Cheatsheet of Dreams for Event Marketers

One of my favourite lessons from Ray Dalio’s book, Principles , was the concept of as life goes on you will continue to encounter the same situations, maybe not exactly but a version of the same.? It is somewhat liberating to see it as “another one of those” as it helps you contextualise what is going on and understand what solutions may or may not work.?

It made me think of some of the conversations I have had many times with our event organiser clients and with our team as we troubleshoot issues.

Whilst we document as much as we can, automate where possible and add to our knowledge base I know there are many issues that present as “another one of those” that I’d love to share and hopefully solve someone’s current headache.?

A few of our most common questions and challenges below, please drop yours in the comments and we can explore next time..?

1. How robust is this tracking?

Tracking is often plagued with issues due to different systems using different models/incorrect set up/lack of options for pixels but usually when troubleshooting it comes down to a few things that can get back on track (this is assuming google tag manager is already installed)?

• Cross domain tracking is not set up (correctly in GA4 or Adobe) this is connecting your registration partner to your website and making sure that you can track someone registering and know what marketing source they came from?
• Referral exclusions are not in - this means that you have excluded both your website + your reg pages + your payment provider as referrals so they aren't not coming into your analytics showing all your conversions are coming from PayPal (we want to know what has happened before this)?
• UTMs on buttons … this is a pet peeve of mine that clients will know well, this is when you have a button that is maybe “register now” but that link has a UTM link for using for instance the source of “website” this means that ANY traffic that gets directed to your website from organic, social, seo, email or paid will get overwritten as soon as someone clicks on the registration link and then all your registrations will look like they are coming from your website (which is of course not a marketing channel)?
• Conversion tracking is done only to a click on registration - this has to be the final page of registration or payment to ensure the person has actually completed the action, we have built a handy guide for GES/Visit forms here?

Once you have robust tracking in place - this can then inform all the other parts of your campaign, drive bidding strategies and make reporting a dream.

2. Top of the Funnel doesn't convert …

As with many things in life, this comes down to expectations and communication - campaigns work well when they are working as part of a funnel, this means at the top of the funnel you may have display, programmatic, social interest on meta or TikTok. It's role is to drive new traffic, to reach a new audience and then to push them down the funnel to see other pieces of content, engage with different ad types or take action.

When looked at in isolation it can be easy to dismiss or want to pause for example “display” it looks expensive / it doesn't really convert.? However by shifting your perception of this to be more looking at engagement metrics - CTR/Engagement rates this is likely to show you how valuable this type of campaign may be.?

Anything above the below is classed above average:

• Display > 0.10%
• Social? >1%?
• Video completion > 50%
• Rich media 2-5%?

3. HELP! We don't have enough registrations!?

We do the same thing every single day to support our clients and team when they are in this pinch point.? It is probably the number one issue clients face and is (usually) fine in the end. The levers we can pull or the things we consider at this point comprise of some of the below:

• Where are we in the event cycle? - human beings often don’t act until they have to, this can be a deadline, registration closing or a last minute cram for an exam.? Since the pandemic the decision making has gotten even more last minute, seeing 60-90% people register for an event in the last 2-4 weeks. We would look at YOY pacing, % growth week on week for registrations and how each channel is performing.? If its early we maybe have to build more awareness to get higher traffic but usually a solid marketing strategy starting at least 12 weeks will do the trick - blending email, organic, social and paid media to drive the numbers that you need?
• How is the budget pacing? Following on from the above there can be a tendency to panic that we have spent too much on advertising at an early stage and will run out or the flip side is not enough.? Remember that whilst we will invest early to get some traction - it's common to keep a high % of budget for the end of the campaign when we see the biggest increases in actual conversions - this then leads to higher quality and likelihood that someone will show up.?
• Is this a launch / got a new challenger in the market / rebrand / changed location - all of these factors can cause issues with marketing success / knowing your challenges upfront means you can prepare - e.g invest earlier in awareness or geofence a challenger brand.? Again taking these points into account when you do your marketing strategy means there will be no surprises when the time comes.
• On top of this there are then hundreds of campaign optimisations getting more granular on campaign types, creative, copy and measurement

4. What does good look like in terms of creative for B2B??

We get this one a lot so build out this handy best practice guide for our clients so they can see top performing within the landscape of B2B Marketing - it only focuses on high quality traffic (over 4% CTR) and stays within the event marketing landscape.?

As a rule stay away from long, same style videos - get into more personalised experiences and high impact images.

Why not branch out and try some Generative AI Creative??

5. Speaking of AI - What Should We Do??

Our ethos around AI is to embrace it, use it to support you and make your life easier - personally my goal is to train it to be a mini (much more efficient) me.? It is coming one way or another so get ready, upskill yourself and your team and be ready for change. Enjoy being creative, or adding value to your customers, or learning more - whilst automating some of the heavy lifting.

Some ideas for our event professional clients here to introduce AI into their workflows and if struggling for prompts then use this handy guide? ?- if you haven't already seen this, our CTO, Alex Velinov created a framework (SPARK) for helping businesses bigger than us to start using AI in a streamlined way that works for their business. Learn more here?

There are so many questions that we can explore in terms of “another one of those” please drop yours in the comments so we can explore next time!?