What are the benefits of integrating events into your marketing strategy? How can events support a B2B sales motion?

Events build trust, which is a prerequisite for closing deals – people buy from people they trust. Events create natural-feeling settings to build relationships in real life and make the sales process feel more authentic.

They can create new opportunities and accelerate the sales pipeline – processes speed up when you go from virtual to in-person. A single event can’t accomplish everything, but good events can simultaneously support multiple business objectives such as increasing retention, creating or accelerating pipeline, or generating upsell/cross-sell opportunities.

Events complement virtual touchpoints in the sales funnel or customer journey – they provide memorable moments that support milestones that might not otherwise have a face-to-face component. Events also create opportunities to develop relationships with additional decision-makers. 

The value of events compounds over time – someone you meet or establish a relationship with at an event today might not buy immediately, but they might convert, refer, or generate overall brand goodwill in the future.

Event Strategy

How do you build an events strategy that aligns with your overall marketing strategy? 

The ideal customer experience determines the event strategy – instead of treating event marketing as a silo, consider it the experiential arm of your overall marketing strategy. Events should feel like an in-person extension of your best marketing campaign.  

Work backwards from your annual priorities – think about the themes of your H1 and H2 marketing initiatives and how in-person events can improve your ability to deliver. If you don’t know where to start, consider how events could support your content strategy, product launches, or customer journey. The answers to the following 3 questions should inform your event strategy:

• What are the key objectives for this period? 
• What is the message we need to communicate to achieve those objectives?
• What type and frequency of events would support those objectives?

Each event type is best suited to supporting specific customer-facing priorities:

• Small customer events → drive pipeline by creating strong connections and encouraging relationship-building
• 3rd party industry events → increase brand visibility and reach, and allow you to meet many people quickly 
• Customer events → improve retention  

What are the key considerations that should go into planning an event? 

In addition to event-specific considerations (shared below), every individual event must be financially justifiable – sales teams will naturally request events because they make the sales process easier. Ask your Sales counterpants to present clear reasoning before you commit to hosting an event.

Event Category: Small Hosted Events
Example	Invite guests to Top Golf, mini golf, or a darts night, host a dinner around a large industry event, or rent out an interactive space (e.g., the Nike store, where attendees can play basketball and/or make custom shoes).
Planning considerations	Target 1-2 events per quarter in hub cities – focus on the 3-5 locations where your prospects already are, instead of trying to incentivize prospects to travel to you.  Plan events 6-8 weeks in advance – avoid planning earlier because plans are more likely to change 2+ months out. The ideal number of attendees is 10-20 guests, but each type of event is best suited to a different attendance strategy – for dinners, invite 1 guest per company; for experiences, invite 2 guests per company. If an additional guest who sits higher up in the org structure also wants to join, let them.  Success depends on your invitation follow-up strategy – unlike trade shows where attendance is nearly guaranteed, hosted events require you to personally drive attendance.
Strategic and financial considerations	Don’t pitch during events – the goal of an intimate hosted event is for attendees to have a great time and walk away with a tangible positive association with your brand, not to talk business.  Position event series as campaigns – if you’re visiting 4 cities in Q2, consider calling it your Q2 Roadshow and curating unique but cohesive experiences in each city. Creating messaging around your event transforms an in-person tactic into a scalable digital campaign. Embrace comarketing opportunities – hosting an event with 2-5 partners who share your ICP can give you access to more attendees at a lower cost and provide a natural opportunity to demonstrate your product ecosystem.   Create strong relationships with different types of partners – leverage your partner team or sales team to identify cohosts. Consider working with channel partners, tech integration partners, API partners, and other companies in your industry with whom you can cohabitate. Prioritize value alignment over size when choosing your partners.  Note: cross-check guest lists with cohosts before sending invitations – make sure multiple hosts don’t invite in the same guests. If your guest lists overlap, clarify who is in charge of sending each invitation.

Event Category: 3rd Party/ Industry Events
Example	Industry trade shows and conferences where companies can purchase sponsorships or booths.
Planning considerations	Bring 2-3 team members – never ask a single person to represent your company at a large event. Having multiple reps present allows you to speak with people who visit your booth and explore the rest of the floor.
Strategic and financial considerations	Start small – big events are resource-intensive from both a budget and planning perspective. Before investing in a big booth at a single conference, explore the events that matter to your competitors and customers, identify those that are most impactful, and test out attending the highest potential ROI event for your first year.  Make sure you can prove the ROI of every event – the ROI of repeat attendance naturally decreases over time because the cost of sponsorship increases year-over-year while the number of new people you meet goes down.  Create activations around big events even if you don’t have a booth – take advantage of the fact that industry events bring prospects and customers together. Whether or not you formally attend the event itself, a small team should plan dinners, meetings, and offsites after event hours.

