Part 2: Relevant and contextual experiences at events
“Context drives successful engagement. B2B marketers must reach the increasingly self-directed buyer with relevant and contextual experiences,” Forrester Senior Analyst, B2B Marketing, Allison Snow.
In part one of this three part series, we explored the tactics that marketers can take before an event even begins to maximize ROI. This second installment discloses some of the tactics that can be taken during an event – in real time – to create a successful event in terms of the almighty investment in time and money.
Maximizing ROI During an Event
During an event it’s all about real time engagement: face to face, timely mobile communications and even relevant social touch points can be used to orchestrate specific questions around buying cycle and purchase intent, and then turnaround and use that data for more engaging experiences. Below are a few ways to engage with customers and prospects in relevant ways during an event:
Relevant Content
- Blog posts can be great resources to capitalize on what’s happening at the event. Creating a short and timely post about something that came up in a session or a keynote that really spurred a lot of social engagement or questions can be turned into a blog post to continue the conversation and hone in on which attendees really found this information interesting.
- You can also tap “friends of the family” or partners and influential existing customers to contribute to your blog. Promote those posts to attendees to connect relevantly. If you have someone who’s a client that’s a guest speaker or in some other session on the agenda, be sure that you’re paying lots of attention to that and promoting that person as a way to 1) say thank you for being an advocate, and 2) to show that you’re playing a role in supporting their personal brand.
Capture data in real time:
- More and more, marketers now are starting to capture session check-in, booth demo check-in, etc. Whether you’re showcasing just one or two products in your booth or you’re showcasing 10, you can capture check-in information for each of those booth demos and use that as intent data to personalize marketing. If you know somebody is interested again in product X or product Z, your marketing efforts towards those people are unique and personalized based on the fact that they’ve shown interest in those things.
- You can also do check-in for micro events, such as a networking session or a happy hour, or any of those types of things where the content is more personalized. And that gives you another piece of intent data.
Read more in part three of this blog series, which will be available next week, to learn more about planning for event ROI after the event’s over.