In-person events are making a comeback.

Now that life is slowly returning to normal, we’re seeing more and more in-person events pop up across the country. And it’s something clients are asking us about a lot too.

As a digital marketing agency, you might expect us to say you should avoid in-person events. But we’re actually big fans, providing they are executed effectively with clear purpose and value.

When done correctly, in-person events have the capacity to nurture your prospective leads through your marketing funnel and deliver months of digital content in the process.

So if you’re looking to maximise the potential ROI of your in-person event, which key areas should you be focusing on?

When should you use in-person events?

In-person events may be back, but it’s not a case of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. If you want to make a real impact, you need to be strategic.

As we’ve touched on already, there should be a clear purpose to an in-person event. Running a one-off event for the sake of it is a hugely expensive and inefficient way to spend your marketing budget, so think carefully about what it is you’re trying to achieve.

It can be helpful to plan around topical moments in your industry. Spotting these opportunities will create more meaningful experiences for your attendees, which will lead to a longer-lasting impact.

You should also make the effort to dig down into the data of your marketing funnel.  As you analyse your data, you’ll be able to build up a list of ‘hot prospects’. The people who read your newsletters, sign up to your webinars, and engage with your consultancy on social media.

These prospective clients are more likely to turn in to buyers, so make sure you send your event invitations to these ‘hot prospects’ who can really impact your bottom line – not just your friends!

How can you maximise the value of your events through digital marketing?

To truly maximise the ROI of your in-person events you need to think about how you can turn a ‘one off’ into weeks, if not months, of digital content. After building up your digital audience over the past two years, it’s really important that you’re thinking about ways to engage with them as part of your in-person events too.

A great way to do this is by ‘repurposing’ the live event. Taking the content that the event produces and reusing it across your digital marketing.

There’s a whole host of ways to do this, but here are a few examples:

  • Recording your event, and releasing any presentations as gated content
  • Creating snippets, clips, photos and assets for social media
  • Using event topics and focus points for podcast content
  • Capturing client testimonials from attendees
  • Running ‘follow up’ webinars to share the content with a wider audience

These repurposing ideas can be executed with minimal cost and give you tons of content for a fraction of the price of the overall event. You can then drip feed this content through your digital channels over time and track your results.

By focusing on the when and the how, you can ensure you’re leveraging your in-person events for digital success – helping you achieve maximum ROI from your consultancy’s marketing.

There’s still no pressure to host in-person events. Webinars continue to work fantastically well for consultancies like yours, but if you decide to take the plunge, make sure you have a clear purpose for the event, have invited the right people, and have a plan for how you’re going to repurpose the content off the back of it.

If you’re looking for more insights into how to make the most of your in-person events or support your digital marketing more broadly, we’re always happy to help. Drop us a message.