B2B event marketing is a vast topic, spanning from how to get people to attend events, how to get them to buy from your B2B brand when you sponsor or organise an event and how to secure sponsorship for your own B2B event. It's a topic that interests event organisers, event marketers and B2B brand marketers in equal measure.

This post was updated on Sept 2020.

Recruiting is a time consuming and painful process. Recruiting outstanding event marketers and event sales professionals is even harder. Why? Because some event leaders are simply using the wrong approach!

If you’re someone responsible for marketing recruitment, it will come as no surprise to hear that things are pretty tough out there. We don’t think it’s too far fetched to say it’s a bit of a nightmare.

72.8% of employers are struggling to find relevant candidates. Fewer and fewer quality candidates in the active job market, those that are asking crazy salaries and being courted by lots of different firms.

A common trend among B2B companies developing online communities around their event topics, is that the marketing team does not have any influence on the content that is generated to drive engagement. A big mistake!

Stuck in a rut with email.. of course you are. Most B2B companies are still lagging behind with one of the most powerful and impactful mediums around. Video.

It doesn't need to be time consuming or expensive. 

Everyone in the B2B organisation should be able to embrace it and I am suggesting you give it a go.

These 5 functions will dramatically see change through video:

A common question we are continually asked by media and event professional entrepreneurs is:

If we want to hire a marketer, how much are we expected to pay?

Hopefully you've caught onto the fact that, this is the golden age of marketing. Marketing is playing an ever important part in the success of media and event businesses and at a time where technology, social media and innovation is key. Therefore marketing salaries need to be at par or sometimes even higher than the average salary. At last the work of hardworking marketers is being accurately compensated. It's taken some time but we're getting there! 

One thing that I feel very proud of is the content I write for you! It’s nice to know it’s well received and valued. So much so that I recently discovered someone had literally taken one of my most popular posts in my blog via LinkedIn and used it as their own. Definitely not kosher! The number one rule in repurposing content is acknowledging the original source, giving love and always linking back.

More and more event business leaders are finally getting serious about online communities for their events - after all it works right (I'd be out of a job otherwise!) and to stay in the game they're wising up to the fact that it's not the future anymore. It's now! 

There are unlimited amount of website developers that can build websites, the big problem is which one to choose? Almost every person I meet that has had their website developed asks someone they know or trust “Who built your website? Do you know a good web development agency?”

Note: This was originally published on June 12, 2014 but reviewed and updated on June 27, 2017.

I love our industry and it's great to see there are more and more events and conferences popping up for our own folk.

Interestingly enough June and November seem to be particularly busy for the events world. Fortunately there's a good variety of them, some of which are more marketing related, that we all should put in our diaries and make a point of attending.

I’ve just managed to get on top of my inbox. It took quite a large chunk of time (I won’t say how many hours). I’ve responded to those ‘I’ll reply tomorrow’ flagged messages, the forgotten-about starred memos and the mass of unread (and now deleted) marketing messages. Although I feel pretty triumphant, I know it will be overflowing again by next week.

Email has become a large part of every professional’s daily routine – whether we like it or not. A mountain of 123.9 billion business emails whizz around the web every day, with the average professional sending and receiving 131 emails every 24 hours, according to a study by Radicati.

Email can be a powerful marketing channel when used correctly. An Adobe report has revealed engagement via email is still the most desirable form of communication between businesses.

Marketing automation has many advantages. But none of them are particularly easy to realise, not least because many marketers underestimate the upheaval required to make their MA systems do what they want.

Beware the common pitfalls, and learn to recognise when it might be time for a change of tack. Here are four telltale signs that something's gone wrong:

1. Your leads are being rejected

One of the main bullet points on the box your MA platform came in was: more effective lead management. Marketing automation means marketers are able to pass only the hottest leads over to sales, and myriad inter-departmental benefits cascade down from there. But this nirvana is far from automatic.

If sales are rejecting a large chunk of MA-approved leads, it’s very likely that the agreed definitions and scoring models in place are wrong. Yes, the system has spat them out and labelled them ‘ready to buy’ but that’s only because you’ve set the parameters by which it decides what’s what. It pays to regularly monitor the attributes of prospects that close and those that don’t. Subtle adjustments to lead scoring rules can make all the difference. 

2. You’ve got no time to think

Relatively few marketing departments are blessed with spare time. I’m yet to meet a marketer boasting about their super-manageable workload. But there is a difference between someone who’s busy and someone who’s run ragged. And misaligned MA set-ups can certainly create the latter.

A hell of a lot of work goes into setting up successful marketing automation campaigns; this shouldn’t be forgotten. But the trick to making sure it doesn’t leave you pulling your hair out is to focus down on key groups and key messages. It’s tempting to run before you can walk with MA, but baby steps – and a laser-sharp focus on which sections of your audience to target –  will help.

Ex-Euromoney MD Luke Gibson lifts the lid on inbound marketing for traditional events businesses and explains why they're so glacially slow at adopting the new inbound marketing methods. Luke talks tough at times and certainly doesn't sugar coat his messages to marketing directors and others seeking investment in inbound marketing for their events.

Catch a few highlights below or watch the full interview here:

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Content marketing is one of the most important aspects I discuss with B2B marketing professionals and business owners before they start developing their project strategy. In my view this will be the only way for the companies to differentiate themselves in the future.

It is important to outline these fundamental truths as content marketing is a set of tactics and a particular approach that is going to take time. The journey will be successful and hugely rewarding only if the right steps are followed.

Most B2B marketers have an idea that writing about events they are hosting is a little different from their day to day workhorse emails, landing pages etc. But how can you be sure you've covered all the essentials in your B2B brand event communications plan?

We've created a checklist of items that should feature in communications about every B2B event, no matter what the event type. Some are channel specific, some apply across all your communications. Ready to see what's on our hit list?

Want the inside scoop on the hashtags every B2B marketer should use to make sure their event is super successful? Look no further. We've done all the hard work for you, compiling a list of the essential hashtags in each category, plus tools to help you find the ones that could make or break your event. 

You might be a bona fide B2B email strategy guru, but do you know what it takes to tweak those strategies to make them suitable for event marketing? Find out...

So, you're a B2B marketer and you want to start running some of your own events for your brand. Where do you start? How much work is involved? Can you do it without losing your mind? All good questions and ones that we hope we can answer with our 10 step guide to marketing B2B brand events...

We love events, they were our first love and remain one of the core parts of our work. And events are a great tactic for B2B brand activation, which is a major focus for marketers at the moment. So, we thought we'd share some of our thoughts on executing this super effective brand activation tactic even more successfully.

Your blog (powerpoint, ebook, email, or social media post) is nearly ready and you ask a colleague, the boss or your team to check it over and the feedback is..."Great post, but I am not sure about the image... You need something slicker, more elegant and stronger..."