How successful events can transform a B2B media business · 2018. 10. 17. · But many B2B media businesses are missing opportunities through lack of skills, organisational integration

How successful events can transform a B2B media business

A strategic report on transforming the value of your brand

Introduction......................................................................................1

1. The Strategic Value Events Can Add To Media Brands.......................................................2

2. Key Challenges......................................................................4

3. Building A Portfolio Of Events.................................6

4. How Events Can Strengthen A Membership Proposition...........................................................13

5. Building All Year-Round Value With Events.............................................................................................14Brand Reputation

Community Building Market Expansion Incremental RevenueData Build Content Creation

CompetitionPartnershipsMarketing Innovation/ROI For Delegates Balancing Sponsor Expectations With Delegate Experience Execution & Talent

Researching New EventsFrom Mass Email To Micro TargetingGrowth Of Content And Social Media Marketing Pricing And BundlingSponsor Proposition

Case Studies Of Evolving Events Future Event Trends

Detailed Market ResearchCreating A Flagship Event Conferences Awards Acquire, Partner Or Launch Best Practice In Event Launches

6. The Role Of Strategic Marketing........................................15

7. Effective Organisation For Event Delivery.................17

8. Evolving Events For The Future...........................................19

9. Conclusions.... ...............................................................................21

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Most B2B media dabble in events as a complement to their core publishing business, but few really invest in a strategic programme of events. Those that do can unlock significant value. This report investigates the success stories and sets out how B2B media organisation can use events to transform their business.

Events can propel media brands’ fame into new markets, tap into different client budgets and build strong industry partnerships. They can provide a competitive advantage by adding value to members and sponsors. Events can also be a relatively ‘quick and easy’ route to rapid revenue and profit growth.

But many B2B media businesses are missing opportunities through lack of skills, organisational integration and senior level understanding of the scale of the opportunity available – resulting in a failure to grasp the impact a well-run events programme can have on the value of a B2B media brand.

Research from the 2016 PPA Publishing Futures report (see below table) shows that for B2B media, live events contribute 40% of all branded activities.

The strategic value events can add to media brands

Key challenges

Building a portfolio of events through launch and acquisition

How events can strengthen a membership proposition

Building all year-round value with events

Strategic marketing for events

Effective organisation and structure

Evolving events for the future

This report is based on individual interviews with eight B2B media businesses and two membership organisations, covering the following topics:

Type of Brand Activity Consumer B2B

Print publications 25% 9%

11%

1%

19%

7%

4%

40%

9%

15%

1%

14%

15%

9%

10%

3%

100% 100%

Workflow tools

Email newsletter

Digital editions

Mobile publications/apps

Live events

Other

Websites/online products

TOTAL SAMPLE

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Amanda Barnes, Chief Executive, Faversham House Rory Brown, Founder, Briefing MediaCaroline Cronin, Head of PPA Business, PPAConor Dignam, CEO, Media Business InsightAshley Friedlein, Founder, EconsultancyTim Lucas, MD, Fleet & Transport Market, Bauer MediaDoug Marshall, Head of Marketing, Wilmington plcAlex Martinez, Founder, Procurement LeadersSteve Newbold, Divisional MD, Media & Events, Centaur Media Alex Taylor, Head of Communities and Events, IET

Participants in our research

Brand Reputation Community Building Market Expansion

Events can enhance the reputation of a media brand, strengthen a community, create opportunities to expand into adjacent markets, build data and content and add significant revenues.

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A flagship live event with prominent speakers, good discussion and a quality audience hugely raises a media brand’s profile and credibility. It can also act as a barrier to launches from events pure plays or associations.

A major live event can become an unmissable part of an industry’s calendar. A strong programme engages audiences and maintains face to face links with the community all year round. Not only does this provide opportunities for informal research, it helps build loyalty and retention among subscribers and members.

Live events can attract new sponsors and partners, and can be used to expand into adjacent or emerging industry sectors. They are helpful for testing out the potential of a new market and can spearhead moves into new geographies.

Tim Lucas, MD, Fleet & Transport Market, Bauer Media

“Events contribution is greater than simply their revenue as they strengthen the brand overall, build senior relationships and industry partnerships, and prevent competitors entering the market.” Steve Newbold, Divisional MD, Centaur Media

“Acquiring events can be a route into a new market, adding media and information businesses later.”

Alex Martinez, Founder, Procurement Leaders

Caroline Cronin, Head of PPA Business, PPA

“Our programme of over 50 large and smaller scale events provide insight, trends, connections and best practices to our membership. They are also a chance to showcase research, content and networking opportunities associated with our membership programme to both members and non-members. Events are also valuable feedback loops for our analyst and marketing teams as they get to talk face-to-face with our audience.”

“As a membership organisation, the PPA’s priority is value over pro�t. Heritage events provide pro�le and prestige, niche events appeal to smaller audiences and networking events broaden and deepen engagement with members. Events are the most important way of bringing members and key contacts together.

Steve Newbold, Divisional MD, Centaur Media

“Events bring the content of the brand to life, and can expand the repertoire of speakers and contributors. They create a virtuous circle of building brand reputation between events and publishing business.”

Conor Dignam, CEO, Media Business Insight

“Awards are particularly powerful in establishing and enhancing the reputation of a media brand, helpto strengthen industry relationships, and have high loyalty so revenues are reliable.”

Alex Taylor, Head of Events and Communities, IET

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“Events have taken IET into new sectors. We frequently partner on events with other specialist engineering organisations, which expands our reach into new audiences.”

Rory Brown, Founder, Briefing Media

“The British Farming Awards have established Brie�ng Media as part of the agriculture sector and led to non-core sponsorships such as Morrisons.”

