Consent mode: what it is, and why event organisers can’t ignore it

As data privacy regulations become increasingly stringent, the role of consent in marketing cannot be overstated.

For event businesses, understanding and implementing Google’s consent mode is not just a matter of compliance – it is essential for building trust with customers and delivering successful marketing strategies.

In this article, we will:

  • Explain consent mode in simple terms
  • Explore why it is important for event organisers to pay attention to consent mode
  • Take a look at the upcoming v2 of consent mode
  • Highlight a related development: Chrome’s phaseout of 3rd party cookies

What is consent mode?

According to Google’s help centre:

“Consent mode lets you communicate your users’ cookie or app identifier consent status to Google. Tags adjust their behaviour and respect users’ choices”

“Consent mode receives your users’ consent choices from your cookie banner or widget and dynamically adapts the behaviour of Analytics, Ads and third-party tags that create or read cookies.”

So, consent mode is a feature introduced by Google that allows businesses to adjust how their Google tags behave so that users’ choices (consent statuses) are respected. It enables websites to dynamically adapt to varying consent levels, ensuring compliance with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Why should you be paying attention to consent mode?

Events businesses need to use digital marketing to attract attendees. Consent mode is therefore highly relevant for the following reasons: 

  1. Marketing performance: by respecting user preferences regarding data collection and targeting, businesses can deliver more relevant and personalised marketing campaigns, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates – and therefore more revenue.
  2. Customer trust: adhering to data privacy regulations is not just a legal requirement. Most importantly, respecting your customer’s data and preferences builds and maintains their trust in you.
  3. Compliance risk mitigation: non-compliance with data privacy regulations can result in hefty fines and damage to reputation, both of which can have significant repercussions for your business. 

Consent mode v2: what’s coming and why it matters

Google is continually refining its tools to better serve businesses navigating the complexities of data privacy. Consent mode v2 is expected to provide even more flexibility and control over how user consent is managed within digital marketing strategies.

Understanding v2 will enable you to deliver effective marketing while maintaining user trust and good compliance. V2’s enhanced features include improved consent measurement and reporting capabilities, both of which will feed valuable intelligence into your marketing analysis.

Preparing for consent mode v2

Here are the three things you need to do to be prepared for v2:

  1. Stay informed: look out for announcements from Google regarding consent mode v2 to understand its implications fully.
    A good way to do this is to subscribe to MPG Insights as we will be publishing relevant updates here as they are announced.
  2. Review current practices: evaluate your existing consent management processes and tools to identify areas for improvement and ensure alignment with upcoming changes.
    If you’re not sure how to do this, drop us a note in this form and we will let you know how we can help you.
  3. Set up a cross-functional collaboration: ensure your heads of marketing, legal, and IT work together to create and execute a robust strategy for implementing consent mode v2 effectively.

Look out for Chrome’s phasing out of 3rd party cookies

In addition to consent mode updates, you should also be aware of the impending phaseout of 3rd party cookies in Google Chrome. This change will have significant implications for your digital advertising and tracking practices, necessitating a shift towards alternative strategies such as 1st party data collection and contextual targeting.

The phaseout of 3rd party cookies underscores the importance of building direct relationships with customers and leveraging 1st party data to deliver personalised marketing experiences. Events businesses that proactively adapt to this shift will be better positioned to navigate the evolving digital landscape – enabling them to survive and thrive.

Understanding consent mode, v2 and embracing 1st party data will ensure you and your business are ‘future-proofed’!

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Marketing to grow sponsorship revenue: why it’s important and how to get it right

Many conference organisers are currently having an internal debate focused on the following questions:

  • How much should event marketers be supporting sponsorship sales? 
  • How can event marketers cover both delegate marketing and sponsorship marketing effectively?
  • If event marketers are focused on sponsorship marketing, how will they still be able to bring in the audience needed – to keep sponsors happy?

This is because wise senior executives know they should not leave sponsorship marketing unmanned. Why? 3 simple reasons…

  1. Most of the revenue from a conference will come from sponsors – typically around 70% or more.
  2. This revenue is in many cases more reliable than delegate revenue i.e. it can be secured earlier and is likely to renew at a higher rate.
  3. Sponsorship sales people will perform better if marketing can help them position the sponsorship value proposition well, feed them with leads for new biz sales, and in the process also support renewals.

A key challenge is that sponsorship marketing methods and processes are very different to those used in delegate marketing. The two types of marketing require two different sets of marketing knowledge, skills, frameworks, tools, templates and performance metrics.

Here are just 2 examples of what is important in sponsorship marketing that is not relevant to delegate marketing:

  • For sponsorship marketing, we need to consider the SAOP framework created by MPG. This framework focuses on what sponsors are actually buying, and therefore how marketing messaging on relevant web pages and campaigns should be formulated. Here is a summary:
MPG Marketing
  • For sponsorship marketing, a key outcome we’re looking for is a batch of relevant new leads for sponsorship sales people to help them generate new business revenue. The conversion rate of these leads to sales should be between 8% and 15%, and it is incredibly important this conversion rate is measured – at a high level and also at a more granular level based on how the lead was generated (e.g. from an enquiry form vs a sponsor pack download).

It is important to consider how your event marketing resources should be organised to ensure sponsorship marketing is effective alongside delegate marketing.  And it is also important to ensure that sponsorship marketing is set up for success with the right level of investment, the right skills and the right KPIs.

Not investing well in sponsorship marketing will be the biggest opportunity cost for many conference organisers right now.


MPG can help you achieve a strong sponsorship marketing performance with:

  • Sponsorship marketing strategy development
  • Outsourced sponsorship marketing – by experienced experts with a solid track record in this type of marketing
  • Database development focused on new sponsor acquisition 
  • Analytics to measure sponsorship marketing ROI
  • Tech stack upgrades – for a single customer view across marketing and sales
  • Sponsorship marketing training

What our clients have said about working with Team MPG:

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, SVP Licencing, Informa Markets

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Being a ‘data-led’ event marketer: what it means, why it’s important and how to do it well

At the end of January, MPG hosted a roundtable discussion for event marketing leaders, bringing together senior marketers from B2B event organisers to share insights about what it means to be a data-led event marketing leader, and why this is so important.

Participants were very open in sharing their knowledge,  experience and ideas on how a data-led approach should be adopted by marketing teams to deliver more strategic value to their businesses.

The discussion centred around the following three important questions:

  1. What is a ‘data-led event marketing leader’?
  2. Why is it important to be data-led?
  3. What are the key challenges and barriers when striving to be more data-led, and how can these be overcome?

5 of the main takeaways from this discussion were:

#1 SYSTEMS CHALLENGES: data needs to be hosted in more than one system, and these systems must be well integrated for data to be a valuable resource.

