Your Booth Isn’t an Event Strategy

I love events. I really do.

I’ve spent a lot of my career in convention centers, hotel ballrooms and yes, at the center bar. And after more than 150+ events, I still believe there’s something incredibly valuable about getting customers, prospects and an entire industry together in one place.

But I’ve also seen how easy it is for an event to become a really expensive item on the marketing calendar.

You sign the sponsorship agreement. Pick the booth. Book the rooms. Order the swag. Figure out who’s going. And before you know it, you’ve invested a significant amount of time and money before anyone has really stopped to ask:

What do we want to get out of this event?

And no, “networking” doesn’t count. Although I fully support networking at the center bar.

So what does an event strategy actually look like?

It starts with the people.

Who is going to be there? More importantly, who is going to be there that matters to your business?

If you know your ideal customer profile, start there. Are those buyers attending this event? Which customers will be there? Are there specific prospects your sales team has been trying to reach? Partners you want to build relationships with?

Then I like to flip the perspective.

Why are they going?

Your prospects probably aren’t walking into a conference thinking, I really hope someone sells me software today.

They’re there for their own reasons. Maybe they’re trying to solve a problem. Learn what’s changing in their industry. Find a new vendor. Meet other operators. See old friends. Get ideas.

Understanding what they’re looking for changes the way you show up.

And that’s when the fun stuff starts to make sense

I love a good activation. I love a booth people actually want to visit. I love dinners and creative sponsorships and finding ways to make a brand memorable.

But those things work a lot harder when they’re connected to a strategy.

Maybe you need a big booth.

Maybe you’d get more value from a smaller booth and a fantastic customer dinner.

Maybe your sales team should have 20 meetings booked before they ever get on the plane.

Maybe there’s a speaking opportunity that puts your subject-matter expert in front of exactly the people you’re trying to reach.

Maybe the best conversation really will happen at the center bar.

There isn’t one perfect event playbook. That’s what makes this work interesting.

The question is: What combination of opportunities gives this particular business the best chance of reaching the right people and moving those relationships forward?

This is also why event marketing is so much more than event logistics

There are a million details involved in getting a company to a trade show. And someone absolutely has to own them.

But asking a marketer to order a booth, coordinate shipping, get some swag and send an email isn’t the same thing as giving them an event strategy to execute.

The best event programs I’ve worked on bring people together before the event ever starts.

Marketing knows the audience and builds the experience. Sales knows the accounts and relationships. Customer success knows the customers. Leadership knows where the business is trying to go.

Put all of that together, and now marketing has something really powerful to work with.

That’s where I think experienced marketing leadership can make a huge difference. Not by taking the execution away from the team, but by helping connect all of those pieces so the team knows what we’re trying to accomplish and why.

And please, let’s talk about what happens afterward

Because everybody comes home tired.

There are expense reports. There are emails. There are hundreds of badge scans sitting somewhere. Sales is already onto the next thing.

This is where a lot of the value can disappear.

Before the event, I want to know what we’re going to do with the conversations we create.

Who follows up? What does good follow-up look like? Which conversations should sales prioritize? How are we capturing what we learned? And how will we know six months from now whether this event actually mattered?

That doesn’t always mean calculating a perfectly clean ROI number. Events influence pipeline, customer relationships, partnerships, brand awareness and future opportunities in different ways.

But we should be able to connect the investment to something more meaningful than booth traffic.

This is one of my favorite parts of marketing

I love the combination of strategy and execution that comes with events.

There’s the business strategy. The audience. The creative. The experience. The sales alignment. The hundreds of tiny details that have to come together. And then there’s that moment when you’re actually there, talking to customers and watching the plan come to life.

It’s also an area where I’ve spent a lot of my career, and it’s something I help clients think through at Growth Guide Marketing.

So if you have a big event on your calendar and you’re staring at a sponsorship packet wondering whether you need the 10×20, the 20×20, the dinner, the speaking opportunity or all of the above, let’s talk before you check the boxes.

We can start with who you’re trying to reach, what you’re trying to accomplish and build the event strategy from there.

The center bar can still be part of the plan.