How to Make a Successful Event Marketing? Everything You Need to Know

Table of Contents

1. What is event marketing?

Event marketing is a strategic process by which a company promotes a product, service or brand through various types of events. These include trade shows, conferences, seminars, webinars or product launches that are tailored around potential customers to create a memorable event experience and facilitate interactions and deeper connections between the customer and the company or business. And ultimately drive sales in a more personalized and impactful way. It's about creating a unique environment in which brand stories can be communicated effectively and engagingly.

2. Benefits of event marketing

In addition to achieving specific goals, event marketing can also bring many direct or potential benefits to enterprises and organizations from the inside out.

Increase brand awareness: Hosting or participating in events can significantly increase brand awareness. Because it provides the opportunity to demonstrate the value of products, services and companies to the target audience in a facetoface manner.
Generate leads: Event marketing campaigns reach a specific audience interested in your niche, search for and capture quality leads.
Increase collaboration opportunities: Each event is an industrytoindustry comparison and sharing platform, providing opportunities to connect with industry peers, potential partners and customers.
Direct and insightful customer feedback: Engaging directly with attendees allows companies to gather valuable feedback and gain insight into customer preferences and experiences.
Market positioning: Attending industry events or hosting your own can establish and solidify your position as an industry leader or innovator.
Generate a large amount of publicity content: Every activity will produce a large number of events, regardless of the impact, can be updated in real time or edited and released to the corresponding publicity platform, which can be used for marketing purposes.
Enhance brand loyalty: A good campaign can add a large number of new users and strengthen relationships with existing customers, providing them with a memorable and good experience.
Increase the motivation and inspiration of people inside the company: a good event marketing in the outside world to obtain a good effect can also increase the collaboration between employees, deepen the group bond, and stimulate innovative thinking.

3. Types of event marketing

Event marketing encompasses a wide range of strategies to promote a product, service, or brand through inperson or virtual events. Here are some common types of event marketing:

Trade Shows and Expos
Conferences and Seminars
Workshops and Training Sessions
Product Launch Events
Webinars and Virtual Events
Networking Events
Exhibitions and Fairs
Experiential Marketing Events
Sponsorships and Partnership Events
Community Event
VIP Events and Private Shows
Popup Events
Festivals Event

These types can be adapted to virtual formats, especially in response to changing needs and digital advancements, allowing broader access and interaction.

4. Tracking and analysis after market activities

Tracking and analyzing event marketing campaigns is key to understanding their effectiveness and improving future work. Here's a comprehensive guide on how to do it:

Follow up and collect user feedback

Send thank you emails: Shortly after the event, thank attendees, speakers, and sponsors by email or letter.

Share content: Distribute recorded videos, highlights or presentations to attendees as added value to increase engagement and satisfaction with the event.

Collect feedback: Use questionnaires to collect participants' satisfaction with the meeting and areas for improvement, which can be used to improve or refine the next event.

Collect user data

Gather lead information: When the campaign is over, make sure that all leads and contacts acquired during the campaign are accurately recorded in your CRM system.

Track social media in real time: Use social media analytics tools such as Meta Business Suite to track activityrelated shares, likes, and comments. Don't ignore every comment, because only people who are interested in the event will join the comments.

Salespeople follow up in a timely manner: Every move to track event participants is necessary to achieve sales goals or other important business opportunities

Analysis results and feedback

Attendance and registration rates: Registered attendees are compared with actual attendees to measure retention of interest.

Engagement Metrics: Use metrics such as engagement or social media engagement to assess which meetings or events have the highest engagement.

Cost analysis: Compare campaign expenses to generated revenue or value to assess the cost per lead or return on investment of the campaign.

Tools and resources

CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce, HubSpot) : for lead tracking and integration.

Social media tools (e.g. Hootsuite, Buffer) : for postengagement analysis.

Survey tools (e.g. SurveyMonkey, Google Forms) : Used to collect feedback effectively.

Analytics platforms (e.g. Google Analytics, Tableau) : for data visualization and analysis.

