An introduction to event-led content marketing

It feels like selling out an event is harder than it used to be.

This blog post kicks off a series on the art of event marketing.

Drawing on my master's in event management, years of event marketing experience, and helping Tito grow to over $1bn in ticket sales, this post is a companion to a guide I’m writing, full of strategies to support our customers and event organisers everywhere.

I’ve devised a framework that combines elements of two proven approaches — the hub-and-spoke model of content marketing and product-led growth — with a specific focus on promoting your event.

As a primer: the hub-and-spoke model drives traffic to central content through smaller pieces of related content shared across different channels, while product-led growth uses the product itself to generate demand instead of traditional sales and marketing.

Essentially, event-led content marketing is simply turning existing content from your event into marketing material, and being smart about how you distribute it. You may already be doing this intuitively, but this post lays out a detailed, replicable process.

The beauty of this strategy is that it’s self-sustaining, highly customisable, and any event organiser can pull it off.

Why do event-led content marketing?

Pull tactics like content marketing are an organic way to drive traffic and interest, but they can be time-consuming and a long game. This framework allows you to work with whatever you already have and squeeze all the juice you can out of it so that a little goes a long way.

I don’t want to bury the lede, so I’ll outline the main stages of the framework first, and then we’ll dive into each one in more detail below with lots of practical examples:

Unless it’s the first one, you should already have content from the previous event.
Adapt this into a pillar piece of content that’s valuable and shareable.
Share supporting morsels of content that point back to this main piece of content.
Measure what’s working and refine your approach.

Most organisers already make video recordings publicly available following the event. This approach just involves taking a bit more of an active role in strategically selecting, adapting and sharing content, to make it work harder for you in promoting your event to new audiences.

1. Identify and organise your event content

You’re sitting on a treasure trove of content right now.

Your first exercise is to categorise the types of sessions at your event, and the different formats of content arising from each. Below are some examples to get you started.

Types of sessions: talks (e.g. keynote, lecture, lightning talk); workshops and breakout sessions; group discussions (e.g. panel, roundtable, Q&A, fireside chat); interactive sessions (e.g. hackathon, town hall, networking).

Content formats: video recordings; audio recordings (e.g. podcasts, interviews with speakers or guests); slides; transcripts; photos; handouts; session summaries; sketchnotes; output of whiteboard or interactive sessions; attendee-generated content (responses to industry-related questions on registration form, reviews, feedback, write-ups); behind the scenes content.

Mixing and matching the relevant session types and content formats instantly gives you a whole bunch of starting points for step 2. If the content was interesting enough to engage attendees on the day, there’s a good chance you can repackage it to appeal to future audiences.

2. Create your pillar piece of content

Having audited what you already have, your next job is to select what you want to transform into a piece of pillar marketing content on which to base your smaller supporting content. This pillar piece of content should live on your website, as this is where we want to drive people to.

Pillar content can take many forms including blog posts, tutorials, guides, documentation, reports, edited videos, podcast episodes and more. The defining feature is that it should feel like a substantial, polished resource that your audience will find valuable enough to engage with and share.

The formula is: [content format] from [session type] ⟶ [new marketing material]

Here are some specific examples, based on the formats listed in the previous section:

Slide deck from a practical workshop ⟶ Self-contained tutorial on a single aspect
Video from a panel discussion ⟶ Edited compilation of key takeaways on a topic
Attendee responses from registration form ⟶ Report or commentary on industry trends
Transcript from a keynote on a problem solved ⟶ Blog post detailing solution in depth
Output of hackathon ⟶ Open source project with helpful README

Ideally, there shouldn’t be too much work involved transforming your existing content. You’re simply repackaging it in a way that makes sense outside of the context of your event. It should feel self-contained, so that someone with zero knowledge of your event understands what they’re seeing.