Many discussion participants highlighted a fundamental problem in their businesses around how data is hosted in various systems and these systems not being integrated. A poorly set up tech stack means the data cannot be used effectively, so loses its value.

There is also great opportunity cost and real cost when marketers have to spend a large portion of their time on manual work to move data around and prepare data for campaigns. This manual work can be replaced by automated workflows if the tech stack is set up correctly, meaning that marketers could then focus on revenue-generating and value-creating activities. 

A further significant issue that arises when systems are not set up properly, is the lack of attribution (see MPG Insights article on attribution modelling – the move to data-driven conversions). When a marketing tech stack is not set up to enable attribution modelling, marketing effectiveness and ROI cannot be measured. If event marketers cannot attribute outcomes and results to specific marketing investments and marketing activities, they cannot deliver marketing performance reports to the business and appear to not be holding themselves accountable for marketing ROI. This then leads to issues around marketing being valued as a growth and revenue driver.

#2 JOINED UP SALES & MARKETING: proper ‘sales and marketing alignment’ is impossible if data, and the systems holding data, are not set up in the right way.

Everyone in the room agreed that salespeople and marketers need equal access to the same data and important insights from that data. From sales data on how a specific opportunity is  being worked to acquire a new customer; to how data on customer engagement is being used by marketing and sales for retention/upsell activities; to understanding how every marketing channel and campaign is performing; to understanding what kind of marketing supports improvements in sales KPIs – there is no doubt at all that well-managed data is essential for marketing and sales alignment. 

To get the data set up in the right way for true and highly effective ‘joined up’ sales and marketing, the right systems and processes need to be put in place. This is essential technology and data infrastructure that – if missing – will definitely hold your business back. 

Many discussion participants expressed frustration about competitors pulling ahead of them because the competitors appear to have better systems and data sets. The event marketing leaders stuck with a substandard tech and data setup are frustrated by ‘their hands being tied’, and a lack of understanding by business leaders of the highly detrimental effect that low or poor investments in tech and data can have on the ability of marketing to perform well. 

Towards the end of the discussion the group explored how marketers could better influence their senior executives to pay more attention to the systems that host essential data.

#3 AI ISN’T A MAGIC BULLET: it will be some time before AI tools replace marketers when it comes to working with specialised data sets and nuanced marketing insights. But machine learning should be used widely for marketing automation.

Most good marketing systems already have marketing automation functionality – but much of this cannot be used as systems are not integrated and data sets are not organised in the right way. Marketing leaders expressed frustration at the fact their businesses had bought tools that could not be used to their best effect. 

When it comes to generative AI, most marketers are using AI tools to be more efficient in some tactical tasks, such as email campaign development. But participants agreed that AI tools are not capable of doing the important work that marketers currently do with data to ensure their campaigns are relevant to the audience groups targeted.

#4 A DATA-LED CULTURE IS ESSENTIAL: marketing leaders are frustrated by a lack of appreciation of and focus on data in their businesses.

Senior executives don’t prioritise data enough in most businesses. Many marketing leaders in the room were considering bringing data experts into their businesses to help develop the right strategies to gain senior executive support and buy-in from a range of key stakeholders across the business. Roundtable participants expressed hope that this would then lead to more focus on getting the right systems in place for effective data management.

There is a real need for marketing leaders to help senior executives and key stakeholders across the business understand and embrace the value of data. Without this education, collaboration and alignment, businesses will struggle to become data-led, and this will have a negative impact on future success and growth potential. 

#5 DATA ON ‘TOUCH POINTS’ IS KEY: marketers need to understand how customers are engaging with a company’s digital channels, sales people and products.

Many marketers don’t have visibility of customer interactions with the business – i.e. the ‘touchpoints’. This means they can’t develop an understanding of what marketing is working, and where marketing time, effort and money is being wasted.

This is demotivating, especially for the best marketers who get very frustrated when they want to focus on outcomes but can’t see what outcomes are being achieved. This relates back to the attribution point mentioned previously.

Marketing leaders who were present at the roundtable mentioned the following systems in terms of where their data is currently held (caveat: not all these systems were ‘recommended’…):

  • Bizzabo
  • Bloomreach
  • BlueVenn
  • Brella
  • Canva
  • Data bricks
  • Data cloud
  • DotDigital
  • Drupal
  • Eloqua
  • Google Analytics
  • Hootsuite
  • HubSpot
  • Internal
  • CMS
  • LinkedIn
  • Marketo
  • Monday.com
  • Salesforce
  • Supermetrics
  • Swoogo
  • Tableau
  • WordPress

Roundtable participants mentioned the following challenges to being truly data-led:

  1. Reporting tools and capabilities vary widely across various systems in use.
  2. Many data points to draw from for decision-making – with data insights often difficult to surface and digest.
  3. Salespeople are very influential, but are not interested in the ‘big picture’ when it comes to data. Marketers are more strategic around data, but are often not heard…
  4. The IT department often selects and implements marketing technology and data systems. But they often do this without the right level of input from marketing. 
  5. Data work is generally still very manual, with so much that could be automated with the right systems and processes set up.
  6. Businesses have invested in buying and implementing good tools and spend a lot of money on them annually, but are not realising the value due to poor ‘follow through’ in terms of how data is set up in the systems. 
  7. AI can supplement important data processes, but marketers still need to do all the thinking and much of the work. 

Conclusion:

Events businesses could achieve more success and growth if they equipped their marketing functions with better data, and systems in which to manage this data. As a general rule, marketing leaders understand what needs to be done to be more data-led, but struggle to get it done due to a lack of understanding and support from senior executives to get the right systems and processes in place. 

The key question is: what more can and should event marketing leaders do to own and drive the agenda on the importance of being a data-led marketing business?


MPG helps event organisers achieve better marketing results.

To find out more how we do this, please get in touch.


What our clients have said about working with Team MPG:

MPG did a great job assessing our digital marketing and marketing operations requirements – considering our business goals.  They developed a robust strategy, followed by a practical operational roadmap to help us further improve how we use technology to support marketing and sales performance. It has been a pleasure working with the MPG team!

Jonathan Perry, Global Marketing Director, PEI Group

MPG developed some valuable analytics dashboards that give us constant visibility of how our website and other marketing channels are performing. This means our senior stakeholders can easily understand how various marketing initiatives are performing, and then make good decisions to get the most out of our marketing investments. We recommend working with MPG’s analytics and marketing experts!

Jenny Fazakerley, VP Head of FT Board Director Programme UK, The Financial Times

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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What 2024 holds for events businesses (and AI)

Back in May 2023, when AI was coming into sharp focus for all business leaders, we wrote this blog post about how senior executives in B2B media and events businesses should respond. Our challenge to business leaders at the time was ‘are you asking the right questions?’…before you start looking for the answers!

