Name: From Event Leads to Demos: Winning the Mindshare Battle
Uploaded: 2025-04-16T19:16:13.461Z
Duration: 59 min 28 s
Description: From Event Leads to Demos: Winning the Mindshare Battle

Transcript for "From Event Leads to Demos: Winning the Mindshare Battle": Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for April's Insider. I am so very excited, for the conversation we're about to have. But hello, everyone. For those, who haven't joined us before, I am Cindy Duvall, the director of growth marketing here at Goldcast. Today's webinar session is focused on driving pipeline from events. So let me bring up the intro slide. So today, we are joined by Tara Robertson, director director of growth marketing at, ContactMonkey. I am so, so excited for this conversation. I was just in the green room talking to her. Two growth marketing demand marketers, putting our heads together and really just kinda opening the kimono and talking through, things we've seen work and probably also many things we've seen not work. So we're gonna talk about winning the mindshare battle specifically through the lens of events. Just some housekeeping items for everyone. Share your comments, engage in the chat. We are recording this event, so, this will be available through the same link you registered with. Drop your questions in the q and a tab. We will definitely do our best to answer all of them. And if we do not, we will definitely follow-up with you to make sure you get the answer that you're looking for. And check the docs tab for helpful resources. With that, let me go through what we're covering today. TLDR, a lot. We are covering a ton. But I think we're in event season for many people. I know we at Goldcast are very much so both on a in person and virtual, perspective. And so we're gonna talk through how do we move beyond just generating leads on events and, turning events into the consideration engine, and to win more mindshare in the, minds of our prospects. We're also gonna talk about post event engagement. How do we build recall and not just book meetings? The reality is is, like, you're likely not gonna book a meeting with the majority of people you meet with, especially at something as vast as a conference or a trade show. So what do we do? Right? How do we make sure that that the juice is worth the squeeze, the investment that we're making, turns into pipeline and revenue? And then we'll go go through the different types of events, field, ABM, virtual events. I would love I'm very excited to hear kinda what Tara has seen work well for each of these variants of events. And then I know just because we have a wide range of folks joining, I'm sure everyone feels like we're on a lean team if we're even if we're on a big team. There's not enough hours in the day. There's not enough resources or budget. So what can we do? How can we work smarter, with automation and repurposing? And then lastly, how do we win by our mind share before the event? Right? I think, the event you know, if you're if you're worried about the event the day the event starts, you're late to it. And so how do we get ahead of that, and how do we make sure that we're set up for success? And lastly, like I mentioned, please put your questions into the q and a, because we will have time for q and a. With that, I'd love to welcome Tara to the stage. Tara, where are you at? I'm here. Hey, Tara. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. As a fellow demand marketer, very, very excited to learn from you. I'd love to just briefly pass it over to you to do a quick intro, tell us, where you're from, where you're where you're calling in from, where you're joining us from. Tell us a little bit about Contact Monkey, and then, anything else you'd like to share. Sure. So I'll keep it brief so we can get to it. Like you said, we have a lot to cover today. So I'm a b to b marketer. I've been in various b to b roles for about a dozen ish years now. Most recently, I was at Chili Piper where a lot of my event experience that we'll get into came into play. And I just joined ContactMonkey. It's a Toronto based startup about two months ago. I'm at, like, the sixty ish day mark, so very fresh. And ContactMonkey is essentially a tool built for managing internal comms. So we help you create, send, track, and measure all different types of internal emails and comms. Awesome. Did you say where you're you're not in Toronto, are you? I am. Yeah. So I'm normally in the office in Toronto, but I'm at home now. I actually broke my ankle last week, So you can't see it under my desk, but that's why I'm home today instead of the office. She's joining us while injured. We are so, so lucky. I'm on the way to recovery. I'm getting there. I just can't move around too much. Perfect timing, right, during busy event season to be injured, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Thankfully, we have a great events team, so I don't have to