Incremental Revenue Content Creation www.mpg.biz

A successful event can make a strong financial contribution to a media brand.

Events create content which can be used to enhance engagement with an audience or target market and strengthen brand reputation. Content can include interviews, panel discussions, surveys, awards and “state of the industry” research reports.

Data Build

Events drive organic data build, providing greater coverage of the market and deeper profile information. This is especially important now as inbound marketing is becoming more essential – helping to ensure customers give brands permission to market to them. Data consent needs to be considered both from a regulatory perspective and from the perspective of customers’ willingness to hear from and engage with a brand.


“Even though we are mostly a subscriptions company, our events portfolio delivers nearly 20% of our revenue”


Amanda Barnes, Chief Executive, Faversham House

“The event is the content brought to life, and the market team work across all platforms and formats. Content can start in the media business, be showcased at the live event and then followed up again post event. It’s even better if content is based on proprietary data or insight and there is crossover between speakers and contributors.”

“We have very strong integration between editorial and event content: themes are planned in advance, start in web and print, continue in seminar theatres at event, then we follow up in digital and print post event.”


“Exhibitions can achieve rates of 75-80% rebook on site, making them a reliable source of repeatable revenues.”

Tim Lucas, MD, Fleet & Transport market, Bauer Media

“Events are growing and are the single biggest revenue source (print second, digital third).”

Ashley Friedlein, Founder, Econsultancy

“The data generated from the Festival of Marketing is valuable to Econsultancy training and subscriptions businesses.”

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Competition Marketing

Whilst the strategic value of events is attractive for media businesses, the environment is competitive, marketing is changing fast and both delegates and sponsors are ever more demanding. How can publishers meet these challenges?

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B2B media brands can miss an opportunity in a market if they don’t have a flagship event. Leaving gaps in an event portfolio provides competitors – pure plays or associations – with opportunities to launch.

Partnerships

For newly acquired or launched events, media businesses have to invest time in establishing industry relationships.

Delegates these days are under more time pressure and mass email marketing is now less effective. B2B event propositions must be focused on the benefits of attending. Upcoming changes to data privacy regulations (such as GDPR) will be particularly challenging for marketers and event campaigns.

There is also a general move away from free to attend events, which often suffer from poor attendance as time-poor delegates often drop out as they have no financial commitment to them.


“A big challenge is events saturation – we have to �ght harder to ensure the PPA brand is a proof point of the value of our own events vs competitors.”


“After acquiring LAMMA we had to work hard to maintain the trust of the agriculture community, especially when moving show venue.”

“We take a lot of care not to overburden our members with multiple promotions for events. We now segment our data much more carefully and key to this is the intelligence we hold in our databases. We also look to more bundled delegate packages sold with our annual enterprise intelligence subscription. This is particularly useful for our largest enterprise members who regularly send volumes of delegates to our global events.”


Doug Marshall, Head of Marketing, Wilmington plc

“Marketing automation systems are enabling us to target audiences more precisely; email marketing now needs to be a more personalised channel delivering valued content.”


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“Delegates have this perception of in�nite choice, so it’s becoming more challenging to get them to commit to events; they seem to be booking later. Email marketing is getting harder due to crowded inboxes, so we are now testing out print direct marketing with some good e�ects.”


“Time poor delegates mean a risk of no shows on free to attend conferences. Data is another challenge, speci�cally GDPR and auditing permissions for cross marketing.”


“Delegates have a packed calendar, and �nd it hard to take two days out of the o�ce for longer conferences: many book late as they don’t know if they will be on set.”

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Innovation/ROI For Delegates

Execution & Talent

Event organisers need to ensure that delegates return each year. Innovation in speaker choice, event formats and more interaction are key to building sustainable events.

A busy calendar of events needs long-term planning and effective execution. Experienced event talent can be hard to recruit, especially for smaller publishers. Some media businesses outsource part of the delivery of events or use freelance producers.

Balancing Sponsor Expectations With Delegate Experience

Sponsors are heavily focused on ROI and want more interaction with delegates. This means organisers must maintain a delicate balance between sponsor expectations and the overall delegate experience.


“Data/GDPR is a major challenge; it will make it much harder to cross promote. We have been updating all our data capture processes, it feels like a return to the days of controlled circulation requests. GDPR is also a challenge for our B2B clients, so we may be able to turn it to our advantage as using publishers’ relationships as a marketing channel will become more attractive.”



“We have to keep refreshing conferences as audiences are now more demanding. A variety of formats: breakouts, speed meetings, table discussions – does make the logistics more complex on the day. We plan to innovate in Q&A sessions and enable more networking.”


“Given declining budgets for event attendance we need to prove the ROI of entering awards and attending events.”

“We have to prove exhibitor ROI – as there is a high cost to attend events. We hire freelance experts to work with exhibitors to ensure they get value and a good return for their investment at our events.”


“There is a bit of a talent shortage – it’s hard to hire in key event skills, so we sometimes have to use freelancers and contractors.”


“There’s more focus on proving ROI on conference sponsorship. We have to o�er more value e.g. content, interaction with delegates – and also for category sponsorship at awards.”


“Approximately 55-60% of our revenue comes from member subscriptions and 40% from events. About half of event-based revenue is from sponsorship. As a platform for knowledge exchange we take care to ensure both delegates and sponsors get the highest quality. However, we are careful to avoid set ups at our events that are heavily sponsor rather than delegate centric. Managing the interaction between sponsors and delegates has been very important in building trust with our community and also sustaining credibility in our brand.”