Event Category: Customer Events
Example	Customer appreciation nights, summits, or user conferences where partners exhibit.
Planning considerations	Customer events should last 1-2 days – depending on the nature of the event, you might need more than 1 day to discuss the product roadmap, conduct meetings with customer executives, and facilitate networking.  Target inviting ~50 of your top customers – the event should be large enough to generate excitement but small enough to ensure that each attendee feels like they are important and able to influence your roadmap.
Strategic and financial considerations	Treat events as part of your Customer Advisory Board (CAB) – if your CAB meets twice per year, consider having 1 meeting in person before or after a larger customer event, or putting on specific appreciation events just for the board.  Leverage CAB members during industry events – once your business starts to heavily invest in expanding existing customer relationships, invite CAB members to join you at trade shows and/or speak at events (and offer to cover their travel expenses). Customer events are an opportunity to transform customers into advocates – in addition to strengthening retention and upsells, customer events help you build stronger relationships. Invite 1-2 strong advocates to future intimate prospect events or experiences to do the selling for you.

Which teams/functions should you partner with when crafting your event strategy? 

Team	Where to Partner
Sales	Before and after – the sales team is responsible for part of the event guest list and the follow-up strategy after the event. The first follow-up should be sent within 24 hours, with additional touchpoints in the 2 weeks after the event.
Marketing	Campaign cohesion – work with Marketing to tie your event into larger campaigns. These “ties” can manifest as the types of events you host, how you position the events to invitees, or how you repurpose content from the events going forward.

Event Planning

What is an example of how an event can fit in with the rest of your sales and marketing activities?

Objective	Event	Integrated Campaign Potential
Launch a new product	Product showcase	If you’re already prospecting a new product, throw a product showcase event to demonstrate that product to a favorable audience, generate content that can support the rest of your launch campaign, and generate excitement around the launch itself.

How do you make the most of sales opportunities during an event?

Focus on educating, not selling – nobody wants to be sold at an event. Their goal is to learn and network, then research interesting products after the event. Hard selling at events that emphasize relationship-building typically backfires. 

View every conversation as an opportunity to provide value – if people seek you out at a large event, they’ve likely already done their research and are considering your product. Put in the effort to understand their pain points and get to know them, rather than trying to rush the conversation to talk to as many people as possible. 

Use ancillary events as a way to deepen relationships with people you meet at your booth – if you’re at a big event and meet a promising prospect, inviting them to the smaller event(s) you’re putting on creates an opportunity to continue to build the relationship in a setting that you’ve designed to be favorable.

If budget allows, spiff your most important goal – for example, if the number of booked demos will determine the success of your event, offer a $500 gift card to the person who books the most demos on the show floor. 

Offer personalized demos on the spot – if you’re trying to generate pipeline, have someone with a laptop run through personalized demos as people visit your booth. Consider offering an incentive (e.g., take a turn in the money booth) to encourage people to learn about your product.

How do you make the most of marketing and content creation opportunities during an event?

Invest in top-tier swag or giveaways if you’re making a brand awareness play – great swag gets worn/used and can attract the attention of other prospects at and after the event. Desirable giveaways (e.g., scan your badge to enter to win an Apple Watch) won’t necessarily attract a highly targeted audience, but it will drive awareness.   

Follow the “great 8 rule” – 1 event should ultimately turn into at least 8 pieces of content that can be leveraged in your follow-ups and communications throughout the rest of the year. This content can include:

• Blog posts
• Short videos
• Nurture emails
• YouTube videos
• Newsletters
• Social posts
• Paid ads

Consider hiring videographers or photographers – professionals can create higher quality content than you can using an iPhone–and they won’t be distracted by other responsibilities, such as talking to prospects. In return for a relatively low investment, you can capture content for customers or prospects, film speaker sessions or demos, or collect funny content that you can use to grab attention on LinkedIn. 

Post selfies with prospects and customers on LinkedIn – especially at trade shows, this tactic can help you remember who you met and create rapport both in person and online.

How should you approach following up with new contacts after events?

Reply promptly with a personalized message – attendees are bombarded with post-event follow-up emails. Share relevant content from the event (e.g., key takeaways, insights, etc.) and only ask for a meeting if the prospect indicated that they’re ready. Otherwise, focus on sharing more information. 

Instead of relying only on text-heavy emails, try something more creative: 

• Send a short video recap of the event – include a 60-90 second video in your follow-up emails to cut through the noise. Seeing your face will help new contacts remember you.
• Send voice notes on LinkedIn – a simple voicemail-style message (e.g., “It was really great meeting you at [EVENT]. I had a great time and hope we get to meet again sometime soon..”) is simple and personable.