worry about it. But I love it. Alright. Let's jump right into it. So I think a good starting point for us to just talk about, you know, the b two b buying journey. I think I see stuff every other day in terms of how big the buy buying committee is. So some stats right here. 81% of buyers already have a vendor in mind before they book a demo. And so, one, I'd love I mean, we have some some questions here, but I'd love to understand, Tara. When what was the last thing you bought? And, like, what will you mind walking us through how you landed on buying that and anything else you're willing to share? Oh, I'm trying to think what's fresh. So I'm this is a very biased one, but in my new role, we actually bought Chili Piper my first week. So that's very biased because I used to work there, and I'm a shareholder. But other than that one, I would say one of the tools I most recently bought was Clay, and that was we used it both both at Chili Piper, and our ops team here at Contact Monkey uses it as well. Did you was it, like, more of a you needed it and so then you went a Chili Piper is, like, such a funny, like, instance. Right? Because you were an ex Chili Piper. But, yeah, like, did you was there a need for that and you were like, now is the time to bring it in? So for a Chili Piper, it was actually they were already in the buying cycle when I was interviewing, so it was kind of a funny meta process where they were looking to buy jewelry paper and also looking to bring me on. So kind of a unique situation. But having my take on things obviously accelerated that buying process just because I knew a lot more about the company and the product. How about Clay? Like, what when did Clay first pop up on your radar? Because we also use Clay as well. Yeah. I would say I think we were pretty early to it. So we actually hosted a dinner with Clay at Inbound last year, so that would have been last September. And, I mean, they've really blown up since then, but at the time, I didn't know too many marketers using them. And we actually started to use them around events and for outreach, specifically on events. So we would find lists of speakers, sponsors, and event websites and use Clay to enrich that for outreach ahead of events. So we can probably talk about that later. But that was the main use case, that Clay came up for. Yeah. I think Clay is, like, an interesting, you know, talking point just because I'm sure everyone is seeing, like, all of their content online. And I think I think that's the the name of the game right now. Right? It's, like, how do you get into people's mindshare, if you will, before they have that need? And I I think it's it's nice that when people have a need, you're the name that they recall. But I think, candidly speaking, like, if you weren't in that universe of their mindset before that, like, you've lost already. Right? Mhmm. So I think let's let's jump let's move in, to our next talking point. I think I don't think anyone here, is in disagreement of the fact that you need to win mindshare prior to that that buying decision. So If that topic is new to you, I would say, if you check out, Pep from Winter, he posts a ton of great content around being kind of top of mind on those buying decisions. So I would check him out if it's a new topic for you. I love it. I'm gonna jump in. I think probably what keeps a lot of event marketers up at night is I mean, beyond. Probably the entire org is addressing sales pressure and maximizing ROI. And demand marketers obviously have to manage so many channels, but through the lens of events, I'm curious, Tara. Let me move to the next one. What I mean, ever I'm sure you've gotten asked. How many meetings do we have booked? How many meetings do we have booked? How are you walking to events to ensure that, one, you do have the most amount of meetings, right, on the books? But, two, like, what kinds of other things are you thinking about when it comes to events to kind of move beyond that, like like, I I didn't even point right. There's only 55% of people, I think they say, that are in market and, like, the rest of them aren't. Like, what are we what are we doing for events to make sure that we, like, capture all of it? Yes. I would say on the prebooking meeting question, I would love to hear in the chat if anyone has done this successfully, but I've tried this at this will be my third company now, owning the events piece, and I've never successfully been able to prebook meetings for an event where people actually show up to them. It's always a struggle because things come up at an event. If you've been to a trade show, like, inbound is one that we did every year at Chili Piper. There's so much going on. Sessions run long. It's a huge venue. People are running late. They can't find the meeting room you booked. So, personally, I haven't had much success on the prebooking meeting side. Where I have seen success is prebooking things