Events as a Tool for Business Growth

Have you thought about how events can be implemented in your company’s strategy?

Events can have multiple ways to improve your business growth, brand awareness, and potential customer pool. Whether they’re internal, external, physical, or hybrid, events give your company a position where you own your brand narrative. As well as meeting your audience face to face, and positioning your company in the minds of your target audience.

First of all, implementing internal events can be a key to enhanced team cohesion, innovation, and overall employee training.

It is no secret that fostering a cohesive team environment, driving innovation, and continually developing employee skills are crucial for organizational success. One often overlooked yet powerful strategy for achieving these goals is through the implementation of internal events. These events, ranging from team-building exercises to innovation workshops and training seminars, offer benefits that can significantly impact a company's culture and performance in the long run.

Building Team Cohesion

It goes without saying that internal events provide opportunities for team members to connect on a personal level, fostering stronger relationships and a sense of camaraderie. Team-building exercises, such as retreats, outdoor activities, or even in-office games, break down barriers and encourage collaboration among colleagues who may not typically interact in their daily roles. This is especially important for cross-department encounters. It has been said that invention + marketing = innovation. As such, it is crucial that marketing and sales get to know the engineers and production managers thoroughly in order to come up with new ideas that meet the customer’s expectations.

Moreover, events that celebrate milestones, such as project completions or company anniversaries, reinforce a shared sense of achievement and pride among team members. These occasions provide platforms for recognizing individual contributions and building a collective identity within the organization.

Enhancing Innovation

Innovation thrives in environments where diverse perspectives are encouraged, and internal events play a crucial role in facilitating such diversity. Brainstorming sessions, hackathons, or innovation challenges bring together individuals from different departments and backgrounds, fostering cross-pollination of ideas and creative thinking. Rome was not built in a day, nor is breakthrough service or product offering. Therefore, facilitating cross-department innovation sessions enables people to bounce ideas around and eventually come up with that rough diamond that can be the core capability of your company.

Additionally, events focused on industry trends, emerging technologies, or market disruptions provide employees with insights that can spark innovative solutions to current challenges. By exposing team members to new concepts and perspectives, companies can cultivate a culture of innovation that drives continuous improvement and adaptation. Seeing is believing, and hearing is learning.

Training and Development

Internal events serve as effective platforms for ongoing employee training and development, equipping staff with the knowledge and skills needed to excel in their roles. Workshops, seminars, and webinars led by internal or external experts offer opportunities for professional growth and learning. The world is changing in a such fast manner, that it is arguably impossible for individuals to stay in the wagon without collective learning of our surroundings.

Furthermore, peer-led training sessions or "lunch and learn" events enable knowledge-sharing within the organization, empowering employees to learn from each other's experiences and expertise. By investing in employee development through internal events, companies not only enhance individual capabilities but also cultivate a culture of continuous learning that is essential for staying competitive in today's rapidly evolving business landscape.

For example, at Epicenter Helsinki, we organize monthly “Passion” sessions where one team member at a time talks about their passion and how it can be turned into our everyday business. These peer-led sessions have an interpersonal aspect that perhaps creates more room for convenient discussions as chatting with people you already know may feel more comfortable than with a “stranger”.

Secondly, leveraging external events is a great tool to improve your brand awareness but also to create close relationships with your customers and other external stakeholders. Therefore, external events can improve your company’s performance and help you to engage with core audiences, share value, and ultimately outpace your competitors.

External events present a powerful opportunity to achieve these objectives, offering a platform for direct engagement, value-sharing, and content creation that can drive significant growth and success. By strategically leveraging external events, companies can not only deepen their relationships with customers but also position themselves as industry leaders poised to surpass the competition.

Meeting and Engaging with the Core Audience

External events serve as invaluable forums for companies to connect directly with their core audience, whether they are existing customers, potential clients, industry stakeholders and decision-makers, or even politicians. Whether through trade shows, conferences, workshops, or networking events, these gatherings provide a unique opportunity to forge meaningful relationships and cultivate trust that is harder to create for example online via LinkedIn.

With external events, companies can engage in face-to-face interactions, gaining valuable insights into customer needs, preferences, and pain points. This direct engagement enables you to tailor products, services, and messaging to better meet the changing demands and expectations of your audience, ultimately strengthening brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. It is no secret that gaining new customers can be more expensive than retaining the old ones. Moreover, happy customers tend to tell about your brand to their community, creating word-of-mouth, which arguably is the strongest form of marketing communication.

Sharing Value and Creating Content

Via external events you can deliver value to attendees and position your company as a thought leader in the field you’re operating. Presenting insightful keynote speeches, hosting informative workshops or panel discussions, or showcasing innovative product demonstrations are effective ways to share expertise and generate interest among event attendees.

Whether your business is operating in B2C or B2B, with external events it might be sensible to think about your target segment from the H2H perspective. Meaning, that people tend to find it most valuable that they gain value, whether knowledge, advice, or tools for an improved lifestyle, when attending events. If you can create this “fear of missing out” phenomenon with your events, you will likely gain more and more attendees in your future events and as such, grow your target audience.

Moreover, external events provide fertile ground for content creation, offering opportunities to capture engaging photos, videos, testimonials, and live updates that can be shared across various marketing channels. By creating compelling content that resonates with the target audience, you can extend the reach of your brand, attract new leads, and reinforce your authority.

Beating Competitors

In today's fiercely competitive landscape, it is tough to sustain success. External events present a prime opportunity for companies to differentiate themselves from competitors by showcasing their unique value proposition, highlighting their competitive advantages, and demonstrating thought leadership. And once again, create long-lasting customer relationships.

By carefully analyzing competitors' participation and messaging at external events, companies can identify gaps in the market and position themselves strategically to capitalize on untapped opportunities. Last, but not least, by offering distinctive experiences, personalized interactions, and innovative solutions, companies can set themselves apart from the competition and solidify their position as customer-oriented industry leaders.

Do you want to learn more how events can be implemented succesfully to your growth strategy? You can download our Growth Playbooks from the link below:

https://weareepicenter.com/knowledge-hub/growth-playbooks/

Are you looking for a space to your next event? Find out more about our versatile and flexible event spaces available here: https://weareepicenter.com/helsinki/events/

Or you can contact our Head of Events Serhan Colpan who is happy to assist you. Our in-house event agency will provide everything from concept to implementation and follow-up.