Building a community is a big commitment for all parties involved, and one of these commitments is financial. Yes, depending on the company size, the financial commitment might be perceived as big or not and you need to commit for at least 6-12 months before you start realising results and a return on investment.

To give you an idea, it costs between £36k and £250k. That doesn't help does it? The reality is that the costs vary greatly depending on many factors and how you choose to go about it.

Let's hit the nail on the head, in order for a 12-month inbound/community marketing program to be successful, there will be many daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that need to be completed to stay on course for achieving your business goals and getting a return on your investment.

So you have two options:

Hubspot publishes every year ‘The State of Inbound’ report and it is full of fascinating insights, statistics and findings, but just in case you don’t have time to read it yourself, here are the top takeaways in easily digestible summaries. Not only is this a real time saver but we’ve also unearthed what these insights mean for the event industry – and how you can use them to your advantage.

1. Budgeting

As a marketer, you’ll be well aware that the size of your budget depends on and relates to so many different factors it can seem impossible to ensure all of them lead to an increase – but it is achievable. Factors such as the economy, a change in management and a past failure with inbound marketing typically led to a lower inbound budget being granted – however demonstrating success with inbound accessed significantly higher sums of budget.

We advocate that before you do anything else to kick off your community, you must, must, must have a blog, but once that’s done and you’re in the routine of publishing regular content, it’s time to bolster your efforts with the other platforms available to you.

These are the steps you must take to develop your online community:

Great, you’re convinced. You realise that at some point you’re going to have to come around to the idea of an online community for your event(s) and what better time to start than right now? So how exactly do you do that?

Start Blogging! Start your own, blog on LinkedIn, blog wherever you want, but do it consistently.

Well we’ve shown you the shape an online event community can take, so think about which areas you’d like to focus on. We have some advice of our own on that topic but ultimately it’s down to you to fit the forum to your ideal customer, or the place you know your prospects and customers can be found.

However, we can’t stress this point enough – if you don’t have a blog you’re missing a major opportunity to generate leads and build a captive audience. This is the most effective first step you can take in creating YOUR community, though you might not think it’s the easiest.

Here are our 5 steps to blog success, take them one step at a time.

How to attract an event audience, and how to keep them

Is there really a secret recipe for event success?

And then a secret sauce to keep them coming again and again?

Not really, it is not rocket science.

This was the opening line from Ashley Friedlein from econsultancy at the recent PPA Breakfast connect event.

I couldn’t agree with Ashley more - there is no silver bullet for achieving event success. So if there is none, what is the magic that some successful events like the Festival of Marketing enjoy?

Everyone knows the formula for event success and the most common mistakes to avoid.

The way you will attract an audience is through the “promise of the experience” and the experience you deliver. This is what Ashley thinks is the secret sauce. Successful events like the Festival of Marketing have the following elements:

In a recent survey, Adestra explored the attitudes of marketers towards emerging technologies, and their feelings towards adopting (or ignoring) it. They predicted that the research would unearth two distinct personas – the technophobes and the technophiles – and were surprised to discover that there were actually three separate camps. So which category do you as a marketing professional fall into, and what, if anything, should you do about it?  

Most event companies we’ve engaged with have at least an understanding that something in the industry needs to change, even if they’re not sure quite what shape this change will take. They’re all scratching their heads as to how they can achieve greater levels of awareness for their events, drive delegate attendance, and increase ticket sales – and do so in a sustainable way.

The beauty of the online community is that it checks all the boxes. It is the only clear solution. Any conference organisation that isn't thinking about developing a community, generating good engaging content, pulling rather than pushing and recognising that there needs to be a different approach, is missing a huge opportunity.

Many event companies are just waking up to the fact that online communities could become a huge part of their event marketing strategy, so let’s start by clarifying exactly what we mean.

An online community, put simply, is a virtual community where members or users primarily use the internet to share information and interact with one another. In the event industry, an online community is formed around a single event, or if the topics are related, a group of events. The information shared would relate to the topic of the event(s), and participants in these interactions would have an interest in the sector. In its purest form, an online community is inbound marketing in action: the process of attracting leads to your organisation, rather than using outdated, interruptive methods to gain new business.