like, hey. We wanna interview you or we wanna create content together. And I know the Goldcast team does this too because that's how I met your team at Inbound last year. But things ways that you can work together and partner on getting their input on things. Maybe you wanna get their input on product, but having it more of a casual, hey. Come by our booth. Come chat. Or we'll come to you if you're another sponsor at the event. But prebooking just a straight up, let's book a demo and have you in a meeting room with a rep, I've personally never seen success on that front. What if you had to say, like if if you I mean, you're at, ContactMonkey and they're like, hey. This is what we wanna do. Like, what are you proposing instead? Yeah. So instead, I would say, let's host something more intimate with the people that we really want to have a conversation with next week and make it a real VIP invite only experience. So we actually just hosted our first invite only dinner last week in Chicago at an event, and it was the first time that Contact Monkey had tried this. It was super successful for us at Chili Piper, and we partnered with usually other sponsors at the event, other folks that we knew would be there. I got I mentioned Clay earlier, but we would find other sponsors that we had. Same ICP, we're targeting the same people. We each invite a few customers. Hopefully, there's some crossover. Your customers are my prospects or vice versa. So it's much more of a casual, let's get to know each other. What what are you working on? What problems do you have versus meet me in this stale meeting room, and I'm gonna force you to watch my demo for twenty minutes. Yeah. That's funny. I I would agree. Like, I think for me, when people outbound to me all the time, it's like, I'm way more likely to join, like, a networking type of event or an event with a cool speaker. Right? Mhmm. Unless I, like I will say, the few times that I have met about a booth for a demo, it's because I probably was already in conversation with them at that point. And so it just makes sense for us to meet in person, like, I'm sure from the rep standpoint to close that deal, in person. I Yeah. And open ops is a very different if you can get your open ops to come chat with you in person, that's huge, but I wouldn't try super cold. Cold. Can you share some of the things that you thought worked well for that event that you were doing most recently, the dinner? Yeah. So dinners in general, I would say leading with you mentioned that people that were gonna be there, but if you can lead with, hey. Some of your peers will be there, and you can actually put their LinkedIn or give a little teaser of who will actually be at that dinner, that can help a lot because that's really why people wanna carve out that two or three hours to attend a dinner. It's to learn from the people there. So that's huge. And I would also say assume nine 80 to 90% drop off even for a dinner. So, typically, we oversubscribe for dinners knowing that a couple people will drop out, things come up, people are sick, travel plans get messed up, that kind of thing. So you're saying, like, for an event that where you have, like, what, 30 seats? How how big is your actual reg list? Usually, I would aim for about 34 ish. Okay. Yeah. And then we obviously can get people to confirm in the calendar, and you can follow-up. If you if someone hasn't responded to the calendar invite, you can do some one on one follow-up as well. May I ask you a fun question? What's the coolest event you've been to? Oh, I don't know about coolest, but I'm trying to think of I guess most memorable because it feels like Yeah. Probably most memorable. This was years ago, but I got invited. It was a direct mail vendor, and they invited me to dinner. This was that inbound years ago when I didn't even know that invite only dinners were a thing. And I think it sticks in my mind because it was the first one that I got invited to. And the way they positioned it was very come learn from your peers, here's some people in marketing that are coming. And part of that, it's almost like a FOMO thing of, oh, I wanna be in the room with these people. So I don't even remember, like, what we ate or what restaurant it was, but I just remember that it was a really great crowd, and I was excited to be part of that. Yeah. I think it's it's the mix of people that you'll meet. I just went to one last night, and, like, there's so much of it that you can control in terms of, like, inviting people, like, you know, getting them registered and sending them all the comms to make sure that they don't forget that there's a man, they're incentivized to go. But there's a level of, like, you just don't know the people who are gonna show up, especially in a room full of prospects. Right? And so, I I think one thing that's helpful is, like, having an advocate there too as well to kind of to know at least, like, one