Lucy Peppercorn

Recent Posts by Lucy Peppercorn

GA4: How to convince your senior stakeholders to invest in marketing analytics

If you’re a B2B event marketer, chances are you’ve struggled with making sense of your marketing analytics. It’s a common challenge, especially with the ever-increasing complexity of tools and data sources like GA4 and the shift towards first-party data (see why MPG recommends growing your 1st party data to future-proof your marketing).

While you know that effective marketing analytics are critical to improving ROI, setting up and optimising these systems often gets pushed to the back burner. But don’t worry—you’re not the only one facing this issue!

What Are the Biggest Barriers to Prioritising Your Analytics Setup?

It’s easy to recognise the importance of marketing analytics, but getting your analytics system in place and optimised can feel overwhelming. The truth is, the barriers are often more related to people and processes than technology. Let’s explore some of the most common challenges:

1. Your Analytics Setup is Owned by Data Analysts or Developers

Many marketing teams don’t have full ownership of their analytics. Instead, data analysts or developers manage the setup and ongoing maintenance. This can lead to delays and misalignment between what you, as a marketer, need and what’s being delivered, making it harder to track key metrics like ROI. See the most common pitfalls MPG are seeing with GA4 set ups.

2. You Don’t Speak the Same Language as Your Data Analysts or Developers

Communicating with data analysts or developers can feel like speaking two different languages. As a marketer, you’re focused on campaigns, customer journeys, and event registrations, while your data team is more concerned with technical structures and system configurations. This disconnect can slow down progress and make it harder to extract the insights you need from your analytics tools like GA4.

3. Your Team Lacks the Skills to Optimise the Analytics Setup

It’s not uncommon for marketing teams to lack the technical expertise needed to fully optimise their analytics setup. Whether it’s configuring GA4 or leveraging first-party data for more accurate tracking, you may feel limited by your current team’s skillset. As a result, you end up with basic, out-of-the-box solutions that don’t fully support your marketing goals.

How Can You Overcome These Barriers?

The good news is that with the right approach, you can overcome these barriers and take control of your analytics setup. Here’s how:

Step 1: Admit You Have a Problem and Understand the Nature of It

The first step is acknowledging that your current analytics setup isn’t delivering the insights you need. Are you struggling to get a clear picture of your ROI? Is there a disconnect between what’s being tracked and your marketing goals? Once you understand the specific issues, you can start addressing them.

Step 2: Build a Business Case and Onboard Senior Stakeholders

Next, it’s essential to build a solid business case to get buy-in from senior stakeholders. Optimising your analytics isn’t just a technical task; it’s a strategic move that can significantly impact your marketing performance. Demonstrate how improving your GA4 setup or enhancing your use of first-party data will lead to more precise targeting, better reporting, and, ultimately, a higher ROI.

Step 3: Prioritise Fixing and Optimising Your Analytics Setup

Once you’ve secured stakeholder approval, it’s time to make analytics optimisation a priority. This may involve training your team, bringing in external expertise, or re-allocating resources. Remember, marketing analytics should be treated as a core part of your strategy—not just a reporting tool. The better your analytics, the better you’ll be able to measure and improve the performance of your marketing efforts.

The Business Case: A Simple Framework

When building your business case for improving your analytics setup, keep it simple and focused. Here’s a straightforward framework you can use:

  • Problem Statement: Outline the current issues with your analytics setup and how they’re affecting your ability to measure ROI effectively. See the most common pitfalls MPG are seeing, with GA4 set ups.
  • Solution: Propose specific improvements, such as upgrading to a more sophisticated GA4 configuration or incorporating more first-party data for enhanced tracking. Use MPG’s 7 step guide to GA4 success.
  • Benefits: Highlight the expected outcomes, such as more accurate insights, better decision-making, and a higher ROI from your campaigns.
  • Costs: Provide a clear estimate of the financial investment required, whether it’s for additional tools, training, or external support.
  • Timeline: Offer a realistic timeline for implementation and when you expect to see results.