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“We have often brought in contract event producers, especially for new markets (e.g. Virtual Reality), who work with the editorial teams on topics, programme and speakers."

Detailed Market Research Creating A Flagship Event

Each market has different needs, and the ideal mix of flagship exhibitions, summits, conferences, awards and small-scale events will vary. If a media brand has aspirations to own a market they may need to acquire existing events or spot emerging opportunities and launch.

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Successful B2B media businesses invest substantially in research, briefing producers to conduct multiple interviews with prospective delegates and sponsors, and thoroughly understand the competitive landscape.

FoM grew out of Econsultancy events JUMP and Funnel. It’s a stand-alone brand, with a dedicated team, supported by Econsultancy, Marketing Week, Design Week and Creative Review. The scope is best practice for marketing. It’s a separate brand to existing event Marketing Week Live. The long-term aim is to build FoM as a destination which attracts entire senior marketing teams. FoM includes a two-day conference with 12 stages and 200 speakers, plus interactive experiences, social events and an awards night, Masters of Marketing. The delegate pass (£800-1000) provides access to all sessions and the ability to pre-book popular speakers. We have mostly UK visitors, but some from Europe, and longer term we could replicate the event in US or Asia. The FoM Festival Director works with all relevant Centaur brands, who contribute content and promotion.The FoM awards were based on Econsultancy digital awards, but have now widened their scope to all marketing and have been renamed as Masters of Marketing. We are now experimenting with themes and social events and inviting more ‘celeb’ speakers e.g. Steve Wozniak, Martin Sorrell. We would like to add more interaction enabling networking between delegates, and enhance both physical navigation and digital experience.

Ashley Friedlein, Econsultancy

The holy grail for B2B media businesses is creating a ‘flagship’ event, that defines the industry and becomes a standard fixture in the calendar. This may be a major exhibition with seminar content or a large-scale summit with paid delegates.



“Good research is essential to event launches. It starts with the event producer exploring trends, issues and pain points, discovering who the thought leaders are. The next stage is creating a steering group who will debate the themes and identify case studies and speakers. This is crucial to make people feel �attered to be asked to join and get them involved in the marketing of the event. It’s important to build events with longevity, rather than ride a short-term trend, and be prepared to invest in the �rst year for a longer-term return. We aim to build equity value from events rather than just focusing on short-term cash returns.”

“A recent US acquisition FRA (Financial Research Associates) is a pure play conference business in healthcare, government and �nance with no media brands. They are adept at spotting emerging topics by conducting deep research with potential delegates. Sponsors are quick to follow as the high level content and speaker quality are excellent. Without in-house media brands, they have to be quite entrepreneurial and develop deep relationships.”

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Case Studies

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The Media Production Show, a free registration exhibition with a seminar programme, was launched at Business Design Centre in 2016 and in 2017 is at Olympia. Supported by all three brands (Broadcast, Shots and Screen), it focuses on production services and process including technology, post-production and locations.

Visitors range from heads of tech at major broadcasters to indie production companies. The event has a full seminar programme and features, as well as stands. Media Business Insight (MBI) hired a dedicated event director and used the Knowledge and KFTV database alongside commercial relationships.

Conor Dignam, Media Business Insight

Briefing Media launched CropTec in 2013 after industry feedback about the loss of focus of a competing event. Research showed that the rival event was losing credibility and the support of the industry. It had become about corporate entertainment rather than learning.

CropTec was launched as a free registration event for qualified farmers. It is seminar-led, but focused on knowledge exchange and demos of technology for the 4,000 to 5,000 largest farmers interested in precision farming, technology and science.

The editorial team controls the content but sponsors gain credibility through association. It has been a three-year journey to a fast growing, credible and profitable event.currently using this approach on a number of event launches in related markets.

Rory Brown, Briefing Media

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Bauer had a small event, Fleet News Congress, attended by just 80 fleet managers (out of database of 16,000). The former Fleet Show had died, losing industry support after one or two sponsors were allowed to outspend the rest, so there was no direct competitor.

FML policy was to offer a selection of standardised packages at the same price to 15-20 major manufacturers providing a level playing field.

We used the CILK process to get feedback on content and support from industry, taking care to research fleet managers who don’t attend as well as the core fans.

The launch was still a big risk, but the risk of not doing it and allowing a competitor to fill the vacuum was greater.

FML is focused on sponsor revenues as in this market delegates expect free or low-cost events. Bauer outsourced the marketing for FML; the team learnt skills to then apply to other events.

Now in Year Three, we have to focus on attracting new visitors and providing an even better experience for exhibitors/sponsors.

We have developed existing best practice sessions and added tech zones with practical, actionable advice.

The Fleet and Transport team always use the same approach to new product development: Concept – Iterate – Launch/Kill (CILK). Once we have a concept, we quickly take it out to a group of ‘influencers’ (e.g. associations, governments, experts and opinion formers) for feedback and endorsement.

We also canvass feedback from commercial partners – described as ‘seed investors’. Then the team iterate the idea and go back to the group two or three times until it is fully refined, and we have financial backing from the seed investors to cover most of the upfront risk.

Next we ask influencers for support on content curation, finding speakers, opening doors to other influencers. What makes it work is a goal that all the influencers buy into – then they will donate their time and share contacts.

The iteration stage takes 12-16 weeks, and only 40% of ideas survive the process. Bauer Media are currently using this approach on a number of event launches in related markets.

Tim Lucas, Bauer Media

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Conferences

Many B2B media businesses are now setting their sights on larger, more generic conferences or summits which can build up an audience over time, rather than multiple, ad-hoc topic-based events.

