September 9, 2015
All too often driving attendance to events in the B2B world is an afterthought.
Companies spend hundreds-of-thousands of ££’s on set-up, stands, design, product and offline marketing and organisation. Then, in the weeks running up to the event, they realise they have not placed enough focus on making their customers and prospects aware of the event.
Usually this is where we get the urgent call to let the market know the event is happening. So, in an attempt to address some key issues, here is my packaged 3-pronged attack for helping B2B marketers drive more attendance to their events.
I am not going to get in to harnessing the power of teams and individuals at the event (will save that for the follow up piece), however, as you will have heard us talk a lot about recently, I am going to put emphasis on harnessing the power of your connected network.
So here is the ‘trident tactic’:
The trident tactic consists of a three-pronged attack that utilises your relevant internal network as well as your organisation’s central social media channels for maximum results.
Central
A central content plan that pushes out event promoting content, with accompanying high quality assets, across all the company’s utilised social channels. Using insightful stats and benefits of the propositions and offerings as opposed to ‘come to our event’ is a much better tactic.
Sales teams
Unlocking the power of your sales team to distribute curated versions of the central social posts is pretty standard. However, briefing your team to go out with LinkedIn InMails or Twitter DMs targeting prospects (and normal direct messages for their existing connections) with a personal message inviting people to the event and explaining what benefit they would get from attending is a great way to humanise your event marketing efforts.
SMEs
Getting the subject matter experts on-board is always a winning tactic in B2B. Again, get them to push curated content out to their networks. But if you can also create some additional content for specialised communities, LinkedIn Groups, or the company, this can create greater thought-leadership content with a lead gen edge (it can also be the basis for more social posts).
Read on here to get the most out of B2B events with social media