In Summary

Taking control of your marketing analytics doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By acknowledging the challenges, building a strong business case, and prioritising optimisation, you’ll be well on your way to better understanding your campaign performance and improving your ROI. Tools like GA4 and first-party data are powerful assets in helping you track, analyse, and act on key marketing insights.

Remember, marketing analytics aren’t just about tracking numbers— it’s about understanding the real impact of your efforts and using that data to make smarter decisions for future success.

Did you know that Team MPG’s GA4 experts can…

  1. Audit your GA4 set up and let you know what is missing or could be improved.
  2. Make the necessary improvements to your GA4 set up so that you can confidently use your analytics to drive your business forward.
  3. Deliver GA4 training for your team on how to get the most out of GA4 to give you customer insight, make your marketing ROI more visible, and help you make better, data-led decisions..

Contact us to find out more about how we can help you get the most out of GA4.

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AI in marketing: insights from MPG’s roundtable for Renewd

AI remains an area of particular interest for B2B marketers. At Renewd’s recent 3-part AI roundtable series for B2B subscription, membership and event professionals, MPG took to the stage for the marketing-focused session to facilitate discussion around the tech’s ongoing development.

Here are some of the key topics we discussed and what the senior marketing and business leaders in attendance told us:

Marketers are still in the experimentation phase with AI

When asked to name the tools their teams have been using, attendees shared a broad range. AI darling ChatGPT was the most mentioned, with transcription tool Otter.ai winning similar favour for its advanced note-taking credentials. GA4 – recently imposed on marketers, willing or not – excites with its AI data crunching capabilities.

Amongst the lesser-mentioned tools, applications varied. Automation from Zapier, image creation from Photoshop and Canva, and copy creation from copy.ai and Oktopost – to name just a few. Marketers remain open to trialling tools and pitting them against one another in various functions.

What’s clear is that marketers are still experimenting with tools – often with overlapping functionality – in a bid to find the ones that will make a real difference to their work.

The question is: will, or can, this experimentation ever end? With almost daily announcements of new AI tools and AI functionality additions and enhancements to already embedded tools such as HubSpot and Canva, we should expect ‘test and learn’ to be a bigger part of every marketer’s life.

Finding tools and understanding their usage remains a key challenge

We asked the roundtable attendees to score their teams on the most relevant skills to AI adoption and usage (graph below). The common weak areas remain those related to finding and properly deploying the AI in the first place. Prompting, a key competency for ensuring tools are working at their best, was the lowest-scored skill.

Marketers will need more time, and in many cases focused training, to get the best out of their new AI companions.

Score your marketing team on a scale of 1-5 on the following skills

… but marketing teams are well-equipped to harness AI once they understand its functionality

When it comes to the skills that will really help marketers long term, things were more positive. Attendees scored their teams higher on strategic thinking and soft skills – both key competencies if marketing is to continue being the champion of AI within businesses.

Understanding how AI fits into broader strategic goals will help marketers remain focused on improving output and results, instead of being distracted by flashy tools that don’t deliver value. 

In a similar vein, attendees were more confident that their teams have sufficient copy editing skills to refine the output of AI tools drafting emails, social and other content for them. Despite the impressive leaps in AI copywriting, a human touch is still essential – for now.

Creative vision will separate the early adopters from the laggards. Marketers who are not afraid to step out of their comfort zone and review existing processes through an AI-lens will find new ways of working, freeing up time for them to focus on more valuable strategic work.

The future is full of opportunities

Prompted on where they see AI going in the context of marketing over the next 6-12 months, attendees once again provided a range of opinions. From improvements in AI video creation options to implications for hiring new marketers – including making AI a competency to check for during the interview process.

However, there was a recurrent prediction of consolidation, with agreement around the fact that through competition and acquisitions – the AI options available will filter down to more elegant and comprehensive solutions that combine functionality that is currently scattered across different tools.

View the full session

You can view the full recording and access the slide deck we shared at the links below.

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AI applications: 4 key learnings from MPG’s roundtable of event marketing leaders

Marketers of conferences and exhibitions are starting to find practical applications for AI tools.

That’s one of the key learnings we took away from MPG’s recent roundtable discussion for marketing leaders – B2B Event Marketing: AI Implications and Applications. This event took place in London on 12th July, and was a resounding success!

