In a recent blog post we discussed the importance of inbound content for B2B event marketers. Of all the many strands of online content marketers have at their disposal, video is perhaps the most compelling and engaging. It is also a firm favourite amongst B2B audiences.

The conference and events industry are scratching their heads about what they can do to drive delegate attendance, conference ticket sales and in general how they can achieve sexier marketing.

As discussed in the first blog in this series, contemporary customers are looking for more than a purely transactional relationship with your brand – they want to interact with you. It's true. Part of that relies on creating interesting and consistent content for your audience to engage with (blogs, videos, interviews, ebooks, photos) but, as an extension to your inbound marketing for events, it also involves building a community. Establishing a community will help retain customer loyalty amongst the glut of event marketing competitors all clamouring for attention, as well as attract the "right" kind of new customer. A community is a two-way conversation. A living, breathing thing that's interactive and social. Ok so there will always be some bystanders in the crowd that just watch and listen - but many will also participate and share, which is where the community weapon really plays out.   

As event marketers we all know that B2B lead generation is an expensive and time-consuming business. Those ye olde ‘push’ tactics simply don’t yield the volume of quality leads we’re all desperately hunting.

Having spent time at Confex last month I couldn’t help thinking again – is there a big opportunity waiting to be grabbed by the Exhibition companies?

This is one of those questions that has a multitude of answers but based on my own experience, Conference and Exhibition companies can specifically start with 6 areas of focus in order to make a step change in their top line performance: I’ve been out talking to bosses of small and medium size conference companies lately about their most pressing challenges and, if I was to distil things down to the one most common question, it is, in essence “how do we sell more stuff?”! 

What is currently happening in the conference and events industry? 

Where are we heading?

Well, like any other fast-growing and successful industry, this is always the topic of conversation when we meet with industry folk or overhear the banter at conference industry events. Every director of a conference, event or exhibition company is asking these questions and it's clear that anyone not thinking ahead will surely be left behind. As successful as the events industry is, nobody can afford to be complacent especially in this entrepreneurial, digital era. 

So we have partnered with CatchTalk.TV (formerly known as Xavy) to bring you precisely that. The most talked about predictions for the conferences and events industry in the near future.

Recently we've been running a series of marketing audits for various conference companies and to be honest have been surprised to see that a lot of B2B email practices from 15 years ago are still being used today.

2 for 1, discount, early bird, free, offer, save, exclusive, last chance, still time…these words are the back bone of so much event marketing copy. Some of them were probably in the list of “powerful” words you were issued with when you started marketing.

Arising from our previous post New Rules For Subject Lines in B2B Email Marketing where we looked at some of the key trends affecting email performance that emerged from the 2013 Adestra Subject Line Analysis Report: “Keywords for killer subject lines”, we found a lot of good information that it gave us room to focus on the sub-set of the results that particularly affects you - B2B event marketing and B2B publishing.

Time out of the office is great to rest and have a good old read of all the things you didn't get around to - a taste of my festive break! As a bit of a marketing geek I love to catch up on what's out there on the web and for me one of the best reports from last year was the Adestra Subject Line Analysis Report: “Keywords for killer subject lines”

I came across an interesting post recently about how Marketo got 10,000 registered visitors to their largest virtual event which being about events obviously sparked my interest and got me writing. 

We thought we'd get together a simple guide to help event marketers out there looking to boost their marketing exposure at no extra cost. That's most of you right?

In the business world in North America the name Brian Solis is everywhere. A serial entrepreneur and business visionary he is a very well respected source of opinion when it comes to social media and marketing.

According to Marketingsherpa 72% of B2B marketers believe events still pack a punch! In fact good old traditional outbound methods are definitely not dead - but that's another blog for another time.

Hard to believe another week is behind us and we're fast approaching month two of 2013! Well here's our Friday round up of some of the most useful B2B marketing and event marketing stories we've come across this week.

Marketo recently launched their "definitive guide to event marketing" - a 122 page document covering pretty much everything you need to know about event marketing.

Going through the vast amount of content available in our industry, here is what's sparked our interest in our inbox and tweeter feeds relevant to our B2B marketing and event marketing industry this week.