In a nutshell – event marketing success

Event marketing with a connections and content led approach has proven a winning strategy for  GoodSense clients.  The approach uses our strength in audience and messaging, our expertise in LinkedIn, and our collaborative approach to comms to help clients sell out their events, time after time.

The winning event marketing strategy was successful for:
• The Climate Change and Business Conference, hosted by the Sustainable Business Council and the Environmental Defence Society in 2022
• He Whenua Rongo – Indigenous Seeds Soil and Sovereignty hui, delivered by Ngā Toki Whakarururanga, Te Waka Kai Ora and Papawhakaritorito Trust in 2024 and
• The Economy for the Public Good conferences, produced by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Aotearoa in 2023 and again in 2024.

The marketing strategy and our support with execution helped all four events to be over-subscribed. This meant our clients events succeeded financially, and maximised the impact the events had for their values-based kaupapa.

In summarising this approach, we acknowledge the strong reputations and relationships all the people in the organisations behind the events hold and the role of other contributors. We particularly want to recognise the work of Auaha Events on He Whenua Rongo and of the sponsorship partners and other funders that supported each event. Like all good projects, each event’s promotion relied on teamwork.

What our clients needed for their events

Events can vary hugely but they generally have common marketing goals.  Organisors want a full house, with an engaged audience, that will make the event a success.

What the six organisations providing the four events above had in common was little available budget for event marketing promotion or the internal capacity or expertise at the time, to deliver it. What they all had in abundance was access to rich content and connections.

Hosting events often carries significant risk – financial and reputational. As one client said to us at the start, “It feels like I am hosting a party and I’m anxious no one will come.”  In several of the above cases, producing successful events was important for future funding support or partner collaborations.

In each case, the events were important for community building and disseminating key knowledge to and between participants.

The events all shared, along with all GoodSense client work, a goal to advance the common good.

The Climate Change and Business conference in 2022, the first major post-covid business event in Tāmaki Makaurau after the Covid-19 pandemic, and rescheduled three times as a result, was important to advance corporate climate action. He Whenua Rongo was a crucial three day hui and wānanga, connecting diverse participants around the shared kaupapa of seeds, soil and sovereignty. The Economy for the Public Good conferences have been pivotal in fostering the growing Wellbeing Economy movement in Aotearoa.

How GoodSense Helped

For all three clients, our event marketing work began with robust planning. Working with our clients we helped them answer the questions:

• What was the goal of the event?
• Who did they most want to attend?
• Why should those people go?

The clear outputs from this co-created marketing strategy process let us develop key messages to promote the events that were centred on what potential attendees needed to know, so they could feel excited and confidant to register.

We then planned out the marketing communication themes and the promotional channels for the events.

• The themes shape the stories told through the stages of event promotion.
• The channels are the places these stories are shared.

For all these events, LinkedIn content (unpaid) played a central role.  Additionally, we wove together strategies that built on connections through speakers, email lists, supporter organisations and sponsors. For He Whenua Rongo we curated an event-specific Instagram account to help bring together the kōrero around the hui, before, during and after.

With a clear event marketing strategy, plan and messages in place, people in the host organisations’ wider networks could more easily rally in support of the event, helping promote it. When people learned about an event they could quickly grasp why it was important for them to be there, or to tell others to go. The power of the many brought people together, without the need for paid advertising.

Across the four events, we delivered a mix of executing promotions for our clients – writing copy and curating the online content – as well as collaborating with other partners, and coaching clients’ team members on delivery. Together we built success.

The impact this had for our clients and their work

He Whenua Rongo event images with graphics star Renee Waiwiri of Indiginous Design and Innovation Aotearoa

The four events above were all highly regarded for not just exceeding their host organisations’ expectations of numbers, but also for the quality of the audiences they attracted.

In all four cases our strategic approach helped bring together diverse attendees. This richness of participation in turn created more impactful events because of the quality of the conversations that were enabled at them. It also ensured the kaupapa of the events was carried back by participants into more communities, workplaces and homes, further spreading the shared knowledge.

We are grateful to our clients and to the many organisations involved in the above events, named and not named here, for their trust in GoodSense to weave success with them.

If you’d like a free, confidential kōrero with one of us about promoting your future event please do get in touch. We’d love to help.