I’d be willing to bet that no matter how obscure your industry is, there are trade shows that bring together similar organizations and like-minded professionals on an annual basis.

For those of us in more common industries (healthcare, real estate, etc.), we know that there are more trade shows every year than we could ever hope to attend – take it from a girl who works in tech. I have definitely attended my fair share of these massive events.

Have you ever walked through the exhibition hall stopping from sponsor booth to sponsor booth? Likely collecting conference swag, hearing sales pitches, and taking in each sponsor’s unique booth design?

Without event marketing managers, none of that would be possible.

And trade shows only scrape the surface of event marketing. Event marketing is any promotional strategy that involves companies interacting with prospects and customers face-to-face. This can be in the form of promotional parties, booths at concerts and sporting events, and much more. In fact, you probably interact with event marketers quite regularly.

That’s because event marketing is more than just traditional advertising. As opposed to blasting the masses with information about your product or service, you’re taking a more personalized approach. When you interact with specific prospects, you can make quality impressions and have a greater chance of acquiring a loyal customer.  

Whichever method of event marketing you choose, your event marketing manager will spearhead your events strategy. Depending on your industry and target audience, this may mean the laborious process of attending and sponsoring trade shows, running booths at local events like concerts and restaurant openings, or running your own events to advertise your company’s product or service.

If it sounds easy, think again. Event marketers will often work long hours, travel frequently, and represent their organization all over the country (or world!). That said, event marketing is an invaluable strategy in any business.

When it comes time for your team to hire an event marketing manager, the following job description can be a helpful starting point. In fact, we invite you to use the template and adapt it to your own organization's needs and requirements.  You may also alter this job description for an event marketing specialist.

Are you looking to hire other marketing roles, as well? You can find more job descriptions on our full list of marketing job descriptions.

Not looking to grow your marketing department just yet? We’ve still got you covered! Check out our comprehensive guide to job descriptions.

Event Marketing Manager Job Description

Title: Event Marketing Manager

Location: Chicago

With more than 400 percent growth since 2015, ACME Corporations is North America’s leading energy provider, with the single largest retail customer base nationwide. Since its founding in 2007, ACME Corporations has strived to meet the highest standards of energy delivery, customer service, and cost efficiency. Our mission is to be the top-tier energy provider while fostering a collaborative, diverse, and inclusive workplace.

ACME Corporation is looking to hire a event marketing manager to be responsible for spearheading ACME Corporation’s event marketing strategy, including but not limited to: trade show planning and attendance, securing speaking opportunities, representing ACME at industry events, and implementing guerilla marketing campaigns. This individual should have a successful track record of organizing attendance at trade shows and proving ROI through event marketing strategies and tactics.

Responsibilities:

• Spearhead ACME Corporation’s event and tradeshow strategy, including but not limited to: identifying key events, internal team training for attendees (elevator pitch, demos, etc.), maintain pre- and post-show communication, and event attendance
• Work with director of marketing and director of sales to organize and staff customer and sponsored events
• Work with director of marketing and marketing executives to develop event strategy and objectives; spearhead initiatives to meet objectives based on lead generation, customer advocacy, and more.
• Negotiate and execute contracts for large- and small-scale events
• Travel frequently – up to 50 percent of your time will be spent traveling to various events
• Drive marketing influenced pipeline and generate MQLs through onsite activations and support of the sales team
• Analyze, track, and report on event ROI based on predetermined pipeline, revenue, and MQL metrics using CRM, email marketing, project management, and similar systems
• Manage a team of event marketing specialists
• Build relationships with ACME customers and prospects on a one-to-one basis
• Interact with key decisions makers and account-holders
• Work with in-house designer to ensure event display accurately represents the ACME brand
• Responsible for ordering and tracking event inventory include collateral, giveaways, etc.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s in marketing or related discipline
• 3+ years of related marketing experience, ideally in event marketing, demand generation, or sales enablement
• Proven experience carrying out event marketing efforts, including trade show planning, attendance, and reporting
• Experience partnering with an enterprise sales team
• Highly organized with an ability to manage resources, budgets, and onsite personnel
• Strong communication skills – written and oral
• Capacity to manage multiple projects simultaneously
• You are creative, innovative, and always think outside the box
• Highly organized and proficient at managing multiple projects at a time
• You are metric driven and have the ability to draw insight from complex marketing data
• Confident with a dynamic personality
• Capable of standing comfortably for up to eight hours a day, working long hours, and traveling frequently

For even more help in writing your own event marketing manager job description, we’ve sourced the following examples from three companies looking to hire.

