Warm before you ask: Siemens' lesson for B2B event marketers

Event marketers know the pressure of the registration count. It's the number the business asks for every Monday until the doors open. A LinkedIn case study on how Siemens promoted its presence at Hannover Messe 2026 makes a useful case for changing the order in which you ask for things, and the results suggest it's worth trying on Australian B2B events of any size.

What's happening

Siemens set out to bring the right people to its booth at Hannover Messe, the major German industrial trade fair, using free ticket registrations as the hook. Rather than launching straight into "register now" ads, it ran the campaign in three stages with LinkedIn.

The first stage asked for nothing. Thought Leader Ads, video and single image ads ran globally to earn attention and build a retargeting pool of people who engaged. Only in the second stage did lead generation start, aimed at that warmed audience with a clear registration call to action. In the third, Siemens livestreamed its session on LinkedIn Live and promoted it with Event Ads, reaching people who couldn't travel.

LinkedIn reports year-on-year results of 3.2x more leads, a 39% decrease in cost per lead and a 42% increase in lead form completion rate. That combination of cheaper and higher-converting leads is the telling part: the ask landed with people already inclined to say yes.

What it means for B2B event marketers in Australia

Most local technology events are smaller than Hannover Messe, but the dynamic is the same. A roundtable for 30 CIOs, a partner summit, an in-person Copilot workshop or a stand at a major industry conference all suffer when promotion starts two weeks out with a cold registration ad to a firmographic list. You get volume from the wrong people, high no-show rates and a sales team chasing contacts who signed up for the coffee.

The Siemens sequence suits the way Microsoft partners and B2B tech firms already work. You have subject-matter experts who can post useful perspectives ahead of the event. You have customer stories to cut into short video. And many of your events, from Microsoft-funded workshops to co-hosted briefings, have a defined target account list that makes retargeting precise.

It also changes what success means. If the first phase is designed to build familiarity, you need to measure it as part of the event, not as a separate brand activity. And post-event, the real number is pipeline from the right accounts, months later.

How to put it to work

• Add a warm-up phase to your event plan. Allow four to six weeks before the registration push for expert posts, short video and Thought Leader Ads on the event's core theme.
• Retarget engagers with the ask. Build audiences from video viewers and post engagers, then run registration ads and Lead Gen Forms to that group first.
• Keep cold registration ads small. Use them to top up, not as the main engine.
• Stream or record a key session. LinkedIn Live plus Event Ads extends reach to interstate and regional prospects who won't travel, and gives you another retargeting pool.
• Agree the real metrics upfront. Qualified attendance, meetings booked and opportunities created matter more than registrations. Report them at 30, 90 and 180 days.
• Iterate during the campaign. Shift budget to the creative and audiences that show engagement from target accounts.

How UBE Marketing can help

UBE Marketing is a marketing and events agency in Sydney, founded by Alvin Paronda to help B2B technology companies fill rooms with the right people. We plan and runs B2B technology events end to end, from promotion and LinkedIn campaigns to on-the-day delivery and follow-up, with demand generation built into the plan. If your next event needs the right people in the room, talk to our team.