Marketers “Third Way” When Mega-events Hit Pause

This is a strange time to be in event marketing. Mega-events are becoming virtualized or canceled almost daily and many companies are giving instructions to reduce travel or to attend events of 50 or fewer people. We face the strangest circumstance right now: the economy is incredibly strong and yet meeting IRL to expand our businesses is handicapped.

Like you, my 25-year sales and marketing career has depended on events to fill the pipeline, to meet customers and buyers, and to introduce products to the market. 

Though unspoken, digital and virtual events will produce a shadow of the results of IRL meetings. We all know this truth. This gives us two ways forward: 1) we will have to significantly increase our total marketing spend, 2) we will have to plan for reduced results.

There is a third way.

IRL meetings that meet the restricted travel requirement, minimize changes to budget, and keep events in small low-risk groups have been growing with Splash for a decade.

The reality is, some of the most innovative companies in the world are already aware of the power of smaller, scalable, local events, and they’ve been increasing investment in them for years. Splash’s enterprise customers created over 50,000 business events on our platform in the past year, and over 80% of them were local events for fewer than 50 attendees. Businesses often struggle to scale this type of local event--to keep the marketing assets on-brand and to keep track of all the data--and Splash makes this easy and automatic. 

The problem with these events, without Splash, is the complexity of event marketing. Launching one event well is a lot of work - executing dozens of events - and even enabling the sales team to execute the events with excellence in data, design, and ROI is what Splash does brilliantly.

Here’s a self-assessment if your brand can justify a local event series right now:

1. In-person events are key to your pipeline development plan and winning customers,
2. You have 100 prospects + customers concentrated in at least five cities (you can probably name these cities),
3. You believe your customers are still likely to have a drink or share a meal with their colleagues and friends where they feel safe,
4. You may not have the budget to replace cancelled mega-events, but can afford entertainment (cocktails/meal) for 12-30 people a couple of times a month,
5. You are resource constrained - the web designer, marketing ops, and others are too busy to help you get this launched as quickly as you need to launch it.

If this sounds like your situation, Splash can help. We recommend taking action immediately to fill the gap in your event plans, and we’re here to make that happen. Here's a link to two videos how Expedia Group and Moveable Ink have had this kind of success.