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Centaur is moving towards fewer, larger, longer lived conferences – more summit style, with content varying each year.

They may take three years to become profitable but will have a longer lifetime. There was too much risk and research investment in launching high numbers of one-off conferences: now every event has to stand on its own feet profit wise.

Producers are continually researching the market, listening to customer ideas and also testing ideas from editorial teams.

Established conferences e.g. The Lawyer Summit, are a fixture in the calendar and can guarantee quality attendance. Centaur will still add in some one-off events on hot topics.

GDPR, for example, has been adapted as a topic for different audiences like marketing and legal.

Running since 2004, World Procurement Congress is the undisputed leader in the global field, known for is cutting-edge content, case studies and inspirational speakers.

The event attracts over 600 C-level delegates from many of the world’s top companies. Hosted alongside it are the World Procurement Awards which gather 1,000 global executives to celebrate excellence and innovation in the profession.

The event has produced numerous regional and topical offshoots. An example of this is DITx – data, intelligence and technology.This subject area is a key focus of Procurement Leaders research and a dedicated centre of excellence in our membership service.

DITx launched early 2016 in partnership with Siemens who provided the venue and were a headline sponsor.

Steve Newbold, Centaur MediaAlex Martinez, Procurement Leaders

Feed Info is a subscription driven price discovery business acquired by Briefing Media in 2016.

Our launch of a feed additives conference in Frankfurt has been very successful.

We hired a good events producer who researched all the premium subscribers and identified a gap.

There were large exhibitions in the sector but no conferences, and plenty of information needs around technology and best practice.

Sponsorship options have been compelling for the community but only work with a strong brand and engaged delegates.

We are now looking at either replicating in new countries or segmenting specialist conferences.


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MBI have launched a series of summits – typically one or two days and up to 300 paying delegates. Most recent was VR (Virtual Reality) Summit.

It was a new topic so we hired in a contract event producer with specialist knowledge who worked with editorial teams on Broadcast, Screen, Shots.

We developed a distinctive proposition: focusingon the creative element, not just the hardware, and included lots of demos.


One interesting crossover launch is the “9% is Not Enough” conference tackling the issue of women in engineering.

This was a risk as it’s more of a HR/recruitment issue than a technical topic, but it has proven very popular among delegates, speakers and sponsors, so it’s an interesting example of expanding beyond IET’s traditional territory.

Alex Taylor, IET

The Agrimoney business is a newswire service with 85k monthly unique users and a very active community.

We have had several attempts at a launch, very well received editorially but hard to find the right commercial model. We have now have identified a subgroup of 5,000 within the audience.

This is a much harder sponsorship sell than the Feed Info market. The lesson is that every community has different dynamics and we need to adapt the model to every market.


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Awards

Most B2B media brands have awards (some have more than one) identifying a distinct segment and a group of people who value recognition. While sponsor revenues are becoming more challenging, table sales are still buoyant.

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The BFA was launched based on our knowledge from other sectors. We deliberately chose a neutral brandto make it feel like an industry event, rather than be closely associated with a single media brand.

Farmers Weekly held an awards event at Grosvenor House, but the high table price meant it had morphed into an event for suppliers rather than farmers.

BFA was launched in Worcestershire, was not black tie, offered more accessible pricing and was targeted at family farms.

This has given it greater authenticity, and now all categories are sponsored, plus the awards has an overall sponsor in Morrisons.

The access to audiences via Farmers Guardian and the detailed research they did helped to identify the proposition.

Awards are particularly powerful in establishing and enhancing the reputation of a media brand. The Broadcast Awards - with 1,400 attendees hosted at The Grosvenor - are long established and help to strengthen industry relationships.

They have a high level of loyalty and repeat bookings from attendees and sponsors, so reliable revenues. The evening was packed with categories, and customers were keen to reward effort in digital content, video on demand and short form, so MBI launched Broadcast Digital Awards as a separate event to serve a different segment of the market.

MBI has launched awards for other brands, Shots and Screen International – smaller at c400-500 people but they still strengthen our brand reputation. We’ve looked hard for a different angle to other awards. Screen focuses on recognising people involved in marketing, PR and sales on film. Shots Awards celebrate creative work across different platforms.

Media brands can support more than one awards event if they can identify a niche with an appetite to enter awards programmes. But the core brand needs to “qualify” to hold awards, i.e. be seen as market leader to solicit enough entries and support. Researching prospective entrants is the most important step. We have so far decided not to combine awards with conferences, because we recognise customers are time-poor and see these events as distinct experiences.



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Acquire, Partner Or Launch

Consensus appears to be that it makes senseto acquire established, large scale exhibitions, especially when entering a market. However, conferences and awards are easier to launch from scratch. Partnering with industry associations can make sense for larger exhibitions.

Thorough research and close relationships with the industry are key to successful event launches:

Do in depth research with visitors/delegates and sponsors

Identify needs not met by other events

Create an advisory board to refine contentand proposition

Get sponsors to commit upfront

Build excitement about the event to attractmore speakers and sponsors


“Exhibitions are often launched by entrepreneurs in that sector, who have the contacts and the trust of the industry. Once they get to critical mass, they enjoy repeatable revenues and an attractive asset for larger media businesses. Centaur launched the Meeting Show �ve years ago – it was a heavy investment but is now a valuable asset and we are starting to internationalise.

“Centaur expects the share of revenue from events to grow. We will keep investing in current exhibitions, but are open to acquiring as well. We will continue to extend paid for conference and awards events around brands. For new events acquisitions – there’s the opportunity to add media businesses, and if we acquire media brands, we can then extend to live events.”


