ExhibitForce Blog

Become The Event Marketer You Want To Be

Written by Gwen Hill | Sep 18, 2023 8:16:25 PM

You can’t believe it’s already 10:30 in the morning, you’re on your third caffeinated beverage, and you realize this is not what you signed up for. 

You thought when you took this Event Marketing job, you’d be harnessing the unrivaled power of trade show and event marketing to engage with prospects, buyers, and partners face-to-face, boosting your company’s brand and driving sales growth.

You thought you’d be collaborating with the best marketing minds to entice show attendees into fruitful conversations with your ace booth staffers.

You thought your bosses would call on you as their in-house event marketing expert who could translate aspirational company goals into creative and effective activations and campaigns.

Instead, it’s not even lunch yet, and you’ve already sent 12 nagging emails, updated 4 different spending spreadsheets, and even chased an elusive booth staffer down the hall to find out what their shirt size is.

This constant stress is keeping you up at night, turning you into a more negative person, and wearing you out.

Despite the challenges, you still know your company could do so much more with events. And so could you, if only given the chance.


The Surprising Hidden Logistical Burden of Events

What’s keeping you from becoming the event marketer you want to be? The crushing burden of managing the logistical and administrative tasks to run your program. 

You spend so much time on repetitive administrative tasks that HAVE to be done, or else your company won’t have a booth and staffers at the show, and management won’t know that you’re staying on budget.

Your boss probably doesn’t know just how much it takes – unless they had your job before you. But then their boss probably still doesn’t understand the time required to manage event logistics.

And so, your days, weeks, and months are (frustratingly!) spent:

  • Stressing whether the urgent task you are working on is actually less important than another urgent task that may have fallen through the cracks.
  • Knowing if the tasks you’ve delegated are getting done.
  • Manually updating multiple spending spreadsheets to ensure you haven’t blown your budget.
  • Manually updating even more spreadsheets to create graphs that visually report to Finance and management your trade show results – sometimes one-off reports -- at the drop of a hat.
  • Following up with vendors to ensure they’ve received your orders and will have your exhibits and promotional materials ready in time.
  • Creating and sending out the detailed show packet to staffers, vendors, and management.
  • Following up with booth staffers to see if they are available, have booked flights and hotels, and have reviewed the show packet.
  • Assigning the right account numbers as you pay every invoice that comes in.
  • Following up again and again to get graphic files approved.
  • Collecting the replies from multiple emails from booth staffers asking for their feedback on how the show went.

Reduce Repetitive Admin Time With Event Suite

Event Suite is a project management system made especially for the needs of trade show and event marketers. It uses workflows, automation, and centralized, accessible data to vastly reduce the time it takes to run your event marketing program. It even incorporates multiple trade show best practices, so you can also boost results.

Event Suite saves you hours a day on repetitive, manual administrative tasks, combining all your event details into one program that includes:

  • Measurement Dashboard with a variety of KPIs automatically updated from ongoing data
  • All your tasks in one place, with email reminders with messaging
  • Reports on budget versus actual expenses automatically updated
  • Access all your preferred vendors in one single hub
  • A real-time, online accessible calendar of all your events with their details
  • Staff assigning capability to streamline your booth staffing flights and hotels
  • Centralize planning and tracking of your goals, objectives, and event strategies
  • Surveys to collect and report booth staff feedback
  • A document library that centralizes your brand guidelines and other key files
  • File approval process saves you time and prevents bottlenecks and late fees

 

Now You Can Get It All Done, With Event Suite

Taken all together, a graphic view of the changes to your weekly activities would look like this:

You spend less time on stressful, administrative tasks, and more time on event marketing tasks. And you can get it all done in fewer hours, too.

 

Event Marketing Activities You Can Finally Have Time For

With Event Suite drastically reducing the time required to manage event administrative and logistical tasks, now you can expand the time you spend on true marketing activities, such as:

  • Planning your trade shows further in advance, giving you more opportunities to do more and try new things.
  • Defining your trade show goals and brainstorming strategies to achieve those goals.
  • Creating pre-show, at-show, and post-show promotional marketing campaigns and activations that generate more booth traffic and attendee engagement.
  • Designing exhibit graphics tailored to different audiences at important shows, not just using the same graphics at every show.
  • Implementing more technology into your booth activations for a more modern brand and greater interactivity.
  • Measuring trade show results, to determine whether you met your goals, which promotional tactics work best, which shows to expand or contract, and which booth staffers to invite back.
  • Researching and analyzing the audiences at potential new trade shows to exhibit at, be they local, regional, national or international shows, or industry or vertical market shows.
  • Following-up on your trade show leads to prompt more sales and help measure results.
  • Training your booth staffers on how to engage attendees, use your lead management system, qualify leads, and present your company’s new products.
  • Identifying potential new star booth staffers to deepen your bench and prevent burn out.
  • All the other ideas you had but let them slide because you didn’t have time to do them.

 

Improve Your Career And Professional Perception

When you expand the time you spend on productive marketing activities away from repetitive, manual admin tasks, your entire career will change – for the better:

  • You’ll always be in control of all trade show and event details, tracking and managing tasks, orders, staffers, and project status.
  • You’ll improve your team's productivity, collaboration, and communication.
  • You’ll avoid missed deadlines, late shipments, and cost overruns.
  • You’ll be calmer, have a more balanced life, and sleep better at night.
  • You’ll increase your trade show and event ROI.
  • You’ll gain significantly better measurement and reporting of event metrics that help improve and justify your program to top management.
  • You’ll be respected as a capable project manager, marketer, and a valuable part of the team.
  • You’ll earn a seat at the table that makes marketing decisions. 
  • You’ll achieve greater opportunities for career advancement.

Take The Next Step Towards Becoming The Event Marketer You Want To Be

With Event Suite, you can significantly reduce time wasted on repetitive admin tasks, so you can reclaim the time needed to better execute on the marketing side of trade shows. See for yourself what’s possible – click here to request a free trial of Event Suite.