A while ago we wrote what turned out to be a hugely well received portrait of an "old school" events leader. Amid the wry smiles and knowing looks shot at certain team members in different events businesses, some of you asked a question that in hindsight seemed like a very natural progression. If that’s an old school events leader, what does a "new school" one look like?

With declining delegate revenues and events still feeling the pinch of a new business ethic, shaped by recent economic austerity, landing the big kahuna event sponsorship deals is more important than ever before. But with companies wanting more for less and keeping a tight hold on the purse strings, how can you increase the value of event sponsorship?  

So you think your events business is great at lead generation because you’re handing a tonne of names over to sales each week? You couldn’t be more wrong. Lead generation for events is officially broken in the vast majority of events businesses. Why? For starters, because a click-through is not a lead, yet most companies treat them as such. Find out why your lead generation process may be broken and what to do to fix it.

You’d have to have been hiding under a rock the last few years not to be aware of the growing number of online event communities springing up. But there’s a huge difference between being aware and actually putting that nagging sense of “should do” into action and sprinting ahead of all the others (without getting disqualified of course!) If you’ve so far lacked the motivation to fully commit to building your online event community, here’s your incentive.

Your team of marketers may already be creating valuable, insightful and market-leading content by the buckletload, and driving additional views to your website, as well as increasing your social media followings; but have you thought about content that will bring in additional revenue? Here is how to monetise B2B content from your online community - you could be sitting on some very easy wins. 

Do you sometimes find yourself on autopilot when creating email marketing for events? Do you churn out the same old communications for every campaign (dates for diary, discount reminder, agenda announcement...yawn)? If you're nodding along and feeling a touch guilty, don't worry, you are not alone. This is a very common state of affairs in events businesses. You're busy. Like really busy. And email is the thing you do most of, so it's not surprising that a few shortcuts and a lack of thinking creep in. But, never fear, help is at hand.

One of the trickiest thing your marketing team must do, in order to better understand and target your audience, is profile your customers and prospects, before they go to sales.

Social media and event marketing are not natural bedfellows time or culture wise, even though social media marketing for events can be one of the most effective channels. That’s because event marketers are used to doing a marketing task and crossing it off their list. Social media isn’t like that unfortunately - it's an ongoing effort requiring the marketer to be “present” over the full campaign. Event marketers also tend to lean towards old school, with outbound “broadcast styles of communication (which is our mission to change!)

Event marketers are some of the busiest people in the whole world. Forget taking a lunch break, they barely have time to breathe a lot of the time. One of the most common questions I get asked is “how do I find time to create content?”

Here we crack the event marketing content code and unlock the time you need to create killer event marketing content, without being in the office until midnight:

So much of event marketing comes down to the people doing it. It's a huge job, requiring serious intellect, commercial acumen and a diverse set of skills. In fact, event marketing is so unique, those that click with it as a job often remain in the industry their whole careers, addicted to the pace and variety of the work.

Building a great event marketing team takes more than just an assembly of talented marketers. You need the right blend of skills and attitudes to create a winning dynamic. Understanding where you are now, where you want to be and how to get there is useful for any marketing leader, but it'll be especially useful for those attending our Accelerator Labs workshops as it'll provide valuable background context for the exercises within each workshop, providing insight on how you'll implement all the great ideas, latest strategies and proven techniques you'll learn. 

Inbound marketing is without doubt the future for event marketing as a discipline. Audiences are fed up with a torrent of selling emails and they are getting much more discerning in turning off the flow when it suits them.

Successful inbound marketing allows you to maintain a positive relationship between your prospect and event brand at every stage of the buying process, but you need to understand the rules so as not to make mistakes and turn them off forever. Here are our 5 most important inbound marketing insights to consider...   

Whether events are all or just part of what your organisation offers, performing a marketing MOT on the business as a whole is a good way to get a real feel for where you are at the moment and therefore how far you'll need to come to become a future proof, digitally savvy marketing team. It can also help you identify the strengths you can capitalise on, as well as areas where you can make some quick wins in terms of improvements.

Performing a B2B marketing MOT on your business in advance of undertaking any new marketing initiative will give you a proper 360 view of the current state of play. This in turn will put you in the best possible position to make an effective plan to move your organisation forward. Organisations that attend our accelerator labs find this excercise particularly valuable before they actually attend the workshops.

So, you’re marketing your first event. Congratulations! But, it’s a bit "first day of school" scary huh? That’s understandable. It’s a big undertaking for any organisation and a big risk, although the payoffs can be even bigger. Which is why you’re doing it right?

We’ve put together a checklist of the 10 things you absolutely have to know before you start promoting that first event, to help you avoid any of the really obvious slip-ups. We also run an awesome event marketing workshop if you want to delve deeper and kick off your first event with a solid plan, so onto the list:

Do you think your events company is digitally smart? Have you kept up with the evolution of digital? Or do you just want to find out what "getting" digital means? Whatever your reason for reading, you’ve made the right move. Events companies can’t afford to fall behind the curve with digital. After all, the events we produce are supposed to show our delegates what the latest and future trends look like in their industry, it’s only natural that they expect our event marketing to follow that pattern.

We love Stephen Covey’s book “7 habits of highly effective people” and often get asked if there’s an equivalent “7 habits” for event folk. So, here they are, our 7 top healthy habits for the digitally savvy events company:

You’ve got a half an hour catch up with your event marketing team. You need to make the most of your time. So what should you ask to make sure your team are on the right track?

Recently I received a request from B2B Marketing to fill in a survey and it was titled "Does marketing own the customer journey?" It was a provocative header (I'm a marketing geek if you didn't notice) that made me take action, fill in the survey and then write this post.

My strong view and answer to this question is:

Absolutely! Marketing definitely owns the customer journey. If they don't, they're just not doing their job.

I took part in a panel discussion at Event Tech Live with Anthony Dunn of i2i Events Group, Neil Robertson-Ravo of Top Right Group, Ade Allenby of Reed Exhibitions; and Tamar Beck from Gleanin. It was a great session (probably the best one I've participated so far) that sparked lots of interesting views. It was mostly focused on how you engage an event audience online and offline, and what kind of tools you need to do it. 

Good quality content is hard to come by in the event industry – it takes time, resource and your boss’ backing to put together something worth sharing.

And creating the content isn’t even necessarily the hard part; it’s what you do with it after that counts, and makes all the effort seem worth it. If you don’t know how to get your content into the hands (and screens) of the right people you won’t see any return on your investment.

Here’s what you absolutely must do to amplify your event content – and using social media is the fastest, most effective way of doing it.

This list has been reviewed on 1 April 2017

This is our definitive list of hashtags every events industry professional must follow without fault.

Twitter is not only a tool that you will use to broadcast and say a lot of things about yourself, your company or your event. It is a tool to simply stay informed about your industry and getting interesting tips and content that you can literally use to do your job better.

This is the list I personally follow on twitter and since a lot of you asked me about this, here it is.

I know that in the events industry we are encouraged to take advantage of all marketing tools at our disposal, and try new things to drive registrations and build awareness of our events. But it’s important to realise that not all channels hold the same value. To me PPC (pay per click) marketing is the perfect example of this – and I would go as far as saying that using PPC to promote your event can be a complete waste of money if you do not approach it right.