Wouldn’t it be a dream to have your 2025 budgets locked and loaded? In my experience - and with increasing frequency – Business, HR and Marketing leaders treat quarter one like a fifth quarter of the previous year, buying time to tame the chaos and make clear decisions. If this is you, I’ve got some advice.

Events are the answer to your business, marketing, and HR problems. Stick with me here.

In the smart technology age, leaders are drowning. There is too much that is new and frankly, just too much - of everything. It feels akin to chaos, and amidst all this, we know we’ve got to drive our ship forward or drown!  

Events are a lifeboat. For all the conflating we’ve all been doing in the events industry over the years, events exist to bring people (a.k.a. Humans) together. Events are human-to-human (H2H). Events are where relationships are cemented, and networks are expanded. Events are for upskilling, training, inspiring. Events are for creating awareness, generating leads, and doing business face-to-face. Trust is diminishing on pace with AI implementation, and events are a solution for that too.

The good news? Event budgets are expected to increase in 2025.  

The Bad news? Costs are increasing too.

So, what’s a marketer to do? Here are five tips, borne out of 25+ years in the events industry:

Tip #1: Plan your portfolio, not your project. (big picture)

The best advice I can possibly give is this: Zoom Out! Do not plan at a project level. Even your most critical event can wait until you’ve established your event portfolio strategy.  

This is more important than ever before. You are not looking for “balance” (why does anyone ever do that?!). You are looking to map your portfolio of work directly to your business and marketing objectives. Do you need to build awareness? Do you need to battle with competitors? Do you need to drive pipeline growth? Do you need to move accounts along a progression path? Do you need to close the deal? All events are not created equal, so you need to align the event to your larger business goal.

Tip #2: Do it right, or don’t do it (smarter budgets)

Only once in my 25+ years did I ever work with a company that did not have all-of-the-above-listed needs. Yes, we must build awareness, progress leads, close leads and nurture our most critical clients.  That’s why your next step is to be strategic and allocate budget and resources, beginning with your most critical priorities.  

Guess what will happen next? You will run out of money.  

And therein lies the need to be brave enough to execute only what you can execute with excellence. Why is this so hard? You know why. Because your boss is pressuring you, and the sales team is pressuring you too. Everyone wants your brand to be everywhere all the time. Even when you have budgets that afford event industry saturation, Strategy means the difference between just showing up and meaningful ROI.

Still getting pressured? Use the data! Data defends your work - and communicates your rationale with confidence. If you are forced into spreading too little butter over too much bread (credit, Tolkien), the only person that loses is you. It’s you that is on the hook when the experience doesn’t land or when the ROI isn’t what it should be. Post event, no one remembers that they didn’t give you the budget requested. You will be put in a position of having to make excuses - and making excuses is not the way of a leader.  

Tip #3: Micro-events work, when planned right

Should you do 30 micro events or one flagship event? Too many brands plan on autopilot. It's only through portfolio planning and good strategy that you can figure out what the business actually needs. Perhaps those needs can be baked into a track at the flagship event, but perhaps those same funds would be better spent on a road show or another “coming to your town” mobile strategy catering to your most critical accounts. Micro-events are exploding for good reason. Hyper-targeted content wins every time.  

Tip #4: It’s not over when it's over. Events are evergreen.

Brands are only beginning to understand (there's a difference between knowing and understanding) what experts in our industry have been saying for years; namely that events are evergreen content engines. You know that in today’s marketing landscape, content is the king and the queen. Content drives nearly every part of modern marketing strategies – building trust, engaging prospects and supporting the customer journey. Content is how you connect with a potential buyer and communicate your value proposition in a way that sticks.

Cross-discipline teams expend a lot of effort on creating content for events. Make sure that content has some shelf life and that your 2025 plan includes a re-use strategy. Events can also be a critical source for net-new content creation. Make sure your 2025 event strategy includes advantaging the content creation opportunity.  

Tip #5: Events are the antidote to increasing buyer mistrust

According to Salesforce's “State of the Connected Customer” report, 89% of consumers believe it's important to know if they communicate with AI or a human, and 80% stress the need for human validation of AI output. We all share this challenge. Brands must build trust in an increasingly mistrustful world. Events create the opportunity for transparency and authenticity. The trick is to define that opportunity for your unique business. This can and should be done at a portoflio and project level .

As you dive into your 2025 planning, remember the vital role that events play in your marketing and sales initiatives.  Approach your events as a portfolio of opportunities that can spark meaningful exchanges, create genuine interactions, extend and expand your content strategy and build the trust you need with your internal teams and customers.  

‍