person. You there's a level of predictability in terms of, like, what what they might bring up, what they might talk about, what their interests are. So I think it's interesting. So I know we we did a poll. Let's let's see if we can bring up some of the results. Let's see. Alright. So the quest first poll of the event is when do you typically start seeing ROI from your events? I think everyone wishes it was immediately after within days of the event. Yeah. Yeah. And so much of this, right, is, like, dependent on your buying cycle. But it looks like most folks, it's with one to two months out. I'm curious for the folks that, you know, are one to two months out, how long your buying cycle is? How how long is the buying cycle for an average person at ContactMonkey? It varies. Usually, around thirty days is the minimum. So it's a little longer cycles than we were working with at Chili Piper. So for your the the dinner you just hosted, when are you expecting to kinda the trickle in from that? So right now, it was a mix of customers and open ops. We didn't have anyone who was a net new lead coming to that dinner. So I would assume that that would accelerate those ops, but they're all at different stages, so it's a little bit trickier to measure. Yeah. Awesome. I wanna hear from this person that said they have immediate ROI from events, though. I'm very curious about that. Monk. Yes. Who who is seeing immediate, and would you like to be the speaker for our next insider? Yeah. That's how you should find your next ones. You're You guys are already registered for that event. I'll be on the list. I did see there was a question in the chat that I can quickly answer. Yeah. Cassie asked, do you typically ask attendees if it's okay to tease their attendance, or do you just do it? In my experience for something like a dinner, I wouldn't necessarily update the, like, sign up page with a person's name, but I would name drop in, say, a LinkedIn DM or an email and say, hey. Here's a couple people that are coming. Typically, I haven't had any concerns with that. I usually would just ask for forgiveness if something were to go wrong. But usually, people don't mind. I mean, they're attending a free dinner that you're paying for, obviously. So it's kind of a win win. Do you do you find that certain channels work better for others, especially when it comes to, like, a VIP dinner or reach Yeah. We found LinkedIn worked really well. Even people that we weren't connected with yet, I would connect with them myself and just say, hey. We're hosting something in Chicago. You're one of our favorite marketers there. We'd love to have you. And most of the time, people will respond even if they're unavailable. They'll usually get back to you. Email is getting tougher and tougher, I think, as a channel in general. But for events, I found LinkedIn works really well. I feel the same way about email, and I don't know if it's just me personally. It's just, like, so hard to like, I'm an inbox zero type of girlie or at least I aspire to be and, like, that is just not true anymore. It's impossible to do it now, the amount of pitches you get. Yeah. It's Pitches within, like, you know, if you're being partners, if you have a lot of programs that you're running on a journal, if you work with a lot of agencies on top of it. Right? And then, like, like, they're in your project management. My reminders. Right? It's Oh, yeah. It's a time. Okay. So I see that Christina sees fairly immediate, return because SDR is called down as soon as it's loaded. They also try to book meetings and confirm the calendar time at the event. Yeah. That's it. Okay. Yeah. I agree. Having SDRs versus maybe some AEs is a good mix. I like to have a mix, but having a few SDRs really helps for booking meetings, especially at a booth. If you have a booth or any big space at a trade show, they're just so eager to get those meetings booked in their name. So I find that great. Yeah. That's so so great. I'm curious because there's obviously, we've talked about trade shows. We've talked about dinners. Let's talk through, like, the various different events, especially relative to, like, ABM activation. Would love to hear from you, you know, what you've seen work well and what cases and, you know, best practices. I think we're all just desperate to hear what Tara's done. Wow. No pressure. Yeah. I would say, actually, Piper, I got to experiment with a mix of all of these, which was super fun. The toughest part for us was especially because I joined the company during COVID when pretty much all events were on pause. So our event program was really starting from scratch in in a lot of ways. We didn't have much historical data on what worked for us. So in the last last probably two years ago, we really tried all different types of events, and it was definitely a learning curve of what metrics we should set. Obviously, not every event demos booked shouldn't be the