B2B Marketing Blog

SEO for B2B Events is simple if you follow these rules

One thing is clear, in order to increase website visits in the events world you need to spend money on advertising or you need to focus on writing value adding-content that will drive free and organic traffic.

This is where SEO comes to play. Without good SEO you simply won't be found by search engines and without SEO you'll need to pay to get the traffic you need! No one really wants that. The problem is that most people think SEO requires a lot of technical knowledge. That's absolutely not true. 

At BrightBull we're pretty proud of the content we write and our organic traffic represents more than 60% of our total. We follow very simple rules to ensure we're staying current and relevant for our audience and subsequently Google.

 


You do not need to hire an SEO agency!
Get your team on it.

 

 

Topics: B2B Content Marketing B2B Websites Event Marketing Conference Marketing

The Digital Pivot in Events: Concepts, cases and advice from those that have done it

After two successful webinars about the digital pivot in events, what it really means and diving deeper into successful case studies from those that have done it, this is a summary of all the best bits.

This is a long post and has tips / methods / videos / interviews all revolving around the Digital Pivot for Events.

Jump to the place you see fit:

Table of contents

Topics: Marketing Trends Event Marketing Conference Marketing Event growth B2B Event Marketing

Event marketing KPIs: Are you sure you're measuring the right thing?

This post was updated on September 15th, 2020

We all love measuring our results and every team will have a set of event marketing KPIs that they live and die by. If you’re still measuring your activities the old way and moving towards marketing the new inbound way, you’re not going to have the info you need to make smart decisions.

By the way, we have decided to refer to a virtual, hybrid or physical event just as "events", while there are defined differences in the delivery and format of each, they way you approach their marketing is generally the same.

Topics: Event Marketing Conference Marketing Event growth

8 Facts on Maximising your Customer Database for Event Businesses

"Our contact database is the lifeblood of our event business, without it, we are nothing"

Agree? If you do, are you really getting the most out of your prospect and customer database?

You are not alone. When I ask this question to CEOs and leaders of the event industry, 9 out of 10 people give me a categorical "No" or a "I don't think we do, certainly we don't know enough from our contacts; we could be doing more with it".

If your sentiment (or that of your boss) is aligned with the statements above, read on if you want to fix that for good.

Topics: B2B Marketing How to Event Marketing Conference Marketing

Ten tell-tale signs you are an old school events leader

This blog was updated on the 15 October 2020

So this blog is inspired by years of working in events and conferences and experiencing for myself all the positive progress in the industry. But of course whenever there is change, there are always those that resist it and just like to keep things the way they are - the dreaded "comfort zone."

Topics: Event Marketing Conference Marketing

A Detailed Guide on How to Launch a PPC Campaign For Your B2B Event


Launching a paid per click campaign is not as simple as paying an agency to do it or getting a member staff to simply spend a couple of hundred bucks on it and off they go.

Before you launch a PPC campaign there are certain aspects that you need to cover, we split this into 4 key areas:

  1. Required PPC settings for your websites
  2. Required settings for your Landing Pages to guarantee PPC campaign success
  3. Required assets and materials before you launch a PPC campaign
  4. How to monitor and track responses of your PPC campaign 

This is a guide that will tell you exactly what to do at each of these 4 stages, if you follow them you will ensure that your campaign is successful and more importantly, trackable.

Topics: B2B Marketing Conference Marketing Inbound Marketing B2B communities B2B Event Marketing

B2B Event Marketing: A detailed guide on Driving Attendance, Sponsorship & Sales at your next B2B Event

 

B2B event marketing is a vast topic, spanning from how to get people to attend events, how to get them to buy from your B2B brand when you sponsor or organise an event and how to secure sponsorship for your own B2B event. It's a topic that interests event organisers, event marketers and B2B brand marketers in equal measure.

Topics: B2B Marketing Best Practices Webinar Marketing Event Marketing Conference Marketing Lead Generation Event growth B2B Event Marketing

17 must-attend events for events professionals

Note: This was originally published on June 12, 2014 but reviewed and updated on June 27, 2017.

I love our industry and it's great to see there are more and more events and conferences popping up for our own folk.

Interestingly enough June and November seem to be particularly busy for the events world. Fortunately there's a good variety of them, some of which are more marketing related, that we all should put in our diaries and make a point of attending.

