and raises the chances they’ll attend.
To make the case for your event, you need to have a separate “Why Attend?” section or page on your event website. You can sell the benefits to potential attendees by providing compelling visuals, testimonials, stats, and even a how-to guide on convincing the boss.
Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 in this series.
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