goal at every single one. As you were saying earlier, sometimes it's more of a brand awareness play, sometimes it's mindshare. So we really had to figure out which events made sense for what. And because we were a lean team, we often were trying to check a bunch of boxes at the same event, which is really tough, but we we really had to get a lot done and see our ROI from that one week that our whole marketing team was essentially offline in that an event. How are you balancing, you know, like conferences, field events, when you should be doing one over the other? Obviously, budgets are tight right now. Everyone has a book of business that they need closed yesterday. Yeah. It's again, it's tough without historical data. So I'm really lucky at ContactMonkey that our events team actually did around 50 events last year. So they really got to test the waters globally, and now we've trimmed that back to around 20 something events. So we know from last year what worked really well for us, and we're focusing in on those events versus being everywhere all throughout the year because that's a lot to be at. But I would definitely recommend, honestly, just chatting with your peers, other vendors in your industry. That's some of the best learnings I've had on events, especially some niche events that you might not have been aware of. One of the first questions I have when I'm working with a new partner is, hey. Do you mind sharing your events calendar with us? So in case we're missing anything and vice versa, we'll share ours. And I just find you can get really interesting insights from some really niche events that you hadn't even heard of because maybe they're in a different country or a different territory. Can I ask, like, what because you kinda cut back what is that? Like, half? I don't Mhmm. Yeah. Rough ish. What do you guys pull back on, and what are you doubling down on this year? Yeah. The main things we cut back on, we did a lot of experimentation with events. Again, it was a team before me, but, mostly in Europe and internationally. And we found that a lot of those leads didn't quite pan out into ops the same way that they did in North America. So we're streamlining and focusing a bit more in North America. We also I mentioned earlier, we sell to internal comms folks. So there's some crossover with corporate comms and PR. So we tried a bunch of events in that space as well, but we've trimmed back on those events where we weren't meeting our ICP. That was mainly feedback from the sales team that was on the ground. Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, that's what you do. Right? Experiment and learn. I think it's great that you're able to kinda go that last team, I guess, was able to test a lot of it Yeah. And that you were able to refine that. So one of the topics that came up, I think, when you and I first had a kickoff call was, like, running events with lean teams. And I think one thing I I remember is that we were talking about, like, enterprise companies, and, like, we don't know what it's like with enterprise companies. And I know that in talking with a lot of marketers at enterprise companies, like, no matter your company, big or small, everyone is, like, strapped. Right? And so, this is why we're landing on here. It's like, so whether you're actually on a lean team where you have, like, three people in marketing or you're just a lean solo event marketer on a big team, I'd love to hear your thoughts on, like, how you, like, go into events and plan to make sure that there's that one, like, you're making every event successful, but at the same time, that you're doing all the right things. Right? Yeah. I think it's tough because events is one of those tasks that it can kind of stretch to fill your time. So whether, like you said, whether you have a part time events person or three full time, you can keep them busy if they're doing events. There's so much to do. So really getting focused on going back to your previous slide on which events you wanna attend, the types of events, and then also what your targets and goals are at those and keeping really focused, that was the biggest key for us at Chili Piper. Because for most of the time that I was there, we did not have an events person. So it was a couple of us kind of half part time, and then we had an events freelancer to do some of the on the ground operational type stuff. So we really had to be strategic about, okay, we're going to inbound. It's a huge event. How do we stand out? What are the list of things that are must dos? And then there's always things that are kind of gonna fall through the crack. And we had to kinda be okay with that, which is tough sometimes to let things go. But So hold on. For inbound, you guys had you didn't have that marketer? No. Slim zone. Me. Yeah. And then you had a resource, like, that was do boots on the ground, pretty much. Yeah. We had a freelancer. It was super helpful