B2B events: the (often underused) lever for marketers, and how to activate it

Did you know that only 56% of B2B marketers use in-person events as a channel in their marketing strategy (Forbes)? That's a fairly low number, given how much B2B decision-makers value networking and live business meetings.

It has to be said: B2B events are a promising lever, yet often underused. The reason? A fear of spending too much time on them for too little business payoff.

In this complete guide, we walk you through every step and key to success for turning events into a growth and visibility driver for your company. All without pulling your hair out!

Why include an event strategy in your B2B marketing plan

Relatively few B2B companies rely on event marketing to reach their audiences, often favoring other levers like content marketing, advertising, or taking part in events run by other organizations.

Yet B2B events hold real promise for a marketing strategy!

With a well-run business-to-business event, you can:

• Bring a human touch to your marketing strategy. Even in B2B, "people buy from people": your prospects and customers are buying from humans first, not a company. Through your events, you can build direct interaction with them and create a relationship of trust.
• Speed up your sales funnel. Building that trust naturally boosts your lead generation and business opportunities, a benefit that's especially valuable for long sales cycles involving strategic accounts. That's why 73% of B2B decision-makers cite building business partnerships as the top reason they attend a B2B event (Good Firms).
• Strengthen your customer relationships and loyalty. You can use event formats dedicated to your existing customers to build a sense of belonging to a community.
• Improve your brand image. By running your own events, you showcase your company culture in real life and boost your brand's visibility.
• Create reusable marketing content. B2B events complement your content strategy. Film your talks, highlight testimonials from happy customers, gather data on the ground about potential clients, and use that data in your marketing plan afterward.

Enough to make you want to get started, right?

6 types of B2B events to consider

To run a successful event, you first need to know what format it will take. Here are a few event ideas to consider for your company.

Conferences and keynotes

59.2% of B2B event organizers offer conferences open to their audiences (Good Firms). These events help position your brand as a thought leader and build momentum around a topic your guests care about. Remotely, conferences and keynotes can take the form of webinars.

Trade shows

Trade shows are marketplaces where your company connects attendees and exhibitors to create business opportunities between buyers and suppliers. It's also a chance for your brand to showcase its own products or services.

Networking events and business speed dating

More than 91% of decision-makers cite networking as the top reason that motivates them (or not) to attend a B2B event (Good Firms). That's a good reason to run networking events, which create business opportunities between attendees and help them grow their network. Formats here vary widely: dinners, cocktail parties, themed evenings, meetups, etc.

Seminars

Seminars make up 52.9% of the event types run by B2B companies (Good Firms). These are educational events aimed at teaching the audience about a specific topic. They also let the organizing company generate qualified leads and build credibility for their expertise.

Workshops and training sessions

Consider creating this kind of hands-on event, which helps build the skills of prospects and customers, especially if your goal is customer loyalty!

Product roadshows

Roadshows aren't reserved for big, well-known brands! Organize a series of events where your brand travels to different regions to showcase its product and connect with its audience in each catchment area.

In-person event or digital event?

With the rise of digital, B2B brands are increasingly turning to remote events, such as webinars or online trade shows. While the costs for this type of event are naturally lower, they're not necessarily suited to every objective.

Not sure whether to go in-person or remote? Here's how to choose:

• In-person events, though more expensive, are ideal for deep exchanges and relationship-building.
• Digital events are convenient, scalable, and well suited if your targets are spread out geographically, but be careful to keep your audience engaged behind their screens!
• Hybrid events are demanding to produce, but let you combine the impact of in-person with the extended reach of digital.
  

It's up to you to choose the format that will hit home with your prospects and customers!

5 steps to define your B2B event strategy

Want to launch a B2B event strategy that drives your growth? Here are the key steps to follow.

Define your event goals

First, align your event with your organization's marketing and sales strategy. Your event should serve your company's overall ambition: speeding up acquisition, growing upsell, building credibility for a new offer, etc.

So select your goals. You can draw inspiration from the benefits highlighted earlier in this article:

• Lead generation
• Speeding up your sales cycle
• Customer loyalty
• Building your brand's reputation
• Evangelizing your market.

Choose no more than two goals to keep your strategy's execution clear.

Finally, link a KPI to each goal, for example:

• For lead generation: the number of registrations, the attendance rate, the number of qualified leads generated, etc.
• For speeding up your sales cycle: the number of post-event meetings generated, the conversion rate of invited leads, etc.
• For customer loyalty: the satisfaction rate, the post-event repurchase rate, NPS, etc.
• For building your brand's visibility: the number of social media shares, the number of mentions of the event on LinkedIn, etc.

