Many small and mid-sized businesses view hosting or attending events as a waste of resources and time. Despite their significance, the resources and effort needed to host or attend an event seem significantly high, so businesses avoid them.  

However, hosting or attending an event, whether big or small, gives you multiple opportunities to connect with your audience. You get a chance to share experiences with your clients, discover potential partnership opportunities, and gain insights about currently trending products/services in your industry.  

Read on, as we look at some benefits of attending and hosting events and how they connect you with your audience!  

Why do Events Matter?  

It Shows You Care  

While a compelling brand story helps your audience resonate with your brand, your consumers believe in your actions. Attending or hosting events shows your customers that you’re true to your words and put them into action. Attending/Hosting events shows your customers that you care about them and want them to grow along with your business.  

Attending events also gives you a way to get insights into the current market trends. It gives you a chance to see what your competitors are offering that’s attracting customers or what strategies are using.  

Using these insights, you can tailor your strategy to make it more effective and connect on a deeper level with your audience.  

Builds Brand Awareness  

When your business hosts or attends an event, it creates an opportunity to get people talking about your business. This buzz helps you build brand awareness about your brand. By pairing your events with other marketing accelerators like social media marketing, outdoor media, or printed marketing, you can further amplify brand awareness.  

These accelerators are also helpful in promoting your brand or the event, ensuring a significant crowd turnover. Experts like After Branding leverage the latest trends and strategies to maximize exposure to your business. Partnering with such organizations could be the key to accumulating a good return on your investment.  

In addition to hosting/attending events, making attendees interact with your brand at different touchpoints is crucial. It creates multiple opportunities for your target audience to become familiar with your business, ensuring a strengthened connection with your audience.  

Networking Opportunities  

Networking is one of the core values on which a business thrives. One of the biggest benefits of attending/hosting events is it creates the opportunity to meet and interact with like-minded individuals. Events give you the chance to connect with fellow businesses, potential clients, and industry experts.  

These connections might create potential growth opportunities for your business. You could come across influencers who can help boost your reputation through the roof. Additionally, you could also uncover some potential partnerships to launch combined products/services.  

Collaborations create an opportunity for participating businesses to combine resources and create products that address the pain points of a larger customer base, creating the opportunity to generate more revenue and exposure.  

Learning The Best Practices  

When you host/attend events, it allows you to discover everything that has been happening in your industry lately. Is there a new regulation that your business needs to comply with? Or did one of your competitors apply an innovative strategy to deal with a common problem in your industry?  

It’s crucial to learn the best practices and regulations established in your industry. Knowing about the best practices and industry regulations is crucial as it saves you from making uninformed decisions. These uninformed decisions affect your business’s reputation and result in costly mistakes.  

When you attend/host events, you get a window to learn information you would otherwise learn from trial and error. As an SMB, having insights can save you from bad investments. You can utilize this capital in better industry practices or revamped strategies you aim to follow.  

Interaction With Your Customers  

As an SMB looking to establish your presence, having in-person interactions with your customers is crucial for growth. According to a survey conducted by Freeman Trust Report, approximately 77% of consumers trusted brands after having an in-person interaction with them.  

This study proves a clear correlation between face-to-face interactions at events with brand trust. Additionally, attending/hosting events gives you a chance to solidify interactions with your customers. 

Some of the customers may likely have interacted through a different medium before (email, phone, or social media). Meeting them at events allows you to build on these conversations and put such prospects into the conversion phase.   

Final Words  

While digital marketing accelerators like SEO and Social media marketing offer significant benefits, events carry undeniable benefits for SMBs. Events are a hub for developing networking opportunities, face-to-face interactions, market insights, partnerships, and growth opportunities for a business.  

So whether it’s hosting or attending the events, attending the events will pave the way to growing your business and achieving the business objectives considerably.  

After Branding, we are dedicated to helping SMBs host events that grow your business. Our experts perform the due diligence needed to choose the right dates, venue, location, and time. These insights ensure your events notice a huge turnout and are a roaring success.  

We also scope business opportunities for your business, ensuring your access to the platforms that will help your business gain exposure and connect with your audience. So, if you’re ready to leverage the power of events, let’s get in touch and make it happen!