Events have long been associated with lots of work, long hours, and huge budgets. Those are three very good reasons for pushing them off the annual marketing plan.
But they’ve also long been massive revenue drivers.
In fact, US-based companies using an event-led growth approach were 75% more likely to see a growth rate of +50% in 2023.
That’s an eye-opening stat if I’ve ever seen one.
Organizations like event-led growth because it (obviously) works.
In this article, we’ll recap event-led growth and its benefits, then explore three ways to level-up your event-led growth strategy.
Buckle up, because we’re about to show you how the most successful marketers are thinking about event-led growth.
Event-led growth (ELG) is a go-to-market motion that uses events (in-person, virtual, and/or hybrid) as the main channel for acquiring and retaining customers.
Event-led growth thrives on events that are collaborative, scalable, measurable, and tied to specific business goals. They reach specific people at specific points in the funnel, making them more effective than “spray-and-pray” approaches of the past.
Many marketing teams have been bought into event-led growth for years. Why? Because it works. But there are still many teams who haven’t been driving event-led growth, and they’re missing out on a number of benefits.
Event-led growth helps you plan, market, and manage events much more effectively. And for busy event marketers, those alone are huge benefits.
But there are a few other key benefits that marketing teams (and actually, larger revenue teams) get to enjoy.
Now that you understand the benefits of event-led growth, we can dive into the strategy of it all.
In a recent blog post, we outlined the seven steps to build an event-led growth strategy — so we’re not going to regurgitate those. Instead, here’s a quick recap:
As you continue your event-led growth journey, there will be opportunities to level up your strategy. That’s what we’re going to focus on here.
Most marketers have heard the phrase "leaky funnel." Where do people drop off in the buying journey? Is it hard to reach new people, or is the problem getting them to renew with you after a year?
These are legitimate questions, but it’s not the only thing you should worry about. Another question you need to ask is: Where are the slow areas of the funnel? (This is your “clogged funnel.”)
Work with your company’s revenue leaders to understand where these leaks and clogs exist so you can create events that’ll fill those holes and open up space for faster deals.
An example: At one point, the Splash experiential team found a gap in our mid-funnel events. Typically, we would focus on showcasing the product in this stage. So we set out to identify experiences that would engage people already familiar with us but not necessarily ready to dive into the product.
We created an event series called Spark Inspiration, a virtual meetup of fewer than 10 event professionals, where they’d troubleshoot challenges and talk event strategy. The point was to mix the thought leadership of top-of-funnel events with the intimacy of a bottom-of-funnel experience meant to close deals.
Scaling your event programs means running more events faster and without adding more resources. This encourages event-led growth because running events at scale usually means they're smaller and personalized.
A global financial services brand used to host a few flagship events each year on Splash. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people would attend these events, making it difficult to offer true "experiences" to their attendees.
When this company adopted an event-led growth strategy (and started supporting it with event technology), they started running more than 1,000 smaller events per year. With 10 or fewer attendees, these events are more repeatable, personalized, and valuable than prior events. (Events are also now their most effective marketing channel.)
Like nearly every other marketing program your team runs, the best way to optimize is to test over and over, then adjust. Here are a couple ways we like to optimize our events:
It’s not easy being an event marketer. Events are an incredible amount of work, and you tend to have a lot of responsibility and weight on your shoulders.
But when you do events the right way, you also get a ton of credit for making the business money.
The most successful event marketers are adopting an event-led growth strategy. They’re making sure their event programs are repeatable (so they can boost efficiency), measurable (so they can track event ROI), and tied to business goals (so they can prove bigger impact).
When you level up your event-led growth strategy, you’re becoming an expert in covering the funnel, scaling your programs, and optimizing constantly.
And these are what lead to even greater success for you, your team, and your business.
