The complete guide to event marketing and why it's important

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Emails get deleted, ads get ignored, but people remember their experiences with a brand. Smart marketers use events to cut through the noise and make real connections. Nothing beats seeing your customers' faces light up when they interact with your brand in person or through a well-executed virtual experience.

With strategic event marketing, companies of all sizes can improve their marketing results. The secret isn't a massive budget — it's understanding how to create moments that matter to your target audience.

Keep reading to learn what event marketing is, which types of events deliver the best results for different goals, and how to execute an event marketing plan efficiently.

Ready to plan your event? Use free event planning template

What is event marketing?

Event marketing entails promoting your brand, product, or service through an experience. Unlike traditional advertising that talks at customers, event marketing creates spaces where businesses and audiences can interact directly and meaningfully.

These interactions can take many forms — from large-scale conferences and trade shows to intimate networking events and product launches. What unites them is their purpose: to create memorable experiences that forge stronger connections between brands and their audiences.

Businesses use events to accomplish various goals, including:

Educating customers about new products or services
Gathering feedback directly from users
Building a community around their brand
Generating leads and driving sales
Establishing thought leadership in their industry

Event marketing cuts through the noise of everyday advertising and creates genuine human connections that leave lasting impressions. Effective project management is essential to coordinating these complex initiatives, ensuring the events run smoothly, and accomplishing the desired goals.

Why is event marketing important?

Event marketing provides opportunities for direct engagement that aren't possible through other marketing channels. When done well, event marketing can:

Create authentic connections with your audience
Provide immediate feedback on products or services
Allow for personalized interactions with potential customers
Create shareable moments that extend beyond the event itself

People are more likely to remember experiences than advertisements. Creating meaningful events promotes your business and builds memories associated with your brand.

Event marketing also offers something increasingly rare: focused attention. When someone attends your event, they choose to engage with your brand without the distractions of competing messages that characterize most other marketing channels.

Benefits of event marketing

Investing in event marketing strategies can yield significant returns. Here's a closer look at some of the benefits:

Increased brand awareness

Events expose your brand to new audiences and reinforce your presence among existing customers. Whether hosting your own event or participating in industry gatherings, each touchpoint is an opportunity to increase visibility and recognition.

Strategic promotion before, during, and after an event is crucial to maximize this exposure.

Boosts customer engagement

The real-time interaction at events creates deeper connections than any email campaign or social media post ever could. Conversations at events tend to be more meaningful and memorable, helping to strengthen relationships with your audience.

Events also provide a unique opportunity to showcase your brand personality. The environment you create, the activities you offer, and how your team interacts with attendees all contribute to a tangible experience of what your brand stands for.

Generates leads and sales

Events are powerful lead-generation tools. People who attend your event already show interest in what you offer, making them warmer prospects than those reached through many other marketing methods.

To maximize this benefit, you need a solid follow-up strategy. Having systems in place to capture attendee information and creating thoughtful follow-up sequences means you can convert event connections into laying customer relationships and concrete sales.

Enhances credibility and trust

Hosting or sponsoring events positions your brand as an authority in your field. By sharing valuable insights, featuring expert speakers, or showcasing innovative solutions, you demonstrate your expertise and build credibility with your audience.

Events also provide an opportunity for transparency. When customers can meet the people behind your brand and ask questions directly, it creates trust that's difficult to establish through other channels.

Types of event marketing

Different event formats have different purposes. Understanding the options available helps you choose the right approach for your specific goals and audience.

Product launches

Product launch events create excitement and anticipation around new offerings. Turning a product release into an experience generates buzz that extends beyond those who attend in person. These events work best when something truly new or innovative is showcased, and the product benefits from a demonstration or hands-on experience.

Trade shows

Trade shows bring together businesses from a specific industry to showcase their products and services. They're ideal for reaching a concentrated audience of potential customers and partners actively looking for solutions in your space.

Conferences

Conferences focus on knowledge sharing and networking within an industry. Hosting or speaking at conferences positions your brand as a thought leader. These events work well for B2B companies looking to establish authority in their fields and build relationships with decision-makers who may not be accessible through other channels.

Seminars

Seminars are smaller, more focused educational events that explore specific topics. They allow speakers to demonstrate expertise while delivering concrete value to attendees through actionable insights. These events are perfect for niche topics or focus-driven presentations.

Virtual events

Virtual events and webinars can include interactive elements, networking opportunities, and engaging content that rivals in-person experiences while removing geographical barriers to attendance. These events are ideal for reaching global audiences, testing event conceptions before investing in physical venues, or accommodating audiences who prefer the convenience of participating from anywhere.

