ARE events PR or BD? Why not both.

I was at an event recently and got into a conversation about how I work with some clients on roundtable events. The discussion quickly moved to the fact that events aren't PR, they're BD. I don't think it's that cut and dry.

If we take the CIPR's definition of PR as "the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics" – then aren't events a key channel to do that? Yes, events ask us to narrow the definition of our "publics", but if we're talking about goodwill and mutual understanding there are limited better platforms than events.

Getting people in a room together, building relationships face-to-face, encouraging them to ask questions and the host to provide answers seems like a pretty great way to build mutual understanding to me.

WHERE BD MEETS PR TO CREATE MEMORABLE EVENTS

The BD goal for events is pretty clear. You want some specific people in a room to build relationships, start conversations and be front of mind when the right opportunity comes up.

But no-one wants to attend an event that feels like a sell. So the key is in creating something genuinely useful for your target audience – that's a very PR mindset.

PR in every guise is audience-first. Whether it's a reactive comment, thought leadership piece, LinkedIn content or a well-structured event, a good PR partner will ask: why is this interesting to our audience right now?

Get that right, and the event is a success. People RSVP yes, they get excited, they might even suggest other contacts you should invite. The conversation is live, the room is engaged, and your business is the one that brought the right people together around something that actually matters.

The roundtables I run work because they start with a PR question and deliver a BD outcome. The topic is timely. The invite list is specific. The people in the room feel like the event was made for them — because it was. That makes connection more authentic and follow-up more natural.

DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE

Everything I do is audience-first and that includes events. Be clear on who you want in the room and what you want to happen as a result. Only once we know exactly who we want there can we figure out how to shape the event so it's genuinely interesting to them.

The events that deliver are the ones where that question was answered before a single invite went out.