Do we need to embrace a new age of event marketing?

Well, according to research carried out by Eventbrite and Hubspot, 43% of event attendees feel that events marketed to them are not relevant to their job or industry. And yet 84% of respondents feel that attending events is an important part of their job, with 75% feeling that events are a valuable source of content and 79% attending events to learn.

There’s a huge opportunity here, but event organisers are not always able to take advantage of it!

In fact 47% of the event organisers we surveyed didn’t have a well- defined persona for their events. The result? 51% of event organisers have not been able to increase their attendance numbers, with 14% actually decreasing their attendance numbers.

The new age of event marketing

Yet with a well-defined persona, your event content and the tactics of inbound marketing can help you generate a lot of high-value, cost-efficient leads, build wider awareness of your event, and improve the day-to-day engagement with your potential delegates, sponsors and speakers.  This is what the new age of event marketing looks like.

To show you how to achieve these results, Eventbrite and Hubspot have teamed up to create an eBook on “The New Age of Event Marketing” to help you grow and promote your events!  You can download it here.

If you’re new to the concept of inbound marketing, here is a quick primer for you.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is defined by Hubspot – who’s co-founder and CEO Brian Halligan coined the term back in 2005 – as simply:

“The best way to turn strangers into customers and promoters of your business.”

Or for a more tactical definition we can turn to Wikipedia which says that: “Inbound marketing is promoting a company through blogs, podcasts, video, eBooks, enewsletters, whitepapers, SEO, social media marketing, and other forms of content marketing which serve to bring customers in closer to the brand.”

In essence, it’s about creating value around the event you run. that will help potential customers discover you, without needing to buy lists, display ads or cold call them.

Why is inbound marketing important for events?

Inbound marketing is important because it means you don’t have to spend your budget on buying lists, display ads or sales reps.  Instead, you can invest in creating additional content that adds value to your event – and the lives of your potential customers – helping you increase attendance in a more cost-effective way.  Take a look at some of these stats:

• Content Marketing Institute recently reported that 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus in an advertisement.
• Inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound leads.
• Better yet, according to Search Engine Journal, inbound leads cost 60% less than outbound leads.
• According to Social Media B2B, inbound marketing works well for B2B companies too, as those that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t.

Want to learn how you can take advantage of inbound marketing for you event?  Take a look at the eBook “The New Age of Digital Marketing” written by Eventbrite and Hubspot to help you grow and promote your events!