How to extend the value of your B2B customer events

A B2B customer event is one of the few occasions when a brand has the magic communications trifecta of senior customers, willing speakers, and a relevant audience all in the same place at the same time.

Yet it’s important to remember the on-stage content, the off-stage conversations, the photography, and the hospitality around an event all have a commercial life well beyond the day itself. With the right planning, that content can keep working across earned, owned, and paid channels for weeks and months afterwards.

The starting point for every event communications strategy is understanding what media access looks like. If journalists are permitted to attend, the earned media opportunity opens considerably, and the work should start weeks before the event. Briefings with relevant journalists, embargoed interviews with speakers or executives, and news angles prepared in advance mean that reporters arrive with context rather than having to construct a story from scratch.

When media are not permitted to attend, resist the assumption that the PR opportunity closes with them.  Brands can leverage paid media to drive anticipation and awareness of the event. Speakers who cannot talk to media on the record can often be quoted in written content such as opinion pieces or contributed articles where they have the chance to review and approve copy through their own communications teams. Some B2B media also accept event photo stories, and strong images can support both brand and industry awareness.

Beyond earned media, a well-planned event is also a fabulous opportunity to secure content for owned channels. Scheduled brand and speaker posts before and during the day build a public presence as it unfolds, while photography and vox pop video captured on the day can support social content, internal communications and sales materials for months. Speakers are often willing to contribute quotes or short on-camera pieces when the planning conversation happens ahead of time.

None of this requires a significant investment, but it does require considering the event as a content opportunity right from the early stages of event planning rather than treating communications as something to sort out the week before.

If you have an event coming up and want to think through how to get more from it, talk to us early.  And if you’d like to find out more about how we support our clients, ask us more about our work with Verint and Qualys.