“It’s easier to acquire in exhibitions – as it takes a long time to build a reputation. But conferences are easier to launch, if working with a media brand. Digital Media Strategies US was relatively easy to launch as the website already had a strong US audience, and then we brought in a local consultant to network and research other events. Without that reach we would have needed a strong partnership with a media brand - i.e. a revenue share - rather than just marketing support.”

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This was an acquisition, identified at the same time as Briefing Media acquired Farmers Guardian. In the last five years LAMMA has grown revenues threefold, through doubling the number of exhibitors by adding sales resource and using Farmers Guardian classified relationships and increasing yield by adding marquees and enhancing the experience for visitors. We also added over £100k of sponsorship, and an awards programme, but importantly have not changed the basic character of the event. We stayed close to the industry during the evolution of event, continued free entry and retained many of the freelance staff. Farmers Guardian has helped with marketing, and provided instant credibility in the industry.


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Best Practice In Event Launches

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Members and subscribers are frequently offered VIP access to flagship events. But there is a trend towards creating exclusive, members only events with proprietary research and insights, high quality speakers and extensive networking. Membership organisations are very highly tuned into creating niche events for specific interest groups. Live events also help the editorial and marketing teams understand members’ needs in greater depth.



“Procurement Leaders is principally a membership business with over 700 corporations and 25,000 executives. Our events are either included within subscription packages or have a discounted additional fee. One example of a speci�c event created for our top tier members is Ovation. This is a CPO think tank for our CPO members, that combines content and networking in a completely unique format and setting. Given focus and relevance this event regularly achieves NPS (Net Promoter Score) above 70%.”

Alex Taylor, Head of Communities and Events, IET

“IET is a membership organisation with 170k members worldwide, and the overwhelming majority of events are organised for its 150 grassroots membership groups. Regional events are largely simple speaker events with networking - they are organised by local volunteers, with the IET team available to support on marketing. Events run by technical specialist groups are more content-rich, and cater for both academics and professional engineers. The technical group selects the content for their events but the IET events team supports with venues and logistics.”

“In the past 12 months the PPA has seen continued organic growth - both in engagement and delegate numbers - of small, niche events that are targeted at very speci�c data sets. These have been successful in adding value to our members’ businesses. They are free to attend so the ROI is easier to justify, and create strong brand engagement for us.”


“MBI have plenty of small scale events: roundtables, networking drinks and sponsor-led thought leadership. Corporate subscribers get discounts on conferences and Shots subscribers get VIP tickets to Cannes party (1,300 attend). We would like to develop more subscriber-only events.”


“Edie.net has a free invite-only VIP club which is funded by a couple of major sponsors. Members get access to exclusive small-scale events. Utility Week has a paid membership o�er – members get exclusive events and VIP access to Utility Week Live, as well as original research reports, a print magazine and complete access to all digital content.”

“Econsultancy has been promoting membership internationally, so we have put greater focus on digital member bene�ts rather than UK events. A few years ago members got discounts on UK events but this didn’t grow attendance and was hard to replicate internationally.We have two webinar series for members only: Digital Shift, a one-hour, quarterly webinar on latest trends with Q&A and Therapy Thursday - a ten times per annum panel discussion on a speci�c pain point or challenge.


“We also run a physical event called Digital Cream, based around small group discussions on hot topics. This has attracted up to 350 people in London, and was replicated in Asia/Australia but we have had to change business model – with more sponsorship,and some non-members attending. We have tested member events in the US but it has been hard to make pro�ts as venues are pricey, so we stick to small scale round tables.”

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“Many of our events have speci�c content focus and are used to showcase proprietary research and insights to speci�c member groups. Our large congresses hosted in US, Europe and Asia provide a wider and more macro perspective to larger broader audiences. In these environments, networking and persona based experiential activities are getting more and more important.”

“Edie Live and Utility Week Live have very strong integration between editorial and event content: themes are planned in advance, start in web and print, continue in seminar theatres at event, then we follow up in digital and print post event. Both video and audio webinars work well in niches. We haven’t yet seen a good example of an online exhibition – face-to-face is still key.”


“Econsultancy have two webinar series for members only: Digital Shift, a one-hour, quarterly webinar on latest trends with Q&A and Therapy Thursday - a ten times per annum panel discussion on a speci�c pain point or challenge. The Festival of Marketing is not closely associated with a media brand, but Econsultancy analysts speak and present research, raising the pro�le of their expertise and content.”


“Conference producers sit with the market teams so they can closely collaborate on content published in print or online.”

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Whilst the strategic value of events is attractive for media businesses, the environment is competitive, marketing is changing fast and both delegates and sponsors are ever more demanding. How can publishers meet these challenges?

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“Our event producers are continually researching the market, listening to customer ideas and also testing ideas from editorial teams.”


“For the launch of our Feed Additives conference we hired a good events producer who researched all the premium subscribers and identi�ed a gap.”

Researching New Events

From Mass Email To Micro Targeting

There is no substitute for event producers having one-to-one conversations with the prospective audience, and enlisting broad industry support.

Email inboxes are crowded and mass email marketing is less effective than previously. Mindful of the impact of data privacy changes, B2B event marketers are building their own databases and using marketing automation to target communications more precisely. Telesales is still core for delegate marketing.


“With a large portfolio of events and an engaged client base, we have to take care with managing the volume of our marketing communications – particularly email. All marketing is now centralised in London with a satellite in the US. Teams have regional responsibilities but the targeting of communications is now more strictly controlled.Telesales is a large part of delegate marketing, and after some experimentation we currently have a single London based team working di�erent time slots to support Asia and Americas.”


