In-person events are crucial for any marketing mix as they allow you to connect with your audience on a personal level, in a way that virtual events and other marketing activities simply cannot. They also provide opportunities to learn about your customers’ needs and interests, which helps you create better marketing and products/services to meet those needs.
For B2B event marketers, in-person events are important across the whole marketing mix. Understanding how in-person events fit into this is essential to creating a successful event marketing strategy. Keep reading to learn why in-person events should be top of your agenda.
What is a Marketing Mix?
The Marketing Mix is a framework for understanding how products are marketed. It consists of four pillars: product, price, place, and promotion. Each pillar has its own purpose in helping customers choose which product/service to buy.
The 4Ps Of the Marketing Mix
The 4Ps of marketing is a model that outlines the four basic pillars of any top-level marketing strategy. It’s also something that marketers always come back to when releasing new products, launching in new markets or engaging in new marketing activities.
Product – What your product or service is
The first element of the marketing mix is the product itself. What do you sell? Is it a physical good or service and how does it provide a solution for your customer?
Price – How much your product or service is
The second pillar of the marketing mix is price; what you charge for your product or service. Do you have a set price or are there different pricing plans available?
Place – Where you will sell your product or service
Where you promote your product. Where do your target audience go to find information about or buy B2B products like yours? Where are they most likely to buy?
Promotion – Where and how you will promote it to get it noticed
How do you reach your customers to tell them about your B2B product? For example: trade shows, industry conferences, social media marketing, word of mouth, TV advertising etc. But what strategies do you use to promote your product to the right customer so they are likely to purchase?
How In-Person Events Are Important to the Marketing Mix
Product
Gain Instant Feedback
In-person events such as trade shows are a great opportunity to showcase your product or service to your target audience, and gain instant feedback. You can hear directly from customers about what their pain points are, how your product can be a solution and how it can be improved further with new features.
Get Insight into B2B Customer Behavior
By attending in-person events with potential customers and competitors in the same room, marketers have greater insight into customer behavior. Allowing you to understand what your customers need and how they respond to different messages. For example, if you realize that the rest of the industry uses a different term to describe something your product does, you can alter how you sell it to keep ahead of trends.
Price
Ensure Your Product is Priced Correctly for your Target Audience
Marketers don’t necessarily influence the price of the product or service. However, for B2B companies, competitively pricing your product can be difficult when pricing isn’t always laid out on the company website, or the selling isn’t done online. By attending in-person events you can make sure your pricing matches up to the kind of customer you want to receive and how you want your company to be perceived.
They Drive B2B Lead Generation
In-person events help you build relationships with your customers. You can use these connections to develop new business opportunities and strengthen existing ones. Whilst this can still be done online, people do buy from people and where people can miss an email campaign or a LinkedIn ad, in-person events put you right in front of them.
The B2B sales cycle tends to be longer than B2C or DTC. Depending on what you’re selling, research shows it can be anywhere from three to nine months long, with the average being six to nine months. Because of this, building strong connections with B2B prospects who turn into leads is even more important, making in-person events crucial to the marketing strategy.
Place
Putting Your B2B Product In Front of the Right People
In-person events are the only area of marketing that can guarantee that you speak directly to the right target audience. But how can you be so sure your target audience will be attending a B2B event? We’ve got just the ticket.
Vendelux is an event intelligence platform that gives you access to a database with detailed information of attendees of 30,000+ B2B events around the world. With Fusion, for the first time ever, event marketers can accurately forecast which sponsors and attendees will be at upcoming events, trade shows and conferences worldwide., so you can make sure you attend the in-person events your prospects do. Meaning you can set up meetings for the day of the event, rather than chasing leads after the fact.
Promotion
They Improve Brand Awareness for B2B Companies
In-person events help build brand awareness by providing a unique opportunity to interact with your audience. This interaction allows you to understand what your audience wants and how they feel about your company. It’s also a chance to show off your product or service in a new light.
NB: It’s important to send the right team members to the right events as they act as the face of the brand.
They Build IRL Relationships That Can Develop Into Long-Term Engagements
People love interacting with people in real life (IRL) and the depth of conversation that can be had in-person is where virtual events lack. This is why thought leadership and personal branding in B2B companies works so well.
But the interaction at in-person events doesn’t stop at the event. Where previous attempts at emailing or connecting with prospects on LinkedIn might have failed, once they’ve met you in person (as long as your B2B sales team have left a good impression) potential customers are more likely to connect on LinkedIn, follow your B2B company’s page and therefore engage with your other marketing touchpoints. Meaning that when they are in the position to buy a product like yours, your brand is already top of mind as a choice.
In-Person Events Strengthen B2B Marketing Strategies
It’s clear that in-person events are vital to every stage of the B2B marketing mix. B2B prospects can be harder to sell to as they know all the tricks in the book. By leveling with them in real life, you can forge the type of relationships needed for quality B2B lead generation. It’s also easier to differentiate from the competition when you put a face and personality to a company, instead of just a 1920×1080 pixel talking head.
If you want more tips for building a successful event marketing strategy, click here. To start your event attendance plan right away, start searching!
