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April 2004
The rise of event marketing
I don’t know about you, but before last year I hardly ever heard the term “event marketing.” Event marketing used to mean trade shows and corporate events. Today, it includes mobile marketing, mall marketing, street events, proprietary events, sponsorships, and press events. And now, it’s everywhere.
Last year, Exhibitor launched Corporate Event, The Magazine for Corporate and Customer Events, which runs in every issue of the magazine. The tagline for this year’s Exhibitor show: The national conference for exhibit and event marketing. There’s another publication, Event Marketer, which is geared “for creators of the brand experience.” Launched in 2002, the publication also produces two conferences and a show.
In addition, PROMO magazine recently published its first comprehensive study on event marketing. According to the survey, marketers spent a total of $132 billion on event marketing in 2002, a 15 percent increase over 2001. (See related story, “Marketers increasingly rely on events to promote products,” page 18). In 2003, budgets for event marketing averaged $827,911. And 36 percent of those surveyed expect their budgets to increase by 15 to 20 percent this year.
In early March, Blackfriars Communications, a marketing research and consulting firm, launched a new quarterly marketing index that will track spending on event marketing. The first index reported that 15 percent of companies’ marketing budgets are spent on events. Advertising still commands the largest chunk (31 percent), followed by 17 percent on Web site development.
The Promotion Marketing Association (PMA) is also tracking event marketing. They report that 22 percent of the total marketing budget is spent on events. According to the association, “event marketing has been identified as the fastest-growing discipline in the marketing industry.” And 47 percent of companies feel that event marketing provides the greatest return on investment when compared with other marketing tactics, including advertising, direct mail, sales promotion, Internet, etc.
But there’s also more competition for event marketing dollars. According to the 2003 Event Trends Study by George P. Johnson and MPI, trade shows only account for about one fifth of total event spending, while 30 percent of event budgets go to conferences, seminars and mobile road shows.
In this month’s cover story, “The Opportunists” (page 36), we talked to event marketing agencies to find out more about this emerging industry, and more importantly, what they’re telling your exhibitors.
The mantra is measurement. Everyone is looking for metrics to determine value. Like it or not, these agencies are pushing for show audits, or at the very least, more sophisticated analysis of show data specific to their client’s needs.
So what does all this mean to show organizers? There’s plenty of room for growth. With more marketing dollars allocated to events, exhibitions are primed to take a larger piece of the pie as the economy continues to grow. And there are plenty of opportunities to expand our business by helping exhibitors produce other events to fit their marketing needs.
Danica Vasos, Editor
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