The following examples show organizations that have followed a typical job description structure, but customized it based on their unique needs and expectations.

Event Marketing Manager Job Description Examples

To see how real employers are writing their event marketing manager job description, check out the examples below!

Amazon

Event Marketing Manager

New York, New York

At Amazon, we continually look for opportunities to invent on behalf of our customers, helping them find and discover virtually anything they want to buy online. To this end, we offer advertisers and agencies ways to connect with customers that are accretive to the customer’s experience with Amazon.  We launched our first advertising program in 2006, and since then have built a global portfolio of advertising solutions on Amazon owned sites, mobile web and apps, Fire tablet and TV, out of home, and on thousands of external publishers on desktop and mobile through programmatic advertising.

We have an opportunity for a dynamic, driven Event Marketing Manager to join the advertising marketing team building events programs that enable our North America agency sales teams.

This is an opportunity to join a growing team and make a significant contribution to building world-class events programs. To be successful in this role you will need to be creative and dedicated to continually testing, measuring, learning and evolving your events programs. When you build something that delivers results, you’ll need to be able to scale your program across teams and enable other global team members to leverage your work to establish similar programs. Your objective is to develop event programs which drive engagement with agencies providing opportunities for sales to build their business with new and existing clients. You will also work on developing marketing plans which grow our largest accounts and deliver collateral which are compelling to agencies.

The candidate will coordinate North America agency events, logistics, and reporting. Candidate will also be in charge of the content that will be provided to the agency sales teams for these agency events. Candidates must be passionate about event marketing, a self-starter and have strong interpersonal, project management, and analytical skills. They will collaborate with training, HR, marketing, operations, and business teams.

Responsibilities:

• Provide logistics support for agency events. Tasks include scheduling, vendor management, AV services, catering, editing, organizing, and storing content related to events
• Own reporting for the team. Reporting includes a combination of evaluations such as feedback forms and other data sources combined in Excel.
• Own the agency event budget. Handle invoicing and purchases for events.
• Project manage content when needed for the agency events
• Work with additional vendors for contracting events.

The ideal candidate will be metrics-driven with strong ownership and focus. Candidate will need to be able to prioritize effectively and communicate clearly and persuasively. This person is able to drive focus and excellence within the programs they own, with their colleagues in marketing and with the sales and product teams they work with. This position does not have any direct reports.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree
• 5+ years event experience
• Experience interpreting consumer data and making business recommendations to drive event performance
• Experience with managing a budget
• Ability to travel 6-10 times per year
• Experience with MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint

Preferred Qualifications

• MBA
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex and highly visible projects at the executive level
• Experience with an internet or technology company
• Experience in eCommerce, advertising or digital marketing
• Strong bias for action: ability to juggle multiple priorities and create a sense of urgency in a fast-paced, dynamic environment
• Move easily between generating big, creative ideas, and driving ongoing process improvement
• Strong oral and written communication skills with proven ability to influence
• Proven analytical and data decision-making capabilities
• Track record of taking ownership and driving results
• Proven ability to think strategically and execute methodically
• Demonstrated ability to perform well in a highly dynamic, geographically diverse, and rapidly changing environment

Sertifi

Event Marketing Specialist

Chicago, Illinois

Sertifi is the leader in Frictionless Business, with innovative solutions for modernizing the last mile of the sales process. Sertifi offers the fastest and most secure way to close business, from eSignatures to online payment capture. Thousands of companies around the world trust Sertifi to close more deals faster, recognize revenue quickly, enhance security and compliance, and go completely paperless. 

Sertifi is looking for a motivated Event Marketing Specialist to join our Marketing team. This person will help generate demand for our products, build awareness for our brand, and engage customers through advocacy efforts. Our ideal candidate has proven experience coordinating successful trade shows and events and a passion for meeting prospects, partners, and customers while owning the event experience from start to finish. This position reports to the Director of Marketing in our downtown Chicago office and will play an integral role on the Marketing team by planning and executing everything events-related.

