Account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns often are within the context of selling your products or services, but what if you want to use ABM strategies for marketing your event?
In this article, we’ll cover a few approaches you can use to market your next big event that still falls within ABM. That way, you can still find a way to make your event marketing feel personal to your target accounts.
1. Align your marketing and sales teams
Your account-based marketing campaigns rely heavily on the smooth cooperation and coordination between your marketing and sales teams, especially when the goal of your upcoming ABM campaign requires experience in face-to-face networking, like an event.
If you genuinely want your events to reach the right people and create a strong community, then ABM is key here. Otherwise, the numbers might say that you have many attendees, but how many of them are from people who are, at the very least, indirectly related to your business?
It’s a question that’s important to ask the more niche your industry or line of work is.
In event marketing, aligning your marketing and sales teams becomes even more critical.
Your marketing team can leverage their expertise in creating compelling content, designing eye-catching visuals, and promoting the event through various channels.
On the other hand, your sales team can swoop in with their relationship-building skills and have positive engagements with key accounts before, during, and after the event.
When you have such a coordinated relationship between these two departments in your company, you ensure that you’re attracting high-value accounts to attend the event and potentially converting them into loyal customers.
2. Determine your buyer personas
When creating an ABM campaign, many ABM experts would encourage you to develop a buyer persona first, even when you’re marketing an event. So, what is a buyer persona anyway?
What a buyer persona does is that it is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and data analysis. It should help you direct and rein in your marketing efforts so that it has a target audience in mind that it can control its efforts through the buyer persona you make.
Integrating ABM strategies into event marketing becomes more effective when aligned with buyer personas.
You can craft targeted messaging, curate relevant content, and choose the proper channels to engage with your identified personas before, during, and even after the event.
Most of the time, though, when you think of buyer personas, it usually means that you are creating a campaign whose goal is to get conversions in the form of sales. However, developing a “buyer persona” for an event is pretty helpful in making it easier for you to know how to get your ideal event attendees.
In this case, you change your questions and approach from “Who can afford my products and services?” to “Who can afford to attend my events?”
Picturing a buyer persona can also help you create better activities for the event. That way, if you plan to make this event repetitive in your roster, you’ll know which events to keep and which ones aren’t worth the effort.
3. Shift event focus from leads to pipeline
Many businesses believe that events are a lead-generation tactic. Although that’s an oversimplified view of the benefits of holding events as a business, that certainly is the main reason why companies are putting effort into hosting events in the first place.
However, there are better ways to integrate events into your ABM strategies.
Instead of considering it a lead generation avenue, consider it a way to engage with or nurture leads.
It’s better to prioritize the quality of engagement and the impact on the overall sales pipeline instead when it comes to events.
Events are a great way to nurture existing leads through personalized event experiences. It can help move your prospects further along their buyer’s journey until they become paying customers.
Stronger connections with your target accounts are the main driving force of ABM in the first place.
4. Develop personalized messaging for each account
When marketing an event, you likely want a large number of attendees, but with that comes the difficulty of making your invites sound personalized. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t make your event marketing efforts a little more personalized.
Start by segmenting your target accounts based on industry, company size, or any other relevant criteria that can further enhance personalization.
Grouping similar accounts allows you to create messaging that speaks directly to their shared characteristics and concerns. You can create relevant landing pages for the event and recommend activities that best suit that particular segment of your target accounts.
Utilize the data gathered from your ABM efforts to personalize event invitations, pre-event communications, and on-site interactions.
Addressing individuals by name and referencing their company’s unique circumstances shows a level of attentiveness that will make them feel valued.
Remember that personalized event marketing goes beyond just using someone’s name in an email or invitation. It involves tailoring content to address each account’s pain points and objectives.
5. Focus on quality over quantity
The main difference between traditional marketing strategies and ABM strategies is that you’re not trying to market to as many people as possible. Thus, you have a better chance of success when focusing on quality marketing efforts over mass marketing efforts. The same applies to your event.
Rather than casting a wide net and aiming for sheer numbers, prioritizing quality over quantity allows us to create more impactful marketing strategies. By focusing on the correct accounts and tailoring our efforts specifically to their needs, we can drive engagement and conversions.
