Whether you’re an exhibitor, a speaker or an attendee – or maybe all of the above - industry events are a great way to boost brand exposure within your market. Large events attract global leaders, key decision-makers and important stakeholders, creating the perfect environment to share your story and connect with key contacts you can nurture through your sales pipeline to revenue in the future. The key to success is preparation. With a packed programme of panels, and hundreds to thousands of attendees and exhibitors, heading to an event without a plan of action will only lead to missed opportunities and diminished ROI. However, this is the reality for the majority of business leaders who lack the time or resource to create a proactive support strategy that will maximise their brand exposure.   

At Active Profile, we’ve been helping businesses maximise their exposure at events for almost 20 years. As part of our work, we create communication strategies to expose the investment and attendance at milestone events, whilst establishing key members of their teams as industry thought leaders through reactive commentary. Here’s our top advice for amplifying content at events. 

Set your sights on key priorities  

The reality is, you won’t always have the time to see and do everything at large events. From viewing exhibitions to attending key panel talks, it can be overwhelming deciding what to prioritise. Ahead of any event planning, ask yourself: what do we want to gain from this event?  

At Active Profile, we get everyone around the table to discuss what the key objectives for the event will be to help establish where attendees will need to focus their time. For example, if businesses are looking to establish new contacts, we’d home in on events that will offer the best quality leads. In contrast, if the focus is maximising overall exposure, we’d look to speaking opportunities on relevant panels.  

With this set in stone, you can now be confident that everyone is heading into planning with the same priorities, making it easier to research the relevant opportunities and make a list of relevant attendees you want to speak to on the day. 

Have content prepared 

Whether you’re a speaker or attendee, it’s always important to head into an event with content that can be used as a networking tool or to maximise your visibility to a wider, online audience.  

For example, to support igloo with their attendance at MIPIM, we created a project portfolio that they could take into any networking discussions to highlight the transformative developments they’re delivering across the country, while highlighting their mission and values.  

Additionally, reactivity to event news and announcements is a key way to share your views and thoughts with the media. To ensure you’re able to remain agile in the chaos of the event, it’s important to do your research ahead of time. Will any key reports or developments be announced at the event? What are the key themes emerging from the programme of activity? With this research pinned down, you can prepare media pitches and synopses ahead of time, leaving you to make the final tweaks and hit send during or post event.  

Social channels are also a great way to position your leading views and values to a wider audience. Working with clients ahead of time to create an event content plan, we use industry knowledge and event synopses to draft content intended to post live from events.  Vox pox style videos at events perform very well on social channels, with LinkedIn accounts often seeing a 50% increase in reach and engagement compared to long-form written posts. Since social algorithms favour video content, it’s a great way to surface key takeaways and event summaries to your followers and wider online audience. While it’s important to have an element of reactivity on the day, it’s always a good idea to have identified who you’d like to film and prepare a few questions to ensure you can deliver it in a timely fashion. 

Get involved in the post-event conversation  

As one event ends, a common mistake a lot of businesses make is looking towards the next without any reflection. This leaves a missed opportunity to share your thoughts around trends and themes emerging from post-event conversations. From taking a stand on social media to identifying relevant opportunities to share your views with the media, there are plenty of ways to take advantage of the noise created by large-scale events. 

Our work with Avison Young following their activity at UKREiiF 2024 is just one example of how key event takeaways can be used to cast a wider net, amplifying your industry-leading values and views in media coverage. With detailed notes from each of the sessions in their exclusive masterclass series, we created a number of thought leadership articles, as well as  written and video content for social media, positioning key individuals as experts on a variety of subjects – including funding and procurement, and sustainable retrofitting - whilst pushing each session’s key message out to a wider audience. Our activity across UKREiiF resulted in opportunities with key media titles such as EG, CoStar and Property Week, coverage in a range of regional outlets, as well as a huge increase in engagement on social media, with over 30,000 impressions and reactions up by 66% when compared to the previous week, demonstrating the value of this approach. 

How we can support you  

A solid plan will amplify the ROI from any event you attend. If this has given you the nudge to put an event strategy in place, or to amplify your presence across multiple channels, get in touch with our team to start the conversation and see how we can unlock value at upcoming events in your calendar.