Audience marketing means focusing on and connecting to your target audience. With the extensive amount of data available through digital marketing, understanding your target audience is easier and more important than ever.

Like all forms of information exchange, understanding your target audience is key to a successful marketing event. Knowing who your audience is and what they’re about will help you create a personalized customer experience from event prep through final information collection.

For more on developing customer relationships through your event marketing check out the tips below and be sure to download this free target audience guide!

Tip 1: Utilize attendee lists for audience segmentation

Creating lists of your attendees is a great way to segment your audience into groups based on criteria like demographics and former experience. It may seem old-school but making lists and tracking them between events is an efficient and effective way to begin customizing your events to your guests’ unique profiles. List segmentation allows for your event to mold to its clientele, creating an atmosphere in which your customers have a personal connection with your brand.

Having a functional guest list is imperative to the lasting success of your event. With the right group of guests, even the most dysfunctional event can yield results. There are many ways to segment your guest list—participant classification, superlatives, partners—but what matters is that you do it. With a clear-cut idea of who is coming and what their pain points are, you can take your event in the direction it needs to go.

The use of lists will not only help you invite the right audience, but it will also help you determine a more fitting audience after each event. By updating your lists before and after each event, you can constantly reorganize and restructure your next event to be more effective and beneficial to everyone.

Tip 2: Utilize attendee profiles

Your guests will have busy schedules so your event needs to cut through the noise. With the information you’ve gathered from audience segmentation, you can host events formatted for your target groups and design them accordingly.

This begins with having the right people in the room. An event can be flashy and fun and personalized but if the attendees aren’t interested and engaged, none of that matters. To get the attendees, utilize your lists and attendee profiles. These will help you determine which groups of people should be gathered together, which content should be focused on, and which ways of displaying that content will be most effective.

Additionally, attendee profiles will help you prepare for your interactions with each guest. Knowing their and their pain points will allow you to initiate conversations with which the guest can personally engage, making them more likely to remember the event with positive associations.

Tip 3: Provide interactive content

How many corporate events have you been to that feel like a boring lecture? Guests don’t want to sit on the sidelines and be talked at, they want to be part of an experience. Bring them into the action with a group activity, an interactive webinar or a demo wherein they get to try your content and put it to use.

Allowing your guests to have a physical experience will foster a memorable positive association with the event. Let your guests be as much a part of the experience as you are.

Refinery29, for example, hosts its 29 Rooms event which takes its guests through an interactive cultural experience attuned to their target audience. Likewise, a healthcare technology event by GE, Healthymagination enables its guests to virtually experience healthcare environments in rural Africa.

An interactive event not only allows you to engage with guests on a deeper level, but it also provides a platform to learn more about each guest and leave them with a strong call to action.

Tip 4: Create a personalized takeaway with a clear call to action

An exciting event can still slip a person’s mind after it’s over. To help keep the conversation rolling after the event, leave your guests with something to hold on to and incorporate a clear call to action within it.

This can be as easy as a group photo to be emailed later. Attach a piece of valuable content to your emails, such as a guide or white paper, that would help continue the conversation and keep you top-of-mind.

Another method is to structure your interactive content like a game or a hands-on demo to present your solutions and invite your attendees to register for a follow-up event. This leaves them with a helpful tool, a call to action and a token to remember your brand by. Perhaps you even end your event with an invitation to coffee or a happy hour. Whatever method you use, it’s crucial that by the end of your event, you’ve created a dynamic in which the conversation can continue.

To maximize the success of your event, your guests need to be planned for ahead of time, engaged with throughout the process and left with something of value. Start using your B2B events to strengthen relationships and build lifelong customers today by using these tips!