because she was actually based in Boston, so she had great recommendations on things like venues for the dinner. She helped us coordinate the big party that we hosted and had great suggestions on locations for things. So as the, like, stepping in event marketing person, what were you prioritizing, for inbound, for example? Because I'm sure many people will be at the many probably are are in a similar boat to the one you're describing. Yeah. I would say the biggest things when you have a small team at a huge event like inbound are you have to get really clear with your team on what is the reason for people to come talk to us at our booth because there's if you've ever been to an event like inbound, it's so overwhelming. There's so many booths, so many things going on and craziness. So you have to get really clear on what your offer is. And I think that's one thing that if you're not an event marketer, you might kind of just be like, oh, we just put a booth up and people come to us and we leave it at that. But you have to really have some kind of offer or activation at your booth to get people excited to come talk to you. So that's the the first thing that we figure out ahead of a big trade show like Inbound. On top of that, we did a lot of work ahead of time to go through any lists that we could find. So whether it's speakerless, sponsorless, scraping those, figuring out, is there anyone on these lists we wanna talk to and meet with ahead of time? And, again, those are the people that we would invite to dinner, that we would invite to our happy hour. So we had all of that figured out before you get on the ground in Boston. So getting clear with the team is what I'm hearing, landing on the offer, and then just making sure, that on-site, everyone's kinda knows where they need to be. What Yeah. Any any interesting offers that you've run-in the past or you've been on the receiving end of? Oh, there's so many fun ones. A couple fun ones actually that we've tested here at Contact Monkey. So last week in in Bosco where was it? It was Chicago. We had a little playpen with rescue puppies. That's a really popular activation type right now, but for the internal events that we go to, that hasn't really been a trend. So we've been doing that one. And then in a previous event, we actually had a manicurist at our booth, so you could come and line up and get a manicure while while your hands are occupied. You could maybe hear the pitch or talk to one of our customers. So kind of hit two birds with one stone there. And then one that we did at inbound that was really popular, I wanna say that was two years ago, was we had a photographer for headshots. That's one that people will always line up for a picture of themselves. I've learned that over time. People just love that one. I've seen that. I don't know that I've ever done it, but that is you're seeing a lot of people have interest in that, the hedgehog. It was super popular. And because we were obviously trying to figure out ways to use our own our own product to get people to book time ahead. So we used Chili Piper to set up a router so you could book a time on our website and come by instead of just waiting in line. Because sometimes you'll go to an event, and you'll see people just standing there forever to get a headshot, but we actually usually pay for the schedule slots. It's I I love that. I feel like not enough marketers do that. I mean, I also think a lot of us don't have it don't have the opportunity to work for a cool product necessarily. Right? Like, I know previous to Goldcast, I worked in industries where it's hard to show, you know, like an ag tech, you know, growing Yeah. It's it's a luxury for sure. No. I if you're in a boat where you can't use your product, there's nothing it's like, for first, number one is, like, having a customer show their use product, and two, like, two, using it yourself. I'm in trying to that's really great. I think the the line and the queuing aspect, I go back and forth. It's like you don't want a long line, right, because it's just, like, overwhelming. But at the same time, like, how many times have you walked by, like, a place and you're like, there's a line. Like, should I be in that line? Yeah. You have that. You're worried. Like, what am I missing that yeah. Some of our phones are at Adobe, and I heard from someone who was an attendee. There was an activation where they had, like, Coke, these little like, the different Coke. It was a Coke station from my understanding. He's like, you can get different like, some Coke maybe, but they're giving out the, like, OG Coke cup that, like, Wanda cup. But one one piece was that there were so many people there. They were like, I didn't know what they were handing out, so I just got in line for it. And then and then I think the after, they were like, it was just like Coke, but there is something in there. And then everyone wanted the cup, which cracks