<em?[Updated January 10, 2017: InboundPHX was created by Sensible Marketing, an agency we recently acquired.]
At the Sensible Marketing virtual headquarters, the story of how we adopted an event marketing strategy with InboundPHX is told often and with passion. As we regroup after our recent successful event, it made sense to review some of the benefits we’ve experienced from our undertaking, the quarterly seminar series known as InboundPHX.
In case you are unfamiliar with Inbound Marketing Phoenix (InboundPHX), see our blog here –>> InboundPHX
The InboundPHX series provides an easily understandable model from which to learn some benefits of integrating an event in our own marketing mix. Some of these include:
- It energizes our whole organization
- It helps us keep our own marketing fresh
- It broadens our influence in the community
- It brings high caliber people into our association
Having an organization wide event energizes our whole organization
Having an event in which each member of our organization participates helps unify and energize the group in a positive way. The shared excitement and anticipation of the event carries over into other projects and into personal lives. We find our agency meetings leading into the event are particularly animated and optimistic.
We refresh our own marketing and messaging
As a marketing agency, we make sure our customers’ projects are completed on time, while we may let our internal projects slide over time. Having a public event provides us with a specific, immovable deadline to review preparation and completion of our internal messaging and systems. It also provides us a chance to test marketing strategies for event publication and community outreach. We are able to speak with various media, technology organizations that reach our technology audience.
Our business eco-system includes more than just customers and service providers. We work with a broad range of community members with whom it is important to keep in contact. Having an event like InboundPHX gives us the opportunity to connect with them and invite them to engage with us in a way that benefits them. Our communications are about adding value to their businesses, not promoting ourselves. The response has been consistently positive.
We broaden our influence in the community
In the process of identifying sponsors for the event, we were able to tell our stories – of both Alaniz Marketing and InboundPHX, to a range people we would not normally approach but who can be strategically influential. So even while some of those we approached were not in a position to sponsor the event, we gained by establishing or improving those relationships. The sponsors of our most recent event, the Arizona Commerce Authority and Printing Specialists in Tempe, added to our reach into the community.An added benefit of our recent event was its inclusion in the Phoenix Startup Week scheduling. We actually coordinated the timing of our event to coincide with this Startup Week. This helped boost attendance and credibility.
We associate with more high caliber people
Our InboundPHX format incorporates guest speakers of high caliber. Their knowledge and content benefits our audience, of course. but also our agency. In particular, as hosts of the event our team gets extra exposure to these experts, allowing us opportunities to learn and to build lasting relationships. Further, the content delivered by the speakers at the event provides fodder for our blog and for promotion of the next event. Of course, depending on the speaker, our marketing of the event benefits gives the speakers added exposure, also.
Running events like these require time, planning and process. Running them well is a skill we are always improving. Subscribe to our blog and you’ll learn our best practices for event planning, using marketing automation to support the event, and some event planning checklists that have worked well for us and our clients. We look forward to our June event.
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