What does this mean for marketers involved in events planning?

What does this mean for marketers & events planning?

How are marketers affected?

The outbreak of COVID-19 has left many companies with a big gap in their calendars owing to third-party and proprietary events being cancelled or postponed. It is a time of unrest for marketers, as many find themselves wrangling with their legal departments, to see if they can get out of contracts. The fact that we don't know how long COVID-19 will continue to have an impact feeds into the the current instability of the B2B events market, making marketers unsure of how to move forward in their campaign planning. Without face to face engagement, marketers lose precious leads - another challenge to tackle.

Now is the time to focus on digital marketing more than ever, finding new ways to engage your audiences.

What needs to be done?

Marketers are in need of creative, innovative ways to have touchpoints with their audiences, especially as more senior audiences (such as C-suite) often cite live events as their preferred media channel. To overcome this, marketers must serve these audiences with strong digital marketing alternatives. Some events are looking to move to virtual, however this is easier said than done, and can end up being clunky due to the time constraints of needing to move quickly. Moreover, many of the events that are being postponed are being rescheduled to September, a trend that means marketers will require even more careful selection of which events to engage in, owing to resource and time limitations.