We're now well into September - one of the busiest months in conferences and tradeshows.

Your Autumn events calendar is packed and the pressure is on to deliver big numbers for the final events of the year. Then there are 2027 plans and budgets to finalise...

As a team of event marketing generalists and specialists with a growth engineering mindset and skill-set, Team MPG has been hard at work supporting the most ambitious event organisers - especially those recently acquired or looking to attract investors within the next few years. So we know what investors value:

(1) Consistent and predictable top-line growth.

(2) YoY attendee volume growth, and an event audience of exactly the right profile.

(3) Systemised retention and acquisition of sponsors and exhibitors - delivering bigger average order values.

What does this mean for event marketing? Overall, more commercial accountability. See the recent Insights piece on this theme: New money coming into events is shining a spotlight on event marketing leadership. Unsurprisingly, this has been our most-read blog of 2026.

As you put the final touches to your plans and budget submissions for next year, we're here to help. In this Special Edition of MPG's Digest, you will find guidance on:

#1 Marketing skills for growing events: MPG's framework of the six essential, interconnected event marketing skill-sets that every conference and exhibition organiser needs - on tap.

#2 AI-enabled automation to grow B2B events: three event marketing tools that growth-focused events businesses should consider using.

#3 MPG Diary: where Team MPG will be meeting the 'movers & shapers' in our industry this Autumn. If you'll be there too, drop our founder Helen Coetzee a note - she'd love to say hi!

 

MARKETING SKILLS FOR GROWING EVENTS

Achieving reliable YoY growth in an events portfolio needs a range of marketing capabilities that go well beyond one person's skill-set.

Getting access to the full breadth and depth of marketing skills is essential and increasingly achieved with a hybrid approach relying on a core marketing team of 'always on' generalists, well supported by fractional specialists.

GENERALISTS = senior, experienced event marketers to create your marcomms strategies and plans overseeing tacticians to execute. These generalist marketers need to plan, manage and deliver two distinct types of campaigns that differ in focus and approach:

#1 Multi-channel audience marketing campaigns: to target and convert the required profile and volume of delegates/visitors for event success. They need to expertly bring together inbound and outbound channels through the full funnel. If they spend most of their time on email marketing you've got a problem - read: If you're relying on email to promote your event, you're in trouble

#2 Multi-channel commercial marketing campaigns: demand gen to support sponsorship and exhibition sales - leading with value-based messaging, a combination of inbound and outbound methods and strong stakeholder management for sales and marketing alignment. This is an area ripe for investment to boost revenue growth - read: The biggest commercial opportunity most event organisers are ignoring

SPECIALISTS = hands-on channel and technical experts to handle the aspects of your marketing needing precise, specialised work. They must have an embedded understanding of events businesses and event marketing requirements as it is this important contextual expertise, along with their specialised knowledge and experience in their specialisation, that makes them reliable partners to generalist marketers. Here, you're looking for fractional:

#3 Analysts to set up your Google Analytics (GA4), Google Tag Manager (GTM) and Dashboards - critical tools for marketing ROI visibility, measurement and benchmarking. This is where event organisers have the opportunity to harness the potential of data in all its forms: Event marketing measurement and attribution: a practical guide for B2B conference and exhibition organisers

#4 PPC & paid media experts to manage digital campaigns to work well for events - optimised for conversions and revenue, eliminating the focus on vanity metrics (clicks and impressions). Too many conference and exhibition organisers are losing money on their digital ads and they don't even know it - read: Are you running your PPC campaigns in the best way? A checklist for event marketers

#5 Tech & data specialists to design and manage your data and tech stack for AI-led automation of campaigns and internal workflows. Here we see an established tool like HubSpot as essential for AI enablement - read: Why HubSpot works well for B2B event organisers, and the 3 things that make it better than alternatives

#6 Revenue systems engineers to systematically optimise every step in your marketing and sales process. When key components of the processes are neglected or mishandled, the real and opportunity costs are immense. Read: Why your RevOps investment isn't delivering: 4 costly mistakes B2B event businesses make with martech

If even one of these pieces is missing, you're leaving money on the table, and growth to chance.

Team MPG plugs your event marketing gaps. For over 12 years, we've worked as a highly effective extension of inhouse teams - adding experienced strategic and tactical generalist and specialist resources where and when they're needed most, especially for events and portfolios earmarked for growth. Get in touch to find out more.

 

THREE MARKETING TOOLS FOR SMARTER, AI-ENABLED GROWTH

Because Team MPG works on so many events, we use a wide range of tech and AI tools - including well-established platforms and new market entrants. We're always on the lookout for new tools we can test and recommend to our clients - if we think they'll be worth the investment.

When recommending tools, we take into account every event organiser's growth strategy, unique product portfolio, target market, current tech and data set-up, and budget.

Being platform agnostic (MPG is not tied to one specific tool), we'll always make unbiased and pragmatic recommendations.

Here are three we've tested recently that we think every growth-focused events business should consider investing in:

SparkToro

An AI-enabled audience research tool that shows you where your audience spends time online, including the websites they visit, publications they read, podcasts they listen to, videos they watch and social accounts they follow. This helps you to:

• Identify the publications, podcasts, channels and influential sources that attract your audience's attention.
• Conduct fast, data-led audience research rather than relying solely on assumptions.
• Focus your marketing efforts on the channels, content and partnerships most likely to reach your audience.

AnswerThePublic

A search-listening tool that uncovers the questions, phrases and related topics people search for around a particular keyword or subject. This helps you to:

• Understand what people want to know about a topic, helping inform your event programme and marketing content.
• Identify relevant long-tail searches and create content aligned with genuine search behaviour.
• Turn the questions people are asking into a valuable stream of audience-focused, search-friendly content.

OpusClip

An AI-powered video repurposing and editing tool that turns long-form videos into short clips formatted for social and digital channels. Reasons to try this tool:

• Transform webinars, interviews, podcasts and other long-form videos into short-form content designed for social platforms.
• Create multiple video variations for PPC campaigns, giving you more creative assets to test across paid channels.
• Produce more video content at scale while reducing the time and resources traditionally required for editing and repurposing.

Subscribe to MPG Insights to receive emails about new AI & automation tools as we test them.

 

MPG DIARY

Team MPG is attending the following events in the next few months - please drop Helen a note if you'd like to meet up!

• The Collingwood Value Creation Summit, hosted by Collingwood - 7 October 2026, London
• Event Tech Live London - 11 & 12 November 2026, London
• The Definitive AI Forum for Media, Information & Events, hosted by Flashes & Flames - 18 November 2026, London

 

And that's a wrap for this edition.

If you'd like to talk about how you can get more out of your investment in event marketing, we'd love to have a chat! Contact us and we'll be in touch soon.