How to unlock extra worth out of your occasion content material | MarTech

My first in-person occasion was overwhelming. I used to be there to report on the convention, doing person-on-the-street interviews and attending as many packages as doable to write down blogs and reside updates for the tech firm that sponsored it. Attending to all of the periods and packages was unattainable even with a small crew. And we have been getting paid for it.

The occasion was extremely profitable: Gross sales booked dozens of on-site conferences, NPS scores have been excessive and model consciousness skyrocketed. However I couldn’t assist questioning — subject-matter specialists had spent months creating periods that will interact very best prospects and present prospects. After the occasion, what occurred to all that content material? 

A brand new strategy to occasion activation

“We put so much time and effort into the event program, creating an amazing onsite customer journey, trying to be thoughtful about our digital attendees and then after the event, the sessions go into an online library and just kind of die,” stated Meisha Bochicchio, digital content material advertising and marketing program supervisor at VMware.

She is working to vary that, constructing a brand new program to repurpose greater than 800 periods of VMware occasion content material — precious content material that can enhance engagement and lengthen the attain of the corporate’s occasions via focused campaigns. 

She’s pondering via other ways to re-create the content material meaningfully and contemplating the way it can assist different enterprise models and their packages. 

“I’m tapping into things like our customer rewards program, how we can keep engaging with our customers throughout the year with our repurposed content…how we can tap into some of our existing customer newsletters that might live on different business units,” she stated and the way they will “support and enable each other with this content.”

Dig deeper: Marketers are reimagining their event strategies

Why repurposing occasion content material isn’t widespread

Within the period of doing extra with much less, extending the lifetime of occasion session content material looks as if a simple win. So why aren’t extra firms repurposing occasion periods into new codecs and belongings for various components of the lifecycle funnel?

It isn’t an entry downside: 70% of events are now hybrid, and most firms returning to in-person desire hybrid events will mix each codecs for the foreseeable future. That digital part means libraries of nice content material are simply ready to be reused. 

It isn’t a expertise challenge: New instruments make it straightforward for even nontechnical employees to drag high-quality transcripts from periods or video clips from panel interviews.

It isn’t an absence of imaginative and prescient: Most entrepreneurs perceive that occasion content material that lives on for months will increase post-event touchpoints, drives extra leads and grows model consciousness.

It comes all the way down to possession. The occasion crew closest to the content material has hit their KPIs and moved on to the subsequent occasion. 

Content material advertising and marketing helps the corporate’s numerous go-to-market performs, staying one step forward of unwieldy metrics (hi there, GA4) to achieve prospects in more and more fragmented channels. 

Model is the steward of firm technique and doesn’t get that granular with ways. 

About half of content material entrepreneurs are already using in-person events of their campaigns. Somebody like Bochicchio, who sits on the occasion crew however manages content material advertising and marketing programming, is ideally suited to the function. Why aren’t there extra like her?

Dig deeper: Doing more with less: How marketers can make content go further

Collaboration is the important thing to post-event ROI

Maximizing ROI from occasions requires a brand new mindset: viewing occasions as a second in time, only one a part of the occasion lifecycle. Occasion periods are cornerstone content material that may drive activations year-round in account-based advertising and marketing outreach, gross sales outreach and even in-product. However one crew alone can’t obtain it. 

You want government buy-in for a job that works strategically throughout capabilities, somebody who is aware of the occasion content material and how you can curate and package deal it post-event to assist different groups and their priorities. 

You want the desire to determine new KPIs — an attribution method that credit each the occasion crew who created the content material in addition to the groups who use it in post-event campaigns. And you have to leverage occasion instruments that may observe income.

The metrics that matter

Put up-event success simply seems to be completely different, stated Melanie Reid, occasion advertising and marketing supervisor at Riskified. “It’s pipeline, it’s influenced ARR, influenced MRR.” She and Lena Stahlschmidt of Fivetran offered at CEMA Summit, exploring the hyperlink between post-event technique and proving the ROI of occasions.

They perceive that occasion entrepreneurs who know how you can align occasions with income and who can present the measurable affect of their program on the underside line will get extra assist.

Reid companions carefully with gross sales in her function, utilizing session information, surveys and an understanding of the place attendees are within the purchaser’s journey to qualify leads and route them correctly.

“Segmentation from sales, the automations from marketing, they all have to work together so that it’s one kind of cohesive message coming from the company, but a two-prong approach,” she defined.

Unique content material is king

Bill Gates famously stated content material is king, however at present it’s authentic content material. Entrepreneurs know that analysis, surveys and interviews have gotten extra precious as a result of they provide individuals one thing they will’t get wherever else — and AI can’t reproduce them. 

Occasion content material periods are a hidden supply of authentic content material and can be a part of these different precious sources as a cornerstone of content material technique. 

To get probably the most worth, you’ll have to deal with constructing relationships throughout occasion advertising and marketing, content material advertising and marketing and model advertising and marketing. 

It’s a collaborative effort, which can be why extra firms aren’t activating extra occasion content material. It requires focus, relationship constructing and a deep understanding of how your occasion content material can assist the work of different enterprise models’ packages.

As Bochicchio says, it’s “80% partnering with other people and establishing relationships and putting together project plans and processes and 20% really just figuring out tactically, how am I going to repurpose this stuff.”

The time is now

Budgets for in-person occasions have lastly exceeded pre-pandemic numbers, based on a March 2023 Exhibitor study. The worldwide occasion trade shall be valued at $2.19 trillion by 2028, per Verified Market Analysis’s estimates. 

Now could be the perfect time to think about who will take possession of your content material and work cross-functionally to make sure it’s getting in entrance of the best prospects. The sector is evolving, however savvy entrepreneurs are already making the connection between occasions, model and content material advertising and marketing.

Occasions are an organization’s most crucial advertising and marketing instruments, so if something required crew play, if something demanded unsiloing, it’s this. The better the cooperation throughout departments, the better the returns in your occasion content material funding.

Dig deeper: How to tackle the challenges of running successful hybrid events