This piece from 7 months ago included Team MPG’s prediction that live events would become more important than ever – with these observations:

have we considered yet how incredibly important live events are going to be in a world where AI becomes mainstream? In-person business meetings will be where professionals can be confident that they will connect authentically with real, highly relevant people with whom they can build real relationships, and from whom they can learn in a trusted, ‘safe space’.

…as the early aftermath of the pandemic has shown us, people will always love attending a gathering of their ‘professional tribe’ – in real life. AI will not replace live events.

…if anything, AI will make live events even more important for the B2B media/events businesses who want to ‘build a moat’ around the communities they serve.”

Based on how well events businesses are performing and how attractive they are looking to investors as we head into 2024, it’s safe to assume we made the right predictions.

And it would be wise at this stage to revisit two more key points:

#1 If your tech stack and first party data are not well set up and managed you won’t be able to use the most powerful AI tools – for marketing, sales, creating value for sponsors, or growing audiences and engagement.
#2 The best martech and event tech platforms have offered machine learning for some time that most event organisers are still not using, and are now rapidly rolling out new AI features.

AI is not just about ChatGPT creating copy and Adobe Firefly creating images. These quite tactical generative AI tools were the focus of the hype in 2023. Easy and simple to deploy, these types of tools will probably have the least overall impact on events businesses.

The ‘game changing’ developments in the coming months will be in how AI tools are deployed to leverage your first party data to create customer experiences before, during and after your events that are more relevant, engaging, and valuable. And that is where the golden nuggets of AI will be found in 2024…

 


Team MPG can help you accelerate the growth of your B2B events – get in touch to find out how.

AI can only revolutionise your business if you have a clear marketing strategy, strong value proposition, growing and well managed data set, integrated tech stack, and well-optimised website. Talk to Team MPG about how we can help you build a resilient, future-proof marketing function.

 


What our clients have said about working with Team MPG:

MPG did a great job assessing our digital marketing and marketing operations requirements – considering our business goals. They developed a robust strategy, followed by a practical operational roadmap to help us further improve how we use technology to support marketing and sales performance. It has been a pleasure working with the MPG team!

Jonathan Perry, Global Marketing Director, PEI Group

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Late event bookings are very bad for business & are NOT ‘inevitable’

There has been a lot of talk lately about delegates, visitors, sponsors and exhibitors committing late to events. Contracts are being signed later, and registrations are being made later. This is not inevitable.

Blaming the pandemic for bookings and revenue coming later is an excuse, not a reason. This does not have to be the ‘new normal’! With the right approach to marketing an event, you’ll get your bookings and revenue in earlier, and have much healthier financials and business resiliency as a result.

 

Why late booking patterns are VERY BAD for event organisers

  • You may not hit your targets in terms of attendee numbers and profile, or you may have too many attendees to properly accommodate. Both risk creating a bad or unsatisfactory customer experience, no matter how well all the other event elements come together.
  • You will be carrying significant financial risk in the longer term. Who will put money into next year’s event if this year’s delivered a bad customer experience?
  • You will not be able to manage overall event budgets in the right way – risking spending too much on areas such as catering.
  • You may be spending too much money on marketing channels that don’t work, or not enough money on channels that are working very well. With a late booking pattern you won’t work this out until it’s too late to do something about it.
  • You won’t have enough time to create FOMO and excitement – nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd! With not enough time for advocacy marketing to kick in properly one of your most important marketing channels won’t work.
  • Ultimately, late event bookings mean less revenue, lower ROI and a serious risk to the longer term survival of the event itself!

 

7 Marketing actions that will bring forward your booking patterns

#1 Invest time (and money if needed) in a robust event marketing strategy. Do this early.

Make sure you have a good plan for your marketing at least 9 months before the event. Start pushing out your marketing activity at least 6 months out, using a range of channels – from email and advocacy, to social media and online advertising – to get all stages of the funnel working.

Ideally use 365 marketing – ensure your audience is kept up to date year-round and reminded of your unique offering.

Open registration as early as possible so that early interest can be converted to confirmed attendees. For paid events: firm up your pricing early, present it on the website and create urgency via early bird campaigns.

#2 Develop and deploy benefit-led messaging throughout all channels and campaigns. Do this early.

Is your messaging correctly focused on the benefits i.e. the reasons people will sponsor/exhibit at or attend your event? Ensure these benefits are ingrained in your messaging and repeated consistently across all channels.

Segment your database so you can send targeted, relevant messaging that specifically appeals to certain customer groups.

Your event will evolve, so make sure your messaging does too.

#3 Get your database in order: it needs to be well structured, big enough and give you strong coverage of your core markets. Do this early.

Tag your database so that you can target the right people with the most relevant, engaging comms that will get them to act early.

Based on average response rates, do you have enough of the right contacts to target visitors, delegates, exhibitors and sponsors? Conduct an audit to see which groups may be underrepresented, and put a plan in place to address any gaps as soon as possible.

Make sure you can identify those who are most engaged, and ensure that they are nurtured and followed up effectively for conversions.

#4 Make sure your website is fully optimised to maximise conversions to generate leads and registrations. Do this early, and then keep optimising.

Your website is your most important marketing channel – update it regularly – daily if needed, or at a minimum weekly.

At 9 months out and beyond, your goal will be collecting ‘register your interest’ leads, and ideally also registrations if you have been able to open reg early enough. At the 6 month mark, content downloads like brochures will drive more leads by offering something in return. Then, from 3 months out, shift the focus firmly onto bringing in registrations.

This 365 approach will ensure your website is always directing visitors to an action that gives you their data, and allows you to drive registrations with a pool of engaged contacts already eager to sign up.

#5 Get your agenda and speakers confirmed early, and publish this information early.

The earlier you can confirm your content programme, the better. Aim to have all speakers confirmed by 12 weeks out in order to get all customers to commit earlier – exhibitors, sponsors, delegates and visitors.

#6 Deploy advocacy marketing – early.

The sooner you can get advocates creating FOMO in your target audience, the better. Use testimonials on your website, in emails and on social media to put this social proof out in the open.

For automated advocacy tools, earlier is better too – even before you open registration / ticket sales. The more data you can collect, the better you can refine your approach.

#7 Create urgency and clearly communicate scarcity.

Early birds and VIP perks aren’t just for delegates. Sponsors can also be enticed by limited time offers that enhance the value they receive – and you benefit from invoices paid months before the event and early commitment, which in turn helps build the momentum.

If your event is free, then scarcity can still be created via event features – possibly by requiring registrants to book for certain aspects of your event which are limited in number. Reward those who back you early, your bottom line will thank you.