Joining us to share how AI has already been integrated in their businesses, the marketing leaders we spoke to were cautiously excited about the prospect of AI-enabled marketing, and were keen to share their ideas on where it could go next.

In this post, we share the key takeaways we had from a busy afternoon of debate and discussion. If you’re interested in joining a future roundtable, make sure you’re subscribed to MPG insights to be the first to know all the details.

4 key takeaways from MPG’s event marketing leaders AI roundtable

#1 Most marketing teams are in the early stages of adopting AI, and are moving to embrace it

As AI appears across tools – both familiar and new – marketers are still trying to get a handle on practical applications and the benefits they bring. With AI opening up new possibilities, marketers are cautiously experimenting with new ways of working.

One new skill that is needed in marketing teams is prompting, i.e. the act of briefing AI tools in the most effective way to get the output you need. With different tools having different quirks for how they like to be prompted, gaining familiarity is an important first step before moving on to practical application in day-to-day tasks.

Some businesses are creating ‘AI Councils’ – with representatives from all functions – to ensure AI is being carefully considered and incorporated into strategies and workflows where applicable. It seems many businesses are looking to their marketers to lead the AI discussion and adoption in their organisations, as the marketing function is seen as best suited for exploring new tech.

The tools and applications being used by marketers right now vary significantly, with different businesses finding different tools, and different ways of using them. Examples include condensing articles to allow research teams to speed up their work, scoring leads in a more automated manner, writing copy, creating and editing images, reviewing performance data, and even supporting ventures into the metaverse.

Results of AI implementation so far have been mixed, but show promise. Some marketers have found current iterations of AI are not capable enough to fully replace humans in areas such as copywriting, data management and analytics. Instead, marketers are finding ways for AI to augment their existing processes to both speed up work and improve results.

“We see AI as a superpower that can help us produce better work, faster – but only if we can adopt it in the right way.”

Attendee of MPG’s marketing leaders roundtable on AI applications

#2 Governance and privacy raise questions

Marketers are finding resistance within their own businesses due to concerns over governance, privacy and security. Some AI tools – such as those that work with data – require sharing of sensitive information, forcing a need for clarity on how AI tools process the information given to them before they can be used.

Similar questions exist over content ownership. Image generation tools like Adobe Firefly assure that their AI is trained on Adobe Stock images only, removing the risk of a 3rd party claiming ownership when their image is inadvertently used as part of an AI generated one. With so many tools cropping up, securing assurances over commercial usage is slowing down implementation as legal teams demand clarityespecially as the topic currently remains a legal grey area.

Due to these issues – as well as some general scepticism in businesses over the necessity to invest in AI – marketing is finding itself in a tricky position to influence upwards and getting their colleagues on board with AI. Tangible results will secure backing, but implementation isn’t always simple.

“Who owns an AI created image?”

– Attendee of MPG’s marketing leaders roundtable on AI applications

#3 Right now, AI can augment existing processes – not replace them

Marketers who have tried handing over too much to AI all at once have found themselves burnt, as the tools fail to replicate the level of quality a human can achieve.

As intelligent as AI tools are becoming, they cannot yet replicate the intimate understanding marketers have of their audience and products. Drafting alternate captions for a social media post? Easy. Writing a messaging strategy? Not quite yet.

Practical applications found so far include editing images with Photoshop Generative Fill – a new tool that allows non-designers to edit images to a level of quality even seasoned Photoshop pros would struggle to replicate. Marketers have used this tool to replace missing shoulders in speaker photos, change backgrounds and expand images.

MPG roundtable AI generated
In this photo from MPG’s roundtable, all of the image outside of the green rectangle is AI generated – using Adobe Photoshop Generative Fill – taking approximately 5 minutes to create.

The marketers at our roundtable agreed that this is the most visible and practical ‘game-changing’ application of AI so far.

“Most AI is not built specifically for event marketers. We have to experiment to figure out how it can work for us as event marketing is different from other types of marketing.”

Attendee of MPG’s marketing leaders roundtable on AI applications

#4 An evolution, or a revolution?