“Email is becoming less e�ective; we now tend to personalise and segment, down to groups as small as 50 and we use social media extensively.”


“The growth of marketing automation is changing event marketing. We can now plot a customer’s journey far more precisely and set up more personalised communications as a result. This does mean a greater focus on developing specialists who understand how to use marketing automation systems.

“In Europe, GDPR means we are placing a greater emphasis on generating contacts from our own activities using online content.”

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As events can add significant value to a media brand, they require a strategic approach to marketing, both in terms of in depth research to uncover key issues among the audience, and the channels used to attract visitors. Mass email marketing is becoming less effective and the focus is shifting to content-driven and social media marketing - along with far more precise targeting. Developing a clear sponsor proposition is increasingly important, although organisers also need to balance this carefully against the delegate experience.

www.mpg.bizGrowth Of Content And Social Media Marketing

Pricing And Bundling

Event organisers need to ensure that delegates return each year. Innovation in speaker choice, event formats and more interaction are key to building sustainable events.

There is a move towards conferences with paying delegates, but this means intense focus on demonstrating ROI for delegates. Organisers are increasingly bundling events tickets within corporate membership packages. During the launch phase of a new event tactical complimentary VIP invites are helpful to build a quality audience.

Sponsor Proposition

Sponsorship budgets are tighter and there is more focus on ROI from sponsorship spend, so producers must ensure the sponsorship proposition is strong, but without undermining the delegate experience.



“The PPA encourage our sponsors and partners to market our events across their channels by providing them with suitable copy and material. We are focusing on video to market larger events and will release promo footage in the run up to an event across social/ email channels. We are forming media partnerships to promote the events beyond our own reach and to engage with a wider audience.”


““Technology is enabling more sophisticated lead nurturing, and social media means an events reputation can be built faster. We have to create the perception that the event is everywhere, so delegates simply can’t miss out, using video, email, print, social to build a growing snowball of publicity.”

“We have started bundling events passes with membership packages, including a number of credits to attend key events. This simpli�es event attendance for members but also helps minimise event marketing volume to members. Key to this credit system working is strong account management and regular communication with the central member contact.”


“The event producer researches sponsors one-to-one, to uncover their frustrations with other events and develop creative marketing opportunities, maybe based more around content than exhibition stands. Brie�ng Media has an in-house agency team, who collaborate closely with sponsors to build tailored packages, and ensure they have a good experience at the event. Farming events are now attracting the attention of larger sponsors such as Morrisons and Waitrose who want to show their commitment to UK farmers. Steering groups and research has to focus on sponsors needs as well as delegates; it’s all part of the mix to getting things right.”


“We have shifted to more technology enabled and content-driven communications, segmenting more carefully and o�ering tailored propositions to individuals based on persona and intelligence we hold in the database.”


“We now have far greater focus on content marketing. For example, we create a main editorial feature such as a CEO interview and promote it and then link this content back to the event. Social media is increasingly important to build awareness pre-event.”

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Tim Lucas, MD, Fleet & Transport Market, Bauer Media

“Bauer’s NPD approach: Concept – Iterate – Launch/ Kill (CILK) puts equal emphasis on commercial partners. We discuss the concept with potential commercial partners, who we call ‘seed investors’ and secure their �nancial backing before we launch. The team work closely with sponsors to ensure that they use all opportunities at the event e�ectively and maximise their engagement with the audience, for example by running best practice workshops in advance and taking photos of stands during the event.”

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B2B media businesses have a great advantage over pure play event organisers thanks to their media brands. Therefore, the focus should be on creating market-driven teams to maximise cross pollination on content, marketing and commercial, but with some specialisation in event production, delivery and marketing.

Dedicated event producers working closely with editors

Sponsorship integrated with media teams

Dedicated exhibition sales team

In-house delegate telesales

Centralised operations

Marketing teams having a blend of event specialists and market focus

The consensus on organisation is:

How media owners organise for event delivery:

IET

Event production A production team put together content and speakers for commercial events.

Logistics team manages venues and registration. IET has a dedicated team of community development managers who support the regional and technical volunteer groups with their events.

IET events team has event marketing specialists that sit within a wider marketing team supporting the membership and publishing aspects of the business. Marketing is becoming more connected and they are currently exploring opportunities for greater coordination.

Sponsorship and exhibition is sold by a team that is separate from the wider publishing sales team. This requires excellent communication to ensure that IET provide the best joined up account management to larger clients.

Marketing

Sponsorship & exhibition sales

Operations

CENTAUR MEDIA

P&L Centaur’s philosophy is market-centric, media neutral. Each market (e.g. legal, finance) has its own general managers/MDs who are profit responsible for all revenues – media, events, information business. This focus has helped trim the long tail of marginally profitable events.

Event development is led by markets, the role of Centaur is to spot best practice and apply to new markets.

Sponsorship sales for conferences and awards are handled by media sales teams, although exhibitions have their own dedicated stand sales team.

Content producers sit with the marketing teams so they are closely working with media editors.

Marketing teams are focused on specific markets, but sit together to share best practice and systems/processes, although they often hot desk.

Event production

Marketing


Event ops are centralised – split into exhibition ops and conference/awards logistics.

Operations

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FAVERSHAM HOUSE

P& L FH is audience focused, and has a matrix structure with teams structured around brands and sectors.

Have a dedicated delegate sales team, who may integrate with membership sales team.

Event specialists work closely with editorial teams. This is easier to achieve in a small company. Use some freelance conference producers.

Event production


Delegate sales

PROCUREMENT LEADERS

Event production Producers sit alongside the editorial team so there is close coordination between content and event topics.

