Optimize Your Event Marketing ROI with Lead Nurturing
Utilizing event marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy is a highly effective way to boost brand visibility, engage with your target audience on a personal level, and showcase your services. Hosting an event can also yield an impressive ROI. In fact, almost half of organizations who invest in them see an ROI of 300–500%. (1) However, hosting an event is often expensive – event management services can take as much as a 25% chunk out of your marketing budget. (2)
The key to seeing triple digit returns is how well you plan, manage, and execute your events, ensuring they generate valuable leads that are likely to convert, fill your pipeline, and take advantage of every opportunity for ROI. Lead nurturing is a critical component to your success.
Lead nurturing is a systematic way to build on the connections you make through marketing efforts, like hosting an event. When a potential client or customer attends an event you host, you can gather a wealth of information about them – not only their names, companies, and contact information, but also details you can use to extrapolate on their needs and interests based on things like the sessions they chose to attend and how they engaged with the event. You can then use that data to inform your strategy to build a relationship with them and usher them through your sales funnel. Including lead nurturing in your event marketing plan can help shorten your sales cycle and provide a low cost per lead. A study conducted by MarketingSherpa showed that businesses that incorporate effective lead nurturing strategies generate 50% more warm leads at a 33% lower cost (3).
How can you integrate lead nurturing into your event management? Here are some best practices:
- Include lead nurturing from the beginning of planning. Don’t wait until after the event is over to figure out what you are going to do with leads once you have them. Your event marketing plan should include ways to begin nurturing leads at your event, and the tools and resources you will need to have in place as soon as the event is over, like landing pages, resource libraries, post-event content, surveys, and email campaigns.
- Use technology to automate your processes. Do not rely on manual data entry and processes to nurture your leads. Ensure your data is accurate while reducing the burden on your sales team by automating your process as much as possible with sales optimization tools.
- Score your leads. Lead scoring is a technique used by sales and marketing teams to determine the worthiness of sales follow-up based on specific criteria and behaviors. It works by assigning a point value to each lead based on predetermined criteria and behaviors, such as demographics, level of engagement, and interactions with marketing touch points, with weights that qualify the relative importance of the different scoring factors, helping sales teams prioritize their efforts on the leads that are most likely to convert.
- Create a post event resource library. Put all relevant event management related materials in one place on your site. Not only will it ensure your leads visit your site, but it will also help you segment your leads even further based on what they interact with after the event. It also allows you to nurture leads for people who registered for your event but were unable to attend.
- Communicate regularly. Every event management professional knows the importance of sending a “thank you” email after your event. Use those emails to provide additional resources, related content, surveys, links to your social channels, video clips, and special offers, discounts, or pricing. Keep your communication steady without overwhelming your leads.
- Connect with attendees on social media. Start nurturing your leads before your event by engaging with them on social media, and keep it up after the event. You can create an online community through a social media group where event participants can network with each other, while you learn more about them, their needs, and how you may be able to help them.
Event management often requires herculean effort and significant investment to pull off. But when done well, your endeavor could have a big payoff. Lead nurturing is critical to that formula, and success is built on everything from pre-event strategic planning through post-event lead-nurturing and beyond. At Paradigm Marketing and Design, our team of skilled event marketers can not only help you fill your pipeline with leads, but also empower you to help them convert. Looking for more lead nurturing tips like lead scoring? Download our whitepaper to learn more about how to set your marketing and sales teams up for success.
(1) https://info.itagroup.com/rs/614-FWE-386/images/Strategic%20Events%20Ebook_vF.pdf
(2) https://www.bizzabo.com/blog/b2b-event-marketing-guide
(3) https://www.hubilo.com/blog/the-art-of-lead-nurturing-with-engaging-events
About the Author
Madison Deckert is a Senior Account Coordinator at Paradigm. Her superpower is her ability to capitalize on both her creativity and problem-solving prowess to drive client success. In her role, she coordinates the execution of tailored marketing campaigns to achieve unmatched success for our clients. She examines current marketing research and competitive analyses to inform strategy, collaborates with design and development teams to create impactful messaging, social media, and marketing plans, and supports the tactical execution of initiatives to ensure purpose-driven results.
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