Attendees of our roundtable generally agreed: AI will be an evolution, not a revolution to marketing. New jobs could appear for AI specialists, and existing event marketers should find themselves with more time, energy and headspace to focus on more impactful, revenue-driving and value-creating work.

Overall, AI presents exciting possibilities for marketers to improve and speed up their work. Careful consideration is needed when implementing any AI tools, but solutions won’t be found without practical experience. And, for the foreseeable future, marketers remain irreplaceable – especially if they are spearheading AI adoption across their organisation.

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AI-Powered Event Marketing: The Opportunities and Challenges

In our last blog post we looked at how AI could be making in-person B2B events more important than ever, and how a strong go-to-market strategy and marcomms plan is absolutely essential every year for a market-leading event.

Critical to success is analysing your target market well and defining your value proposition clearly with strong, relevant messaging.

Then your martech, website, data and analytics need to be well set up – especially if you want to use basic AI tools such as chatbots, programmatic advertising / automated ad bidding or optimised send features within your email marketing automation – and possibly more advanced, newer AI tools for even more effective, personalised and timely marketing.

And once all of this is done, you need to put in place a better event marcomms plan than your competitors.

Here are three areas you need to pay attention to, and a breakdown of how 4 key event marketing channels should be deployed as AI becomes more mainstream:

#1 Start marketing your event early! And by early we mean start promoting next year’s event at this year’s event, so you have the benefit of a full 12-month cycle. If you’re already on the back foot, a 6-month lead time from ‘soft launch’ is the minimum you should aim for. Don’t wait for a fuller programme or your pricing to be confirmed.

The sooner you can start building awareness about your event and positioning it as a better event than your competitors, the better! Start capturing data ASAP on those interested in attending, exhibiting or sponsoring – this is your gold dust!

Get in touch to find out how Team MPG build multi-channel event marketing timelines that drive strong YOY growth for flagship events.

#2 Optimise your event website ASAP & keep it optimised. Your website is your most important marketing channel. All your other channels drive people to your website, so if your event website is not optimised, the marketing across all your channels won’t work as well as it should.

Get GA4 set up well and ensure every page on your website has the best possible messaging and content (words, pictures, videos etc), all laid out in the optimal way to convert visitors to leads or customers with CTAs or forms – to attract visitors/delegates and exhibitors/sponsors.

For your event website, conversion rate optimisation is going to be much more important than SEO. Generative AI may wreak havoc on search engines within the coming 12 months as search results are replaced by answers created by tools like ChatGPT. This will have a significant impact on business models that rely on search engines to monetise their content.

You will probably get less organic traffic to your website, so you need to work harder at converting those who do land on your web pages into leads or customers. When you know who they are you can reach out to them more proactively via other channels.

Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you optimise your event website for conversions and that you are correctly tracking these conversions (including checking that your GA4 is set up correctly).

#3 Use inbound and outbound channels in an integrated way (don’t rely too much on any one channel), and set up automated comms where it makes sense to do so.

What will AI mean for various marketing channels?

  • Email marketing will be more important than ever. Many of the most accessible and already mainstream AI tools are those that help marketers create more engaging emails – with optimised subject lines, send times etc. Search engines won’t be sending as much traffic to your website, so your email marketing needs to fill most of the gap left. Make sure you have a large enough, high quality, relevant and well organised emailable database to make email work for you. This is where you could easily lose out to competitors if they do this bit better than you do. Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you get the most out of your email marketing.
  • Paid media (PPC) will continue to work well all the way down the funnel, but only if you:
    • Use a range of channels and campaigns, including social platforms and search engines, and ensure you continually use a ‘test and learn’ approach. It looks like generative AI may quickly disrupt search engines, so tread carefully with Google and Microsoft Ads (note that AI tools available in these platforms and a lack of competitive activity here may still deliver good returns – certainly in the short term).
    • Measure your paid media ROI continuously and carefully – at every stage of the customer journey. Don’t dismiss influenced conversions – they indicate an effective funnel overall.
    • Have a strong analysis and reporting methodology in place for your paid media – working in real time (a report you only get after a campaign has run is almost useless!). Make sure your paid media agency or inhouse paid media team delivers, at a minimum, a monthly report showing paid media ROI and trends across different channels and campaign types. AI could quickly disrupt some of the paid media channels you currently rely on, meaning you could lose money fast on media spend if you don’t have strong visibility of key data points to make good decisions about where to spend more and where to spend less.

    Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you create and execute winning paid media campaigns, ensuring you have constant visibility of results with our unique ROI reporting approach.

  • Advocacy via your customers and your employees will become more important than ever in the age of AI. The same goes for media and association partnerships. People will base more of their buying decisions on recommendations from those they recognise and trust. Gaining and leveraging advocacy successfully has always been a superpower of the most successful world-leading events and now, with the prevalence of tech that has entered the market, it’s even easier for marketers to harness this power. Marketers can automate and optimise this engagement with advocates for greater reach and better results. Get in touch with MPG for our latest research and findings on the best advocacy tools to use in your event marketing.
  • Social media success in event marketing will rely more than ever on advocacy by real, recognised and trusted people (see point above), and also brand trust – which is likely to come from trust in the people who represent and advocate for a brand. Assuming your advocacy efforts will generate engagement with social posts from real people about your event, it will also be important to keep posting regularly on the social media platforms where your target audience hangs out with a mix of content-led, product-led and offer-led posts. As search engines may be sending less traffic to your website soon, pushing people to your website via social channels will become more important.
  • The multi-faceted and rapid AI evolution will dominate our conversations for a long time. Live events enable these conversations within our communities. The way these events are marketed will make all the difference to how commercially successful community-led businesses will be in 2024.

    Team MPG can help you develop a high-growth event marketing strategy and plan that aligns with your business growth targets.

    Get in touch today to learn more about how we can help you take your event marketing to the next level.

    Get in touch

    “Working closely with our internal team, MPG developed a strong marketing strategy focused on achieving revenue growth for a key product in our portfolio – including recommendations for a virtual offering. We were impressed by the science and rigour they put into the process. I would recommend MPG as a good strategic marketing partner for a B2B brand.”

    Anna Knight, VP Licensing, Informa Markets

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MPG Newsletter | Spring 2023

Spring has finally sprung! And just as nature is experiencing a season of renewal and growth, we reflect on how B2B media and events businesses are taking advantage of new opportunities and accelerating growth with a focus on commercial revenues.

Commercial marketing is a vital component of any B2B media and events business looking to expand its reach and acquire new clients. With the right strategies in place, commercial marketing can lead to significant growth and flourishing revenues for businesses of all sizes.

Consider the following questions when contemplating how to invest in this area:

  • Is there a consistent flow of well-qualified, warm leads to support your sales team adequately?
  • Do you possess the necessary marketing skills and resources for effective commercial marketing?
  • Are your commercial marketing and sales functions seamlessly integrated with appropriate systems and processes?
  • Are your sales pipelines optimised with lead nurturing to boost conversion rates and sales?
  • How much visibility do you have regarding marketing and sales performance, including lead generation, lead conversations, average order value, and length of the sales cycle?

In this newsletter, we will explore how integrated marketing and sales, a good martech stack, paid media, web analytics (including GA4), and email marketing can help businesses maximise their potential. By incorporating these elements and consistently refining strategies based on data and insights, businesses can generate leads, increase conversions, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

#1 Why is commercial marketing the ‘goldmine’ for spex revenue growth?

Spex clients will drive revenue growth in most events businesses in the next couple of years but you need to ensure the value proposition for sponsors and exhibitors is positioned and communicated well to positively influence both returning and new spex clients.

In this article, we share MPG’s recommended step-by-step process to achieve a well-integrated spex sales and commercial marketing setup.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#2 Integrated marketing and sales is essential for revenue growth

By aligning marketing and sales strategies, businesses can ensure that they are targeting the right audience with the right message, leading to increased conversions and revenue.

