Ruby Sweeney: How to Leverage Events in Marketing?

On this episode of the Powerful Marketing Tips Podcast, Ruby Sweeney from The Events Hub joins host Mari-Liis to discuss the significance of events in marketing. Ruby emphasizes the importance of being proactive in event planning and strategy and highlights that events as essential for building trust and relationships with customers. She also discusses the value of aligning events with company values and using them as a marketing platform. Overall, events are a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes and sectors who want to connect with customers and grow their brands.

Ruby Sweeney is the founder of The Events Hub. Her key goals are to not only create engaging, memorable experiences for attendees but save clients the entire mental load from start to finish. To Ruby and her team, what they do is way beyond just events - it's about creating opportunities for relationships for businesses, being a trusted partner to take care of and nurturing clients’ business growth. With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Ruby was recently also recognized as one of The Most Influential Women in Events 2022 and emerged as a finalist in the Businesswoman category at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards. We are incredibly excited to partner with Ruby and The Events Hub for Malaga Marketing Week taking place in September 2023. Find out more about Malaga Week.

Events hold transformative potential for businesses, propelling them to new heights. In this blog post, we explore strategic event planning, the importance of meaningful relationships, and the role of technology, including AI, in enhancing event experiences. Discover the key strategies and insights that can help businesses unlock the full potential of events.

The Power of Strategic Planning

To maximize the impact of events, businesses must adopt a strategic approach. Organizations need to align events with their overall business objectives. Reactive planning is replaced by proactive strategies that involve setting clear goals, defining target audiences, and outlining desired outcomes. By treating events as a vital part of the marketing strategy, businesses can ensure a higher return on investment and make the most of every opportunity.

Building Meaningful Relationships

Events possess a unique ability to foster genuine connections between brands and consumers. While virtual events have their merits, we firmly believe that the human touch of in-person meetings cannot be replaced. Quality over quantity becomes the guiding principle, focusing on connecting with the right individuals who can contribute to long-term success.

Pre-Event and Post-Event Marketing

Events offer businesses the chance to showcase their brand, values, and expertise. Leveraging necessary mediums, formats, and platforms before and after the event are important to create a buzz, engage with attendees, and extend the event's impact. Through effective pre-event and post-event marketing strategies such as email outreach, social media campaigns, and content creation, businesses can enhance brand visibility and generate valuable leads.

The Multifaceted Showcase of Events

Events provide multiple avenues for brands to showcase their offerings. Businesses can tailor their presence at events to suit their objectives, whether it be through sponsoring specific segments, securing speaking opportunities, setting up booths, or hosting social programs. By identifying the most relevant opportunities and experiences, companies can strategically leverage events to effectively reach their target audiences.

The Rise of AI in Events

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the events industry, transforming various aspects of event planning and execution. AI offers capabilities to aid in content planning, event tech utilization, translation services, and matchmaking. While AI brings automation and efficiency to event management, human connection is still important and face-to-face interactions give businesses irreplaceable value.

Content Creation and Promotion

Events generate a wealth of valuable content that can be repurposed and shared across different platforms. Content shared at the events can be used in diverse forms, including audio, video, blog posts, social media snippets, and images. By leveraging these materials effectively, businesses can extend the reach and impact of their events, attracting new audiences and reinforcing their brand messages.

Events remain a powerful marketing tool, offering unique opportunities for businesses to build meaningful relationships, showcase their offerings, and create compelling content. Through strategic planning, proactive approaches, and a focus on quality over quantity, organizations can make the most of events and unlock their full potential. While technology, including AI, continues to evolve and enhance event experiences, it should never overshadow the inherent human touch that events provide. By embracing events as an integral part of their marketing strategy, businesses can achieve remarkable results and propel themselves to new heights.

Quotes:

“Events was the number one offline marketing activity that brands and businesses trusted in to help grow their business and meet their objectives. Now, I feel that we're getting to those levels once more in 2023 and beyond." (00:03:39)
"Events are essential to businesses, marketers, entrepreneurs of all levels, all sizes, all sectors, and that they should be taken so seriously and they should be planned for strategically.” (00:03:57)
“Strategy is that one place where everybody should start with events. And I see time and time again, there's so many organizations, so many individuals can be reactive towards events and we're not proactive enough. So we need to strategize about events in the same way that we look at business objectives, marketing objectives, sales targets, and get really smart about how we leverage events” (00:04:42)
“You can build tons of trust around your brand because of the event, but you can market yourself via those necessary mediums, formats, platforms, before the event, after the event.” (00:06:00)
“The number one thing, whether you're building a brand personal or business, or wanting collaborations, or wanting lead generation, it's about relationship building." (00:07:39)
“Identify the sorts of conferences or events or interactions that you want to get involved with, the experiences you want to create, and how best you can leverage those things.” (00:10:08)
“It's about looking at the best use of people's time when they're attending an event, but it's also about identifying which events, experiences, conferences, webinars, etc. are going to achieve those targets that you have set for your organization or your company.” (00:10:43)
“From our side as the organizers, we need to be providing the attendees or partners or sponsors or exhibitors with the data, the intelligence around who is coming, what this event is about, and really focusing and niching down on what our event is looking to achieve so that on the flip side, those attendees, partners, sponsors, exhibitors know exactly what effort, what energy, what resources, what budgets to put against those events and those interactions because we can't hide behind kind of mediocre events anymore.” (00:11:15)
“There are lots of different areas of events where AI is starting to have an impact and event tech is starting to kind of embrace those.” (00:14:41)
“When you look at the ROI of events as well, events are a really, really good value for money.” (00:18:50)
“The best way you can identify what works for you is to go and test something. And it doesn't have to be a big, huge one. What I do say to a lot of my clients is we start small, we take baby steps, and we give ourselves time because the thing you don't want to do is rush into something and then finally haven't given yourself and your team enough time to plan for it.” (00:20:29)