Topics: Event Marketing Conference Marketing

Read this before you run an event in an emerging market: 10 pearls of wisdom

My name’s Hannah Wharrier I head up 3 of Clarion’s oil and gas businesses – the Energy Exchange the World Refining Association, and GTF. Since I started at Clarion, I have launched 5 events into frontier markets, conference and confex (conference + exhibition) of varying sizes and types from 200 people conferences up to 4000 visitor, 5000 sqm exhibitions in Egypt, Madagascar, Oman, Senegal and Gabon.

I would say all the tips I’m going through today also still apply if you have repeat events in emerging markets that move country every year.

The normal principles of launching a B2B event still also apply: data, going to your bellwethers first etc... these are the most important tips specifically related to launching or running your B2B event in emerging markets.

Topics: Event Marketing Conference Marketing

B2B Inbound Marketing Stories: How To Sell Out Your Event In Seconds

In our latest edition of B2B Inbound Marketing Stories, we spoke with Kelvin Newman, founder of BrightonSEO, the UK's largest SEO conference and MD of Rough Agenda, one of the new breed of B2B events companies shaking up the conference scene. In the interview, Kelvin reveals the secret sauce behind selling out his event in just 60 seconds and shares some pointers on how larger, traditional events businesses can incorporate a start up mentality to steer them to revenue success.

Watch the full interview, or pick up the key highlights below...

Topics: B2B Marketing Marketing Ideas Event Marketing Conference Marketing Inbound Marketing Event growth

B2B Inbound Marketing Stories: Andrew Ferguson, BrainXchange


In our new series of Inbound Marketing Stories, we interview B2B organisations and explore their inbound marketing journey so far. 

Our first story comes from Andrew Ferguson, Co-Founder at BrainXchange who lifts the lid on his unique business model and shares the reason why he believes inbound marketing for event and conference organisers is so essential for any future success. 

  • Want to know how you can secure a 80-90% rebook rate from your event sponsors?
  • How about the secret to being able to charge double what your competitors do?
  • Or reliably booking a handful of delegates every single week without touching the phone?

You can listen to the full interview at the bottom of the post, or just digest some of the highlights we've pulled out here...

Topics: Content Marketing Event Marketing Conference Marketing Inbound Marketing

Must-read event marketing reports of 2016 (so far)

We all like to think we’ve got the best marketing knowledge available, but when time is tight, how do you choose what to read?  So our team spent the time you don’t have, reading through all the latest marketing reports and shortlisting the best of the best. The result? Our list of the must-read event marketing reports to come out of 2016 (so far at least!). The only condition of entry to the list is that the report must be freely available. For those who are super pushed for time, we’ve also selected a couple of key nuggets from each that you can benefit from even if you haven’t had time to read the reports.

Topics: Event Marketing Conference Marketing Event growth

"New school" event marketing: The 12 key traits to harness and nurture

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?

Topics: Event Marketing Conference Marketing

A digital events business. Do you run one? 7 smart habits of a digitally savvy events company

 

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:

Topics: B2B Marketing Marketing Trends Event Marketing Conference Marketing

Engaging an event audience online and offline


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. 

Topics: B2B Marketing Event Marketing Conference Marketing B2B communities

5 Tips to amplify event content on social media for social media virgins

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.

Topics: B2B Social Media Event Marketing Conference Marketing

35 hashtags in the events industry every marketing professional should use

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.

Topics: B2B Marketing B2B Social Media Event Marketing Conference Marketing

PPC could be a waste of your event marketing budget. If you are doing it like this that 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.

Topics: Marketing Ideas Event Marketing Conference Marketing

The NON-Definitive List of Good Event Website Designs

Some time ago we wrote a post looking at the main problems with conference and event websites. We shared our views on what we think is wrong with many of them, as event websites, especially conference websites are particularly lacking inspiration.  

Topics: B2B Websites Event Marketing Conference Marketing

Getting event marketing right and getting it wrong [Interview]

I recently took part in a podcast for Event Industry News to delve into what event marketers are getting right, and where they’re going wrong. The “Talking events” session was hosted by Event Industry News contributor James Dickson, and I was joined by Adam Parry, Event Industry News editor and organiser of Event Tech Live. You can check out the podcast in full at the bottom of this post , but just in case you don’t get a chance to, I’ve summarised the key points from our discussion below or go straight to the video if you prefer.

Topics: Content Marketing B2B Social Media Event Marketing Conference Marketing