How to Make the Most of Your Event Strategy in 2022

EXTRA! EXTRA! There’s no time to wait to fine-tune your go-to-market strategy. 

With one month left of Q2, there’s no better time to ensure you’re going into the second half of 2022 with a more effective approach –– especially for events. The famous “new normal” now differs by state and country, so you’re likely still navigating some uncertainty in finalizing (and budgeting for) your event strategy. 

So what should you do?

Our VP of Account-Based Experience, Beki Scarbrough, and our VP of Data Cloud, Asher Mathew joined forces to bring you this webinar on How to Make the Most of Your Event Strategy in 2022. 

No time to watch the webinar right now? We have the highlights for you. 

Redefining events

The first step to optimizing your event strategy moving forward is to define what an event constitutes for you in 2022. Is a webinar an event? Does it have to be in person? What about hybrid events? This last point is exceedingly important, given that according to a study by Bizzabo, 97 percent of respondents expect to see more hybrid events after the onset of Covid in 2020.

Format aside, maybe it’s easier to define events by what they’re typically used for or what you hope to accomplish through them. The answer is likely:

• An extreme focus on pipeline generation and
• Moving the revenue team forward. 

Why are we dedicating time to this? 

Because another key area of event strategy is budget allocation, and marketing budgets tend to be the first pocket that finance teams look to when they’re deciding where to cut expenses or where they can funnel money from into other departments they want to prioritize. This needs to change. 

Aligning marketing channels to GTM Programs 

An event should not just be a single engagement, but rather be in support of a fully integrated approach. Instead of starting off the year with budgets being allocated to departments, it would be ideal to match budgets to programs. 

Why? 

Because the big goals tend to encompass multiple teams (if not the whole company) and by aligning each channel to a program, you ensure that each specific go-to-market tactic is prioritized and executed appropriately. 

Here’s an example shared during the webinar of how an event goal can be clearly laid out by touching all the areas of a marketing mix. Consider the goal being acquiring 100 Tier 1 new logos for “Product X”:  

• Display advertising to target accounts showing interest for “Product X.” 
• Sponsor “Product X” analyst symposium to meet contacts in Tier 1 target accounts. 
• Add Symposium content to social media campaigns to create pre-event buzz.
• Direct mail campaign to Tier 1 target account executives likely to attend Symposium. 
• SDR/BDR outbound to contacts in Tier 1 engaged accounts to set 1:1 meetings at Symposium. 
• Incorporate Account tech install, intent & next technology purchase data to create personalized recommended event agendas.  

Multiple channels. Multiple teams. Multiple budgets. ONE GOAL. 

Hot tip! To help people find you at an event, make your booth match the background of the display ad you used in your marketing!  

More to learn

The webinar closes with the top component to keep in mind when refreshing your event strategy for the remainder of 2022: data. How can you leverage intent data or technographic data to boost engagement and improve opportunities to close with your target accounts? No one can explain it better than our VP of Data Cloud, Asher Mathew. Review the webinar as well as the slides to find out what data can help you accomplish for future events.