Event Marketing Services: 6 Undeniable Benefits [+ Our 7-Step Process to Boost Registrations]

An astonishing 85 percent of companies generate leads and sales through events, but only 12 percent of promoters feel highly effective at execution. 

Mind the gap, marketers.

As companies pivot towards virtual gatherings and online events, the art of event marketing has become more crucial than ever. But with this shift, a set of challenges has emerged, making it even more imperative for businesses to strategize and optimize their approach. 

This guide delves into the intricacies of event marketing, highlighting its challenges, the immense benefits of specialized services, and how a structured plan can lead to unparalleled success. For B2B companies aiming to make a mark, understanding and implementing these insights is the key to transforming your next event from a simple gathering to a monumental success.

What is Event Marketing?

Event marketing is a powerful strategy businesses employ to promote their brand, products, or services through live experiences. These experiences range from webinars and trade shows to product launches and corporate gatherings. 

If events are the bridges that bring businesses together to foster genuine connections and open new opportunities, then we can view event marketing as the roadmap that guides attendees to the right destination at the right time.

The 5 Top Challenges of Event Marketing in a Digitalized Era

The digital age, while offering expansive event platforms and tools for promotion, also introduces unique marketing challenges. If you aim to maximize event registrations, you may find yourself navigating a labyrinth of digital marketing intricacies. 

To better prepare you, we’ve listed the five primary challenges you’ll face when promoting your event, along with expert advice on how to overcome them:

1. Digital Noise: 

With every brand shifting focus online, the digital realm is flooded with distractions. Standing out and ensuring your event promotion is noticed and not lost in the cacophony has become an arduous task.

If you’re being drowned out by digital noise, Sudhir Khatwani, Director of The Money Mongers, Inc, knows exactly how you feel and gives us some insight on how to turn the tides:

“In the bustling space of event marketing, finding a way to grab the right eyes and ears has always been a bit of a bear. With everyone shouting over each other, it’s easy for your event to just blend into the crowd. To climb over this wall, we pulled out a simple, old-school playbook: speak the language of our audience and use every megaphone we can get our hands on, from social media shoutouts to good old email nudges, to make sure our event doesn’t get shoved into the unnoticed corners.”

2. Precision Targeting:

The vastness of digital platforms means a wide array of audience types. Delivering your marketing message to the decision-makers most likely to register for your live event requires a refined strategy with advanced tools and techniques.

When it comes to precision targeting, Vito Vishnepolsky the founding director of Martal Group has discovered that:

“When it comes to targeting, there are no shortcuts; you must have the right tools, talent, and techniques. We’ve found that detailed ideal client profiles paired with AI-powered prospecting tools and sales executives with industry experience are the ultimate trifecta for effective targeting. We heavily invest in buyer intent, technographic, and psychographic data, all of which empower our team to develop segmented, personalized campaigns that strike home with our clients’ prospects.”

3. Market Saturation:

The rise of online events has resulted in a saturated market. Nearly any business of any size can host a webinar or virtual conference at little to no cost, resulting in many subpar experiences. This overabundance has left more and more would-be attendees safeguarding their time from sales pitches masquerading as training or networking events.

Does that mean you should scrap your event altogether? Absolutely not! Here’s what Onur Kutlubay, CEO of YouParcel, suggests:

“Marketing events in the B2B world certainly present their unique set of challenges. The most prominent hurdle we’ve encountered is ensuring our event stands out in a crowded market. With numerous conferences and webinars vying for attention, it’s crucial to differentiate. To overcome this, we’ve implemented targeted email campaigns, leveraging our well-segmented client list, and created engaging teaser videos highlighting our events’ key takeaways. This strategy has boosted our event attendance significantly.”

4. Multichannel Coordination: 

Employing multiple digital platforms for event promotion is common, but ensuring consistency, timing, and effectiveness across all marketing channels often becomes a significant communication challenge for event marketers. Any confusion leading up to the event can hurt the attendance rate and diminish the return on investment. 

Kevin, over at Webserv, explained that they, too, struggled with seamlessly integrating multiple elements into their event campaigns, especially with a small team. Here’s how Webserv streamlined its strategy:

“Our strategy to overcome these challenges centers around strategic planning and the implementation of automation tools, which simplify complex processes and eradicate manual, time-consuming tasks. This enables us to concentrate on the strategic facets of event management and ensures the smooth execution of events, translating to potent lead generation and elevated sales.”

5. Marketing Optimization: 

Time is of the essence when promoting an event. It requires continuous evaluation of the marketing campaign’s progress and making strategic adjustments on the fly to meet event marketing goals. Developing an agile approach to optimization is often one of the most difficult yet most important pieces of the event marketing puzzle.

Gregory Rozdeba, president of Dundas Life, understands the challenges of optimization for a fast-paced event marketing campaign, stating:

“In my journey through event marketing, I’ve faced daunting hurdles. Coordinating logistics, attracting the right audience, and measuring ROI often felt like an uphill battle. But I persevered by embracing technology for streamlined planning, crafting compelling content to engage attendees, and implementing robust post-event analytics. It transformed my approach, boosting effectiveness and making event marketing a triumph.”

Considering these challenges, it’s no wonder that event marketing has become exceedingly complex, even more so than marketing products or services in some cases.

Now, if you are thinking that you already have a great deal of responsibility on your plate, don’t worry. Next, we’ll discuss how you can boost event registrations without taking focus away from event planning.

Event Marketing Services: The Secret to Amplifying Event Registrations

Event marketing services offer a specialized suite of strategies and tools to amplify reach, engagement, and, most importantly, registration numbers. It’s not about merely announcing an event—it’s about crafting a compelling narrative, reaching your target audience, and creating anticipation. 