For 79% of B2B event organizers, the number of attendees is the most relevant KPI, and for 64%, it's the sales generated directly or indirectly by the event (Good Firms). Worth emulating!

Choose your event's targeting

95% of B2B event managers say their event's performance depends above all on the choice of audience and the quality of targeting (Good Firms). That's a good reason to look closely at this and study your target precisely.

To do this, define your priority personas. Are they your existing customers? Your warm prospects? A still-cold audience whose interest you need to spark? Influencers in your
industry? Potential business partners? Don't hesitate to segment your targets, so you can then tailor your messaging, or even the activities during the event itself.

Then study the profile of your targeted audience (if you haven't already). Goal: determine what they expect from B2B events:

• What topics or themes resonate with their current challenges?
• What types of content do they consume: case studies, benchmarks, trends, concrete solutions, etc.?
• What formats do they prefer: conferences, workshops, panel discussions, demos, case studies, etc.?
• What constraints do they have in terms of time and mobility?
• What are their goals when attending a B2B event: learning, discovering trends, networking, etc.?
• How do they find out about events they could attend: LinkedIn, influencers, trade media, professional clubs, associations, etc.?

To find out, you can ask other teams in the company (sales or customer service) for information. But don't forget to ask your customers directly what they think, via a short survey, for example in your newsletter. Nothing is worse than an event that misses its target because nobody listened to it beforehand!

Design your event's format

Now you need to create the concept for your B2B event.

First, define the key message to convey to your targets, based on the event's goals. What do you want them to remember about your company, your products, your services?

Then choose your event format based on this message and the audience profile.

For example:

• For visibility or thought leadership goals: a conference, a panel discussion, a webinar
• For targeted lead-gen goals: a VIP workshop, a business breakfast, a private demo
• For customer loyalty goals: an afterwork, a seminar
• For sales acceleration goals: a networking event

Be careful to match your event's length to your audience's expectations. While a breakfast or an afterwork might last one to two hours, a themed conference can run up to three hours, and a seminar for highly engaged customers can take up a full day.

Create the journey for your attendees (and exhibitors, if relevant)

This is the time to design the schedule for your B2B event.

Spread across the time you have:

• Welcoming attendees
• The event introduction
• A value-adding segment
• An interactive segment with the audience or a social moment
• The event closing

Then create your attendee journey. Ask yourself what content attendees need to have on hand to take part in your event: a venue map, an attendee app, an immersive experience, meeting spaces for networking, etc.?

If you're running a B2B trade show, you'll also need to think through the same journey for exhibitors. To do this, define the offers dedicated to them: the features of the booths you rent to them, the technical and service support you provide, the communication tools available to them, etc.

Choose your tools

To simplify the organization of your B2B event, and depending on your goals, you might need specific tools.

For example:

• To organize your event in-house: project and task management tools
• To communicate around your event: an emailing tool, marketing content creation tools, etc.
• To manage your registrations: a ticketing tool that lets you centralize and qualify guests
• To measure your event's performance: event analytics and reporting tools, a survey tool for sending post-event satisfaction questionnaires, etc.
• To launch a hybrid event: equipment and a live streaming tool

And to make things easier, nothing beats a dedicated event management platform like Digitevent. Everything you need is right there: everything to build your event website, manage your invitations, your check-in, your badges, and your registration platform. Digitevent also lets you work on attendee engagement by creating your attendee, exhibitor, and event Matchmaking apps.

Discover how Digitevent supports you in running successful B2B events!

Best practices for a successful B2B event strategy

Make your B2B event a success, from planning through to the end, with these keys to success.

Create a well-oiled event brief

Preparing an event usually requires collaboration, whether with your team, colleagues from other departments, or external partners and vendors.

That's where your event brief comes in to support collaboration. Clear and structured, it gives everyone visibility into the event's strategy and details.

A good brief includes:

• Your event's goals
• The targets
• The concept and theme
• The estimated budget
• The venue and dates
• The program
• Logistical and technical needs
• The communication strategy
• The KPIs used to measure the event's success

To learn more about this, find out how to create an event brief here.

Refine your registration approach

When launching your event, your goal is to maximize registrations and attendance on the big day.

