There is no doubt about it - B2B events are truly booming! 

Recently in his Flashes & Flames newsletter, the renowned Colin Morrison told us that “Global trade show revenues rebounded by 16% in 2024 and are expected to do +18% this year.”

Colin also points out that:

• There is a ‘change in the air’ as one-to-one meeting formats take centre stage. This points to the need for a highly curated audience at every event. ‘Who’s in the room’ matters more than ever - surpassing ‘volume of attendees’ as a key priority.
• Specialists with deep market expertise are likely to see the greatest reward. This points to the importance of highly relevant content at events, as well as highly relevant messaging when promoting events.
• Many companies will establish ‘semi-detached' operations to compete effectively while leaving existing teams to maximise legacy revenues. This points to the need for more flexible operating models, likely to include the use of external specialists to create ‘incubator’ type environments, a model with which Team MPG is very familiar. 

A booming market also means more competition, making strong event marketing essential. And to have strong event marketing, you need - first and foremost - to have strong foundations in place.

Here are seven key foundations for a successful events business:

1. Clearly defining and sizing your event target market, followed by segmentation and targeting to attract enough of the right people to your event. You need a structured target market map, including market sizing compared to your current reach. This should be done for both your event attendees and sponsors/exhibitors - at least 9 months before the event, ideally more.
    

2. Building the event marketing database you need to match your target market and meet your commercial goals. For every 1 good quality attendee you want to attract, you need 100 relevant names on your database. And to work out how big your database needs to be for commercial marketing (i.e. to attract sponsors and exhibitors), you should assume for every new client you want to acquire, you should work to a similar conversion rate.
    

3. Developing and deploying event marketing messaging that effectively communicates your event’s value to your audience and spex clients - ensuring different groups you’re targeting get different messages based on what is most valuable to them. You need a messaging matrix that maps out selling points and benefits for each key customer group - ensuring your whole event team is aligned on what they really care about.
    

4. Creating and managing your event website - your most important marketing channel - as an effective hub for converting those engaged with your marketing to event attendees and leads for your spex sales team. Event marketing sites need to be structured and managed in a certain way to be effective. There is no question that you need to invest in a fit-for-purpose event website in terms of structure, functionality and content - otherwise, none of your other channels will work as they should as they’re all driving traffic to your site.
    

5. A well-managed and truly integrated multi-channel event marketing campaign that will effectively reach, engage and convert your ideal event attendees to actual event attendees, and a separate but aligned campaign that will generate leads to attract sponsors/exhibitors. Your website, email marketing, PPC/paid media, organic social, media partners, and advocacy must all be activated. If one of these is missing, your event won’t achieve its potential. Telesales is usually also hugely beneficial and will more than pay for itself if expertly delivered and managed well. Direct mail sometimes features too - depending on the event.
    

6. Your event marketing lead time - ensuring your go-to-market timing is early enough. Booking patterns may be falling later, but that doesn’t mean your lead time can lag. In fact, the opposite is true. For events with content as a key driver of audience value, it is more important than ever to publish your full event content programme at least 14 weeks before the show - especially if you’re expecting attendees to pay to attend. And marketing for annual shows should be running all year round - building your brand, community and database.
    

7. Full measurement of your event marketing performance and ROI - tracking reach, engagement and conversions for different audience groups, from a range of channels and from various campaigns and tactics. Every bit of your marketing can and should be measured - as long as your analytics is set up correctly. Marketers should be sharing regular reports on engagement and conversions. This is the only way to ensure your attendee profile is going to meet expectations and to predict final attendee volumes.

These all may sound like ‘old news’ - i.e. what we’ve been talking about for many years. But they are the foundations, and every event needs these working well to do well in an increasingly competitive landscape. 

Do you need help getting your event marketing foundations in place? Get in touch with MPG to find out how we can help. 

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