There has been a lot of talk lately about the death of traditional marketing methods, also sometimes known as outbound marketing. If by chance you haven’t yet heard this, there are 100’s of experts out there just waiting to tell you this. I believe that the truth lies somewhere in between the two theories.
I bet that you can think of 5 or more Outbound Marketing techniques off the top of your head – radio, TV, direct mail, newspapers, telemarketing, and of course e-mail. How effective are these in driving your purchases or deciding what communities you join? With all of the free tools (caller id, spam filters, pop-up blockers,) we use to block and screen marketers using these traditional methods, my guess is not very.
What about Inbound Marketing? Inbound marketing consists of things like SEO (search engine optimization), tags, blogs, YouTube, and social media tools like Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. Most large companies especially consumer product producers have been using them for quite some time. How effective are they? Have you thought about your event marketing strategy can embrace inbound marketing to increase your traffic and awareness?
Inbound Marketing allows you to be found by potential customers and fans who are looking for your product or service. It can create a buzz before you have even left for the show site. It allows your booth/products to be sought out amidst the noise and clutter of the show floor or event. If people are already searching for you, it should be a bit easier to convert them to customers or community members than by just throwing a bunch of stuff out there and waiting to see what sticks.
How do these two methods relate to your event marketing strategy? Are you still using magicians or booth babes to drive traffic? Or are your potential clients already waiting to stop by and see your latest demo or product? The choice is yours, what would you choose?
More On Return On Investment
The 2009 Global Event View Report, which is sponsored by the MPI Foundation, The Event Marketing Institute, and George P. Johnson, gives a good idea of what economic factors are driving event marketing factors.
On page 11 of the report, they specifically discuss measurement in event marketing. 44% of respondents listed to justify expenditures, which was the #1 response and only 20% responded that to demonstrate marketing ROI was why they measured at their event.
I would argue that these are not mutually exclusive. If you measure to demonstrate ROI, wouldn’t you also be justifying the expense? If you focus on your event’s ROI you should also cover the other 5 categories in the survey.
Today, marketing management are under increasing pressure to do more with less. Unfortunately, event marketing has suffered greatly as budgets are downsized. One of the many reasons for this is the lack of quantifiable results. Our colleagues in other marketing disciplines are much more polished in the reporting of the effectiveness of their marketing programs. Ask anyone in e-marketing how effect the last newsletter mailing was and I would guess they can tell you how many were opened and how many responded to the call to action.
This is the information you need to have at your fingertips the next time you are asked to justify your event. By focusing on measuring your event’s ROI from the start, you will be able to answer this question with authority like and Jack and KG did in the “Rock-Off Challenge!”