Telesales is a large part of delegate marketing, have a single London based team with some who work early mornings to call Asia and others late afternoon to call Americas. Regional satellite teams are focused on customer service for members.

Dedicated event marketing team.

Sponsorship sales team sell events alongside marketing solutions, advertising and webinars.

Marketing

In-house team deliver operations for the events.Operations


Delegate sales MEDIA BUSINESS INSIGHT

Event production Have often brought in contract event producers, especially for new markets (eg Virtual Reality), who work with the editorial teams on topics, programme, speakers.

One single marketing team across all events – includes a couple of dedicated awards people, a couple on the show and a small team on conferences, but all attend all events.

Commercial teams are totally integrated – operate on account basis, selling across magazines, digital and event sponsorship. Sponsors are getting more sophisticated and keen to contribute content to the event, e.g. commission research, bring speakers, case studies.

Marketing


BAUER MEDIA

P& L Editorial, marketing and sales teams work across print, digital and events.

Prefer to hire sales people with either customer account management skills or B2B product/services sales background and train up on media. Bauer split sales team into big accounts – manage risk, get to know the organisation and its strategy, and small accounts – grow revenues.

Producers work closely with journalists: producers understand generically what makes a good conference session, connecting emotionally with delegates, while journalists know the subject and have the contacts. The ideal editor is now more of an external facing ‘brand ambassador’ with excellent personal relationships with all the CEOs and key influencers.

Event marketing is a great training ground and is a very tangible measure of success.

Event production

Marketing


A dedicated events team manage logistics.Operations

Exhibition stand sales (smaller clients) is done by a specialist team. Commercial teams serving larger clients work across print, web and live and plan with client a year ahead, creating tailored campaigns instead of selling pre-packaged items.

Case Studies Of Evolving Events

In any market, establishing a flagship event ensures longevity. All events, large or small, need continual refresh and reinvention and the content and format must always keep pace with an audience’s needs and changes in technology.

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Well selected advisory groups made up of progressive industry stakeholders are a key cornerstone in keeping an event moving in the strongest direction possible.

Fleet News Awards have been running for over 20 years with a continual focus on how they can improve and provide a better experience for delegates and sponsors. Extensive surveys of audiences, analysisof financial results and benchmarking against other events in the sector has allowed Bauer Media to make intelligent changes to Fleet News Awards and keep the event relevant and healthy.

Company Car in Action (CCIA) was a 2009 Bauer Media acquisition and was at the time a loss-making event. Looking to revitalise the event, organisers shared information transparently with sponsors and discussed strategic options for moving forward. The focus was on improving experience to grow the event rather than simply to raise yield.

CCIA has an audience steering group and an investor steering group who meet quarterly to effectively run the business - although in the case of disagreement the audience group takes precedence.

Almost all manufacturers in the sector - and almost 1,000 fleet managers - already attend the event,so limited growth potential exists. Consequently, Bauer Media is looking to enhance the audience experience and its ROI for manufacturers.

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A growing trend for increased interaction

A move away from formality

A rise in standards for free-to-attendexhibitions – often comparable in quality topaid conferences

There is noticeable growth in small scale,niche events targeted at special interestgroups

While webinars are valued by sponsors andmembers (experimentation by Econsultancyin this area is particularly interesting), there doesn’t yet seem to be an online substitute for the face-to-face contacts at a large-scale exhibition or summit

Other factors to consider for the future of events include:

Fleet News Awards, CCIA Fleet News Congress was a small event in BauerMedia’s portfolio, attended by just 80 fleet managers out of database of 16,000. The former Fleet Show had failed due to lack of industry support after one or two sponsors were allowed to outspend the rest of the market, meaning there was no direct competition. To counter this, FML’s policy was to offer a selection of standardised packages at the same price to 15-20 major manufacturers – thereby creating a level playing field.

Using its CILK process to get feedback on contentand support from industry, Bauer Media took careto research not just its core audience, but also fleet managers who did not attend the previous Fleet Show. While the launch of FLM was still a significant risk, the risk of not launching and allowing a competitor to fill the vacuum was even greater. FML is focused on sponsor revenues as in this market delegates expect free or low-cost events. Bauer outsourced the marketing for FML and applied the skills they learnt from this process and applied them to other portfolio events.

Now in Year Three, FML is now focusing on attracting new visitors and providing an even better experience for exhibitors and sponsors. Recent additions includedeveloping existing best practice sessions and adding tech zones with practical, actionable advice

Fleet Management Live (FML)

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Procurement Leaders will continue to invest in and grow its Congress events - in particular focusing on developing multiple streams, targeted at different personas, but allowing delegates to mix and match.

Producers are also adopting a more creative and experiential style with varied sessions, moving away from the pure speaker presentation and large hall format. Plans exist to add more informal networking, dinners, blue sky and best practice sessions with use of more external speakers.

Smaller scale events, such as roundtables and summits, will be driven by growth in the membership in different regions and emerging industry topics.

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Procurement Leaders

With audiences more demanding than ever, MBI ensures it keeps refreshing its conferences – now offering a variety of formats, including breakouts, speed meetings and table discussions (although this does make on-site event logistics more complex). MBI is also focusing on innovation in Q&A sessions and ways to enable more effective networking.

MBI’s portfolio includes plenty of small scaleevents such as roundtables, networking drinksand sponsor-led thought leadership. Corporate subscribers get discounts on conferences and Shots subscribers get VIP tickets to its Cannes Party (1,300 attend). MBI is keen to develop more membership and subscriber events.

It’s possible there may be further polarisation between large scale flagship events and very small niche events, with a challenge for mid-sized conferences.