Sometimes it’s easy for the marketing team to become an island, and as a marketer your job can feel like a constant battle to prove yourself, and the value of the work you do, to the business. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Some simple cooperation can encourage other teams to view yours as an equal, and can demonstrate to your boss just how much of an asset you are.

Every one is talking about it. This is our time, the golden age of marketing is almost here, and sooner than you think if you decide to step up and take it. There is huge opportunity for marketers to engage with broader areas of their businesses, and be THE change benefiting their function and the company as a whole, but on a much larger scale than normal. The focus is finally back on the customer, which is surely where we come in, but unfortunately there are still some significant hurdles to overcome.

Picture this: Your business launched an event last year and it was a resounding success, receiving 150 attendees. This year, your target is 200 delegates (about 30% increase), and senior management believe that if you "do some clever marketing" and "throwing some additional money at it" your could easily reach 300. That’s right; the boss has just raised the bar by forecasting a 100% increase in event attendees. Simply because there is a good feeling about it.

Salesforce recently published their 2015 report on the current state of marketing, and naturally it has given me plenty of food for thought. The report is a thorough and comprehensive overview of what marketers say about their budgets, priorities, channels, strategies and metrics for 2015. Yes, it goes into great detail, but there are definitely a lot of valuable insights in there for curious marketers. With a focus on the UK, and B2B marketing primarily, I’ve summarised what I believe to be the salient points.

If you read this blog, you know my view on how event marketers use and abuse email marketing, and I’m afraid to say it hasn’t altered just yet. If anything, I realise that there are several fundamental forgotten points that I just had to make. If you’re a B2B event industry insider, and you use email as your main marketing channel please listen up, because your approach so far is not good, not because I say so, just because click-through rates in our event industry are appalling!

Email marketing click through rates in the events industry range from 0.5% to 1.5%

Video for B2B events is a must, and any organiser who doesn’t think to budget for it and prioritise its importance will likely regret it when the sales and marketing teams come to sourcing or generating new leads next time around.

But how exactly do you make the most of that conference footage? And how can you tell its effectiveness as a lead generation tool? Well, I’ve been keeping an eye on one company in this arena that is driving the industry forward in a very innovative and cool way. CatchTalk.tv has built its own platform for event companies to showcase conference video on, and not only that, but it can demonstrate the ROI behind it too. 

Event marketers like to think they’re pretty savvy when it comes to all things email-related. However, from my experience, most of them seem to forget to leverage one fundamental (and free) marketing channel that could be put to use in growing awareness of their brand, their blog and ultimately their own profile. What is it, you ask? The personal auto signatures, of course!

As an event professional, there’s simply no excuse for not knowing the numbers and relevant statistics that indicate whether your event will be successful or not. This does not just apply to the marketing team, and even if you are not directly responsible for tracking these metrics, it’s crucial that you retain a regular awareness. B2B event planners that don’t bother to find out are just relying on wishful thinking to guarantee success; now what kind of strategy is that? Here are the most important numbers to help analyse the success of your event before it even takes place!

Conference companies love to brag that they’re “a purely online organisation now” or that they “only do digital”; but has the digital revolution taken the event world a step too far? In the case of traditional event brochures, we think it has. There are several benefits to printing your agenda that simply cannot be overlooked, despite your decreased collateral costs and greater green credentials. Here’s a list of our top reasons why you shouldn’t stop printing:

Email is the holy grail of event marketing, and that doesn’t look set to change just yet. Chances are you’ve got a healthy and reasonably responsive email database, but event companies can’t afford to rest on their laurels – growth is key, and sustaining a consistently increasing number of sign ups is a must. There are a number of ways to go about this, but if you try even one of these tips in the next couple of weeks we’re certain you’ll see the kind of results which will undoubtedly aid your event email marketing strategy for 2015. 

Trade shows and exhibitions are a lucrative environment, for the exhibitors, the organisers, and indeed the attendees. They provide the perfect opportunity to reach key decision makers, grab a moment of their precious time and assess on the spot how qualified they might be as a lead. But how fruitful are these meetings in reality? There are several steps you must take prior to, during, and after the exhibition to guarantee maximum value from such events. Here’s my guide on how to make the most of your expo opportunities: