Quiet admissions from the event marketing team
There are some things event marketers don’t usually say out loud. Not because they’re doing anything wrong… Usually because event marketing today is busy, messy, reactive, and involves a huge amount of moving parts.
So in the interests of honesty…
A few quiet admissions. I’d love to know if anyone can relate.
“I thiiiiink these registrations came from email”
One dashboard says paid, but an email went out the day the registrations spiked. Plus direct mail would have started landing…. Sales say they came from their team.
Perfect attribution is rare. But enough clarity to make better decisions shouldn’t be.
“This wasn’t in the strategy but someone senior asked for it”
Every campaign starts with a plan but then priorities shift. Speakers change, or are not confirmed until late in the campaign, a stakeholder has a new idea. Before long, the team is no longer delivering strategy, they’re responding to requests.
“I copied last year’s plan and changed the dates”
Nobody likes to admit this, but when deadlines are tight and teams are stretched, sometimes there physically isn’t the time to be starting from scratch. It’s very rarely a creativity problem, marketers are creative by nature. It’s a capacity problem.
“I don’t actually want any new ideas right now”
Again, it’s not normally a shortage of ideas that’s the problem. Teams are just short of time, focus, prioritisation, headspace!
“I have absolutely no evidence that changing the homepage will help but everyone wanted something to happen”
Sometimes activity can feel productive but it doesn’t always equal progress.
I have no doubt event marketers across the globe are thinking some of these as you’re reading this. But it doesn’t mean the team need to work harder. It’s usually just a sign that the team need more space to think, clearer priorities or extra senior support to help them simplify what’s becoming unnecessarily complicated.
At Nicklin Marketing Group, we work with businesses to strengthen marketing performance through strategy, structure, and specialist execution, helping teams scale smarter, not just spend bigger.