Whatever your sales objective – driving brand awareness, improving lead generation, or closing a higher percentage of sales – hosting an event is an effective campaign milestone that will push you closer to your goals (In fact, according to 2025 State of Events Report, 78% of organisers identify in-person events as their most impactful marketing channel).   

The type of event you choose will bring about different results. For example, a webinar is perfect for capturing leads, educating your audience or showcasing your product, while a roundtable would be perfect for those looking to address a key challenge within an ecosystem with a focused group of stakeholders. Both of these are different from a networking event which aims to facilitate connections and build strong relationships.  

However, events are a massive investment, and for them to add value to your sales and marketing strategy, you need to ensure the appropriate stakeholders turn up on the day, while also having a follow-up plan in place to ensure you continue to engage with key prospects.   

At Active Profile, over the past 20 years, we’ve supported a number of organisations from the tech and real estate sector to plan a successful event that’s supported their growth objectives. Here’s a peek into how we do it...  

1.   Create an event plan    

With sight of your agreed objectives, the first thing you need to do is create an event plan. What time would you like the event to be at? What type of setting would you like to host the event in? What’s on the event agenda? Each one of these points should be aligned to your brand and target persona(s).   

When thinking about each of these points, it’s important to look beyond measuring success as just ‘event attendance’. Whether it’s engagement in socials or the number of scans of a QR code, make sure you have a measure of success in mind.  

2.   Agree on a call to action  

As part of your event plan, as a team, you should all agree on a call to action for the event. Not only will this help with measuring the success of the event, but it will help inform the content you need to include in the event and create surrounding follow-up content to nurture attendees through the marketing funnel.   

For example, it could be to download a report at your industry meetup or launch event, or asking attendees if they’d like to book a live demonstration might be appropriate for a more product-focused event.   

3.   Plan supporting marketing content  

You could plan the best event in history, but if you haven’t also created personalised marketing content to promote and follow the event, it won’t have the impact you were hoping to generate.  

 To ensure the right people show up on the day, create social and email content to promote the event organically. And why not create a content toolkit that speakers, partners or community connections can use to share with their audiences?   

Following on from the event, make sure to create a range of content – from thought leadership articles to social posts – which relate to your target persona and event content to keep attendees engaged with your brand.   

4.   Engage your team 

An event has the highest chance of being a success when all your event team have a detailed brief and believe in the value it can add.  With this approach, they’re more likely to share the event details on their own LinkedIn and get stuck into their role at the event – whether that’s welcoming attendees, networking, or filming the video content.   

In our experience, we’ve found this works best when each person is given a role for the event with a measure of success, so everyone feels like they’re playing an important role in the day.   

5.   Dive into the data & follow up 

Following the event, you should have captured details of everyone who signed up and attended the event (at a minimum). Make sure all of these contact details are added to your CRM and added to segmented lists which can be sent tailored, engaging content.   

Amongst any relevant marketing and resources – such as event recordings, relevant presentations or other valuable materials - it’s also a good idea to send out a survey to ask for any feedback, allowing you to improve your event next time around.   

Additionally, if the objective of the event was to build leads or nurture relationships, following the event, hopefully as you worked your way around the room, you were able to gage who was interested and ready to go on a journey with your brand – whether that’s investing in your company or buying a product. Following the event, you should turn your focus to a handful of these contacts, crafting personalised emails or following up with a coffee catch-up to help you continue to nurture these priority relationships. 

Create your event content with us! 

If this has made you think about how you can use events to your advantage, or it’s made you realise that your event strategy could be more effective, you can reach our team via our website or LinkedIn.