Challenges You’ll Face:

• Work with Co-Founders and Director of Marketing to plan, execute, and track quarterly marketing and sales events to meet and/or exceed quarterly pipeline and revenue targets and drive customer advocacy through meetups that align with company and team OKRs.
• Work closely with marketing, customer success, and sales teams to discuss leadership conferences and trade show sponsorship opportunities
• Develop event strategies with these teams based on objectives like lead generation, increasing product usage/speeding customer onboarding, and customer advocacy.
• Plan, coordinate, and execute on average 20 events per year with end-to-end plan and follow-up, measurement, and ROI
• Responsible for all pre-show planning and management of event coordination including but not limited to: internal team training for the event (elevator pitch, demos, etc.), securing hotel rooms and flights, support materials, pre- and post-show communications with internal event team, attendees, prospects, customers, and partners
• On average, travel with sales and/or customer success team to 12 trade shows and events per year.
• Introduce prospects to Sertifi for Frictionless Business and help secure appointments or demos
• Build strong relationships with customers, partners, and industry experts
• Ensure event display represents the Sertifi brand and is always professional
• Manage team representing Sertifi on the road (booth schedule, breaks, branded attire, behavior, etc.)
• Coordinate and manage all event inventory including booth displays and signs, demo sites, event presentations, sales and marketing collateral, prizes and giveaways, etc.

What You’ll Need to Succeed:

• Minimum of 1-2 years in an event coordinator or related role, ideally at a B2B SaaS company
• Experience organizing and coordinating multiple events simultaneously
• Exceptional oral and written communication skills
• Highly organized, decisive, and a quick problem solver
• A self-starter who is energized by people and fast-paced environments
• Ability to motivate cross-functional teams to work with you and feel great about their involvement
• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, communications, or related equivalent experience
• Ability and excitement to travel throughout North America and possibly internationally for trade shows and events

What’s in it for you

You will work in a collaborative office environment that welcomes new ideas and allows you to make an immediate impact on the team. Additionally, we offer great benefits such as: competitive salary, health/dental/vision insurance, 401k with company match, paid parental leave, pre-tax Transit Benefit Program, casual work environment, weekly team lunches, company outings, and a convenient River North location close to public transit.

Career Builder

Trade Show and Events Marketing Manager

Chicago, Illinois

Job Summary:
Help manage and oversee the majority of CareerBuilder's corporate and marketing events which includes planning, developing, executing and measuring results.

Major Responsibilities/Activities:

• Manage the day-to-day planning and execution of corporate and client facing events, industry conferences, and trade shows, including pre- and post-event communications and attendee management
• Negotiate and execute contracts for both large and small scale events
• Collaborate across departments to contribute to meeting design, agenda development, brand building, and event communications and marketing
• Partner with content team to develop strategies leveraging existing content and access to industry communities to promote events and tradeshows
• Communications: provide consistent and clear communication of events program to all stakeholders, including internal briefing documents for specified events and conferences.
• Work alongside the Marketing team to design, document, and execute innovative multi-channel marketing programs for CareerBuilder's events.
• Event Systems Administrator: responsible for effective provisioning, configuration, operation, and maintenance of event systems.
• Vendor Management: Collaborate with promotional & print vendors and maintain the best relationship possible with those vendors.
• Budget Management: You will oversee, manage, and wrap-up event budgets with internal teams and vendors
• Provide ongoing marketing support and material development for all event initiatives
• Manage and execute events starting with the RFP process, through vendor contracting, planning, registration and on-site execution
• Source new venues / locations for upcoming events
• Assist in evaluating ROI for all events
• Work as a shared resource to the sales force, and other corporate departments, in support of their event needs
• Work closely with the Events Coordinator to help develop his/her skills and learn the event planning process
• Assist the Experiential Marketing Director in executing any of his/her medium to large scale events
• Work closely with the Director in strategic planning of events calendar as far as two years in advance
• Plan, coordinate and execute additional ancillary events as they arise
  

Job Requirements:

• 5+ years working experience in a marketing/corporate events role
• Detail-oriented, team-oriented, multi-tasking pro
• Proficient in Salesforce.com
• Proficient in event app & event registration software
• Proficient in marketing automation tools (Pardot) a plus
• Bachelor's degree required, marketing concentration preferred
• Project management and contract negotiation skills essential
• Think creatively and work independently
• Excellent organizational skills essential
• Strong relationship-building and excellent customer service skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Travel 30% - 40%

Additional Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Adaptable under pressure with quick deadlines
• Think creatively and work independently
• Prioritizing responsibilities effectively
• Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail

Essential Functions:

• Knowledge of Registration Platforms and company software: Cvent, Salesforce, Brightfunnel
• Organizing and coordinating schedules
• Communicating with the public
• Creating written communication