How to Maximise Your Events and Sponsorship Investment

Are events a part of your marketing mix? This post is for you especially if you are sponsoring or exhibiting at an event, but also some tips even if you are simply an attendee.

Whether you are sponsoring or exhibiting at the Tech Summit, heading into conference season in the US, or flying over the ditch to meet clients and prospects in Ozzie, there should be some key things you consider.

Events can be a great part of your toolbox. Although lots of business went online during covid, events are back and it’s great to meet people in real life. You can reconnect with existing clients, meet and build relationships with prospects, touch base with suppliers, check out competitors and position yourself to meet great potential employees.

Events can be great places to pick up market intelligence – what’s hot on peoples’ minds (worries and opportunities); you can test and get feedback on your offering; see what’s changing and, if the event organisers have done a good job in curation, there should be interesting key themes coming through – picking out challenges and opportunities of today and the future.

Aside from the cost of attending (anything from a few hundred dollars, to a couple of thousand), prices for sponsorships or exhibiting can also be a large proportion of your marketing budget, when you include travel, accommodation and time out of the office.

But what gets me is that many businesses focus ALL of their attention on the day of the conference/event and fail to maximise the value of their investment.

I want to encourageyou to think about these 5 points – and get more value from the investment you’re making in sponsoring, boothing, or attending events and conferences:

1. Strategic alignment
2. What are you doing before the event
3. Maximise the day
4. Follow up & next steps
5. Was it worth it?

1. Strategic alignment

Before committing to an event sponsorship or exhibition booth, think about the following:
Does this event support your strategy; how specifically?

Reality check – Make sure you have allocated more than the cost of the event booth itself, so that you have budget for merchandise, hosting, booth assets and advertising and PR.

Do you think the best way to achieve your objectives is with this pot of money, or could you achieve your objectives more cost effectively in other ways?

What are your objectives for the event – set some metrics (this links with the next point)
How will we know we are successful and it was a good investment (think about how to measure before the event)
Think strategically how you will achieve the best exposure and reach out to the organisers with creative ideas.

Now you’ve committed to do this- it’s time to do it well.

2. What are you doing before the event?

OK, admit it – most of you are spending time thinking about your booth – collateral, swag and competitions.

But there’s other opportunities too.

Gaining profile.

How are you showing your support / attendance at the event – well before you get there?
A good sponsorship / expo package should include options for you to promote and message to attendees
Think also about how you can communicate through your own channels too. Your website, newsletters, social media, email signatures….

What’s your message?

How can you communicate to prospects and clients that you are going to be there & the value /alignment you have identified “We’re proud to be sponsoring…(why)” “We’ll see you there ….there….(so that???)”

Who are you looking to meet with?

Be explicit. If your objective is to gain new prospects, you’ll want to be targeting the ones that have the best fit “we’re especially looking to meet people who are interested in ABC” “If you are struggling with XYZ we’d love to chat ..”

Is there a direct message you can send to some of your contacts?

Are you going to try and have side meetings with prospects & clients?clients. If you have the attendee list you can prioritise, but you might have to review your own CRM and make some ‘educated guesses’ about who might be going, e.g. ifeg if you are looking at the Tech Summit, you might exclude your Australian contacts (“it depends” is generally the answer!)

Internal comms – don’t forget to tell the rest of your team what you are doing and why. Can they help – even by sharing your social media on the day?

3. Maximise the day

I won’t focus on this section too much, as this is the bit most people have been thinking about: what’s the backdrop, do we need banners, imagery, a video? What is the team wearing? Have we got a competition to get people’s names? Do we have information to give people? Swag?

Some things I have sometimes seen missing include:

Who is on your team?

This might seem super obvious…..but pick those who are great at engaging with strangers and can keep their energy going all day, as well as your technical experts. This can apply to those standing on booths, sponsors or attendees.

If you have an expo booth, it can be super helpful to split the team, with those who can stand in the aisles and engage with prospects, triage the tyre kickers (eg “here’s a brochure”) and introduce the hot leads to your key people who can have a meaningful conversation.

How are you capturing & prioritising your leads so it’s easy for the team to follow up?

Not everyone carries business cards anymore…what’s the plan if not? Some conferences sell an ‘add on’ for booth holders to have a QR code scanner for a quick grab of who has been on your stand, or you can simply take photos of name badges or use a scanner tool. Booth holders can have a QR code or entry form for a competition / prize draw. Swap LinkedIn profiles and send connections – make sure your profile is up to date before you use this
Apple users can use Apple NameDrop

Elevator pitch & objectives –

Get the team together beforehand and make sure everyone has a good level of understanding of your whole offering and what you are trying to achieve at the event.
My perspective: most of us are not great at having succinct elevator pitches (please prove me wrong!)

Sometimes some of your team may not be as familiar with your whole story or product mix as others, so make sure they have the ‘whole picture’ Don’t forget the employee branding messaging if that’s a part of your play

Share on social media.

Use the event’s # as this will get shared and amplified by other attendees and the event team.
What you do depends on your strategy, and alignment with your brand, from shout-outs as a sponsor or exhibitor, to focusing on the learnings, or interactions you have.

Take photos – with people. These can be used for social posts (on the day / after), other marketing activities, internal communications, reports and presentations I say ‘with people’ as an expo booth or banner on its own is not very engaging, whereas we humans still are!

4. Follow up & next steps

Phew! That was great, we had a fabulous time and have a whole heap of leads.

Now what!?

You should have planned this before the event, especially ensuring there is time and resources allocated to follow up.

Don’t be the team that gets back after a ‘day out’, gets right back into ‘normal’ work and the leads get older, the energy to follow up with them diminishes and the value of your investment is wasted.
Prioritise your leads and follow them up with urgency
You might have different levels of leads and urgency here, eg hot sales opportunities versus a marketing lead
Upload relevant leads to your CRM
Post event comms – Is there a blog, video, social post, website update etc that needs doing?

5. Was it worth it?
One last step – have a review.

Was this investment value for money?
Did we achieve our objectives?
What were the metrics?
What was the final budget?
What went well?
What did we learn?
What needs improving?
Would we do it again?

Have I missed anything?
What else have you found works? I’d love to hear from you, or bowl me up at the Tech Summit.

See you there 🙂

Who do I want to connect with?
Tech & innovation companies – that’s my jam to help you:
If you are struggling to grow effectively, including moving beyond word of mouth
You are already super successful, but are at a pivot point in your business that needs some additional direction and support – new market, new product
You have a technical sale and need help to make sure it lands better with your prospects.

Shorthouse Consulting

Shorthouse Consulting provides marketing leadership and support for B2B tech and innovation companies. We help you grow, through effective sales & marketing activity.

We are THE strategic tech marketing organisation in Christchurch and are proud to be a supporter of the Tech Summit. We’re also a B Corp and love to do business with people and organisations who care.

Founder Helen Shorthouse has been involved in Canterbury Tech for over a decade and loves the vibrant tech community we have here. The Tech Summit is a great place to catch up with old friends and meet new ones, as well as get inspired by the speakers.

There’s lots of easy ways to connect with Helen
helen@shorthouse.co.nz
021- 900- 335
Connect on LinkedIn
shorthouse.co.nz