To do this, offer different deals for:

• The first attendees to register for the event, following the early bird principle, which offers discounted rates
• Last-minute registrants, to maximize your event's attendance

The key? Keep promoting your event right up to the big day, to get the best possible results.

Choose your partners and vendors carefully

If you organize events often, or if you don't have all the necessary event skills in-house, it's a good idea to bring in external vendors.

Outsourcing your B2B event strategy can help you scale your events and improve their quality.

But to ensure success, you need to choose these vendors carefully:

• Check that they're well aligned with your company values, particularly around CSR and eco-responsibility
• Favor vendors who specialize in B2B, since B2B events differ noticeably from B2C
• Ask to co-build your strategy with your external vendors, to make sure the event aligns with your company culture and values

Streamline your processes as soon as possible

Planning an event entirely "by hand" can quickly become a real headache. To save time, set up shared templates and tools to streamline how you organize your B2B events.

Consider creating:

• A standard timeline for each event format
• Templates for invitations, LinkedIn posts, and follow-up emails
• Logistics checklists and production sheets
• A directory of vetted, tested vendors

Center your strategy on the attendee experience

Every interaction between your company and your targets should bring value to the target, not just to your company! To do this, you need to think in terms of attendee experience above all.

• Personalize the attendee and exhibitor journeys as much as possible, as well as the event content, for each of your guest segments
• Choose speakers based on the credibility your target perceives
• Build in quality interaction and networking moments between attendees

Work on communication before, during, and after the event

A good event strategy relies on multichannel communication before, during, and after the event.

Remember to promote your event:

• Beforehand, with teaser videos, a dedicated event website, social media posts, follow-up emails, etc.
• During, with live tweets, video coverage, attendee activities, etc.
• Afterward, with replays, a recap video, a sales follow-up or lead nurturing, etc.

Communication is the key to maximizing the ROI of B2B events.

3 examples of B2B companies that made events a key to their success

Need some inspiration? Take a look at these three organizations that turned their B2B events into standout moments for attendees.

Business France Mexico and the French Healthcare Day

The French Healthcare Day 2024 is an event organized by Business France Mexico. Every year, this conference brings together experts from the medical sector, executives, and institutions.

In 2024, the event took place in Mexico City on November 26, with more than 200 attendees. On the agenda for this symposium: a series of standout talks, including one from Mexico's Minister of Health.

To simplify the management of its event, Business France Mexico adopted the Digitevent event platform, which lets it:

• Create a personalized registration journey for different types of guests
• Set up a multilingual event website
• Easily manage invitations, reminders, and confirmations
• Get an overview of key data
  

The platform helped Business France Mexico minimize its no-show rate and create a seamless attendee experience.

To learn more, check out the Business France Mexico case study.

HubSpot and its INBOUND event

Every year, marketing software company HubSpot runs its INBOUND event. It's an event dedicated to digital marketing professionals, where they can attend inspiring expert talks and also network with each other.

To ensure the success of its B2B event, HubSpot sets up flawless communication before, during, and after the event:

• Their website highlights big-name speakers and offers a simple, easy-to-understand registration flow.
• The brand shares content from previous editions: videos, content created by past attendees, blog posts, etc.

A tightly run organization, which partly explains the success of this event, now a benchmark in the B2B marketing industry.

Weldom's annual B2B trade show

Every year, Weldom runs a trade show that brings together 2,000 attendees. The event's goal: strengthen ties between the stores, suppliers, and employees that are part of this neighborhood retailer's ecosystem.

At the most recent edition, Weldom took the opportunity to launch the Home Index, an indicator that assesses the environmental and social impact of a product offered by the brand.

For this event, Weldom needed a solution to simplify the registration journey, check-in, and guest access management. The company chose Digitevent as its partner, which let it streamline these processes while ensuring optimal tracking of the event and its results.

To learn more, check out the Weldom case study here.

💬 Quote from the Digitevent expert:

"Organizing a B2B event isn't just about checking a date off a calendar. It's a real lever for building connections, showcasing your brand, and engaging your audience. A well-designed event leaves a mark: it inspires, it connects, and it keeps feeding your marketing strategy long after it's over."

Raphaël Le Doucen, Account manager at Digitevent

As you can see, events are often the missing link between digital marketing and customer relationships. They feed your entire funnel, strengthen your brand image, and let you generate content to use all year long.

Want to launch high-impact B2B events too? Digitevent supports you and helps you automate registration, access control, and attendee engagement from A to Z. Discover the event management platform that simplifies your life and maximizes the success of your events!