The recession has had little impact on the use of events as a marketing tool, or channel, with a third of companies increasing their investment in events in the last 12 months (against only 23 per cent who decreased it). A similar number expect it to increase in the next year (whilst only 10 per cent expect it to decrease).
This is according to a new survey by B2B Marketing, in association with Marketing Options, which underlines the importance of B2B events, with just under 70 per cent of respondents describing them as either ‘critical’ or ‘very important’.
This result is surprising given the recent recession and the investment in both time and money to make events work effectively. Also, the increasing migration towards digital communication would suggest that face-to-face interaction is going out of fashion.
Despite this or perhaps because of it as demonstrated by the survey, B2B brands appear to be increasing their focus on, and investment in, face-to-face events, rather than reducing it.
According to the research, events take a significant portion of many brands’ marketing budgets, with almost 40 per cent spending at least a quarter of their total budget on them. Almost 20 per cent spend at least 50 per cent of their budget on events, whilst a further 20 per cent had no formal budget or were unable to disclose their spend.
Mixed event profile
In terms of the type of events used by respondents, the majority (just under 60 per cent) said they used a mixture of generic industry events (e.g. trade shows) and their own bespoke events (e.g. launch parties). A third of respondents said their focused on one type or other: 23 per cent on bespoke events, whilst 12 per cent focused on general industry events.
Branding still a key objective
As regards to objectives for events, the most important objective was ‘building customer relationships’ cited by 59 per cent of respondents, followed by ‘generating sales leads’ which was cited by 53 per cent. However, surprisingly in the current environment, ‘building/raising brand awareness’ was still cited by 45 per cent of respondents as the most important objective from an event, which demonstrates that events are not all about harder business objectives.
As regards to measurement of success, however, ‘number of leads generated’ was the most popular response (37 per cent) closely followed by ‘number of sales ultimately generated’ (36 per cent).
Events are most effective at targeting middle-management employees, according to the results, with 44 per cent of respondents describing them as ‘very effective’ at reaching this audience. Furthermore, and very surprisingly given the increasingly time-poor nature of senior management, almost 40 per cent of respondents believed events remain very effective at targeting this audience. Conversely, respondents suggested that events were much less effective at reaching junior level executives, perhaps because this audience are less able to attend industry events.
A digital horizon
The survey also confirmed that digital events remain in their infancy in the B2B sector, with only 30 per cent of organisations either using them ‘regularly’ or ‘sometimes’. The largest group of respondents (47 per cent) have not used digital events at all.
There is much interest in digital events, although marketers remain rightly sceptical that they will take over completely from the face-to-face variety. Rather they will be ‘ a different option’ in the future, suggesting that the medium would mature and that it would be viable in certain instances.
