Clarion is a leading event organiser, producing and delivering innovative and vibrant virtual, hybrid, and in-person events around the world. Their aim is to drive business growth across a range of diverse sectors by connecting decision-making buyers with solution providers.
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Challenges
Clarion faced a significant hurdle: their tried-and-true marketing channels could only go so far towards achieving their ambitious growth targets. Email and paid media had reached a saturation point, pushing them to explore new avenues for growth.
They realised innovation would be crucial to continue thriving in the competitive event marketing arena. The problem? Determining how to not only maintain growth, but also ensure brand visibility — particularly in a competitive space where consistent branding across every touchpoint plays a critical role in building trust with potential attendees.
Providing a world-class event experience for virtual, hybrid, and in-person events all over the world meant a need for constant reach, but expanding into new audiences without excessive demands on resources proved challenging.
In short, they needed a better way to get their events in front of new audiences, to get more attendees, and deliver an outstanding event experience for stakeholders.
Enter Community Marketing.
Solution
Leveraging attendee campaigns.
Clarion integrated community marketing tools from Gleanin into their marketing strategy. In doing so, they recognised an untapped opportunity to unlock new audiences through their existing attendees by empowering them to become brand advocates.
By making it easy for attendees to share and promote events on their social media networks, Clarion sparked buzz around their campaigns. Likes, shares, and engagement from attendees began pouring in, extending the reach of these events to their friends, colleagues, and industry peers (and surpassing the reach of traditional marketing channels). But it didn’t end there.
Amplifying reach with authentic advocacy
Clarion recognised the influential role of authentic advocacy in unlocking new audiences. Building on the success of attendee campaigns, they expanded their strategy to include speakers and sponsors as advocates.
"Advocacy is a big part of it, and we've been lucky enough to see some really good results from it. It's about reaching a new audience, and that community feel drives our attendees and speakers to share and promote, creating a real buzz around the event."
Building trust through consistency
Leveraging Gleanin’s customisable templates, Clarion quickly and easily created attractive branded banners for event stakeholders. This allowed not only attendees, but speakers and sponsors to promote their involvement with very little effort — and by extension, build brand awareness.
“Our laptops are not made for design work. That’s why we love tools like Gleanin. [They provide] a simple, user-friendly interface that allows us to create promotional banners at scale.”
Using data to continuously grow
Having highlighted a growth plateau as one of their immediate challenges, Clarion realised they needed a reliable way to collect and analyse data to measure impact on existing and future campaigns.
Using Gleanin’s straightforward insights, Clarion gained comprehensive data and analytics, enabling informed decision-making. Clarion were able to accurately measure campaign performance, tracking engagement, speaker promotions, and conversion rates.
Results
The results achieved by Clarion were so much more than vanity metrics or numbers on a spreadsheet — they represented a tangible shift in Clarion's operations to include community marketing as a core pillar of their marketing strategy.
By integrating Gleanin’s community marketing platform, they achieved the following:
This transition to community-focused strategies not only aligned with how more people use social media today, but also leveraged the power of personal connections and trust. Head of Brand Marketing at Clarion Events, Maxie Smit says, “People attend events today based on word-of-mouth. They need a compelling reason to attend. They listen to those they know, like, and trust.”
Clarion’s strategy tapped into this reality, harnessing word-of-mouth as a more impactful, trusted approach to event marketing.
What’s next for Clarion?
Looking ahead, Clarion is poised to build on the success of community marketing as a core element of their strategy. Armed with valuable insights, they can now optimise their marketing campaigns to build more relevant, meaningful connections with their audiences and drive their success even further.
Their continued use of word-of-mouth marketing will drive growth and brand awareness, ensuring Clarion maintains their position at the forefront of the event marketing sector.
How event marketers can replicate Clarion’s success
For event marketers looking to replicate this success, the message is clear: community marketing is no longer a luxury in your marketing toolkit. Instead, look to integrate word-of-mouth marketing as a core part of your strategy — and there’s no easier place to begin than with your existing attendees, sponsors, and speakers.
Platforms like Gleanin make it easy to empower event stakeholders with the tools to promote your events. But the essence of community marketing lies in the term "community" itself. It goes beyond just expanding your audience — it's about fostering an engaged community where attendees, sponsors, and speakers naturally become your most vocal advocates.
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