When Royal Air couldn't get invited to local events, their marketing advisor's solution was to sponsor them. By paying a small fee, they created their own "invitation," bypassing gatekeepers and proving that direct financial support is the fastest way to gain visibility and participate in the community.
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Ty Haney, founder of Outdoor Voices, reveals a key community-building step: relinquish brand control. By empowering super fans to host local events, the brand turns them into 'co-owners' of the experience. This generates more authentic engagement and word-of-mouth than centrally-managed marketing ever could.
Instead of cold outreach, Accel Events hosts dinner events for potential customers and partners. They create a valuable community space for senior professionals to discuss shared challenges, without ever pitching their product. This builds trust and generates inbound interest and direct requests for calls, proving more effective than traditional sales tactics.
The highest ROI for marketing development funds (MDF) comes from helping partners get closer to buyers. Instead of lavish vendor events attended by the same partners, suppliers should fund activities that directly support an advisor's customer acquisition efforts.
The ROI of attending an event extends beyond lead generation. A key, often overlooked, metric is client retention. Simply showing up at an industry event can prevent existing customers from churning to a competitor who is present, making defensive retention a primary pillar of event strategy.
Sprout Social amplifies its event presence by sponsoring community-led micro-events and dinners co-hosted with creators during major conferences like INBOUND. This strategy leverages the creator's audience to attract a curated group, piggybacking on existing industry buzz for greater impact.
Transform your customer base into a community by hosting exclusive meetups. This strategy builds a "culture machine" where customers feel like family, fostering loyalty and generating organic referrals without a hard sales pitch.
Businesses shouldn't shy away from publicizing community work out of humility. Promoting a non-profit partner provides them with valuable marketing exposure they often can't afford, allowing them to dedicate more resources to their core programs. It's a powerful way to amplify their impact.
When direct outreach to potential sponsors fails, use unconventional channels. To land a key partnership, Millie couldn't find the right contact, so she messaged the company's customer support. They eventually routed her to the correct person, proving that the "third door" is often effective.
Instead of digital ads, the Coppell Chronicle grows by sponsoring local high school sports teams, PTAs, and youth baseball. This hyperlocal, real-world marketing embeds the brand directly into the community fabric, creating goodwill and awareness that's more effective than online advertising for a local venture.
Instead of bearing the high cost of hosting its own conferences, a trade magazine partners with existing industry events. They produce a co-branded special print edition for the event, selling ads into it and sharing the revenue with the event organizer. This creates a new revenue stream without the financial risk.