me up because now I'm sure, like, with you having gone to so many events, at this point, I'm just like, I don't I don't really want stuff. Like, I don't Yeah. So I'll stand in line for something. It has to be really cool now because I've been to so like you said, I've been to so one actually that stands out, again, from inbound last year was AdRoll actually had people, screen printing t shirts at their booth so you could actually see them. And they were, like, they were in the brat green, so that lime green, and they said ABM. So I was like, I'm lining up for this. This is the one thing. Jillian has one too. But that's the one thing at Inbound that I was like, this is for me. This is for me. And that's going that's knowing your audience for sure. Sorry. Who's the vendor you said that did it? It was AdRoll. Oh, AdRoll. Okay. I feel like I had a Marketo summit a long, long time ago, and I think LeanData was doing that. And I remember Oh, interesting. Yeah. It's a memorable thing. Well, it's memorable because it's actually really cool to watch them make the shirt. Mhmm. Like, I didn't realize that's how you do it, but then the other part, immediately my brain's like, I don't know that I would wanna do this, like, at at a show. I can't remember it in, like, the screen printing ink. You know? But I think it's cool. It's cool to be able to, like, pick your your shirt and then have them print Yeah. And then probably be in your size. Because how many times are people like Oh, they're never in your size. Yeah. Do we have extra extra small? It's like, well, I don't fit either of those sizes. Any only because this is, like, personally very fun to me. Any other cool swag thing that you've gotten over time? Honestly, I'm not a big swag person. Like I said, it has to be super targeted and personalized. This going back to what we were saying earlier, this isn't swag, but another thing we did at our booth at inbound last year that helped going back to that ROI question because we were in a position where most of the people we wanted to talk to were actually other sponsors and vendors at inbound. So the main reason to come by our booth was we actually had a live dashboard of what our ROI from the booth was, and I was able to build that with how many people had booked meetings with us on-site. And then we had some calculations on rough ROI, and rough like, we know how many people are gonna show up to the meeting after the fact so we could make a guesstimate of what the opportunity values would be. And that was something that was just wasn't very pretty, but I just had a dashboard on literally a slide that I had to refresh. And people would come by and check-in with me and ask how things were going because they wanted to know if it was worth it for a booth next year, and they were curious about that. I ask that a lot at Joe's that I Same. Yeah. Like, are you coming? I actually have had a experience where I didn't think the show floor was, like, that, like, full, but every vendor she was like, no. We're coming back. It was a really, really good show for us. I'm like, just hard to tell sometimes. Yeah. It's sometimes that's what you just say. Who your audience is. Right? Like, I think yeah. I think you also, like, have blinders on if you just, like, know that you don't sell to so many people there. It's hard to tell that, like, a lot of the people that you need to talk to are are actually there. I in the comments saying, at Salesforce last year, Forter was engraving glass cups. It was their favorite giveaway. Who doesn't? Custom silk scarves and gold foil. That's fancy. Yeah. We actually had our mind share events a few weeks ago last month. Wow. I can't believe it's been a month. We were handing out pod recorders. So, like an email notetaker, if you will. And we had, I think, foil gold foil names engraved on them as well. So I know that I I know for a lot of people, it was like, what is this? And I actually was just talking about it at an event I was at last night. It was like, this is what it does. It's so cool. That's fine. Another one I really like are anything that you can that's kind of consumable just because I hate having things that are kind of gonna go in the landfill later. But at Chili Piper, our little mini hot sauces were really popular because people would say, like, oh, I finished mine, and now I want another one or I wanna give it to a friend. I I actually remember Chili Piper's chili sauce. That's funny. Mhmm. I'm not a big, like, consumable person. I think I'm too picky about the things I would, like, eat and stuff, and so I'm like, no big I'm good. Yeah. I will take, like, hand sanitizer or, like, hand wipes, like, that stuff that Mhmm. You that I always wish I had, especially on a plane. Like, things you wish you on a plane, but you're like, I didn't pack that because I was so worried packing. Yeah. That's smart because most people are flying home. So Yes. I think to