In summary, if you have the right marketing strategy and execution approach in place, your booking pattern will not be late. Late booking patterns are very bad for business – full stop. Don’t accept them!

 


Team MPG can help you bring your event booking patterns forward.

Get in touch for a ‘no obligation’ conversation about how we do this, and can be done to make your events business work better with a better approach to event marketing.


What our clients have said about working with Team MPG:

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, SVP, Licensing, Informa Markets

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Marketing Strategy Briefing for B2B Intelligence, Media & Events Businesses – August 2023

What will make the biggest difference to your marketing performance?

As we head towards the final months of 2023, we start focusing our ‘strategic minds’ on 2024 and beyond. The annual planning and budgeting cycle will start very soon and has already started for many businesses.

For senior executives focused on events, this can be a very challenging time, as the intense budgeting process overlaps with a very busy period of delivering important events that bring in a significant portion of 2023 revenues to fund 2024 operations and growth.

Marketing is emerging as a critically important function for business success. Strategically minded leaders are spending more time and money on ensuring they have the right marketing people, systems and processes in place to enable scale and profitability. 

Smart investments made in marketing over the coming months will move the dial for many businesses in 2024. Here is where we recommend you focus these investments:

#1 Optimise your customer database to reach the right audience with the right message

Those with strong 1st party data have been smashing it in 2023. By ‘strong’ we mean:

  • Good market coverage i.e. having enough of the right contacts on your database to achieve your commercial targets
  • Well-tagged contacts for segmented campaigns and targeted, relevant comms to successfully engage and monetise your audience
  • A well-defined and well-executed process to continually maintain and grow your compliant, relevant data set
  • A systematic method to analyse and act on customer insight on audience interactions.

Studies by Google and Boston Consulting Group have found that using 1st-party data to engage audiences with personalised marketing results in 2.9x revenue growth and 1.5x cost savings.

A valuable, optimised database relies on having an ongoing, systematic process. Much of MPG’s work in 2023 has focused on helping our clients put this process in place to achieve sustainable growth. We use HubSpot’s easy-to-follow Database Lifecycle Management Model, a simple 5-part framework that delivers good results. The 5 parts are:

  1. Data cleaning: contacts can become unusable over time and may need to be suppressed, refreshed or removed. 
  1. Data collection: capturing the right types of contact data and enrichment data is key to success. 3 methods need to be in play here at all times:
    • Lead generation/data capture forms
    • Data cleaning via automated and manual processes
    • Data acquisition – which we recommend is done via a trusted 3rd party data research specialist (contact us for a list of recommended providers)
  2. Data usage: when deciding what data to collect, it’s important to understand how contacts will be used for marketing purposes. Impactful, targeted campaigns rely on well-tagged data.
  3. Data storage: all customer and prospect data should be stored in a fit-for-purpose system or well-integrated tech stack. This is absolutely essential if you want to scale your business. (MPG are official implementation partners for top-of-the-range systems, including HubSpot, Adobe (Marketo) and Active Campaign. Get in touch if you need help sourcing and putting in place the right system for your business).
  4. Data maintenance: your customer and prospect data should always be ‘ready to use’ and this requires ongoing, systematic maintenance via automated and manual processes.

Can we help you develop, maintain and continually grow your 1st party data?

MPG’s database experts have extensive experience in planning and managing the essential work needed to give you a strong database that enables effective, targeted marketing and sales campaigns. Contact us to find out more.

#2 Use analytics for data-led decision making on your marketing investments

‘Shooting in the dark’ is no longer an option. Using marketing and sales analytics in the right way is a priority for the smartest business leaders. Team MPG has seen that a well-structured reporting and decision-making process based on robust analytics delivers good results – again and again. 

In today’s data-driven landscape, it is essential for marketers to have analytical skills to understand customer behaviour, track campaign performance, and create effective strategies. 

If you use Google Analytics, you need to make sure GA4 has been set up in the right way to give you the data points you need. Google’s previous analytics product – Universal Analytics (UA) was phased out in July.

Here are some of the key features of GA4 that make it a much more valuable tool than its predecessor:

  • Cross-platform tracking: GA4 can track users across multiple devices and platforms, which gives you a more holistic view of your potential customer’s behaviour.
  • Flexible reporting: GA4 has more flexible reporting options, so you can create custom reports to meet your specific reporting needs. In addition, GA4’s default attribution model is data-driven attribution – a new, dynamic approach that uses algorithms to distribute credit for conversions based on each channel’s click interaction, taking into account all touchpoints throughout the customer journey
  • Enhanced predictive analytics: GA4 uses machine learning to provide more accurate predictions about user behaviour. This can help you to improve your marketing campaigns and make better business decisions.
  • Better integrations: GA4 is more tightly integrated with other Google products, such as Google Ads, Google Search Console and Google Marketing Platform, making it much easier to optimise campaign performance.
  • Metrics and dimensions: GA4 has a new set of metrics and dimensions designed to be more flexible and comprehensive than UA. For example, GA4 has a metric called “Active Users” that tracks how many unique users have interacted with your website (or app) in the past 7 days. This metric is more helpful than UA’s “Total Users” metric, which only counts the number of users who have visited your website or app at least once.
  • Enhanced predictive analytics: GA4 uses machine learning to provide more accurate predictions about user behaviour. This can help you to improve your marketing campaigns and make better business decisions.
  • Data model: in UA, data was collected in sessions, which are defined as a group of user interactions that happen within a certain time period. In GA4, data is collected in events, which are individual interactions that a user takes. This makes GA4 more flexible and scalable, as it can track a wider range of user behaviour.

Can we help you get your marketing and sales analytics and reporting into good shape?

MPG’s analytics experts have extensive experience in auditing and implementing GA4, as well as training our clients in-house marketers and analysts on how to get this tool working optimally.
We have also built marketing and sales reports for many businesses to give senior executives and marketers ‘at the coalface’ the intelligence they need to make good strategic and tactical decisions.
Contact us to find out more.

#3 Be more effective and efficient with AI marketing tools

ChatGPT has sparked many debates about the opportunities and challenges presented by AI. Participants of a recent roundtable hosted by MPG shared how AI is being used in their businesses, and how they’re approaching AI going forward. The 6 key takeaways from this Marketing Leaders discussion were: 

  1. Most marketers are in the early stages of adoption, experimenting with various tools. MPG has identified the following tools to help event marketers.
  2. AI is augmenting, not replacing existing processes – for now.
  3. AI tools cannot replicate the deep understanding marketers have of their audiences and products.
  4. AI used well should help marketers’ automate more processes, meaning they will have more time for this kind of strategic thinking and planning to better support revenue generation and business growth.
  5. Marketing technologists who can deploy AI well will play a more important role going forward.
  6. Governance and privacy issues raise tricky questions, and marketers are being encouraged by inhouse lawyers to exercise caution – or not use tools like ChatGPT at all.

