If you’re like most business owners throughout the country, your company has probably had several large and small events canceled over the last six months with in-person events unlikely to return until 2021. Not being able to host or attend the in-person events that you were anticipating when you planned your annual budget may have you wondering what to officially do with your 2020 events budget. Although you have several options available for repurposing these funds, those that are likely to be the most beneficial for your business include adjusting your marketing budget, creating virtual events, and applying the money from your events budget to other areas of your business during the last quarter of the year.
Reuse Your Events Budget to Meet Other Needs of Your Business in 2020
Reusing the funds you had planned to spend on events for other things that benefit your business is one of the most common options, particularly among small business owners. Losing the events you had planned for this year may have temporarily left you with more money than you expected to have moving into the fourth quarter of the year, but your business may also have experienced closures, low sales, and other financial challenges that may mean that reusing some of your “extra” money to replace this lost income should your first priority in order to keep your business afloat. If your business is struggling this fall, there’s nothing wrong with doing what you need to do in order to stay in business.
If your business is lucky enough to have not been hit very hard by the challenges of this year, you may also be able to reuse some of the funds from your events budget to pursue other projects or investments that you were not planning on making in 2020. If you’ve been thinking about adding onto your building or expanding the products or services your business offers but hadn’t yet set a timeline for taking action on these ideas, using some of the money that you had planned to spend on events to pursue new opportunities for your company can be a great way to find a silver lining for your business this fall.
Redistributing Funds Within Your Marketing Budget
Redistributing the funds from your event budget back into your overall marketing budget can give your business the extra boost of publicity it may need if you are recovering from a period of closures and low spending among your usual customers.
Both large and small businesses are putting money that they are able to spare into new marketing campaigns in order to build their customer bases and keep the attention of current customers as they slowly move back toward their normal spending habits after saving more money than usual throughout the spring and summer months. Whether investing more money into avenues that were already covered under your planned marketing strategy or pursuing a new avenue altogether best meets the current needs of your business, you can’t go wrong by adjusting your marketing budget to keep your brand fresh in your target audience’s minds.
Before making drastic changes to your marketing plans, be sure to factor in how you are going to address them as you plan your 2021 budget. Make sure that you will have the means to make that money back within a reasonable amount of time and decide whether you will go back to your normal marketing budget once you add events back into your 2021 budget.
Repurpose Some of Your Events Budget for Virtual Events and Sponsorships
Losing your business’s favorite annual in-person events does not mean that you do not have any options for connecting with your customers this fall and winter. Companies of all sizes have been converting certain types of conferences, benefits, and other events into virtual events. Hosting events over Zoom or other online platforms usually does not cost as much as hosting in-person events but putting some of your regular events budget toward virtual events is one way for your money to go toward something that serves a similar purpose to its original intention.
Hosting your own virtual events or putting money toward sponsorships for other local businesses that you have partnered with in the past may not be quite as much fun for your customers as your regular events, but the capabilities of the internet make it possible for your business to make the most of what you have to work with and continue connecting with your target audience this fall.
Roll Funds Over to Your 2021 Budget
If you have gone through all of these possibilities and still find that your business has more money than it needs this fall, simply adding it to your 2021 events budget can be a simple way to set your business up for success as soon as you are able to hold regular in-person events again. Although this is not common, as most businesses find plenty of ways that repurposing events money can improve their current situation, it can still be something to think about if our main three recommendations are not relevant to your business.
2020 has made hosting events more difficult than it has ever been, but the current situation will not last forever. Businesses throughout the country have been forced to move a plethora of in-person events to 2021, which means that many of your customers’ schedules for next year are already filling up. With that in mind, using your extra money to make your 2021 in-person events bigger and better than ever can be an effective strategy for making a bigger splash and standing out from everything else your community has to offer once circumstances improve to have in-person events again.
At Brand Syntax, we are here to help businesses make strategic marketing decisions that help them get the most out of their annual budgets, marketing plans, and events. If you are searching for ideas for repurposing your 2020 events budget that can benefit your business in another way during the last quarter of 2020 or in 2021, we can help you consider the pros and cons of the most common options as they relate to the specific structure and needs of your business. Contact us today to learn more about the marketing services we offer to get started!
