Insights

Five Ways for Events to Stay Relevant (It Takes More Than Marketing)

Relevance used to come with the territory. Now associations and events have to earn it. Here’s how the strongest ones do it.

For a long time, associations and the events they run could take relevance for granted. If you were the industry’s professional body, you had the annual meeting everyone blocked out, the credential that opened doors, and people showed up because that was simply what you did. Relevance was inherent.  

That assumption is breaking, and marketing alone can’t hold it together. The organizations feeling the ground shift — softening attendance, slower renewals, an audience that no longer treats them as essential — are usually facing a structural problem wearing a marketing disguise. 

The reasons are well understood by now: The information, community and access associations and events once owned are available everywhere. 

These five shifts are where associations and events regain ground — each one part structural, one part marketing, because staying relevant now takes both.

1. Start with what your audience needs now.

Relevance begins with understanding the audience you have today, not the one you had a decade ago. Assumptions age fast, and the gap between what organizers think people want and what they actually want is wider than most expect. Freeman’s 2025 Experience Trends Report found that 78% of event organizers believe they’re delivering a standout moment for attendees, while only 40% of attendees agree.

We can close that gap with audience research, identifying what today’s members and attendees are trying to accomplish, what they value and where they’re going instead when you fall short. That insight is the foundation every other move depends on, and it’s where marketing earns its seat at the strategy table.  

What we did for National Black MBA Association: When NBMBAA wanted more of its audience to see the value of the annual conference, mdg started with research rather than a campaign — audience interviews and market sizing that became detailed personas. Those personas reshaped the messaging and segmentation and surfaced retention patterns that now guide where and how future conferences are planned.

2. Rebuild the experience around outcomes.

People come for outcomes they can act on, not for tradition. Design the experience — the sessions, the show floor, the membership itself — around the progress your audience is trying to make. Then, market that outcome rather than your history. The payoff is measurable: Freeman found that when attendees reach a moment that helps them accomplish a goal, 85% say they’ll return. Relevance and retention turn out to be the same problem, solved by the same thing — delivering value people can use.

3. Build community where your audience already is.

Relevance begins with understanding the audience you have today, not the one you had a decade ago. Assumptions age fast, and the gap between what organizers think people want and what they actually want is wider than most expect. Freeman’s 2025 Experience Trends Report found that 78% of event organizers believe they’re delivering a standout moment for attendees, while only 40% of attendees agree.

What we did for ASIS International: To help its local chapters promote membership consistently, mdg built partner toolkits — ready-to-use social graphics, copy and templates — that let chapter leaders carry the same message into their own networks. After launch, ASIS recorded its highest number of new members to date.

4. Win the next generation on purpose.

Your future relevance depends on an audience that’s changing. Freeman calls it the Now Generation — digitally native, selective with their time and clear about what they expect. They won’t inherit their predecessors’ loyalty, so it has to be earned on their terms. Design your formats, content and messaging around the ways they discover, evaluate and decide. Build the Now Gen into your programming and leadership, rather than waiting until the current audience ages out. Relevance with the incoming generation is a choice you make years before you feel the results.

What we did for the National Restaurant Association Show: mdg met the industry’s next generation where they already were — on TikTok. A creator-led campaign built user-generated content around the Show’s value to foodservice pros, driving nearly 7,000 site visits, a 90% new-user rate and a $100+ drop in cost per conversion — expanding reach among Gen Z and millennial audiences. The tactic was also a natural fit for the campaign’s theme, which featured trend speak to build currency with younger attendees in a language they’re fluent in.

5. Make the in-person experience worth showing up for.

Everything else leads here. The community you build online has to find something on-site a screen can’t deliver — hands-on access to products and expertise, conversations that build trust, the whole industry in one place at one time. That is the value only you can offer, and it’s the kind of tangible, practical moment Freeman found attendees value most. Lean into it. When the year-round relationship is strong and the in-person experience delivers what nothing else can, attending stops being a choice about a calendar and becomes a choice not to miss the one place your industry comes together.

Earning Relevance Takes Time

None of these recommendations are a quick campaign, and that’s the point. Together they’re how an organization stops assuming relevance and starts earning it. Marketing is central to all five — the research, the storytelling, the community — but it works only in service of an experience that’s worth showing up for. Get both right and relevance follows. So does growth.