A basic principle of marketing is getting the right message to the person at the right time. This is especially important when the product you’re promoting is an event, as events are so time-sensitive. They have a fixed timeline and ‘sell-by date’. If you don’t get enough marketing out early enough, you’ll miss your chance to capture the audience you’re aiming to attract to the event.

People are busy - especially the professionals and senior executives who typically form the audience for most conferences. Their diaries fill up very fast, and far in advance. So, you need to get early awareness, engagement and interest from your target delegates - otherwise you’ll miss your window of opportunity to get your event into their diaries as a firm commitment.

Ideally you want your targeted delegates to register early, i.e. weeks, if not months ahead of your event. Not only does this make it easier to plan your event in terms of logistics - it also significantly reduces your financial risk.

Another upside of bringing in bookings early is your ability to leverage early registrations to sell even more delegate places (using FOMO), and being able to leverage a strong delegate list to sell more sponsorship and exhibition spaces ahead of the event - assuming this is an important revenue stream for your business.

To commit early to your event, at the very least your target audience should know when and where your conference will take place. Early on, they should also understand why attending the event would be a valuable enough experience or a good enough use of their time, compared to other ways they could be spending their time. If it is worthy of commitment, they will diarise your event dates early on - as well as required travel time to and from the event if it’s far from where they live. Potential delegates may also need to pitch for some budget to cover the cost, but from MPG’s experience - cost is very seldom a barrier if an event is worth attending. For senior executives in particular, their reputation, profile, network and time are the most precious currencies.

Any money a senior executive has to spend on attending an event - even if several thousand £/$/Euro - is generally a much less important consideration than the time it will take and what it will do for their reputation, profile or network. When evaluating whether or not it’s worth attending your conference, they will look for value-for-time before they look for value-for-money. And generally speaking, a senior executive will have enough room in their budget for the events worth attending.

Having said that, all of MPG’s experience tells us that everyone loves a bargain! So, even where you’re marketing to the most senior executives, early-bird discounts are a good way of getting early bookings - as long as the early-bird deadlines are well timed, the discounts are big enough, and the marketing campaigns are organised in the right way to make the most of this pricing tactic. Coming back to the concept of ‘lead time’, all of our experience also tells us that if your conference marketing campaigns don’t reach the right people early enough, with the right messages based on where you are in the event production cycle, your attendee numbers will suffer. Here is a simple how to guide on all things ‘lead time’ - the term we use in conference marketing to refer to one of the most important elements of timing of marketing campaigns:

#1 What is lead time?

Lead time refers to the number of weeks between the launch of the full marketing campaign, and the date of the event. By ‘launch of full marketing campaign’ we mean releasing the following information:

1. Dates and venue of the event

2. Event theme, key speakers and overall ‘shape’ and format of content programme

3. Who else is likely to be attending

4. The benefits of attending, arising from all of the above

5. How to register to attend an event, sometimes requiring a purchase of a delegate ticket (typically this would be a self-serve online process, and/or via a sales person).

#2 What should your lead time be?

When determining the best lead time for your event, it is important to ask these questions:

• Is your event an in-person, hybrid, or virtual event?

• How senior is your target audience?

• Do a large number of your delegates need to travel far to attend the event?

• Is your event a small, quite frequent event, or does it only take place once a year, or every two years?

Generally speaking:

• When you’re asking delegates to pay to attend events, a longer lead time is needed than when promoting free to attend events.

• If your event is fully in-person or hybrid with an important in-person element, you will need a longer lead time than when promoting a virtual event, especially if delegates need to travel a significant distance to attend your event.

• The more senior your audience, the longer the lead time you will need.

Here are some guidelines based on event type:

• In-person/hybrid conference where the majority of your delegates are paying to attend - approx. 35 to 28 weeks lead time.

• In-person/hybrid events where the majority of attendees are free (exhibitions) - approx. 20 to 16 weeks lead time.

• Virtual event (paid delegate tickets) - approx. 28 to 20 weeks lead time.

• Virtual event (free to attend) - approx. 12 to 8 weeks lead time.

It is important to bear in mind that it is essential to keep promoting the event with regular communications via multiple channels in the weeks between launch and the event taking place, with marketing activity needing to ramp up in the last few weeks before the event takes place to maximise attendance.

#3 What are the other milestones within a timeline that a B2B event marketer should be mindful of?

To get the best results from an event marketing campaign, especially for a paid-for conference style event, here is what we recommend (having seen a lot of evidence over the years that this is what works best - across events in all industries, globally):

• Bookings should open and ‘save the date’ email campaigns should start at least 6 months before the event.

• A draft agenda including at least 50% of the speakers and content should be published on the event website no later than 16 weeks leading up to the event.

• A final agenda containing at least 90% of speakers and content should be published on the event website no later than 12 weeks before the event.

• If you plan to use early-bird pricing for your event - which we always recommend for paid-for events to create a sense of urgency and bring revenue in early, here is what we recommend (dependent on number of early-birds planned):

• For 3 early-bird price breaks, it is best for them to fall within the following intervals before the event:

• 8 to 10 weeks

• 4 to 6 weeks

• 2 to 3 weeks

• For 2 early-bird price breaks, it is best for them to fall within the following intervals before the event:

• 4 to 6 weeks

• 2 to 3 weeks

#4 What are the additional benefits of a good lead time and well structured timeline?

Having sufficient lead time for an event allows you to invest in key strategic priorities and channels at the beginning of the campaign e.g. conducting more research into media partners, and inviting them on early, or time to improve the user experience for your website. Not having enough time to plan ahead and optimise your all your channels throughout the campaign will mean you’re missing out on delegates you could have attracted to your event. Furthermore, a ‘good’ lead time allows you to develop your database: by drawing people to your event website over a longer time period across multiple channels, especially inbound channels, you can convert more to known prospects and leads as they enter your database via form completions on your website. In a post-COVID world, amidst an uneasy economic climate, MPG has found that most successful events are those that lead their market. You cannot be a market leader if you take your event to market later than you should. . So make sure you get your lead time right if you want to win the events race ahead!

 

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Do you have the required experienced and skilled marketing resources to give you a good lead time on your events?

Team MPG can provide the resources and know-how you need to be a market leader. To turbo-boost event growth, our clients outsource event marketing to us - often for their highest growth, flagship events. Get in touch today to find out how Team MPG can help you.