Why should you invest in events in 2024?

Are you leveraging events as part of your marketing strategy? If not, 2024 is the perfect time to start! Throwing events can be overwhelming if you’re new at it, but the benefits you can see from hosting events for your clients and prospects are numerous. Let’s break down some of these advantages and how they make events an essential part of any TSP marketing strategy.

What is event marketing?

First things first—what is event marketing, and what does it mean for a TSP like yourself?

By definition, event marketing is a strategy that includes live or virtual promotional events where audiences interact with a product or brand face-to-face. For TSPs, this definition can look a couple of different ways depending on what your event strategy is. We typically see TSPs running webinars or in-person experiences with their clients and prospects.

Virtual events can be a great way to dip your feet into the water of hosting events. In fact, 85% of marketers who use webinars say they are crucial for their marketing efforts. These are also typically a lower-cost investment. All you really need is a platform to run your event, such as GoToWebinar, Crowdcast, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams, and content that you want to convey to your attendees. Aside from webinars, you could also look into virtual panels, virtual lunch and learns, or even a virtual wine tasting! Pro-tip for virtual events: Activities throughout or at the end of your event will help participants stay engaged with your content!

In-person events can be a bit more of an investment of your time and money, but 68% of B2B marketers believe in-person events drive the most leads, and the average ROI for in-person events is 25-35%. In-person events typically require more planning and coordination, but you can get creative with what the event is—for example, inviting clients and prospects to a stadium suite to enjoy a professional sporting event and learn about your products and services.

Whether your event is in-person or virtual, you will want to clearly define what your goals are for the event, how you will invite clients and prospects, the content you want to share during the event to generate leads, how you will pay for the event, and how you will follow up on your leads from the event. Having a clear and defined process for each item above will ensure that your event will be successful.

Benefits of leveraging events as a marketing channel

Now, let’s get into some of the benefits of putting on an event. In addition to the statistics that are out there on events and how they are a great lead-generating activity, here are three major benefits to using events as part of your marketing strategy in 2024.

1. Sales and marketing culmination. Events are where sales and marketing come together. If you are hosting an in-person event, it’s your sales team’s first opportunity to meet prospects that have been warmed with marketing content before the event and before having an official meeting. The same goes with virtual events—attendees have likely been invited to the webinar via a marketing recruitment campaign or have been touched through channels of your marketing strategy. If they attend the event, they would be considered a hot lead that sales can follow up with post-event to get a meeting scheduled. Because of this, it is essential for marketing and sales to stay extremely close when planning events and work together to create a pipeline and close deals from events.
2. Personal connection with your brand. By hosting an event, you put a face to the name of your company and create a personal connection with your attendees. This can go a long way when trying to win new logos and when retaining or upselling your current clients. The more you interact with customers, the more sympathetic they will be when you must make business decisions like increasing prices, switching products, or even when they are experiencing issues.
3. Education and actionable takeaways. Hosting events is the perfect way to really get your message across to your customers. One way to hammer in your message through an event is to bring in an expert on the topic you are planning to cover. This will add credibility to your event presentation, and attendees are likely to trust the expert more than you as a business owner who is trying to push their products. In addition to this, you can provide actionable takeaways to attendees that will further educate them on their own business needs and how you can help them. A great example of this is hosting a cybersecurity education event and giving attendees complimentary dark web scans—allowing them to receive a personalized piece of the event that can show them where they are at risk.

Getting started with events

Unsure about how to get started or feel overwhelmed with the thought of putting a successful event together? Let the ConnectWise Partner Program™ help you! By joining the Partner Program, you could have access to a marketing concierge who can help coordinate and plan events, subject matter experts (SMEs) from ConnectWise to speak at your events, event planning checklists and marketing campaigns that will enable you to recruit for your events and follow up with leads, and marketing funds to help offset the cost of your event.

If you are a ConnectWise Partner, apply now to join the Partner Program and claim your event planning resources to get ahead of 2024 event planning!