Event marketing is a good way to generate leads, especially for B2B events such as conferences or webinars. Still, numerous event planners face challenges in drawing attendees to their events. While it is crucial to employ various communication channels to announce and promote your event, it is even more effective to attract leads by targeting the right audience at the right time and in the right manner.
In this article, we will initially discuss strategies for designing an event that appears more captivating to attendees, followed by a plethora of tips and recommendations on how to entice your audience to attend.
While advertising techniques are significant, some events can attract leads without any special effort, just by announcing the event by email or on a website. Let’s first check the factors that give rise to such events that have much attraction.
Even the best events cannot say it is successful if people do not turn up. For an event to be successful, you need to prepare for it to be a “crowd-attracting event” at the planning stage. To accomplish this, the initial focus should be on identifying the “target” and “purpose” of the event.
In the case of b2b events, these two points are fairly clear from the outset.
Target of the event = your own customers or potential customers
Purpose of the events = Increase sales
Further from there, target can be further divided into “existing customers” or “prospective leads”; while purpose can be narrowed down to objectives such as “expanding brand awareness and its services or products”, “generating business from target customers”, “building relationships with existing customers”, etc.
If the goal of your b2b event is to attract new customers, you need to clarify the target audience. To achieve this, it is useful to set up detailed 'personas'.
Next, we need to determine the content of the event. It is important that the content is something that the target audience will want to attend.
For business events, this is usually a webinar or conference with content of interest to the target company’s staff. Examples of content include:
Sharings that interest the target audience
Inviting experts who are closely related to the industry to speak is a classic and popular format. A well-known speaker is more likely to attract an audience.
Information that leads to resolutions of issues faced by the target company
Topics such as “AI” and “ESG” are common challenges regardless of industry, they are always good choices to choose. On the other hand, events that provide solutions to industry-specific issues may have a limited number of participants, but can attract more people with a high level of interest. It is also effective to ask companies that have significant achievements, such as increased sales by using their products or services, to speak about their success stories.
Opportunities that are beneficial to the target audience
There are events such as business card exchange meetings and networking events between client companies, where participants can connect with each other to provide opportunities for participant companies to interact through a two-part structure consisting of a lecture and networking session.
In terms of benefits, it is effective to offer clear incentives such as “free consultation” to participants, as well as prepare gifts such as NFTs.
Event content is not only important for generating attendees for your upcoming event, but also for continuous attendees generations.
If the satisfaction of the participants is high, repeat participation can be expected, and those who were interested in attending the event but could not due to scheduling conflicts may consider participating in similar events in the future.
It is also important to make it easy for busy businessmen to attend the event.
The first consideration for the venue of an in-person event is its accessibility. It is also effective to choose a venue that makes people want to visit, such as a facility that they would not normally be able to enter or a facility that has recently gained buzz.
When choosing a date for an event, first avoid the industry's busy periods, such as the end of the month. As an example, avoid Mondays and Fridays and choose Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and time slots from 10:00 or 14:00.
If it is possible, making the event in hybrid format is also a wise choice. Online participation is easy and accessible from anywhere, and it will also be great if there is a recording for those who cannot make it.
Once the event has been outlined, finally it is time to attract the audience.
It is important to ensure that the target audience is informed that the event is worth attending. There are 2 elements to this: “how to present” and “how to deliver”.
The “how to present” of the event information included the title, information text, visuals and video content that convey the appeal of the event in an easy-to-understand manner. Among all, the title is particularly important.
The “how to deliver” included means such as e-mail and digital advertising. The timing and frequency of information delivery also needs to be considered.
Once the event has been decided, you can create a landing page to post event information and for registrations.
A landing page is the page that users see when they click through from other pages, newsletters, advertisements, etc. There is also a method called 'personalised landing page”, which displays different content for users who have no prior knowledge of the event via advertisements and for users who are already potential customers.
The landing page will summarise the details of the event in an easy-to-understand manner, and a registration button will also be placed on the page.
Timely information pop-ups can be effective when users view the corporate website or owned media.
By clicking on the pop-up, users can be directed to the landing page.
For prospects to whom you send regular newsletters, you can announce the event in the newsletter.
In addition to regular email newsletters, you can also send an information email with the title of the event in the subject line.
By taking detailed measures such as ‘segmented emails’, in which emails with different content are sent to prospects with a high level of interest and those with a low level of interest, the click and open rate can be increased.
The following are ways to advertise your event by paid ad. If you want to attract users with whom you have had little previous contact through business events, you can use these methods:
1. Social media advertising
Advertising on social networking sites is also often used, as it is easy to target the target audience for which the adverts are displayed. Facebook and LinkedIn are said to be particularly effective for business events.
2. Display advertising
Display advertising is the most common type of web advertising for event announcements.
Among display ads, retargeting ads, which appear on web pages viewed by users who have viewed information related to the event, are effective.
It is important to narrow down the media and target users for the advertisements in order to efficiently attract customers within a budget.
3. Video advertising
Video advertising is being used with increasing frequency in B2B, and there are many different types of ads that can be placed on YouTube alone.
There are several types of video ads on Youtube: Skippable in-stream ads, Non-skippable in-stream ads, Video discovery ads, non-video ads.
The above traditional methods are indeed useful and impactful if you use them skillfully and with a well planned plan. However, you might want to put more effort into other aspects of your events instead of studying how to promote it.
Here comes our Lead Finder!
With EventX Lead Finder, you can fill your events with targeted attendees, that have a high likelihood of becoming qualified sales opportunities with only a few steps. Just enter your niche and we will generate a list of audiences for you. Using that list of emails, you can draft your invitations and blast it out on EventX. With EventX, you can focus on creating the best experience to convert them.
For more information, please visit the Lead Finder page.
We totally understand the difficulties of organizing events. After reading this blog, we hope that we can alleviate some of your concerns. In short, remember:
1. Events that attract visitors have a clear target audience and provide content that is of value to the target audience.
2. Methods to attract visitors to events include creating Landing pages, website pop-ups and email announcements. Display ads, social networking ads and Video ads are recommended as well.
3. It is also good to seek help from expertise, such as EventX. We are always willing to help with our Lead Finder.