Media Business Insight

The PPA is constantly experimenting with a range of event formats, considering it is essential to remain flexible and open to change in light of the rapid evolution of the sector. Prepared to try and fail fast, rather than never try anything new, the PPA avoids replication of the same event portfolio year-on-year. Other focuses include:

Refreshed event formats from immersive awards show to interactive conference sessions to elevate the delegate and sponsor experience

Showcasing latest event technologies

Contracting venues beyond corporate hotel chains and using unique, dry hire spaces

PPA

Future Event Trends

Observations on future trends from AshleyFriedlein, Founder, Econsultancy

Sponsorship: sponsors won’t be able to rely on data post GDPR. Will instead have to attract prospects via content.

Webinars: today’s ‘slideshow plus audio’ platforms feel outdated, could there be a better platform for video and user interaction?

Peer-to-peer: we are witnessing some growth in other sectors in meetups, private networks, micro communities providing peer insights (e.g. TableCrowd). Attendees like the more informal experience, but the business model is not currently clear.

‘Hosted Buyer’ tradeshow formats will stay relevant as buyers like to meet with sellers in an efficient setting.

We may see polarisation between large scale flagship events and small niche events, with mid-sized conferences struggling.

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Events can transform a media brand into a powerful industry player

A strong portfolio of B2B events can establish a media business as a significant central force in a market, shaping future thinking and bringing the community together. Events offer a powerful bridgehead into new markets and geographies, and strengthen established media brands. Face-to-face events cement relationships with associations, suppliers and the wider audience, and can make a substantial financial contribution. Events create content and build data, add value to membership propositions and establish new commercial relationships. Once established, a flagship event that is a calendar fixture will snowball and attract bigger audiences and generate the potential for secondary events.

campaigns that run seamlessly across publishing businesses and live events. But there is a delicate balance to be struck between event specialists (producers, marketers, sponsorship sales, operations) and the editorial teams with their store of knowledge and contacts. Many media businesses struggle with co-ordination between events and publishing teams to ensure effective delivery of live events.

Event organisers face plenty of challenges

Events have to balance the objectives of key organisations across the industry: suppliers, sponsors, delegates, trade associations, regulators, and this takes time. Business delegates are time-poor and need a convincing ROI. Sponsors have high expectations and can be equally demanding. Venues are scarce, event talent is thinly spread and organisers need extreme discipline to deliver increasingly complex events. Launching events can be high risk, with upfront venue commitments and a trend to late booking. An event that doesn’t deliver can be damaging to the parent brand.

Marketing events requires new skills

Marketing events is becoming more complex -email marketing requires a far more strategic and technical approach and event marketers must master much finer segmentation and targeting while fully exploring the potential of marketing automation. The emphasis is shifting towards creating bespoke content and using social media to generate awareness and interest.

Events must keep evolving to stay relevant

Business people are time-poor and have high expectations of the insight, inspiration, interaction and networking they will get from a live event. Organisers need to cater to more complex audiences with far more varied needs. They now have to entertain as well as inform and embrace technology and the shift towards more informal communication styles.

The case studies in this report show that it is possible to develop first class, industry defining live events and use them to strengthen core media brands. Encouragingly for those looking to create or refine their event strategy, every B2B media owner and membership organisation we spoke to expects their revenues from live events to grow in the next few years.

Media brands can add great value but there are organisational pitfalls

Media brands are becoming more adept at creating content that works online, in print and in a live format, and launching research and

Events must be approached strategically and building a portfolio takes time

Successful events take time to research, and are dependent on building strong relationships across the industry through editorial boards and advisory groups. Organisers have to learn to adapt and cede some control to find a purpose for the event that unites and galvanises the industry. Each marketand media brand must evolve its particular mix of exhibitions, summits, conferences, awards and small-scale events to suit all the subgroups. Longer lived events that may take three or four years to establish will contribute more value than

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Research Contributors About The Authors

Helen Coetzee has worked in B2B media businesses since 1998. She has held senior marketing roles in some the world’s most respected media businesses, including Informa, Ascential, UBM and Procurement

Leaders. In 2014 Helen launched MPG, a marketing consultancy and agency that enables event and value growth for a variety of B2B media brands – with a focus on community development and brand engagement. With a unique, innovative, content-led and data-driven methodology - blending digital marketing with more traditional approaches - Helen’s team at MPG has helped clients across a range of sectors, globally, achieve their growth objectives.

Carolyn Morgan has launched, acquired, grown and sold specialist media businesses across print, digital and live events, and was the co-founder of the Specialist Media Show. Now a digital publishing

consultant, Carolyn advises media owners on their digital strategy through her consulting business Penmaen Media and regularly writes and speaks about digital media and publishing.

[email protected]@carolynrmorgan

[email protected] www.mpg.biz@coetzee_helen

Amanda BarnesChief Executive, Faversham House

Rory Brown Founder, Briefing Media

Helen Coetzee, Co-Founder & Managing Director

Carolyn Morgan, Founder, Penmaen MediaConor Dignam CEO, Media Business Insight

Tim LucasMD, Fleet & Transport Market, Bauer Media

Alex MartinezFounder, Procurement Leaders

Alex Taylor Head of Communities and Events, IET

Caroline CroninHead of PPA Business, PPA

Ashley FriedleinFounder, Econsultancy

Doug MarshallHead of Marketing, Wilmington plc

Steve Newbold Divisional MD, Media & Events, Centaur Media

Documents

How successful events can transform a B2B media business · 2018. 10. 17. · But many B2B media businesses are missing opportunities through lack of skills, organisational integration