Again, sure, it’s nice to get numbers like 10,000 attendees but remember, it’s unlikely that you’ll get a lot of qualified leads.
Even if 10% of them become leads and 1% of those leads end up as customers, you’re only getting 10 conversions in that case. You better ensure a high-ticket offer that can cover event costs.
The steps mentioned earlier help you get more quality leads attending your event.
Once you have identified your target accounts, personalize your event experiences to cater to their needs. This activity could involve hosting smaller-scale events or exclusive gatherings where you can provide personalized attention and foster deeper connections with key stakeholders.
By focusing on quality over quantity in ABM event marketing, you can ensure that each interaction is meaningful and impactful. This approach enhances customer satisfaction and increases the likelihood of long-term partnerships and revenue growth for your organization.
6. Take a multi-channel approach
There is only one place where you can promote your events. However, it’s best that you still take a multi-channel approach.
It’s doubtful that all your qualified leads hang out in only one place or marketing channel. To cover more bases, a multi-channel approach is helpful. Just make sure you personalize your marketing messaging depending on your track. Otherwise, it can make your marketing campaign sound ill-fitting and like it’s from a template.
For example, don’t only promote your event on LinkedIn if your event is for B2B professionals. Consider promoting it in your newsletter and your website blog as well.
Whatever the touchpoints are between your business and your target accounts, that’s also where you should have event marketing materials.
7. Create a lasting community
Personalizing your ABM event campaigns is much easier when you have created a community around your brand already. You can skip some of the barriers you must communicate to promote your event.
Plus, if you do your community-building right, you should’ve already created a community filled with qualified leads.
When you create a lasting community around your brand, finding attendees who will support your events will be much easier. At the same time, it’s also better for your bottom line since if there are more qualified leads, you can push them further down the customer journey through your events.
8. Tailor the event website experience
It would be a worthwhile investment to have a whole event website in place so that it’s another viable marketing channel for your event. The event website will serve as the hub of information for all interested in joining the event, and it’s also good for SEO.
It should contain essential information, such as:
- Description of activities in the event
- Dates and time
- Location and, ideally, how to get to the venue
- Venue map with descriptions of booths
- Pictures and photos of the event
By customizing the event website experience based on your ABM strategies, you can create a more personalized and engaging journey for your target accounts.
Consider incorporating personalized landing pages or sections within the event website specifically designed for each target account or segment. Remember the segmented target accounts that we mentioned earlier? This place is where you can make the most out of that.
These customized sections can showcase tailored content such as case studies, success stories, or testimonials that resonate with their specific challenges and objectives.
By tailoring the event website experience as part of your ABM strategies, you demonstrate a deep understanding of your target accounts’ needs and aspirations. This level of personalization increases engagement and helps build stronger relationships with key stakeholders within those accounts.
9. Test and optimize your ABM
Even when the event is over, your work doesn’t finish there.
You should always test and optimize your ABM strategies for events so that you know what you should do better if you ever arrange another occasion.
It’s okay not to have a perfect event, as managing one rarely goes smoothly. However, what’s not good is not having an accurate view of how the event went.
That’s why you should have some metrics that let you know the overall event experience. Consider leaving a feedback form for attendees so that you can hear straight from them how it went from their perspective.
Conclusion
These tips show how to adapt ABM strategies to marketing a grand event for your business. Next time you plan to host an event for your target accounts, apply these tips so your events can go off without a hitch or as few hitches as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
Here are some questions commonly asked about ABM strategies and event marketing.
Q: What is account-based marketing for events?
A: This marketing approach uses personalized and direct-to-the-target-audience marketing strategies to get conversions. In this case, the conversion is event attendance. The key is a high-impact marketing approach targeting accounts that feel most curated to them.
Q: What are the benefits of event-based marketing?
A: Event-based marketing helps spread brand awareness as attendees can get to know your product, services, and overall brand more through the event. Aside from potential customers and generating leads, it also helps you connect and network with other professionals and businesses joined in some way to your industry.
Q: How do you determine the goal of the event?
A: It depends on your overall marketing strategy. If your goal for a particular campaign period is to get more leads, then that should be the goal of your event. That’s why you must align your event marketing campaigns with your business’s overarching account-based marketing strategy.
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