Event Marketing: Best Marketing Strategy for Hotel Technology Vendors to Get B2B Sales Leads Faster

Event marketing unites businesses with their target clients through memorable, engaging, and experiential events like webinars, hybrid events, in-person conferences, and Metaverse events. The primary goal of event marketing is to demonstrate genuine relationships with potential clients, increasing brand exposure, engagement, and credibility, as well as the number of sales leads generated.

High-quality content marketing (such as whitepapers, guides, and tipsheets) will always generate some leads over time, but active marketing is required for the content to be effective, which takes time and can result in a low return on investment if your email marketing lists and social media following do not reach the right demographic.

So, how can hotel technology vendors improve their marketing ROI and receive more sales leads?

Event marketing is the answer.

Event Marketing: What is it?

Event marketing uses memorable, engaging, and experiential events to connect organizations with their target customers, such as webinars, hybrid events, in-person conferences, and even Metaverse events. Event marketing is to improve brand exposure, credibility, and engagement with potential customers, ultimately generating more sales leads.

During COVID, event marketing became an important strategy for hotel technology vendors looking to quickly and economically generate sales leads. While we were all working from home and getting ready for when the world would reopen and travel would begin, the demand for webinars and online events was at an all-time high; The market’s desire for traditional webinars and online events has, however, significant decreased following COVID. However, this does not mean that live or online events are no longer an effective approach to generating sales leads and return on investment.

Vendors of hotel technology can make use of the power of events to increase their visibility and credibility among potential customers in the hotel industry and generate a significant number of sales leads by developing original, strategic, and non-promotional event concepts that are presented in unconventional formats.

What are the Key Advantages of Event Marketing?

What makes it different from content marketing in terms of generating new sales leads? The low (or even abysmal!) rate of technology adoption by hotels around the world is one of the biggest challenges facing hotel technology vendors today. Marketers at hotel technology companies spend a lot of time trying to educate hoteliers about the benefits of operational technology rather than selling their actual product. The goal of this kind of marketing is to help hoteliers understand the huge benefits of operational technologies, especially in today’s highly dynamic online travel industry; Once the customer’s mindset has been altered to comprehend the “why” behind operational technology in general, they can be considered a warm lead for the vendor’s technology solution.

Hospitality technology marketers spend a lot of time creating and promoting new and different types of content to educate hoteliers about the advantages of these different types of technology. Some of this content is good at driving sales leads, but most of the time, it only generates a steady stream of inbound leads over time.

This is where event marketing comes in because, for a variety of reasons, it can generate B2B sales leads much more effectively, including:

1. The Ability to Build Personal Connections with Potential Leads

One of the most significant advantages of event marketing is the capacity to personally connect with event attendees through live Q&A or by focusing on a specific hotelier’s issue to demonstrate how technology can address it. Because of this personal connection, the technology company becomes more relatable to all attendees and gains credibility.

The human connection significantly shortens the sales cycle and warms up potential leads for future sales outreach, as many decision-makers, particularly in the service-focused hospitality industry, prefer to do business with people they know and trust. In a nutshell, stronger relationships yield more high-quality leads.

Event benefits: They enable your sales team to “meet” potential customers and have in-depth conversations about their specific requirements and challenges; This information has the potential to greatly enhance the personalization of subsequent sales pitches. After all, knowledge is power, and attending events is the best way to meet a large number of potential customers at once and gain a deeper understanding of the customers you will be selling to.

2. Fosters Real-Time Engagement With Attendees

Similarly, event marketing makes it possible to engage with potential sales targets in real-time, making it a potent tool for closing sales more quickly. Prospects who attend events are typically in the decision-making phase of the sales cycle since they are actively seeking answers to their specific problems. Moving prospects down the sales funnel from interest to purchase is quicker and easier if specific questions and concerns are addressed on the spot. Since content marketing is a static, one-way marketing strategy, events are even more effective because of their dynamic interaction.

Events give people a sense of urgency and excitement, which can help them make faster decisions about what to buy. Try offering an “event special” at your next event to see if you can quickly convert attendees by removing one of their primary entry barriers—cost, effort, time, etc. if they buy something during or right after the event.

3. Builds Credibility with Potential Customers and Establishes Company Leadership as Industry Thought Leaders.

Hosting and participating in B2B events permits IT suppliers’ executive teams to offer their experience, ideas, and vision for the hotel technology business, establishing them as thought leaders in the area These marketing strategies build credibility and trust with potential customers and the industry as a whole. Taking this concept one step further, educational events that speak to these two topics can be a very effective way to educate many potential sales targets at once because one of the main barriers to hoteliers adopting technology is a lack of understanding of the fundamental benefits and functionality of the various operational solutions available to them.

Think about it this way: if you are the company that teaches a hotelier why they need an RMS, don’t you think they will approach you first when they are ready to buy one? (Answer: No doubt!)

4. More Successful Audience Targeting, Bringing about Higher Return on Initial Capital Investment.

One of the most important benefits of event marketing is the ability to target the message and takeaways of the event to a very specific group of potential customers based on factors like location, stage of the sales cycle, hotel size or type, and so on. Hoteliers who attend B2B events generate higher-quality leads because they typically already have an interest in the products or services being presented. Contrary to popular belief, content marketing generates qualified leads at various stages of the sales cycle. With multiple campaigns, marketers must segment and nurture leads over a longer period, resulting in lower conversion rates and lower return on investment.

5. Provides Networking Opportunities.

Events can provide excellent networking opportunities for both the event’s organizer and those who attend, which may result in unexpected opportunities and/or leads that could not have been received through content marketing alone.

6. Creates Memorable Experiences for Attendees.

People who attend high-quality events have a good impression of the company, which makes them more likely to remember it when they make other purchases in the future. This is because the events are immersive and include opportunities for learning and networking. It will be more difficult to build this emotional connection alone through content marketing because your materials will frequently get lost in a sea of hospitality tech-related online content.

7. Gives You the Chance to Experience the Solution Firsthand.

Reading about a solution in a blog post or watching a video online isn’t nearly as compelling as seeing it implemented. At events, potential clients may see and feel the goods in person. This can assist them grasp the business case for implementing operational technology on their property and obtain a better understanding of the solution’s specific benefits. This again reduces the sales cycle and the expense of obtaining new consumers.

As may be obvious, occasion showcasing offers critical advantages over the more traditional marketing strategies that are being utilized consistently today by tech merchants to create potential customers (cough, cough… content marketing). Event marketing is a cost-effective solution for sustained business growth, regardless of how demand in the travel industry changes over time. Through the use of unique event topics, angles, and formats, it engages and cultivates relationships with attendees, builds credibility through education and thought leadership, and provides a platform for direct engagement.

Event marketing is both a strategic option and an operational requirement for hotel technology vendors who want to achieve long-term financial success and remain competitive in today’s ever-expanding technology market.