One thing is clear, in order to increase website visits in the events world you need to spend money on advertising or you need to focus on writing value adding-content that will drive free and organic traffic.

This is where SEO comes to play. Without good SEO you simply won't be found by search engines and without SEO you'll need to pay to get the traffic you need! No one really wants that. The problem is that most people think SEO requires a lot of technical knowledge. That's absolutely not true. 

At BrightBull we're pretty proud of the content we write and our organic traffic represents more than 60% of our total. We follow very simple rules to ensure we're staying current and relevant for our audience and subsequently Google.

You do not need to hire an SEO agency!
Get your team on it.

This post was updated on 24th August 2020.

One thing is clear, in the world of events to increase website visits you will need to spend money on advertising or you will need to start writing value adding-content that will drive free and organic traffic.

What is value-adding content? The term refers to content you produce for which your sole intention is not to sell but to educate, inform or entertain. In my world event generated content meets the education and information purpose by default. Event organisers should not have any issue with publishing top notch relevant content in the first place. The challenge is repurposing it efficiently to drive engagement and as a result of that engagement intiate/spark/stimulate interest in future events you have coming up.

Building an online community with the help of your content is a great strategy and it’s one that absolutely works! But there are various things to consider in making the most of your content - at the most basic level you need to PLAN and know what to do with it. Sounds simple right, but often content can become your master without you even realising it has taken control!

This blog will help you take back and keep control with one of the best ways to succeed - by developing your own content marketing framework and exploring the skills needed by your team.

Right after Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet, despite also being a social media site. This means that the importance to build and promote an online video presence has gained more relevance over the past couple of years and will continue to do so.

B2B companies are now seriously using videos as part of their overall marketing strategy and B2B events have been recording tons of video content at their events far longer BUT they are no way near as savvy when it comes to capitalising on it.

That is why we have come up with 6 simple tips to optimise your B2B YouTube presence:

B2B event lead generation is an essential component of event marketing. Many event business leaders and marketers allow their campaigns to be killed too early or dismiss future ones outright simply because “the leads the campaign is generating are crap”.

The goal here is to explain that on any normal lead generation campaign, around 66% of the leads  generated will not be good or even relevant at all. So if only 33% of the total leads generated are good then you're not doing bad at all -  you are well within the benchmark.

So what is deemed as a good or bad response from a lead generation campaign?

Here are the top take aways from the video with some good examples:

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:

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.

You've spent months, if not years, carefully honing your inbound marketing machine. You've painstakingly tweaked your content, A/B tested your workflows and invested countless hours building trust and relationships with prospects and qualified leads who are now truly worthy of the name.

Then you decide to run an event and risk ruining it all... Find out why and what to do to avoid it.

Whether you know it or not, like it or not, having a successful event or a series of successful events in the same or similar topic, is the basis of a community - it's all about the gathering of people that share a common interest. So what better way to engage with your community than through great content.

The events sector has a big advantage compared to most industries, in that you have experts at your fingertips - whether that's your production team, stakeholders, speakers or advisors. That allows access to knowledge, thought leadership and future shaping ideas with "relative" ease. 

One of the trickiest thing your marketing team must do, in order to better understand and target your audience, is profile your customers and prospects, before they go to sales.

B2B marketers tend to dream big, but can sometimes be held back due to time constraints and lack of financial resource. This can mean that necessary changes aren’t made to websites, new landing pages can take ages to implement, and the smallest design update can end up being expensively outsourced.

If this set-up sounds familiar, take a look at our top free content creation tools, and see if you can’t solve your creative challenges without seeking help from outside.

You may have already read my summary of a recent 2015 social media marketing report, which covered the areas of social media that marketers are most comfortable using, the platforms they don’t plan on adopting anytime soon, and the amount of time they are dedicating to their social media activity, among other topics.

So here let’s look ahead – what does the future of social media marketing for events look like?

There comes a time in every organisation’s lifecycle when a website redesign is staring them in the face, and it’s an occurrence you simply cannot afford to ignore.

This could be for a multitude of reasons such as a rebrand, a strategy overhaul, or just that it looks increasingly dated.

Don’t sigh with despair when this issue arises, grab the bull by the horns and make your website work harder for you; turn it into an unstoppable inbound marketing machine.

Here’s how to in just ten steps:

I came across this insightful and truly comprehensive report by Social Media Examiner, and found it so useful I thought I’d summarise it here and pass on some of these must-know nuggets of wisdom.

In its entirety the '2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report' covers the top questions marketers want answered on the topic of social media, how much time is spent on this increasingly vital channel, which platforms are most frequently used, and which ones marketers want to find out more about.

So here are some statistics to whet your appetite…

Often companies look at competitors to see if they’re falling behind, or where they’re leading the way for the rest of the industry – but we forget that there’s a lot to be learned from other industries entirely. In this case I’m talking about media publishers. Struggling to generate high quality leads, surely it makes sense to take a little knowledge from the experts! If there’s one thing event marketers do well it’s lead generation – and I’m about to let you in on the top secret business of how they do it:

Aside from publishing high quality content, there aren’t many additional revenue streams media publishers can tap into, right?

Wrong!

There are several ways you can expand your reach and repertoire that don’t necessarily need to break the bank. And if you at least try these new channels, you’ll be able to discover which are more profitable for your organisation and are worth persevering with.

We’ll explore each of these tips in greater detail in the next few weeks, so watch this space for more information!

Here are our absolute top revenue generating tips for media publishers:

If the qualitative and quantitative evidence that we’ve provided in other blogs isn’t enough to get the support of your team, or your CEO’s buy-in, the cherry on the cake in your argument will be demonstrating the effects of an online community at every level of the value chain.

There are several groups who will thank you for your efforts in your B2B online community – in terms of both monetary rewards and delegate fandom.

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.