MPG sees one of the most important applications of AI being attribution modelling – ensuring you have strong visibility at all times of which marketing initiatives are delivering a good ROI, and which ones are losing you money. Here is more on this important topic.

Do you need a marketing strategy that includes tried & tested AI tools?

Technology should not be the tail that wags the dog, but is a very important enabler to marketing success. MPG’s marketing strategy and martech experts can help you develop a marketing strategy that incorporates AI to help you reach the right audience with the right message more effectively and more efficiently, and measure the performance of various marketing initiatives with
Contact us to find out more.

#4 Get maximum mileage out of your marketing budget

Marketing campaign budgets have come under pressure 2023. This is unlikely to change in 2024. Marketing leaders need to make sure the money they put into various marketing channels and tactics delivers results, and these results are visible.

Email marketing will continue to be an incredibly important marketing channel for all marketers, especially for attracting high-quality event attendees and generating leads for sponsorship and exhibition salespeople. Here are some conference email marketing do’s and don’ts to help you get this channel working at its best.

Another important channel for event marketing is paid media – sometimes referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) and digital advertising. PPC can quickly become expensive if you don’t approach it strategically and with the necessary rigour in execution. When set up and managed well, paid media can be a cost-effective way to attract and engage event attendees and generate leads for your sales teams to convert to bring in more sponsorship and exhibition revenue.  

Social media also plays a crucial role in boosting brand recognition, generating awareness, and delivering organic leads and registrations. Social media is also important for maintaining year-round engagement with your community. Effective social media usage relies on:

  1. Messaging and content strategies backed by a deep understanding of your audience gleaned from social listening and competitor analysis
  2. Posts optimised for discovery and using high-quality, on-brand creative assets
  3. Amplified reach by leveraging brand advocates and influencers 
  4. Automated processes for streamlined posting, monitoring, tracking and measuring

Can we help you achieve better results from email marketing, paid media or social media?

MPG’s marcomms experts have a wealth of knowledge about how to make all your channels work well and deliver strong ROI.

Contact us to request a call to have a chat about where your marketers could be doing better.

#5 Embed important skills in your marketing function to future-proof your business

Doing marketing well is difficult. A marketing graduate straight out of university should have good, theoretical knowledge, but typically very little understanding of how to apply this to your business. And more experienced marketers from other sectors who have not worked in B2B media or events previously may find their way of marketing is not fit for purpose for your product set.

There 4 ways to get the marketing skills you need, and MPG recommends doing all four in combination:

  1. Hire the right people

    Look for analytical marketers who are good at problem-solving. You need people who are organised, systematic and productive. They also need to be good communicators and great at stakeholder management.
  2. Complement your in-house team with external experts – engaging partners strategically for long-term success.

    Having a flexible, skilled supplementary workforce who can fill important skills and resource gaps is a huge advantage. Having strong partners on board and supporting your in-house team will help you retain your best marketers and consistently deliver good results in all areas of your marketing.
  3. Train your in-house marketers in the kind of marketing they need to do:

    There are specific and different approaches needed for marketing to attract delegates to conferences, visitors to exhibitions, sponsors and exhibitors.

    These approaches are also very different to how subscription marketing should be done to attract and retain subscribers. Don’t underestimate the differences in marketing these different types of products.

    Your marketers also need help in getting to grips with the critical data, martech and digital tools they need to deploy confidently and competently.

    Invest in their training to keep your marketers performing well, motivated and engaged.

Build a stronger, future-fit marketing function with MPG

MPG Academy’s trainers are B2B marketing practitioners whose ‘day job’ is delivering strategies, operations and campaigns for a range of B2B media and events businesses.

Get in touch to find out about the training we can deliver for your team.

Topics:

10 steps to take your B2B event social media marketing to the next level

Marketing budgets have fallen again and, according to Gartner’s ‘State of Marketing Budget and Strategy in 2023’ report, 75% of CMOs are being asked to do more with less in 2023.

With a hyper-focus on making marketing budgets work harder, we are turning our eye to one of the most cost-effective channels for B2B events – social media. As a mostly free channel, with some spend required on tools to create efficiencies (more on that later), social media is a key driver for growing brand awareness, driving organic lead generation and conversions for attendees and spex, and keeping your community engaged year-round.

Successful use of social media can lead to exponential audience growth through earned media – i.e. people choosing to share your content with their own networks because they believe it to be of significant interest and value. It’s an opportunity to build a community of engaged followers that are more likely to convert and can be targeted with paid advertising, creating further opportunities to drive valuable actions like completing a form or registering.

Social media isn’t just a tactic to use in the lead-up to your event and then dial down once your event has happened. Your social media strategy should focus on all 3 stages of your event marketing cycle:

  • Pre-event is where the bulk of your social activity will be and the aim is to generate direct and influenced leads and registrations and build excitement ahead of the event. Event-specific posts typically focus on the upcoming event, but can also contain post-event content from previous years to provide a sample of what to expect.
  • During event activity that takes place while your event is live. It focuses on generating live discussion, providing real-time updates on sessions taking place and generating as much buzz and ‘FOMO’ as possible.
  • Post-event activity takes place immediately after your event, until pre-event activity begins for the next event. Focus this activity on wrapping up and sharing the content and discussion generated from the event. Encourage non-attendees to register their interest for the next event while the sense of ‘missing out’ is still present.

Team MPG has helped many clients efficiently and effectively accelerate the growth of their events by creating and executing multi-channel event marketing strategies, including social media. Here are the 10 steps MPG recommends you take to elevate your social media marketing:

#1 Know your target audience to create content that resonates

To effectively connect with your audience, it’s crucial to understand who they are and what they want. For every event, you should have a documented messaging strategy that outlines who your audience is, what their challenges/opportunities and jobs to be done are, and defines your event’s USPs and benefits.
Your social posts should either be so interesting that:

  • people want to click to find out more
  • they start a conversation i.e. get people talking/commenting/sharing

A robust messaging strategy helps you engage with your audience in a way that feels authentic. Read MPG’s 5 steps to building a winning messaging strategy to find out more about deploying strong, impactful messaging.

#2 Listen to your audience and meet them where they are

Monitor and analyse the conversations your audience is having on different social media platforms to gather valuable insights, identify trends, understand preferences, and recognise pain points. This is called ‘social listening’. Use this information to identify the right social platforms to use, improve your content, and better address their needs. You might already have this functionality in your tech stack – some CRMs e.g. HubSpot have social listening as part of their native social media management functionality. If you don’t already have this built-in, there are many tools that can be used as standalone products or can also integrate with your CRM e.g. Oktopost.

#3 Keep an eye on your competitors

Study what your competitors are doing on social media. If they are already implementing successful strategies, learn from them. See how they are positioning themselves in the market and how shared or overlapping audiences are engaging with their content. If your competitors don’t have a successful social media presence, take the opportunity to differentiate yourself and reach a user base they have yet to tap into.

#4 Harness the powers of influencers

Look for influencers, both individuals and brands, who have a large following and align with your brand values. Collaborating with influencers can greatly amplify your reach and credibility. This could be as simple as aligning your brand with well-known media outlets or associations via partnerships that include them posting your content, or by actively sharing third-party content from these key industry players.

#5 Leverage your brand advocates

Brand trust is more important now than ever, and the viewpoints and actions of trusted colleagues, peers and community thought leaders have a huge influence on purchasing decisions. Leveraging your brand loyalists (advisory boards, speakers, sponsors/exhibitors and attendees) is an important part of the puzzle when it comes to creating and executing your amplification strategy. This should be automated wherever possible e.g. with tools such as InGo, Gleanin or Snöball, allowing your marketing team to focus on other revenue-generating activities.

Don’t forget to include employee advocacy as part of your social strategy. All event stakeholders, e.g. salespeople and producers, will have strong networks of highly relevant contacts that can be leveraged. Linking personal accounts in social media management tools (e.g. adding personal accounts to HubSpot or using tools like Oktopost) helps you amplify your messages across social.

#6 Develop a comprehensive content strategy

A successful social media strategy requires a good mix of product promotion (e.g. speaker highlights and agenda session focus), informative content (e.g. industry reports, articles or white papers), and offer-led content (e.g. early-bird promotions). This content should be repackaged into multiple formats e.g. image + copy posts, PDFs or short and long-form videos to provide a variety so that your target audience can engage with a format that resonates well for them. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new formats – e.g. polls, questions, posts with images, posts without images etc.

Plan your content calendar in advance, ensuring you are posting regularly i.e. at least 1 post per week, per channel, increased to 2 per week from 12 weeks out and to 3-4 times per week in the final 3 weeks before the event.

#7 Create high-quality, on-brand creative assets

Consistency is key, not only in your posting schedule but also in your overall brand identity. It is important to maintain a consistent brand image across all marketing channels. If your brand’s messaging and identity keep changing, it can confuse consumers and make it difficult for them to connect with your brand.

Further enhance your social media presence by investing in creating visually appealing and engaging content using high-quality photos, videos, and graphics to capture your audience’s attention and increase engagement.

#8 Optimise your posts for discovery

Make it easy for new people to find your brand by using relevant event and industry keyword hashtags and tagging relevant accounts, e.g. speakers and their companies and sponsors and exhibitors. Use the event hashtag consistently – ‘owning’ a unique hashtag makes your social account more discoverable, and creates a library of relevant 1st and 3rd party content. Users who aren’t following you can click on the event hashtag and discover an active community, sharing content that they are interested in. Be sure not to include the event year in your hashtag so that users can see your full catalogue of content and you don’t need to ‘start from scratch’ each year.

#9 Track and measure your social media efforts

Regularly track and measure the performance of your social media posts and campaigns. Use analytics tools to gather data on engagement, reach, conversions, and other relevant metrics. This will help you understand what’s working and what needs improvement.

#10 Utilise social media management tools

Social media management tools like Oktopost can help you streamline your posting, monitoring, and tracking processes. When selecting a social media management tool, consider:

  • Content creation – does the tool have AI content-creating capabilities that will enable you to effectively create social media content at scale?
  • Integrations – does it integrate with your CRM and other marketing automation platforms to optimise workflow and data management?
  • Reporting – does it provide you with data on your social engagement and analytics dashboards that will enable you to extract actionable insights and make data-led decisions?

By following these 10 steps, you can elevate your social media presence and take your online engagement to the next level. Remember to continuously adapt and optimise your strategies based on audience feedback and industry trends.


Team MPG can help you accelerate the growth of your B2B events

We can help you attract and convert more of the right customers with a robust marketing strategy, practical operational roadmaps and rigorous execution. Get in touch with Team MPG today to see how we can help you unlock revenue growth in your business.


What our clients have said about working with Team MPG:

“I was very impressed with the marketing strategy MPG developed for Environment Analyst. The level of thinking that went into this strategy and how it was delivered has created great value for our business. My marketing manager and I now look forward to working with MPG to execute great marketing together.”

Julian Rose, Director & Co-Founder, Environment Analyst

Topics:

Growing event revenue fast: a tried and tested methodology

In-person events have, without any shadow of a doubt, bounced back very strongly since the pandemic. We have seen ample evidence of many annual conferences and tradeshows – particularly those in market leadership positions – attracting large audiences. In many cases, we have seen events in the first half of 2023 attracting their largest number of attendees ever.

And with the rise of AI, we predict in-person events will become even more attractive to attendees, sponsors and exhibitors as people seek out real conversations with real people; as SEO becomes a less reliable source of web traffic and leads; and as companies look to build brand trust.

So, what are the key things leaders in events businesses should be focused on for a successful 2023 H2 and as we prepare for 2024?

Here are three things we think have always been strategically important for winning conferences and tradeshows, and going forward they’ll be more important than ever:

  1. How unique and valuable your event is to your targeted attendees.
  2. How well you do your marketing to attract attendees – to get the right message to the right people at the right time.
  3. How well you’re doing commercial marketing to grow sponsorship and exhibitions revenue.

The most important area for focus in terms of rapid revenue and profit growth is #3: commercial marketing to grow sponsorship and exhibitions revenue. Another term for commercial marketing is ‘spex marketing’ – we see these terms being used interchangeably in our client companies.

Sponsors and exhibitors are hungry for effective and relatively quick routes to market, and events are a channel they can rely on to achieve this goal.

So, acquiring new sponsors and exhibitors is probably the ‘quickest win’ for most event organisers who have never properly focused on this area.

Over the past 6 years, MPG has developed a successful methodology to help event organisers achieve strong YOY spex revenue growth, and build momentum into their sales team to continue this growth for years to come.

Here is how we do it:

If you’re going to invest in spex marketing we suggest you do it this way too!

When working with Team MPG on spex marketing, a range of our clients who run annual conferences and exhibitions have consistently achieved the following results:

  • Over 5x number of MQLs (relevant leads) for the spex sales team
  • Over 3x higher conversion rate from spex lead to sale
  • 25%+ growth in average order value
  • Over 2x revenue from new spex clients

The revenue is there for the taking – by the companies that make the smartest investments and manage their teams well to integrate marketing and spex sales for best results. So, whether doing this inhouse or with external support, we strongly recommend you invest in spex marketing, or your competitors may outgrow you in 2024.