In this article, we provide you with a comprehensive guide that emphasises the importance of integrating marketing and sales in order to achieve sustainable growth for a business. The article highlights the three stages of the sales and marketing funnel, which are awareness, engagement, and conversion, and explains how marketing and sales can work together to optimise each stage. The article also discusses the challenges that businesses face when trying to integrate marketing and sales and provides practical solutions to overcome those challenges.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

GET MPG’S GUIDE TO SALES AND MARKETING INTEGRATION

#3 Investing in martech for sustainable growth

In today’s business landscape, investing in martech is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Cutting corners in your approach to martech can lead to technical debt that holds your business back.

A good martech stack is essential for effective commercial marketing. It allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks, track customer interactions, and gain valuable insights into customer behaviour. This can help businesses optimise their marketing efforts and improve overall performance. User-friendly platforms, like HubSpot, allow businesses to have a single view of their customer and include marketing and sales automations without the need for internal technical teams. For larger businesses that have internal technical teams to support martech integrations and optimisations, enterprise-level platforms like Adobe/Marketo and Salesforce or MS Dynamics are potentially a good investment to enable integrated sales and marketing.

In this article, we discuss the top 5 investments business leaders should be making for long-term, sustainable growth.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#4 Why you should use paid media to acquire new sponsors

Paid media (PPC) can be an effective way to support commercial marketing efforts. By targeting specific audiences with strategic messaging, businesses can increase brand awareness and generate leads.

Paid Media, alongside other channels can help you:

  • Reach beyond your existing database to new, relevant leads; expanding your dataset and pushing more, brand-new sponsor opportunities into your sales pipeline.
  • Support other marketing efforts such as email and social media, pushing your conference to ‘top of mind’ and making it more likely sponsorship leads will be driven towards you.
  • Via automation, reach, nurture, and convert more relevant contacts faster to become qualified sponsorship leads. Paid media allows you to quickly increase the volume of relevant contacts you can engage with to convert to warm leads – without needing to add much more in terms of a marketer’s time (you just need to put more money in your campaigns once you’ve got them well-targeted).

In this article, we share with you the dos and don’ts of paid media for attracting, nurturing, and converting leads.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#5 Email marketing’s role in supporting the commercial marketing funnel

By nurturing leads with targeted messaging and personalised content, businesses can move potential customers closer to making a purchase. Email marketing can also be a great way to stay top-of-mind with current customers and encourage repeat business.

If your brand has both memberships and events, and you are sending lots of emails to the same data sets as the event product develops (e.g. new speakers are announced and new agenda sessions are added), you need sophisticated tools and a smart strategy that is well integrated with your membership product marketing.

In this recent article, we shared email marketing dos and don’ts for conference marketing. We focused on delegate acquisition, which is important to satisfy your sponsors, but these principles can also apply to your commercial marketing emails.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#6 Measuring the results of the joined-up marketing and sales effort

Success is driven by strong visibility of campaign effectiveness, and also core KPIs supported by commercial marketing activity – i.e. # of marketing qualified leads (MQLs); # of sales made from these MQLs; conversion rate from MQL to sale; revenue from MQLs; average order value of sales from MQLs; and ideally also the length of the sales cycle.

Web analytics, including GA4, is crucial for understanding how users interact with a website. By tracking user behavior, businesses can gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, leading to more effective marketing strategies. GA4 in particular offers more advanced tracking options and can help businesses better understand the customer journey and conversion funnels.

The needs of sponsors are also becoming more sophisticated and sponsors are demanding much deeper audience engagement. Without a well-optimised website, and robust measurement in place, you won’t be able to provide your sponsors with critical information to support them in investing with you in the future.

In this article, we share with you the 3 things you won’t be able to do without having GA4 implemented.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Commercial marketing is the key to great riches! However, it’s essential to get it right. By implementing these strategies, you can unlock your business’s potential and drive revenue growth.

We hope that the insights we’ve shared in this newsletter will help you achieve success in your commercial marketing efforts!

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Paid media: how to attract more sponsors to your conferences

If you want to attract more sponsors for your conferences, paid media (PPC) should be in your marketing mix.

Sometimes referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) or digital advertising, paid media is a conference marketing tool that has seen increasing interest and investment.