Beyond that, here are three tips for successful pillar content:

Get permission: Speak to anyone involved in creating the content (for instance the speaker), and get their permission to adapt it. You can present it as an effort to add value by creating a shareable format that helps them promote their work to their audience as well.
Aim to meet a need: People gravitate towards content that offers solutions to problems they face, gives them opportunities for self development, allows them to feel seen or connected to others, or inspires and motivates them to take action. Your pillar content should meet one or more of these needs.
Include a call to action (CTA): Your pillar content should include a link for where to go next, ideally to your registration page, otherwise your mailing list. You could frame it as: “This content was adapted from [session at Event Name]. Get your 2025 ticket at [link]”.

You can obviously create multiple pieces of pillar content, but before you do that it’s a good idea to make the most of this one by moving on to step 3.

3. Generate smaller morsels of supporting content

From your pillar content, the next job is to put together a handful of smaller, actionable pieces of content you can share across different platforms to extend your reach. These could be:

An image with an intriguing quote or statistic
A social media carousel of bitesize lessons
A short clip or soundbite from a longer video
A listicle type post
A single useful tip from a longer tutorial
A thread summarising key points or takeaways
A candid behind the scenes photo or moment
A poll related to a topic debated in a panel discussion
A teaser question answered in your pillar content
Feedback from someone who found your pillar content valuable
Even a meme or a skit if that’s something that feels natural to you

You can share these across whatever social networks you have a presence on, as well as in newsletters, Slack channels, or wherever you normally interact with your audience.

Of course you can — and should — also link to your pillar content directly, but morsel content allows you to post regularly without things feeling repetitive. It also gives people more opportunities to interact with you and therefore for the algorithm to show your content to other people who aren’t yet following you. You can significantly boost your discoverability without needing to go viral (although obviously that would be nice!)

Again, we have three tips for success:

Optimise for each platform: Check what sizes, formats or lengths work best for wherever you’re planning to share each type of content. For instance, lots of people watch shorts or reels with the sound off, so you may want to include subtitles.
Link back to your pillar content: Explain where people can find the full context of what they’re seeing and include the link in the best place according to each channel. You may find a shortlink is useful to include in graphics or descriptions where URLs aren’t hyperlinked (for instance, Instagram).
Don’t overthink it: These morsels can be experimental, fun, and even silly if it suits your event’s brand. The important thing is that they’re easy to create, and that they capture people’s attention enough to want to check out the pillar content, and hopefully share your post.

4. Measure and iterate

The final step is to track your content’s performance and do more of what works. It may be tricky to attribute ticket sales directly to individual pieces of content, but you should at least be able to see an increase in visitors and page views in your analytics dashboard.

Shares, comments, clicks and views are worth keeping an eye on, but try not to get bogged down in them or disheartened if some morsel posts don’t do well. The idea is that you can generate these posts really rapidly, and even have a bit of fun with it.

If you spot certain types of content that do really well, focus on those. And if you’re lucky enough to get comments and/or questions from your audience, responding will help build goodwill and turn fans into vocal advocates.

By the time you move on to creating your next piece of pillar content, you should have a clearer idea of how to get the most out of your efforts.

Bonus tips

Know what you can get away with on each platform. Email marketing requires a considered approach that’s respectful of people’s time and attention, but on social media you can afford to share frequently and even recycle content in slightly different ways as most of your audience will miss a percentage of your posts anyway.

You’ve probably seen varying statistics touted about how many touchpoints it takes for a prospect to convert. Whatever the exact number, the more visible you are, the more opportunities you have to convince someone to buy a ticket. For this reason, you’ll probably want to keep the look and feel of your posts somewhat consistent (even if that’s just including your event logo), to reinforce brand awareness.

Finally, it’s tempting to not want to give away too much for free with your pillar content, but be as generous as you can afford to be. The more value you can offer up front, the more you’ll convince people that it’s worth paying to see more.

On that note, I hope this first post in our event marketing series has proved valuable, even in just reminding you that the content you’ve already created has the potential to fuel your marketing and that you don’t need to start from scratch. You’re halfway there, and this post and our guide to the art of event marketing aim to help take you the rest of the way.