If you need Team MPG’s help with spex marketing to grow your revenue fast, we can:

  • Create the strategy for you, and ensure you’re set up well to execute this strategy inhouse, OR
  • Create the strategy and do the execution for you, either in place of or alongside in-house marketers.

What our clients have said about working with Team MPG:

“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 better monetising our digital products. We were very impressed by the level of strategic thinking and valuable benchmarking they put into the process. I would recommend MPG as a good marketing partner for a B2B event brand.”

Managing Director of a £20m portfolio in a large global business focused on B2B exhibitions.

“MPG did a great job developing and then executing a marketing strategy to help us grow one of our largest US events. They added a level of science, rigour and new thinking to our approach that our internal marketers are excited about, giving me confidence we’d achieve great things together. It has been a complete pleasure working with Team MPG!”

Managing Director of a medium sized, founder-led conference business.


Get in touch if you’d like to find how Team MPG can help accelerate growth of your events revenue.

Topics:

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

Topics:

Questions B2B media/events business leaders should be asking about AI to win in 2024

The hype around AI is ramping up, and most leaders and senior marketers in B2B media/events companies are still trying to work out how to react.

There is a palpable fear in some businesses that competitors and future disruptors will ‘eat the lunch’ of those who don’t adapt quickly, as well as great excitement in those who see embracing emerging tech fast as a means of gaining a competitive advantage.

Some of the most progressive businesses are seriously considering how they should disrupt themselves before someone else does.

From MPG’s perspective, we see the following as some of the most important questions B2B media/events businesses and those responsible for their marketing should be asking themselves:

  • What tools should our team start using straight away to increase efficiency and productivity?
  • How should AI tools be added to our existing tech stack to enhance what we already have in place?
  • Do the tools in our current tech stack offer AI functionality we’re not yet using? And for all tools in our tech stack, what is their roadmap to introduce more useful AI?
  • How should we manage the risk around ‘betting on’ AI tools? How do we mitigate this risk?
  • How can we get all our staff on board the AI journey, especially the most skeptical, and those who fear they will be replaced with AI?
  • How fast do we need to move to adopt AI? How much time do we have to figure out our AI strategy? How quickly will today’s best AI tools be replaced by the next generation of best AI tools?
  • How much is ‘getting AI’ going to cost us? How do we build an investment plan to pay for this, and build a strong business case for each investment to gain board approval?

And probably the most important question of all based on personal interest of senior executives, and how they can put themselves in a strong position to answer all the questions above:

  • Where do I find the most relevant information about what AI means for me and my business?
  • And how can I stay plugged into this valuable source of relevant information to help me stay up to date with AI developments?

It’s the last two questions that B2B media/events business leaders should be considering more laterally…

Your B2B media/events brand puts you in a great position to be the conduit of AI learning and information sharing for your community. You have probably already published reports and articles on AI for your audience, sold AI focused webinars to your clients, and incorporated AI into your event programmes.

But…have we considered yet how incredibly important live events are going to be in a world where AI becomes mainstream? In-person business meetings will be where professionals can be confident they will connect authentically with real, highly relevant people with whom they can build real relationships, and from whom they can learn in a trusted, ‘safe space’.

AI will certainly help enhance the in-person event experience, and smart event organisers are already using AI to engage and serve their event audiences more efficiently and ‘personally’, i.e. based on what each audience member finds most valuable – en masse (e.g. matchmaking tools). AI will also deliver even more valuable marketing solutions for sponsors and exhibitors as data and analytics can be used to deliver a better and more visible ROI for clients’ marketing spend.

But, as the early aftermath of the pandemic has shown us, people will always love attending a gathering of their ‘professional tribe’ – in real life. AI will not replace live events.

If anything, AI will make live events even more important for the B2B media/events businesses who want to ‘build a moat’ around the communities they serve. This will be especially important for brands that have built membership offerings where events are a key part of a membership package. As generative AI tools such as ChatGPT reduce the need for search engines, businesses that rely on search traffic to drive visitors to content-heavy sites may find digital engagement from web traffic falling off a cliff. Engagement with events will probably need to fill the gap.

Therefore, information brands with ‘flagship’ annual events they rely on to engage and serve their community members should recognise that the accelerated adoption of AI will make it more important than ever for their flagship events to take, and hold, a market leading position.

A strong, content-led, annual flagship event will always successfully drive community engagement, membership growth and overall revenue – as long as the marketing of the event is planned and executed well.

As we approach the halfway point of 2023, here are the two things event organisers should be putting in place now (if they have not done so already) to ensure their flagship events in 2024 will hold or take the market leading spot:

#1 A strong event product development strategy and team:

Your subject matter experts (i.e. editors, analysts, etc.) and event programming experts (i.e. conference producers) should already be doing the work needed to create a valuable programme for your 2024 flagship event.

The earlier a strong product is created (with strong speakers confirmed), the better chance you have of capturing the 2024 budget your customers will be putting towards sponsoring, exhibiting or attending events.

#2 A strong go-to-market strategy and marcomms plan:

  • Analyse your target market

    • Define your total addressable market, as well as the size and profile of key segments. Consider both your event audience buying tickets, as well as vendors who will buy your exhibition stands and sponsorships – both markets need to be defined and well understood.
    • Evaluate your current database in terms of data contained and how it is structured in relation to the size and shape of your overall target market and key market segments. Will your database give you the targeted reach you require to attract all the visitors/delegates and exhibitors/sponsors you need for commercial success and a market leading position?
    • Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you audit, structure, grow and maintain your database to create business value and ensure your database gives you a competitive advantage.
  • Define your value proposition i.e. unique selling points (USPs) and benefits. How will your event be differentiated from competitors in a way that makes customers choose yours?
  • Determine what key messages will resonate with different market segments. What tone, words and phrases need to be used in all your marcomms to attract, engage and convert customers so they not only register for your event, but also turn up on the day?
    Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you develop more relevant, compelling and engaging messages than your competitors.
  • Martech, data and analytics: evaluate your martech, salestech, database and analytics tools in terms of how well you can reach your target market in a scalable way.
    • Where are the gaps in your data?
    • Which tools need to be better set up and optimised to work as they need to?
    • What integrations are needed for real-time, efficient data flow and compliance are missing?
    • What tools are missing in your tech stack?

If your data, tech and analytics tools are not set up in the right way, you won’t have an efficient and scalable business so that your flagship event can get and keep the ‘top spot’.

It is also worth bearing in mind that to use marketing automation and other AI tools you need a good tech and data setup.

Get in touch to ask for case studies on how Team MPG have helped many B2B media/events businesses improve their martech and data to enable scalable growth (MPG are official partners to HubSpot, Marketo and various other leading martech platforms)

  • Create a better event marcomms plan than your competitors…
    The detail on how to do this will be in our next blog post! Sign up here to get an email notification every time MPG publishes a new Insights piece like this on.

