The Ubiquitous But Undervalued Value of B2B Events

For decades branded events, trade shows, conferences and road shows have formed the backbone of B2B marketing calendars. But in an increasingly digital and AI-supported world, are face to face events relics or still valuable investments? Are large scale branded events like ServiceNow’s Knowledge, SAP’s Sapphire, or Adobe Summit worthy investments for modern marketers? What about annual trade shows like The RSA Cybersecurity industry conference in San Francisco, The Hannover Messe heartbeat of industrial automation industry, or the commercial construction industry’s descent on Las Vegas for The World of Concrete? 

The role of such events is disputed not only due to measurement challenges but also because strategy and activation tactics vary dramatically, and so does the ROI. In our view, the value of events depends on their ability to put brands where B2B buying happens (or could happen) and expand access to customer and category revenue. Marketers who fully leverage events as scaled reach multipliers, content creation engines, and thought leadership positioning opportunities stand to gain significantly improved ROI on their investment compared to those who narrow their focus to the finite event moment itself. 

Both Branded Events and Industry Events & Trade Shows each have their pros and cons, and their own tactics for improving and proving outcomes.  

B2B Branded Events 

Destination events created and hosted by a single brand.  

Branded events excel at creating powerful customer experiences far deeper than most other forms of marketing outreach. Typically geared towards current customers, they are the perfect environment to tease new product launches, flatter high value customers by showcasing their results in front of their peers, and give sales account teams quality time to warm-up and deepen client relationships. 

As a result of their current customer focus, branded events are rarely explicitly designed with new customer acquisition in mind: they are often expensive to attend and it’s rare that people “pay” to be sold to. The host brand invites primarily from their customer base, which is naturally only a proportion of the total potential market and includes only a handful of current customers who are “in-market” for an additional product solution at the time.  

While branded events can deepen relationships with current customers, their contribution to customer reach and potential revenue coverage is often narrow unless paired with broader distribution tactics. With the often enormous and heavily scrutinized investment behind them, leaders in B2B branded events are looking beyond the physical event footprint, finding creative ways to scale content to a wider audience and improve ROI. 

For many B2B brands, hosting annual in-person events are long standing pillars in their annual marketing program. By scaling event content to a digital audience, for example via livestream and post-event content amplification, many B2B marketers are realizing a significant uptick in the number of customers reached and in the ROI on their event investment.  

To truly capture the potential value of investment, branded events should be evaluated based not only on their potential to maintain and nurture current customers, but equally on their potential to expand reach to growth audiences. 

Industry Events & Trade Shows 

Events, summits, conferences and tradeshows addressing a theme or industry topic; arranged to by an event host and attended by many (often competing) brands.  

Industry events & trade shows are slightly different. They invite people from the category, therefore often provide broader audiences, including attendees from exhibiting vendors and customers. From a presence standpoint, industry events tend to offer broad category-level coverage, increasing the likelihood of reaching new customers who are not (yet) buying from you.  

Industry events attendees tend to pay lower entry fees and are more open to being sold to. And whilst it's true that most of them won’t be in the market for a new product as they walk the conference center floor- it's also true that many of them attend to discover what’s new and happening in the market, including new products and innovations.   

Marketers tend to view these events as new customer acquisition/lead gen opportunities, even though immediate payback in terms of leads may be rare or slower than the standard 3-month post event tracking cycle. Industry events attendees experience a far lighter ‘brand touch’ than attendees at branded events – but even a subtle nudge builds mental and physical availability.  

From the perspective of increasing a brand’s presence when/where buying happens, industry events (especially large ones) tend to offer access to a significantly large cohort of potential customers all in one place. Here conference sponsorships and speaking opportunities have the potential to position the brand in front of a concentrated buying audience. This makes them a powerful tool for expanding reach to a relevant, low wastage audience – including the 95% of buyers who are not yet ‘in market’. New or small brands, or marketers with particularly limited budgets may also benefit from a “birds of a feather effect” by associating themselves with the industry and competitive set.  

But industry events aren’t without their challenges. Playing in these channels literally means sitting side-by-side with your direct competitors, so it’s crucial your brand is prominent enough to stand out against the competitive clutter. Industry event organizers are wise to this challenge, offering a range of premium real estate and sponsorship add-ons to the highest bidders. Suddenly the cost of participating in these channels starts to add up, feeling like a competitive spend race. ‘Free’ assets that aid in standout should be elevated and leveraged – Distinctive Assets that uniquely cue the brand and associations with valuable category entry points relevant to wide pools of buyers are a great starting point. 

