Event marketing
In this channel, we group different types of offline events together—local meetups, trade shows, attending or speaking at a conference, and so on. You can use them to reach a wider or different audience than you might normally reach through other channels and to meet potential customers and industry leaders and peers face to face.
When you run events as part of your growth marketing, keep in mind that offline activities offer less of the two-way flow of data that naturally characterizes online campaigns (e.g., such as search or digital advertising). Nevertheless, you can harness some of this data flow (and resulting metrics) by using online mechanisms to drive activities or traffic offline.
Other simple metrics you can use to help measure the success of your offline event include the number of event attendees and subsequent lead generation. Later, you can move to capturing metrics through more advanced means, such as coded links, promo offers and a coded logo on the event website.
With offline events, ensure you do track all available metrics so that you can quantify your ROI.
Example: Measuring the performance of event marketing
What are some of the pros and the cons with event marketing?
Pros:
- In addition from your marketing goals, events are a great way to build your networks and source talent.
Cons:
- Metrics in this channel can be harder to capture than in online channels such as content marketing and social. Make sure you track all the ones that are available to you so you can measure your ROI.
Can you reach your target customers with event marketing?
Key tactics and strategies
- Get out there. Attend and/or sponsor two to three events each month.
- Hosting a party or a meet-up doesn’t have to be expensive. Be creative.
- Collect contact information and make sure you follow up!
Tools
Resources
- Entrepreneur blog: Hire Professional Moderators So Your Event Panels Don’t Suck
- Entrepreneur blog: 6 Steps to Planning a Free Startup Event and Making a Splash
- Hubspot blogs: Event Marketing Blog Posts
- Quora: How can I track UTM codes in Google Analytics?