Brands can’t afford to be “faceless” organisations. They need to interact with their customers, engage with them, gauge their reactions and get their feedback. In-person events are a great way to do that.

This week’s guest, Meesha Stacker, has been working in events for a decade. For the past three and a half years she has been at acQuire Technology Solutions — a data management mining software company — where she has implemented a very successful events strategy.

Today the Brand Newsroom team chats to Meesha about how to get in-person events right.

Here are some key take-outs:

• In-person events work because they are an opportunity to work with your customers in an environment where they can relax, take in your content, and provide an immediate reaction.
• Have an events strategy and make sure it aligns with your marketing strategy.
• You can repurpose event content into multiple formats for weeks, or even months, afterward.

“If you look at the Content Marketing Institute’s research, in-person events are the number one content marketing tactic for both B2B and B2C. — Sarah

• Measure your success based on feedback from customers. Ask them for that feedback.
• Use each event as a way to create all kinds of content. Reinvent and recycle the one idea. For example, conferences and webinars can become blog posts and presentations to share in other ways.

“I love in-person events because they bring out a personality and another kind of connection you could never achieve with a five or six page document. You’re bringing people together and it’s so powerful.” — Nic

• Events do cost money and resources. But it’s possible to do them “smarter” to make them more efficient. Choose your events carefully.
• Don’t just attend a conference or convention, leverage it. For example, if you have a booth, get speakers along to hold talks.

“We don’t have a huge budget. We’re smart with how we use the money. For each event we put on, we make sure we can get the most out of each event… Market leading up to the event and utilise what happened at that event afterwards, so you have that presence for a lot longer.” — Meesha Stacker, acQuire

• ROI can be hard to track sometimes. Work out what you’re basing that ROI on. It might be money coming into the business, or it could be the retention of clients, for example.
• Ask people for their expertise. They’re most often really happy to help.
• Follow up after an event. Thank your guests for coming along. A nice email with pictures taken at the event is great. And take the opportunity to remind them of your website, social media, special hashtags and so on.

“In-person events are a way to bring life and personality to your brand. You can make a big and lasting impact with people and it makes them more comfortable doing business with you.” — Meesha

Here are the links you might need

• Here’s that Content Marketing Institute research Sarah mentioned:

• And you can find those statistics in these reports: B2B; B2C.

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