Successful event branding strategies: How to effectively position your event as a brand

Event branding is essential for the success of your B2B events. The goal is to create an event with a clear brand image and high recognition value. Participants should immediately see that your event stands out from the rest and, ideally, has a unique selling point (USP).

So, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear ‘event branding’? A sleek logo or an appealing slogan?

Sure, both are often part of high-quality event branding, but a successful brand involves much more than just the design of promotional materials. Effective event branding starts with the development of a clear brand identity, builds on a target audience analysis to create visual branding for all marketing channels, establishes the foundation for consistent communication with participants and speakers, and, ideally, lays the groundwork for a lasting brand identity that benefits future events.

Event branding also reflects the event's content and provides a better promotional platform for sponsors.

Why is that? We take a closer look in the next section.

The importance of event branding

Yet the importance of event branding is obvious:

• Recognition: With consistent event branding, you ensure your event or event series is quickly recognised and remembered by participants, speakers, and other interested parties. Among other things, this increases the number of returning participants and the recommendation rate.
• Trust: As the name suggests, branding results in the creation of a recognisable brand. A strong brand identity increases trust in the quality of your event and future ones. The potential outcomes include increased attendance and better sponsorship deals.
• Unique positioning and differentiation: A strong brand identity that perfectly caters to the interests of your industry ideally creates a USP. This helps you stand out from the competition and ensures attendees remain loyal to your events in the future.
• Sponsorship: A strong brand identity and an outstanding reputation for your event provide the ideal promotional platform for sponsors and advertising partners. To achieve this, your event needs to convey values that sponsors want to be associated with.
• Revenue increase: High-quality event branding leads to a higher number of participants, a greater proportion of returning attendees, increased sponsorship revenue, and ultimately, an overall increase in revenue and other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Developing a clear brand identity

For your B2B event branding to truly align with your event and deliver the benefits mentioned above, creating a strong brand identity is a must.

In the B2B context, establishing such a brand identity is even more crucial than for B2C events. This is because networking, building new business relationships, and maintaining existing business contacts play a particularly important role in B2B events.

What vision are you pursuing with your event?

• Highlight your USP compared to other events.
• Example: The vision for an aviation industry trade show could be: ‘We are the go-to event for networking with key players in the aviation industry’.

What values do you want to convey with your event?

• Define the values your event and company should represent.
• Example: A trade show for logistics providers might emphasise values that are crucial in the industry itself, such as perfect organisation, punctuality, and professionalism in all organisational processes.

Your goal is clear: You want to make a lasting impression on your target audience.

For a holistic event branding approach, the following elements are essential:

• Design, including graphical elements like logos and fonts (corporate design)
• Communication, such as writing style in documents and emails
• Sponsoring companies that align with the event’s message
• Speakers who embody the event’s brand identity

To effectively implement the following event branding strategies, conducting a target audience analysis for your event is an important next step.

Target audience analysis and brand message

Only when you know your target audience well can you develop a suitable brand message for them and finalise the details of your event branding based on that message.

An effective target audience analysis doesn’t have to be complicated. Key aspects include demographic factors, such as age, gender, and profession, as well as psychographic factors, such as interests and values. From these, you can derive specific recommendations for your event branding.

Where can you find information on your target audience?

• Use data from your business activities, such as the marketing channel that reaches the most buyers.
• Create surveys for your business contacts and directly ask them about their interests and preferences for an event.

Example: A supermarket chain wants to expand its selection to include regional products and, to this end, reach out to family-owned farms. An efficient way to do so is by hosting an event and inviting representatives from these farms. This target audience operates in the agricultural sector and values sustainable farming practices, which should be reflected in the event’s branding.

For larger B2B events, it can be useful to further segment your target audience, for example, into specific interests.

Visual branding: Logos, colours, and design

Once you’ve established the foundational elements for developing a brand identity, including defining your target audience, the next step is to bring your vision and values to life. This is where visual branding plays a crucial role.

To ensure your event benefits from a strong brand identity, visual branding should be consistently applied across all channels, such as the event website, social media, email communication, and printed materials.

• Logo: The logo is an important visual element in event branding. It should be memorable and reflect the values of your event. A logo needs to work well in digital environments, such as on a website, as well as in print.
• Colours: The logo’s colour scheme usually defines the event colours. Different colours evoke various emotions in B2B attendees and can significantly impact their perception of your event. For example, blue is associated with trust and reliability, while warm colours like orange or red create a dynamic impression.
• Design: Important design elements include graphics, layouts, and typography for printed materials. For consistent recognition, the same layout and font should be used across all event materials.

