to get more from your event content

It was my first time attending an event in person. I was at the conference to cover it, do interviews with people on the street and attend as many sessions as possible in order to write blogs and provide live updates for the sponsoring tech company. Even with a small group, it was impossible to attend all the sessions and events. We were paid to do it.

The event was an incredible success: sales booked dozens on-site meetings; NPS scores were excellent and brand awareness skyrocketed. But I couldn’t stop wondering — subject matter experts spent months creating sessions to engage ideal prospects and current customers. What happened to the content after the event?

Event activation: a new perspective

Meisha Bouchicchio is the digital content marketing program director at VMware. She said: “We spend so much time on the event program. We create an amazing customer journey onsite, and we try to be thoughtful of our digital attendees. But then, after the event, all the sessions are put into an online archive and die.”

She wants to change this by creating a program that will repurpose over 800 sessions from VMware events. This valuable content will increase engagement and expand the reach of company events through targeted marketing campaigns.

She is considering different ways to recreate the content in a meaningful way and how it could support other business units or their programs.

She said, “I’m tapping in to things like our rewards program and how we can engage with our customers all year long with our repurposed material…how we could tap into some of the existing customer newsletters which might be located on different business units” and “how they can support and enable each other using this content.”

Dig deep: Marketers reimagine their event strategies

Why is repurposing content from events not widespread?

It seems easy to extend the life of content from event sessions in the age of doing more with less. Why aren’t there more companies that repurpose event sessions to new formats and assets?

70% are hybrid and the majority of companies prefer hybrid event. Both formats will be combined for a long time to come. This digital component allows for libraries of excellent content to be reused.

This is not a technological issue. New tools allow even non-technical staff members to easily extract high-quality transcripts or video clips of panel interviews.

There is no lack of vision. Most marketers know that content from events that lasts for several months will increase post-event touches, drive more leads and grow brand awareness.

Ownership is key. The team that is closest to the event content has met their KPIs, and they have moved on to another event.

Content marketing helps the company to achieve its various goals, including go-to-market, while staying ahead of unwieldy metrics, such as GA4, in order to reach customers through increasingly fragmented channels.

Branding is the guardian of company strategy. It doesn’t go into detail with tactics.

Around half of content marketing professionals are already incorporating in-person events into their campaigns. Bochicchio is the perfect candidate for the role. She sits on the team that manages events but also handles content marketing programming. Why aren’t more people like her?

What marketers can do to make their content go further

Collaboration is key to maximizing ROI after events

To maximize ROI, you need a new mentality: view events as just a moment of time and not the entire event lifecycle. Event sessions can be used to drive activations throughout the year in account-based outreach, sales outreach, and even within products. One team cannot achieve this.

It is important to have executive support for a position that can work across all functions. You will need someone who understands the event content, and knows how to curate it and package it after an event to help other teams achieve their goals.

You must have the desire to create new KPIs – a formula for attribution that gives credit both to the team responsible for creating the content and the teams using it in the post-event campaign. You need to use event tools that track revenue.

What are the metrics that matter?

Melanie Reid, Riskified’s event marketing manager, explained that post-event success looks very different. It’s pipeline. It’s influenced MRR, ARR. She and Lena Stahlschmidt from Fivetran presented on the CEMA Summit exploring the relationship between post-event strategies and proving ROI.

Event marketers who are able to demonstrate the impact of their programs on the bottom-line and can align events with revenues will be given more support.

Reid’s role involves working closely with the sales team, utilizing session data, survey results and a thorough understanding of the buyer journey to properly qualify and route leads.

She explained that “segmentation in sales and automations in marketing have to work together, so it’s a single, cohesive message from the company. But a two-pronged approach.”

Original Content is King

Bill Gates once famously stated that content was king. Today, it’s unique content. Researchers, surveys, and interviews have become more valuable to marketers because they offer something that can’t be found anywhere else. AI cannot reproduce these.

The event content sessions will become a valuable source of original content, joining the other sources of valuable content as a cornerstone in content strategy.

You’ll get the best value if you focus on developing relationships between event marketing, brand marketing, and content marketing.

This is a collaborative endeavor, and this may be the reason why more companies don’t activate more event content. Focus, relationship-building and an understanding of the ways in which your event content can complement other business units’ initiatives are required.

Bochicchio explains that it is “80% about partnering with others and building relationships, putting together plans and processes, and 20% about figuring out how I’m going to repurpose the stuff.”

Now is the time

According to a March 20, 2023 exhibitor study, budgets for in person events have finally surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Verified Market research estimates that the global event industry’s value will reach $2.19 trillion by 2028 .

It’s time to think about who will own your content, and how you can work together to ensure it reaches the right people. Marketers are savvy enough to make the link between content, events and brand marketing.

The most important marketing tool for a business is its events. If anything, this requires teamwork and a willingness to break down silos. The more departments work together, the better the return on investment for your event content.

Dig deep: How can you run successful hybrid events?

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