Networking events

Networking events prioritize relationship-building in more intimate settings. They're less about presentations and more about facilitating meaningful connections between attendees. This format is valuable for service-based businesses where personal relationships drive sales or companies looking to build community among their customers.

Celebrations

Anniversary parties, milestone celebrations, and holiday events show appreciation for customers, partners, and employees while highlighting your company's achievements and culture.

Strategies for effective event marketing

Successful events require thoughtful project planning and execution. Defining a clear project scope is essential to keeping your event focused and preventing scope creep. Effective resource planning ensures the right people and materials are available when needed.

Check out our event calendar template to get started quickly. Or, follow these steps to plan your event marketing strategy:

Set clear goals

Setting goals for your event can keep your entire team on track. Are you focused on brand awareness, lead generation, customer retention, or community building? These goals will shape every other aspect of your planning.

Trackable goals also make it easier to measure success and calculate ROI after the event. Connect your event goals to broader business objectives through well-defined targets that align with your company's vision. Creating a detailed action plan can help ensure everyone knows their responsibilities. Jira’s calendar views can support this by visualizing important deadlines and helping you avoid scheduling conflicts.

Check out our OKR template to set clear goals and track their success.

Understand your target audience

Identify who you want to invite to your event and why they would want to attend. Your decision-making should consider everything from venue choice to messaging and promotional channels.

Create attendee personas that capture demographic information, professional roles, pain points, and motivations. Then, design your event experience to address their specific needs and interests.

To stay organized during planning, use list views in Jira to monitor task completion and clearly assign responsibilities across your team, making it easier to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

Leverage digital marketing

Use social media platforms strategically to build excitement before, during, and after your event. Create event hashtags, share teaser content, and post live updates to engage both attendees and those who couldn't make it.

Email marketing is also helpful for event promotion, especially for nurturing registrants before the event and following up afterward. Segment your lists to ensure messages are relevant to different audience groups.

Create compelling content

Develop valuable content that generates interest and builds anticipation. Blog posts, videos, and infographics can showcase what attendees gain from participating while extending your reach to potential registrants.

Your content strategy should extend beyond promotion to include materials that enhance the event experience and provide value even after it's over.

Offer exclusive perks

Provide special incentives that make attendance more attractive, such as early access to new products, discounted offers, or VIP experiences. Exclusivity adds tangible value to participation.

These perks can also serve as natural talking points that encourage attendees to share their experience with others, extending your event's reach organically.

Collaborate with influencers

Partner with industry influencers, respected speakers, or thought leaders whose audiences align with your target attendees.

The most effective collaborations offer value to all parties involved, so consider what unique benefits you can provide these partners beyond exposure. Managing these relationships requires careful capacity planning to ensure you can deliver on your promises.

Offer on-site engagement

Create interactive experiences that make your event memorable. From hands-on product demonstrations to interactive polls and networking activities, engagement opportunities help attendees connect more deeply with your brand and each other.

These elements also provide natural opportunities for social sharing, extending your event's impact beyond those physically present.

To support these efforts behind the scenes, use Jira’s timeline view to track task dependencies and ensure activities are sequenced properly in your event plan.

Measuring event marketing success

You need to measure success to justify your investment in event marketing plans and continuously improve your approach. Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) such as attendance, engagement, and ROI. Establish clear metrics aligned with your specific event goals.

Event apps, CRM systems, and social listening platforms are tools and methods for tracking event performance and gathering insights. These can help systematically collect data on attendance numbers, session participation, lead quality, survey results, social media mentions, and direct sales attributed to your event.

Enhance event marketing success with Jira

Successful events require careful coordination across multiple teams and deadlines. Marketing project management software like Jira can streamline event planning by improving task management and collaboration. With features like shared releases, board views, list views, calendar views, and timeline views, teams can visualize work in progress and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Forms simplify data collection from stakeholders and participants, while integrations with other tools centralize communication and reduce back-and-forth.

Jira's robust capabilities help event marketers track deadlines, assign responsibilities, and maintain clear organization throughout the planning process.

Ready to start planning your next event? Use free event planning template

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The complete guide to event marketing and why it's important

Browse topics

What is event marketing?

Why is event marketing important?

Benefits of event marketing

Increased brand awareness

Boosts customer engagement

Generates leads and sales

Enhances credibility and trust

Types of event marketing

Product launches

Trade shows

Conferences