Example:

For its event, the supermarket chain mentioned above should use branding aimed at regional farms that embodies sustainability and ecology. This could involve a green logo and green colours on the website and event materials.

Consistent communication across all channels

Building on the visual branding for your B2B event, the next step is to establish communication guidelines. Fundamental communication rules are essential to ensure you’re conveying a consistent message across all channels, whether it’s the event website, social media, emails or print materials. It is important that the same brand message and identity are consistently communicated to participants.

The extent of the communication guidelines depends on the size of the marketing team. Generally, the larger the team, the more rules you will need.

What tone should be used in your communication?

One possible option is a more factual tone that focuses on technical aspects. Alternatively, a relaxed tone also makes sense if your aim is to build a sense of closeness with your visitors.

What keywords should be used repeatedly?

Define a series of keywords, messages or expressions that you would like to use consistently in your communication and that relate to the key features of your event. This can also include an event slogan. In addition, you can also determine expressions that should never be used in your event communication.

When should you communicate with interested parties?

Define specific schedules for all your communication channels to provide regular, predictable touchpoints to your audience. For example, plan a new LinkedIn post every Monday and a weekly email newsletter every Friday.

Example:

The supermarket chain can emphasise the importance of eco-friendly products in its invitations to regional suppliers.

By maintaining consistent communication across all channels, you can ensure your event gains a high level of recognition and is consistently associated with the same emotions and values.

Creating engaging and unique event content

Your B2B event content plays a crucial role in event branding. Ultimately, branding works to draw attention to and emphasise your event content. However, for the branding to be effective, the content needs to align with the desired brand identity.

In other words, the vision and values of your event and branding should be directly reflected in event presentations, workshops, and other sessions.

You can achieve this through:

• High-quality content and speakers who offer real value
• Presentations with a strong storytelling component that illustrate your vision
• Interactive sessions, such as polls or Q&A rounds, that focus on the event’s core values

Example: The CEO of the supermarket chain from the previous examples could present the vision of sourcing a significant portion of the product selection from regional suppliers in the future.

Incorporate partnerships and sponsors

Do you know exactly what you want your B2B event to stand for? Then choose your partnerships and sponsors according to your event’s brand identity.

You and your partners should represent the same values. This includes, for example, event speakers, moderators for workshops and discussions, and exhibitors. Sponsors should also match your brand identity.

This results is a win-win situation for you, your sponsors, and your partners, as you benefit from each other’s branding.

Sponsors can, for example, present products at an on-site stand and hand out free product samples in goodie bags to the participants.

On-site branding and participant experience

Branding plays an essential role at the event itself, where participant expectations, sparked by your pre-event branding efforts, are confirmed.

• Event venue: The choice of event venue significantly impacts on-site branding and participant experience. Ideally, the venue should reflect your brand’s values. For example, a sustainable event might take place at a venue that uses eco-friendly energy sources.
• Stage and room design: To achieve immersive event branding, all event spaces should be incorporated into your marketing efforts. This includes the stage design, for example, which serves as the backdrop for presentations and discussions.
• On-site branding details: Further details in on-site branding can enhance your brand identity even more. A signal of sustainability can be conveyed by avoiding single-use tableware in catering, for example. It’s often these details that leave a lasting impression on the participant experience.
• Follow-up and long-term engagement: A brand identity generally develops over a long period of time, rather than overnight. That means it’s important to stay engaged and continually make improvements to your marketing.
• Participant feedback: The opinions of your attendees play an important role in improving your brand identity. After an event has concluded, it’s essential to gather feedback from your event participants, for example, through an online survey.

In this survey, you can ask specific questions regarding your brand identity, such as:

1. What values do you associate with the event?
2. How sustainable did you find the event?
3. What steps should the organisers take to further strengthen their vision?

• Long-term participant engagement: Remain in the minds of your participants even after the event has ended. A great way to do this is by sending follow-up emails with pictures, materials, and summaries of the event. With the right email marketing software, you can personalise these messages, making them even more memorable.

You can bridge the time between major events with smaller ones, such as webinars or online networking meetings. These engagement strategies ensure your event is seen as part of a larger brand identity, not as a one-off occasion. This makes branding future events much easier.

Establishing your B2B event as a recognisable brand through event branding

As you can see, there are plenty of event branding strategies available to help you build a brand identity for your event. It all starts with a vision and target audience analysis. Following this, you can use visual branding, such as a logo, clear communication guidelines, the right event content, and suitable partners and sponsors to create strong branding for your event.

The result: More participants, and happier ones at that, as well as increasing KPIs, such as revenue and profit.