Beyond the marketing funnel

The digitalisation of events has created new flows of data which can be used to deepen engagement and drive future growth if used beyond the traditional marketing funnel. 

In the April edition of Exhibition News, we discussed with Mark Parsons and Jake Austin about how organisers can use a Design Thinking methodology to build better shows. In this article Mark expands on the digital lens with Digital Marketing expert Paul Dominguez, exploring ways in which data can, and should be, used to strengthen tradeshows over the next 12-18 months. 

As we emerge from lockdown and evaluate the new landscape, many things have changed. The way we think has also changed. While many of us aspire to head back to the office, the reality is that three months of home working has impacted the way we think about teamwork. Being forced to work remotely using technology as an enabler has shown us that it’s not necessary to all be in the same place all the time. Things got done, teams solved problems. When we return to our offices, it’s very likely our recent experiences will make it easier to work remotely and to achieve more flexibility at work. 

But why stop at changing just the way we think about where and how we work? As an industry, the marketing of exhibitions hasn’t evolved much over the last decade – sure, the technology stack has changed, but the rhythm and approach haven’t. Simply put, the average organiser does two things. It spends 9-10 months crafting beautiful marketing to convince exhibitors that their show is ‘the one’; and then it uses the last 2-3 months to frantically market to ‘turn out the vote’ and deliver an audience for exhibitors. Until March 2020, we hadn’t changed.

The crisis drove change. To remain relevant, many in our industry have embraced digital-only initiatives. Data from Events Intelligence shows that 32% of a panel of 230 UK tradeshows have announced new digital initiatives over the last 3 months. These new content initiatives and digital events generate massive amounts of new interaction data. For a savvy organiser this creates an opportunity to strengthen tradeshows – for this or next year, and for many years to come. 

These digital initiatives are likely to be less of a short-term fix than many of us expect. A recent survey by SmartXpo showed that over 75% of respondents thought that their tradeshows would be subject to severe limitations until Q2 2021. For better or for worse we’re all going to have to ‘go digital’ to remain relevant. If all you have to sell is sqm and a promise that people will turn up, the next 12 months may be very challenging! 

From a marketer’s perspective, the traditional rhythm of a tradeshow has changed: no longer is marketing tasked only with making the value case for exhibitors and with “turning out the vote” for the audience. Event marketing has become a far more complex dance of multiple touch points, profiling, and nurturing. To deliver on this promise, we identify three themes to get right.

Weaponize Digital 

Digital is an interactive and measurable medium. Users who engage with specific pieces of content or choose to click on a link in an e-mail declare their interest. Digital events provide even richer insights into users because users interact with content for longer. This insight can be passive (evaluating what was looked at, which companies and products appear to be of interest, etc) but can also be active (how users answer a poll, what questions they asked, what paper they downloaded, etc). 

Content can be “weaponised” to help gather data which can then be used to cluster users into areas of specific interest. Content can be shaped to help discover different interests. When designing polls for events, think about whether there is ‘one more’ question which helps you understand the audience better. Polls and surveys can be used to gather purchase intent data helping organisers understand the level of demand for specific products. 

Glue data together

To extract real value from it, data needs to be “glued” together so it can be queried. Data from audience and exhibitor CRM systems, website data, newsletter platforms, content marketing, digital events and registration systems commonly sits in different platforms. While large organisers spend hundreds of thousands (and sometimes millions) integrating systems into complex CRMs such as Salesforce, the reality is that binding data together (even probabilistically) and querying it is not overly difficult or expensive to build or to outsource. One can use many online databases and analytical tools provided by cloud compute platforms offered by Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. 

There is little value in data per se, the value for event organisers comes from being able to query data from multiple sources to discover areas of interests. You should seek to build a “data lab” that enables you to quickly explore different data sources to identify clusters of similar interests, which we like to call “communities of interest”.

Using interests to tailor and delight

Tradeshows bring together large audiences of engaged buyers and sellers. Pre COVID-19, most organisers didn’t really know that much about the interests of their attendees or those of their exhibitors. Post COVID-19 those organisers that can build a data-led content and digital events strategy, will be able to segment users effectively and to generate tangible value. For a typical show of 10,000 attendees and 500 exhibitors, being able to split them into small groups of 100 or 200 individuals who have specific and similar interests has significant value for the organiser, for its exhibitors and its attendees. 

Sales reps can use insight into communities of interest to sell the value proposition of a show more closely to specific exhibitors and to upsell pre-show access to those potential attendees who are highly engaged on a specific issue. 

Attendance can be improved by tailoring marketing messages to focus on the expressed interest of the user. More creatively, those ‘influencers’ within your audience can be identified and leveraged to gain extra marketing reach for the event.

Matchmaking can be significantly improved by combining exhibitors’ targeting lists with information on attendees’ interests. A further layer is adding new data covering company similarity from data providers such as Events Intelligence.

So where does that leave the marketing funnel?

Similarly, to remote working continuing in the future, attending a mix of digital and live events is likely to become the norm given that the fire has been lit. From a marketing perspective, this creates a richer and continuous relationship with our communities of attendees and exhibitors. Data from these interactions transform the traditional marketing funnel into a complex machine to segment users into interest groups. Data is commonly described as the new oil, for organisers to create real value they need to build refineries!

About

Paul Dominguez runs tamedMedia, a digital consultancy providing publishers and event organisers with strategic and hands-on support to better understand and engage with their communities. With over 20 years’ experience working with leading B2B media and events brands he is passionate about using data and analytics to interpret audience motivations to consume and buy.

Mark Parsons runs Events Intelligence, a big data business which uses machine learning to understand the similarity between companies and find new exhibitors at scale. For the last four years he has helped the strategy and deal teams at major organisers using data-led origination tactics. He is a Chartered Accountant, holds an Executive MBA from London Business School, and a MSc in Data Science and Business Analytics from NYU Stern.