How do you decide who to invite to a marketing event? What prospect stages should you invite?

Always invite high-intent prospects – if a prospect has taken 3 meetings and has entered the consideration phase, an intimate event is the perfect opportunity to push your deal forward. 

Encourage freshly opened opportunities to stop by industry events – while new prospects don’t merit an invitation to a hosted event, they should be invited to stop by your booth at large trade shows. 

Note: big logos or strategic high potential customers should be invited to events at any prospect stage.

How do you budget for an event? How do you track ROI?

As with any campaign, set the event budget based on quantifiable goals – for example, if your goal is to set 50 meetings from this event, ask what budget you’d need to achieve that outcome. Goals might include pipeline creation, deal acceleration, or customer expansion. 

Track both leading and lagging indicators in a 90-day window: 

• Leading indicators – include registrations and meetings booked
• Lagging indicators – include pipeline created, deals closed, and sales velocity improvements

Manually track relationship strength – events often pay off in ways that you can’t instantly observe. For example, a relationship built at an event might result in a sale or referral 6 months later. While tracking relationship strength isn’t as precise as tracking quantifiable KPIs, it is a critical element of your marketing and sales flywheel.

Note: budget is a key consideration when determining your event strategy – sponsoring a major conference can cost over $20,000 – $250,000, while smaller hosted experiences typically range from $3,000 – $10,000–or a fraction of that amount if you split costs with co-hosts. Cost also varies significantly by city. 

How do you test out an events strategy?

Start small → pick 1 type of event that makes sense based on your objectives. Don’t get distracted (or ahead of yourself) by creating a huge booth at an industry show if a 15-person dinner is better aligned with your GTM strategy. 

Run a few pilots → learn fast based on trial and error and sending surveys to attendees of private events. Identify the elements attendees love, the elements that fell flat, and adjust for the next pilot event. 

Host events at different times → seasonality can have a massive impact on event success, but the same schedule doesn’t work for every company. In general, spring and fall are peak event season, while summer and winter see lower attendance. 

Roll it out! → only roll out and advertise an event campaign after you’ve optimized your event strategy and experience. The way you publicize events to your prospects and customer base should also evolve as you determine which tactics work best. 

What is the best way to scale a new events strategy?

Build a repeatable playbook – document what works, create templates for different types of events, and take the time to train your team so that your event strategy doesn’t depend on a single person. 

Create comprehensive documentation – detailed documents should include every step of the process, SLAs, templates, and best practices. This documentation is often 50-60 pages long and should be thorough enough that anyone could use it to execute the event strategy if needed. 

80% of your events should be tied to revenue metrics – 20% should be reserved for testing new approaches and building relationships that may not immediately convert. 

Who from your team should attend your event? 

Marketing and Sales should lead the event – typically, 1 person from Marketing and 1 person from Sales should attend.

CS, IT, or executive representation might be appropriate depending on the event – for more technical events or products, bring an engineer/solutions engineer or leader who can talk about both the vision and technology behind the product.

When choosing your team, focus on the purpose of their presence at the event, not their title – every touchpoint before, during, and after an event should be intentional. The “right” people to work an event is almost entirely determined by what you need to achieve at that event, and who has the skill sets and availability to help you do so. 

Overall

Where should Events sit in your organization? Who should lead the events team?

At mature companies, Events is a subset of Marketing – the events team could be part of the sales team, marketing team, ABM team, or even a standalone department depending on the size of the GTM team.

Larger teams might have more specialized roles – a full-fledged events team might have 1 person responsible for conferences and trade shows and different roles dedicated to virtual and smaller hosted events. However, some teams also prefer to divide responsibilities by region or take an all-hands-on-deck approach. 

What are the most important things to get right?

Align events with company goals – the events team should know the quantifiable purposes of their events and plan accordingly. Don’t plan events in a silo that doesn’t consider the broader business strategy it’s supposed to support. 

Keep events human and personal – avoid events that feel like extended sales pitches disguised as networking opportunities. If you invite attendees to an excellent dinner, give them an excellent dinner–not a sales pitch. 

Plan for the long term – event strategy doesn’t yield results overnight. It requires patience, consistency, and an integrated follow-up strategy. 

What are common pitfalls?

Treating events as standalone activities – events that are planned and executed in isolation are less effective and don’t create a cohesive experience for your customers.   

Focusing too much on vanity metrics – don’t get carried away by attendance numbers or “barcodes scanned” at conferences. These metrics typically distract from revenue-related goals that give a clearer indication of event success.