Some of your best memories are probably experiences that take you out of your everyday routine, whether a simple get-together with friends or a big wedding. B2B event marketing can make the same kind of impression on your leads and customers. Whether you’re attending a trade show or hosting your own event, these kinds of special occasions are where long-lasting partnerships are made. While events can be effective lead generation channels, there are many different kinds of events, each one aligning with different business goals. Here’s what each type of event can do for your business and how to make any event a success.

Planning for Success

Every event will incur at least some costs, which could include time you invest in planning and managing the event to costs of promotion, venue, food and beverage, or entertainment. Before doing anything that involves an investment, be clear about your goals. What do you hope to get out of holding or attending an event? The same thought process that goes into your customer journeys and marketing plans should be present here. Bring together sales, marketing, and operations teams to decide the purpose and expected outcome of the event. Do you want to:

• Make your business known to potential customers who have no awareness of you?
• Help current leads make the decision to become customers?
• Nurture current customers with product demonstrations, early access to new products, or continuing education?

Setting clear goals will help you determine what kind of event to host or attend and which members of your team should be present. Balance the cost of events with your marketing goals and the return you are expecting. Have you seen great returns from sending a sales team to that national trade show halfway across the country, or are your webinars creating more value? There are many ways to do event marketing.

Once you’ve worked out the details of the event, start planning with press releases, email campaigns, and landing pages. You want to know how many people to expect as soon as possible, so set an RSVP date and offer incentives for signing up early. And don't think incentives have to always be discounts! Incentives can include limited-seat education sessions, access to experts, limited edition books or swag ... get creative! In the run-up to the event, create content on social media and your blog to share the content, reasons, and benefits for attending your event.

After the event, be sure to follow up with personal thank you notes. Organize the leads you gathered and put them on the appropriate email nurture lists. When you host your own event, make it easy (and appealing!) for guests to posts about it on social media and tag you with your event hashtags.

Trade Shows

Trade shows remain the gold standard in corporate events. They are the classic venue for building relationships, finding new leads, and closing deals. While a lot of B2B business has moved online since the pandemic, trade shows are still a proven venue for finding new customers. Even if you do most of your business online, you may still want to attend trade shows if your particular niche benefits from in-person networking or product demonstrations.

Conferences

If you’re looking for event lead generation through thought leadership, consider conferences. You may think we mean consider attending conferences ... and we do! ... but we also encourage you to consider speaking at and hosting conferences. Conferences provide the opportunity for your technical experts to shine, to present innovative technologies and techniques, and to share your ideas about the future of your industry. Conferences help you position your company to new customers as well as nurture existing ones by providing ideas and education that will help them in their own businesses. Many B2B organizations have found conference hosting to be a powerful way to connect with current and future customers, whether they host alone or collaborate with other non-competitive B2B organizations that serve similar customers.

VIP Events

When you want to turn a warm lead into a hot lead or give something back to your best customers, give them the ultimate personalized attention with a VIP event. In some cases a fun outing or a nice meal can be enough,  but you may also want to consider offering something of substance, something educational, inspiring, or useful that they can bring back to their own businesses.

Webinars

More B2B businesses are discovering the lead-generating potential of webinars. These relatively low-cost virtual events can perform a variety of marketing functions across the customer journey. They can be a great introduction to your business and how you serve your customers, provide value and thought leadership that turns leads into buyers, and nurture relationships with existing customers. They also have the benefit of generating leads all around the world, leads you may not otherwise have access to. In effect, you can get the benefits of all of the event types above without ever leaving home.

Your Ticket to the Main Event

Events serve a variety of lead generating and conversion functions, whether you’re attending one or hosting one yourself. No matter your goals, talents, or budget, there’s an event for you. When you incorporate B2B event marketing into an overall growth strategy, you’ll find yourself hosting a different kind of event altogether: the event celebrating your success.