What is event marketing? Ideas, strategy, and trends

Event marketing transforms how brands connect with audiences—creating memorable, face-to-face experiences that drive awareness, generate leads, and deliver measurable business results. But in today's landscape, successful events require more than just great content and logistics: they demand smart planning, personalized attendee experiences, and data-driven insights. That's where AI comes in, helping marketers automate research, tailor outreach, and uncover opportunities that turn one-time attendees into long-term customers.

Read on to discover proven event marketing strategies, the latest trends shaping the industry, and how AI-powered tools can help you plan, promote, and measure events that deliver real impact.

What is event marketing?

Event marketing is the promotion of a brand, product, or service through in-person, virtual, or hybrid experiences. It’s not just about organizing a gathering—it’s about creating experiences that build brand awareness, spark connections and deliver measurable business results. That’s why live events are considered such an important channel for reaching your target audience.

Event marketing includes appearances at massive trade shows hosted by trade organizations to owned events hosted by a company to drive interest in their products or services.

Owned events also range in size and scale: they can be intimate, regional roundtables, happy hour mixers that target customers or prospects, or annual user conferences attracting thousands for training, product announcements, and networking opportunities. Internal events, such as sales kickoffs, company retreats, or reward trips for top account executives are also a type of event marketing geared toward employees to drive employee engagement and incentivize performance.

Regardless of the format, event marketing is designed to engage audiences face-to-face, in a different way from digital marketing efforts, such as email marketing, display ads, or social media. A company’s event marketing strategy is aligned with but distinct from these marketing channels’ strategy. Events must be promoted on these channels—for example, a company may run several email campaigns pre-event, driving to event registration or attendance. But most marketers consider events their own unique marketing channel.

Event marketing requires careful planning, cross-team collaboration, and cross-team execution—it really does take a village.

Types of event marketing

There’s no single format for event marketing—different marketing goals call for different event types. Some of the most effective types of event marketing include:

1. Trade shows and industry conferences

These large events bring together professionals from an industry or vertical, often on an annual basis. Trade shows or industry conferences might be regional or global, providing potential vendors an opportunity to maintain or expand their reach in different geographic areas. They position your company as a valuable partner in that industry via event programming and content, ideally generating new business opportunities in-person.

For example, a SaaS company might have a booth at a large user conference like Dreamforce to attract enterprise buyers. That same company might also host a breakout session or panel discussion, showcasing the unique ways in which the product or service serves a specific vertical. Using the National Retail Federation’s Big Show as an example, that software company might partner with a retail customer at that event to showcase their retail use case and success in-depth.

2. Product launches and demos

Product launches and demos can happen at trade shows or conferences. For example, a software vendor might have a booth at a conference exposition floor, where product experts demonstrate new products or features for attendees who show interest. A more common way to showcase a product launch is a big announcement at the company’s own user conference, such as Inbound, Dreamforce, the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), or what was then known as Macworld.
Launch events generate excitement and media buzz around new offerings. They can be streamed virtually, held in person, or presented as hybrid experiences. For example, many of us are familiar with Apple keynote addresses showcasing new devices, operating systems, or features, and the resulting buzz across news outlets and social media.

3. Webinars and virtual summits

Cost-effective and scalable, virtual events allow companies to engage audiences across geographies without major travel costs. They may also feature keynote speakers, announcements, and moderated panel discussions in breakout rooms.

4. Workshops and training sessions

Interactive, hands-on events add value through education. These educational tracks are often included as part of a user conference, allowing attendees to get certified or re-certified on your software. Workshops, in-depth seminars or training sessions, and certifications are perfect for positioning your company as a trusted advisor and category leader. They also give event attendees something to brag about on LinkedIn and to their manager.

5. Community events

Casual meetups or networking nights build loyalty and humanize your brand. Community events can be standalone events or included as part of the agenda at a large user conference or owned event.

6. Experiential or brand activations

Creative, immersive experiences designed to make your brand memorable. Think pop-up shops, VR activations, or street-level installations—free massages or pedi-cabs are just a couple examples of unique branded activations at live events.

7. Internal events

Not all events are customer-facing or prospect-facing. Sometimes your target audience is your own employees, with the goal of rallying them around a big company moment. Town halls, company offsites, and team-building sessions are all touchpoints can strengthen company culture and retention. They can also be important internal activations that accompany a bigger external company moment—like a user conference.

What are the benefits of event marketing?

Event marketing is an essential marketing channel because it creates direct, human connections. Benefits include:

How to create an event marketing plan

A successful event marketing plan is essential to execute against the event strategy. Here’s a 10-step framework for how to plan an event.

1. Define your event marketing goals

Be precise—do you want 500 net-new leads, 50 media mentions, or a 20-percent increase in customer retention? Clear event KPIs anchor your strategy. They also allow you to tweak and optimize future events.

2. Understand your audience

Research your ideal attendees’ pain points, roles, and preferences. Use surveys, past event feedback, and persona data to deliver a unique and brand-right event experience that will excite and engage them pre-, during, and post-event.

3. Choose the right format

Select in-person, hybrid, or virtual depending on objectives, budget, and audience geography.

4. Budget realistically

Factor in venue costs, production, catering, travel, sponsorships, speaker fees, and promotion, while always leaving room for contingencies. Ensure alignment with leadership on the pricing tiers for attendees or your budget for a booth or activation at a trade show.

5. Craft compelling content

Your event program should provide value—expert speakers, engaging panels, networking opportunities, or entertainment. Draw upon the themes and storylines in your digital marketing efforts; your event programming and digital content across earned and owned media should be in alignment.

6. Build an event promotion plan

Use a mix of channels to promote your event. For example:

7. Activate speakers and sponsors

Provide your featured speakers and sponsors with toolkits, graphics, and sample social media posts to promote the event.

8. Leverage technology

Technology goes beyond ensuring your event website is up and running. Use event management tools and templates to streamline ticketing, scheduling, and attendee engagement. If you’ll be live streaming your event, you’ll also need a reliable event technology vendor to support the digital experience.

9. Prepare for flawless execution

Run rehearsals for keynote speakers, assign roles and responsibilities, and create a crisis management plan just in case.

10. Follow up post-event

Send thank-you emails, distribute links to on-demand recordings, and collect feedback. Draw upon the momentum of the moment to tease to future events, such as an upcoming regional happy hour or next year’s conference. These communications nurture leads and strengthens relationships—some existing and hopefully some new. This sets you up for a successful next event.

How to measure event marketing success

Measuring ROI is crucial. Combine quantitative and qualitative metrics; here are some examples of metrics to track.

Tracking these metrics provides both immediate insights and long-term learnings.

What are the latest trends in event marketing?

Event marketing evolves rapidly. Current trends include:

What are the challenges of event marketing?

Despite the benefits, event marketers face hurdles:

But having a solid story and message, agile planning processes, robust tech stacks, and diversified promotion can help mitigate these risks.

Top event marketing strategies

How to market an event: 5 ideas

Event marketing tools

Event success relies on the right tech stack. Useful tools include:

Things you can automate for events with AI

AI reduces manual work and helps personalize experiences. From Airtable’s event attendee research AI Play:

Improve event marketing with Airtable

Event marketing requires collaboration across marketing, sales, operations, and design teams. Airtable’s marketing solutions connect your workflows—planning timelines, campaign assets, speaker details, and attendee data—all in one place. And with built-in AI tools, you can uncover attendee insights, craft tailored invites and follow-ups, and generate engaging event content.

The result: fewer silos, faster execution, and stronger outcomes.