Just like branded events, industry events, trade shows and conferences can also be scaled digitally to touch a far wider customer base beyond those attending face to face, thereby further maximizing the ROI of the event investment.

Sizing and Measuring Potential Value Contribution 

To decide which events (if any) to invest in, and to maximize value from that investment, consider and measure value through several lenses: 

1.Reach Potential 

Since brands grow primarily by recruiting new users, reaching a wide audience is key to growth. But events are not created equally, and neither are their participation prices. To right size investment, the challenge is to understand both the quantity and quality of audience members delivered by an event (or any other potential channel). In many B2B categories, accessing buyers is difficult, and events can provide an opportunity to reach a concentration of quality customers all in one place. It’s always worth remembering that effective reach tactics are different according to the audience you are targeting. 

Measurement Tip: Do the math. Compare the cost, quantity, and quality of contacts generated by different events against other channel options. Prioritize events that give you incremental access to prospects you can't reach elsewhere, especially since maintaining visibility in your market is an ongoing competitive necessity.  

2.Quality, Distinctive Content Generation 

Events are content creation engines. The interviews, panels, demos, white papers, videos, and custom builds needed to create compelling customer experiences become raw material for dozens of follow-up touchpoints, turning a single event into sustained market presence via social posts, customer case studies, sales enablement toolkits, website content and more. Starting from events and working out (from owned to paid and then via earned) provides a simple and cost-effective model upon which to increase value from the investment. It also has the potential side benefit of replacing mediocre B2B advertising content with distinctive, authentic and stand out content, thereby saving on production costs. 

Measurement Tip: Look beyond immediate event costs to include content value. Compare how much you invest in creating materials (working dollars) versus promoting them (non-working dollars), and track how long those assets keep generating ROI after the event ends. 

3.Customer Access Multiplier  

Face to face events create high touch moments of brand experience for those physically attending. But leveraging digital distribution channels to make valuable event content available online multiplies the brand’s coverage of customers and revenue. If done well this can even create FOMO– driving interest and registrations for future events.

Measurement Tip 1: Beyond the leads & immediate conversions generated at the event, measure the number of potential customers touched f2f and with digital scaled assets, and track their behavior over a long-time horizon. Remember many B2B categories have extended buying cycles that span multiple years.  

Measurement Tip 2: separating customer and non-customers post attendance reviews is more useful than a combined view. Brand users always rate their brand more highly, and a combined view masks the specific challenges in converting new customers.  

4.Thought Leadership & Employee Advocacy 

Employees have their own social media following and broadcasting their activities at events adds both scale and authenticity to the content suite. For example, LinkedIn data shows that the average total organic reach of Company X’s employees is X more than its organic reach on the main company page. Employees can provide access beyond customers to industry bodies, the board, and other important internal stakeholders. 

Measurement tips: Consider not just how many, but what type of people your employees can efficiently reach, and how this overlaps or adds to your paid amplification investment. 

5.New Product Research & Competitive Intelligence 

The concentration of current customers in one place provides a unique opportunity to gather valuable product feedback to shape product roadmaps, therefore contributing to efficient resourcing decisions. Industry events have the bonus of being efficient learning grounds for analyzing competitive priorities and industry trends. 

Measurement Tip: Involve cross functional stakeholders to estimate the value concentrated customer feedback & competitive intelligence adds to the product development. This helps connect events beyond the traditional marketing metrics and to firm long term value creation. 

Conclusion 

Business growth hinges on increasing a brand’s mental and physical availability—being easier to think of, find, and buy. While events may be shoe-boxed as expensive, resource intensive and focused on existing customers, this headline overlooks the many nuances that impact their strategic potential. Many B2B events are underleveraged and amplification before, during and after the physical moment is the obvious low hanging fruit to step change this. By understanding the full in-person and digital customer coverage events can deliver, and their wider contribution to value creation, marketers will more accurately assess the role of events in building brand availability, and reap better returns on their financial and time investment to run them. From this comes a more considered evaluation of the cost-benefit of an event and it’s role as a strategic channel to intercept buyers where B2B buying happens.  

Events should not be evaluated only on their conference center build costs and ability to fill 3-month lead quotas —but on their role in showcasing your brand, putting it front and center to potential buyers. Many B2B marketers are under leveraging their events, and amplification is the low hanging fruit to step change this. 

Up Next: Presence helps you get in the room, but can your buyers find you? In our next article exploring Prominence, find out why you should stop borrowing the spotlight and start owning it.

This article is part of our report, “Easy to Find: Being Where B2B Buying Happens.”