As we dive into the unique benefits of event marketing services, you’ll discover how they can become the linchpin to transforming your event from ordinary to extraordinary.

6 Undeniable Benefits of Event Marketing Services 

Event marketing services are designed to turn those challenges we mentioned earlier into opportunities. By overcoming the obstacles you face with proven strategies, an event marketing agency can help your registration invitations reach and resonate with potential attendees who match your ideal client profile (ICP). 

Without further ado, let’s dive into understanding the 6 benefits that bridge the gap between potential pitfalls and solidified success.

1. Targeted Outreach:

In the world of B2B, precision is paramount. Event marketing services offer laser-focused targeting, ensuring your messages resonate with the right audience. Leveraging advanced prospecting tools, these services enable campaigns to identify and connect with key decision-makers, honing in on demographic, firmographic, technographic, and psychographic data. This level of specificity ensures that every marketing effort is relevant, timely, and captivating.

2. Enhanced Engagement:

The power of personalization cannot be understated. Through personalized and segmented campaigns, event marketing services ensure that every communication feels tailored for the recipient, leading to dramatically increased engagement. By strategically utilizing multiple touchpoints, from emails and LinkedIn messages to direct calls, a coordinated and rhythmic cadence keeps your brand at the forefront of prospects’ minds, enhancing recall and interest without becoming overwhelming.

3. Increased Event Registration:

While outreach is essential, the ultimate success of any marketing campaign lies in conversion—in the case of event marketing, this boils down to event registrations. Event marketing services employ tried-and-true methodologies that not only maximize touchpoints but also drive registration and participation. The art of re-engaging prospects at just the right intervals ensures they’re continually reminded of the value your event promises, boosting the likelihood of successful conversions.

4. Improved Cost-Efficiency:

In the realm of business, every penny counts. What makes event marketing services stand out is their cost-efficiency. By hiring experts to focus on high-potential leads and crafting bespoke messages, resources are directed efficiently, ensuring a higher return on investment. Gone are the days of casting a wide net and hoping for the best; precision targeting ensures resources are channeled for maximum impact.

5. Unmatched Scalability:

The dynamic nature of the B2B landscape demands flexible scalability to stay competitive. Event marketing service providers are agile by nature, ready to adjust, expand, or contract based on real-time feedback. Whether it’s a shift in geographic focus or a tweak in messaging for a particular sector, these services are equipped to adapt swiftly and efficiently.

6. Indispensable Insights:

Knowledge is power. One of the standout benefits of event marketing services is the depth of analytics and feedback they offer. By providing real-time insights into campaign performance, businesses can make informed decisions, refining their strategies for even better results in the future. Every metric, every response, and every engagement is an opportunity to learn and improve.

How to Market an Event: Our 7-Step Event Marketing Plan

At Martal, we excel at taking the guesswork out of event marketing. Here, we have broken down our 7-step process plan to ramp up your registration and boost attendance for any type of event. 

1. Tailored Team Selection:

For every project, we meticulously select the team members who will partner with you on your event marketing campaign. Based on your niche and needs, we prioritize industry experience, geographical knowledge, and availability to ensure you’re backed by a squad that understands the nuances of your market and can seamlessly resonate with your target audience.

2. In-Depth Market Research: 

Before devising a strategy, we dive deep. By understanding the current market, competitor strategies, and emerging trends, we position your event not just to participate in the market but to lead.

3. Customized Strategy Development: 

Your goals are unique, and so should be your strategy. By integrating your objectives with our insights from market research, we craft an event marketing strategy aligned with your vision and the dynamics of your audience.

4. Curated Lead Lists:

Armed with a clear strategy, our next step is identifying those genuinely interested in your event. By leveraging the most advanced AI-enabled prospecting tools, we create lead lists based on your ICPs, ensuring that the individuals and businesses we target have the highest propensity to engage and register.

5. Segmented Multichannel Campaigns: 

Knowing your audience is half the battle; reaching out effectively is the other half. We design segmented campaigns tailored to the unique data and preferences of decision-makers, ensuring all our messages – be it through email marketing, LinkedIn, or direct calls – are both relevant and compelling. This targeted approach amplifies engagement, driving increased registrations.

6. Expert Campaign Management: 

Our seasoned sales executives are the champions of your campaign. They don’t just launch and observe; they interact, engage, and encourage. By monitoring interest, answering queries, and maintaining a consistent dialogue, they become the personal touch that often makes the difference between a maybe and a definite yes.

7. Data-Driven Optimization: 

The world of event marketing is dynamic, and resting on laurels isn’t our style. Post-launch, we continuously monitor campaign results, assessing every metric from open rates to registration conversions. Drawing from these insights and our extensive experience, we fine-tune and optimize, ensuring that your campaign remains agile, effective, and always ahead of the curve.

With these seven steps, we don’t just plan an event marketing campaign; we sculpt it, continually refining and perfecting it until your objectives are met or surpassed.

What’s Next?

Event marketing is expansive, blending age-old tactics with modern strategies to create memorable experiences. As the landscape evolves, driven by technology and shifting audience preferences, businesses must stay adaptable and informed. 

Partnering with a top event marketing agency can be the fulcrum that lifts your event’s success, ensuring you navigate the complexities with finesse. Armed with the insights from this guide, you’re now poised to make informed decisions that will not only amplify your event’s reach but also resonate deeply with your target audience. Seize this knowledge, make your next move, and watch your event become the talk of the industry.