Its popularity stems from its ability to cost-effectively drive more awareness, leads and revenue for B2B conferences. As a form of online advertising, it also affords marketers a high degree of control and visibility over performance, making it a safe investment when marketing ROI is under scrutiny.

How does paid media work?

The most popular paid media platforms for B2B events are  Google Ads, LinkedIn Advertising and Facebook Ads. In essence, paid media covers any online ad where advertisers pay for every click.

Marketers need to define how ads are targeted, using criteria such as job titles, industries, interests, behaviour (e.g. people who have visited your website before), and intent. The latter is how the popular Google Ads Paid Search functions – targeting users based on the relevant queries they are searching in Google, allowing them to be targeted at the time when they are researching solutions that conference sponsorship can provide.

Why should you use paid media (with other channels) to acquire new sponsors?

  • Reaches beyond your existing database to new, relevant leads; expanding your dataset and pushing more, brand new sponsor opportunities into your sales pipeline.
  • Supports other marketing efforts such as email and social media, pushing your conference to ‘top of mind’ and making it more likely sponsorship leads will be driven towards you.
  • Via automation, reach, nurture and convert more relevant contacts faster to become qualified sponsorship leads. Paid media allows you to quickly increase the volume of relevant contacts you can engage with to convert to warm leads – without needing to add much more in terms of a marketers’ time (you just need to put more money in your campaigns once you’ve got them well-targeted).

3 things you must get right when using paid media to generate new sponsor leads

  1. Create a solid plan before spending a penny
    1. Be clear on what you’re trying to achieve – define goals and success in specific terms
    2. Create objectives for each channel and each type of campaign/ad based on the stage in the funnel you’re aiming to influence
    3. Decide on a budget, and how that budget should be split across paid media channels and campaign types
    4. Ensure messaging in paid media ads is consistent with other channels and ties well into the full customer journey
  2. Get visibility of paid media performance and results
    1. Set up conversion tracking properly, using tracked links
    2. Focus on the metrics that matter – based on your objectives
    3. Use a data visualisation tool like Looker Studio (by Google) to pull together performance data and present it clearly and simply so it is easy to understand and act on
  3. Use specific and refined targeting
    1. Assuming you’re trying to reach a specific kind of person in a specific kind of company – most likely to be a lead for sponsorship – make sure your targeting is as narrow as possible. Then keep monitoring performance metrics and leads coming through so you know this targeting is hitting the right people. To stay on target, use the options given in paid media platforms like exact match keywords, uploaded data lists, job title and industry

3 things to avoid – or you will be wasting your money and not getting the leads you need!

  1. Don’t start investing – until you’ve worked out your ‘funnel’
    1. Paid media will drive traffic to your website, nurture existing contacts and generate more leads i.e. all the way down the funnel. Make sure you know how you are influencing each stage of the funnel
    2. Make sure your marketing and sales is fully integrated, or you won’t get good results! See MPG’s resource on how to integrate your marketing and sales well, and the relevant KPIs around this
  2. Don’t leave your paid media campaigns unattended
    1. Have a disciplined and robust process in place to regularly review campaign performance (minimum weekly)
    2. Keep optimising your paid media campaigns by adjusting your approach based on the performance data you see coming through in the reports you’ve set up. Keep tweaking your targeting options based on what is working best
  3. Don’t neglect your website
    1. ‘Cold’ leads coming from paid media will have low awareness and understanding of your event, so make sure the web pages you drive them to from your paid media (i.e. your landing pages) are well set up to explain what the event is all about and the benefits of becoming a sponsor. Also make sure this landing page has some clear calls-to-action (CTAs) so that your website visitor fills in a form to become a lead for your sponsorship sales funnel
    2. Paid media is a great way to grow your database, so use lead forms to identify leads and capture all their data

Using paid media well can make all the difference to how many good quality and well-qualified leads you can drive into your sponsorship sales funnel. When your strategy and execution here are solid, you have a great chance of attracting lots of great new sponsors to your event and growing your sponsorship revenue faster!

Want to find out more about how Team MPG can help you attract more sponsors to your event with best-in-class lead-gen marketing?

Get in touch today to have a chat about how we can help you grow your sponsorship revenue faster.

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