 


Team MPG can help you accelerate the  growth of your B2B events

AI can only revolutionise your business if you have a clear marketing strategy, strong value proposition, growing database, integrated tech stack, and well-optimised website. Get in touch with Team MPG today to see how we can help you build a resilient marketing function that is well set up for future success.

MPG did a great job assessing our digital marketing and marketing operations requirements – considering our business goals. They developed a robust strategy, followed by a practical operational roadmap to help us further improve how we use technology to support marketing and sales performance. It has been a pleasure working with the MPG team!

Jonathan Perry, Global Marketing Director, PEI – Alternative Insight


Take a look at this short video by MPG’s own Dominic Bird at a recent Gleanin event that explains how AI is being used to gather insights, understand customer behaviour, and personalize marketing strategies. Watch the full video here.

Topics:

Commercial marketing: the ‘goldmine’ for spex revenue growth

In-person events are back with a bang and with them the promise of rapidly growing sponsorship and exhibitions (spex) revenues – especially when the event organiser can also offer a strong digital audience linked to their events. 

So, how can a business with a portfolio of strong events and associated digital audiences make the most of this opportunity? The answer is commercial marketing – in other words, the marketing that drives awareness, interest, engagement, leads and commitment from companies that would benefit from spex opportunities available.

Based on what was traditionally called ‘exprom’ by the large trade show organisers, commercial marketing is emerging as a ‘next generation’ area of marketing in events businesses – specifically to support spex sales teams attract, retain and upsell clients on high-value packages. 

The ROI on a commercial marketing programme should be significant (600%+), but only if money is well spent on the right kind of marketing. And therein lies the challenge…which is this: the knowledge, tools and skills to do ‘the right kind of marketing’ to support spex sales teams to deliver strongly growing commercial revenues typically don’t sit within today’s events businesses.

Event marketers typically know how to deploy marketing approaches that are specifically suited to attracting delegates and show visitors – which, to keep things simple, we will call ‘event audience marketing’. Commercial marketing requires a very DIFFERENT methodology and set of performance metrics (KPIs) compared to event audience marketing. This also requires a different knowledge base, skillset and mindset in marketers.

Commercial marketers should be focused on ensuring the value proposition for sponsors and exhibitors is positioned and communicated well to positively influence both returning and new spex clients. This spex value proposition is very different for spex clients than it is for the audience – even though it is essentially focused on the same product. Two value propositions from one product; two sides of the same coin. Although this is what makes events a wonderful model – especially if you can directly monetise both ‘buyside’ (attendees) and ‘sell side’ (spex clients) – it also means you’re effectively marketing two different products to two different target markets, in two different ways.

Securing revenue from event audiences is more difficult than ever. This is not to say that a valuable event experience shouldn’t be paid for by a delegate. But it does mean growing delegate revenue fast is very challenging, especially if a key goal is to ensure the quality of the audience is ‘top notch’ and attractive to potential spex clients. 

In the next couple of years, our prediction is that spex clients will drive revenue growth in most events businesses. This will require very good event audience marketing as the right audience is what spex clients are effectively paying for. And it means commercial marketing is also needed to attract new spex clients while also supporting the retention of existing clients (who now have far more choice about where to spend their marketing budgets, and who may have therefore become a lot more price sensitive.

Never underestimate the importance of a steady stream of new spex clients. They can be retained and upsold in future years, and also provide helpful ‘competition’ for existing spex clients – giving your salespeople a stronger negotiating position. 

Also, don’t underestimate how helpful it can be to your sales team to have a strong commercial marketing programme running all year round to deliver a steady stream of new leads into their pipelines. 

Recently, 12-month programmes run by Team MPG have delivered full payback within 3 months (i.e. money committed to the full 12-month programme has been covered by resulting sales within 3 months), with the campaigns typically delivering an ROI of over 600%. This means for every £1 spent on commercial marketing, £6 is generated from spex clients who would not otherwise have heard of the event, let alone paid attention to the spex opportunities on offer and raised their hands via a web form to indicate their interest.  And that’s just the direct revenue generated for that period – not counting leads converted in future years or the lifetime value of new clients retained and upsold. 

Commercial marketing won’t work without sales and marketing integration

An integrated sales and marketing approach is essential for success! And it is important to automate as much of this process as you can – which with tools available like HubSpot*, is relatively straightforward.
(*MPG are HubSpot Partners – have a look here to see how we can help you get the best tech stack).

Here is MPG’s recommended step-by-step process to achieve a well-integrated spex sales and commercial marketing setup:

STEP #1 Build a market map –  identifying key people in your target market as a starting point for building your customer personas. Typically your market map would include information for each customer segment such as company type, job function/title/seniority and relevant geographical information e.g. countries or region. Develop personas that explore goals, pain points and motivators of your target spex customer.

STEP #2 Determine the size of your market. How many potential spex clients are out there? You may be surprised how large the potential pool of clients really is! And you may find you only have a very small percentage of these in your database, so commercial marketing activity will be needed to grow this list (see next point…)

STEP #3 Grow your database – from both inbound marketing efforts (e.g. PPC & social media) and targeted data research, ensure the list of potential spex clients on your database is both large enough and easily identified and targeted with relevant email comms.

STEP #4 Optimise your website so that potential new spex clients who hit your website are motivated to fill in forms so they become spex sales leads. You will need analytics well set up on your site for this to work (GA4 is almost upon us!)

STEP #5 Deploy well-optimised inbound marketing tactics e.g. content marketing, social media, advocacy marketing, SEO and PPC. All of these efforts are needed to give you a steady stream of well-qualified spex leads, and can work wonders in re-engaging lapsed spex clients and convincing annually returning clients to spend again, and ideally spend more!

STEP #6 Qualify and nurture leads, by using marketing and sales automations such as lead scoring and automated messages. Well-set-up automations can ensure spex leads are kept warm until a conversation is possible, and can also ensure they’re contacted at exactly the right time to have the best kind of sales conversation – most likely to lead to a sale. 

STEP #7 Measure, measure, measure. If you’re not measuring the results of the joined-up marketing and sales effort you won’t know what is and is not working. 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. You need an evidence-based, data-led approach to get an ROI of 600%+. Ask MPG about our Commercial Marketing Dashboards – as below:

Don’t miss the boat on this one! Commercial marketing really is the key to great riches – when you get it right. Hopefully the knowledge we have shared in this piece will help you achieve this!


Did you know that Team MPG delivers Commercial Marketing programmes for a number of leading events and membership brands.

Get in touch to find out how we deliver a 600%+ ROI, again and again.


 

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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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