If you’ve been following the news, economic recession discussions are hard to avoid. And while experts haven’t conclusively declared that the U.S. economy is in a recession at the writing of this article, its realistic potential is enough to fuel anxiety, tension, and feelings of uncertainty.
While battling this recession-induced anxiety, marketers are still responsible for generating qualified leads, nurturing them through the buyer’s journey, and converting them into revenue-generating deals.
Although navigating uncertain times isn’t a new concept for most marketers, it can be challenging to keep your revenue generation efforts fresh and effective when it feels like you've been reinventing the wheel year after year.
And in unpredictable times, it's crucial your decisions ensure predictable revenue growth. Which is why we want to share a proverbial rabbit in a marketer’s hat; a secret weapon that helps generate a constant pipeline of quality leads and nurtures them through the funnel. And that weapon is events.
Events have always been one of the most effective revenue-generating tactics used by B2B and B2C organizations; the last two years have exposed marketers to many new and creative ways to conduct events.
Whether an event is virtual, in-person, or hybrid, they have proven to be agile, effective, and impactful. According to an EventTrack Industry report, 74% of attendees had a more positive perception of an organization after an event, and 96% of customers who had a great experience at an event will be more inclined to make a purchase.
Recent Splash research shows that attendees today are more selective with their time, and what events they attend. If marketers create targeted experiences that help their audience solve a challenge or meet a specific need, nurturing a lead from inception to closing a deal—even in these uncertain times—becomes simple.
Here’s a list of reasons why events remain effective, no matter what the economic climate is:
Pro Tip
Figuring out the right event marketing strategy and mix of events can be challenging. A general rule of thumb: cater the mix of your events to each stage in a buyer's journey. Start from the top of your funnel and make your way down. At the top of the funnel, you can host an insightful industry-focused webinar to draw your audience in, expose them to your brand, and establish credibility. And further down the funnel, you can tailor and personalize your events even more, which will make your attendees feel heard and valued. These nurturing tactics will help move the pipeline in a seamless and effective way.
Giant conferences with limited opportunity for familiarity or connection are becoming increasingly anachronistic and more difficult to justify in precarious economic times.
Instead, businesses are turning to smaller events that can meet attendee expectations and deliver tangible business outcomes and positive ROI. With the right tools in place, it’s relatively simple to ‘rinse and repeat’ small events to scale to your business needs.
According to Splash data, smaller events are outperforming their behemoth counterparts. The main reason: agility.
Scalable, small events allow marketers to plug and play the same program in various places. It’s not only what audiences want, but it makes for better business. Working smarter, not harder is always the way to go.
Scalable events allow cross-organizational teams to drive revenue throughout the buyer’s journey and customer lifecycle.
Here are some of Splash’s favorite ideas for scalable events:
Pro Tip
Make sure your marketing team has the proper tools, like Splash, to execute on-brand, seamless experiences every time. Otherwise, the value proposition you worked so hard to define will be overshadowed by the technical difficulties you could encounter at every step.
Marketers strive to provide the most value to our potential and existing customers. Holding an event gives marketers the opportunity to take that goal to a new level.
How, you ask? By repurposing your live event’s content.
Whether you hosted a virtual, in-person, or hybrid event, there are numerous ways to leverage content from one event over and over again. You can create an on-demand event, use video snippets for social media, write blog posts on the different topics discussed, and even include insights and resources in your follow-up emails.
Event programs, when sliced and diced, can have a huge impact on generating pipelines, allowing marketers the opportunity to create highly personalized experiences for their audiences and continue offering the right content at the right time.
For example, we recently hosted a small, IRL dinner series called Magic Spark, and here’s a step-by-step layout of how we are using that event content to drive the pipeline.
Imagine using one lemon to make a lemon pie, lemon meringue, lemon loaf, lemonade, and limoncello. It's all about squeezing as much as you can from one piece of content to provide value to your audience in new, exciting ways. Using the content produced from one event to create a collection of high-value content is a scalable, budget-friendly win for driving results.