5.How to customize the right event marketing strategy

Developing the right event marketing strategy is a complex multi-step process that requires a thorough understanding of your target, audience, and resources. And according to their own budget, personnel have a clear and clear arrangement. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you develop an effective strategy:

Define your goals and objectives

The first step is to determine what direction you want to go with the campaign and to what extent you want to achieve the data. For example, the number of attendees, the amount of exposure on social media platforms, the amount of potential customers collected, and the actual revenue target. These indicators need to be set correctly and clearly, bearing in mind that "one bite does not make you fat."

Identify your target audience

Identify who your audience is and divide them into different groups based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. Thus further crafting messages that resonate with each section. Create meaningful connections with your audience using language, tone, and content that match their specific needs and preferences.

Choose the right channel and type of event

The right type of activity
Digital platform

Choosing the right type of activity can greatly determine the success of the activity. For specific activity Types, please refer to "3.Types of event marketing". Children's Book selects the most important publicity platform suitable for your audience group according to the differences in user habits among different social media platforms.

For example, linkedin is positioned as "the largest professional network in the world", and its external image is more formal and professional. Therefore, linkedin's publicity strategy will be more different and its target audience will be more professional.

Develop compelling event themes and content

Consistent theme
Engaging content

Create a central theme that aligns with your brand, and plan meetings, events, and content according to your users' needs and pain points to deliver value to attendees and create a cohesive and highly identifiable event.

Budget planning and resource allocation

Budget breakdown
ROI evaluation

Set your budget strictly and allocate resources rationally to promotions, venues, speakers, technology and any other necessary components. Keep some of the money in the emergency fund as appropriate, and consider the expected return on investment for each component of the strategy when the budget is properly allocated.

Leverage partnerships and sponsorship

Collaboration
Sponsorship opportunities

If you partner with other brands or influencers, when they are aligned with your campaign goals, it is possible to achieve a 1+1>2 effect in a state of cooperation and competition, helping to expand your influence. It can also provide sponsorship opportunities for brands that want to align with your event, generating real economic benefits.

Monitor and adjust your strategy

Feedback mechanism operation
Activity status analysis and adjustment

Timely adjustment of the details of the strategy, can also bring unexpected gains. Feedback can be collected at different stages of the campaign through surveys, polls, social media monitoring, etc. Track the performance of your marketing efforts and be prepared to adapt your strategy based on real-time data and insights.

Logistics and operation of the implementation activities

Develop a sound logistics plan, including registration, attendee management, technical and personnel coordination. Also prepare a well-thought-out contingency plan for potential problems. Planning is certainly difficult, but when everything is in place, success will come naturally.

6.Successful event marketing examples

"Barbie" movie marketing campaign: In 2023, the Barbie movie directed by Greta Gerwig launched a wave of pink across the world. The film is not only promoted through traditional advertising channels, but also launched a variety of co-branded goods and offline experience activities, covering multiple fields such as fashion, toys and home furnishing. The pink theme became a hot topic on social media, sparking a lot of user participation and discussion.
Taylor Swift's "Wild Parade" Concert Documentary campaign: Leveraging on her global tour, her team hosted a series of flash MOBS in several cities around the world to give fans an interactive experience related to the concert. These activities not only strengthened the cohesion of her fans, but also triggered a lot of UGC (user-generated content) on social media.
Nike's Sustainability Activities: Nike has always been committed to promoting sustainable fashion. They are highlighting their efforts to use renewable materials in the manufacturing of their products through a campaign called "Move to Zero" in 2023. In addition, they launched a social media challenge calling on consumers to share their sustainable lifestyle.
Coca-Cola's Custom Bottle campaign: Coca-Cola launched a campaign over the summer that allowed customers to design their own bottles through an online platform. Users can upload photos or design patterns to generate unique bottles, which not only strengthens the interaction between the brand and consumers, but also enhances the sense of belonging of consumers.

These activities have combined the communication effect of social media and actual offline experience, and successfully attracted a large number of consumers' attention through multi-channel and multi-form promotion means. Event marketing is evolving towards being more personalized and experiential to better stand out in the marketplace. For more specific and up-to-date cases, it is recommended to pay attention to the news reports of the marketing industry or the company's official website.