wrap up the running events with lean teams, I think one concept, we talked about or I don't we talked about at least in the prep calls was, like, get getting to, like, a good enough and MVP of events. I think we all probably, at some level, suffer from perfectionist syndrome, and so we wanted to be the best thing there ever was. But, you know, in the spirit of being agile, you know, and trying to tackle all the work that we have, would love to hear your thoughts on how to ensure that, you know, what is good enough and how to think think through. Like, you can't possibly do all the things you wanna do, so how do we prioritize what we should do? Yeah. Usually, what I would do is have a meeting pretty much as soon as we confirm that we're sponsoring. If it's a big one, like, inbound, pretty much as soon as we can as soon as we've signed that deal. And then we figure out what does MVP look like for us for this event, and we actually talk it through with maybe your cofounders need to be involved or your CMO, whoever is the one signing off and you're participating. Another big one in this category is being selective about who you send with you to the event. So we mentioned earlier that sending BDRs can be really helpful, but I also like to be picky and send people that I know will help without me having to ask because there's so much stress. At an in person event, things are gonna go wrong. You're gonna need someone that can help you if, like, oh, the setup company didn't give us a dongle to connect my laptop to this monitor, so someone has to run to Target and get that. Or we ran out of socks, so we need to figure out, like, how to get some shipped here by tomorrow. So that kind of thing, just having the team on the ground that can really support that MVP and make sure that it's a success. I'm curious because I have a few horror stories. Like, have what was the worst event you've done? And, like, what what made it so terrible? I'm trying to think. I think I've been pretty lucky, to be honest. I haven't really had a worst I did this was years and years ago, but we sponsored Marketo Summit a long, long time ago. And it was our first time sponsoring, but they had for whatever reason, the sponsor hall was in kind of a separate building than the rest of the event, so it was very low traffic. And that was one of the first events that I had been looped in on to lead, and it was so stressful because we weren't getting any foot traffic at all to the booth. And that's all I remember is being up at night of, like, what are we gonna do? So we ended up just kind of having reps check out the sessions. We had a customer session, so we made sure to go to that and connect with people there. But the actual booth part was kind of a flop. Yeah. Yeah. My horror stories around it is actually I think both times, UPS or FedEx didn't deliver our swags or, like, stuff in time. So we first had a team in, like, London, and I think they just had a tabletop. So it wasn't even, like, that much stuff, but our package got trapped in customs. And so I would say for any anyone, like, venturing into the global space, like, account for customs, it is a thing, and they do hold your packages. And it it was such a mess because they ended up I asked them at some point, like, just, like, return it, and they ended up the day after the event ended. And then I had to have someone, like, go find it and ship it back. The second time was a similar situation as well where none of our stuff arrived for a a booth, I think, in Vegas. And we, we had so many, like, jokes about what we're gonna do. We were like, let's go buy, like, shooters and put print logos at FedEx and just tape our logo on it. And then, of course, there was a moment, like, are we allowed to hand out, like, shots to people? Yeah. I I always like to ask that because I think from the outside in, it's like like, it looks like no one has, like, a bad event, and they're certainly Oh, everyone has. Yeah. Yeah. We had one other thing with customs. We ran into it. That reminded me. We ran into it quite a bit with our hot sauce because it's because it is a consumable. Depending on the country, we would get it would get stuck at certain places. So we definitely had at least one small event, and I can't remember which one, in Europe where it didn't make it. And we had a box of hot sauce just somewhere in some warehouse that we never got back. I know. I'm like, at that point, you're just like, it's a loss. Yeah. It's not worth it to ship it again. Like, what are we gonna do with a hundred hot sauces now? I see. I'm seeing stuff stuff in the comments about, booth vendor coming in late for setup, being up till 4AM before getting all three booths, finalized with finishing touches. Oh, man. I can only imagine. Having a forklift driver drive over inch a transmission display. And then breaking that display. Oh, man. Oh, man. That is true though. Oh my god. Have definitely shipped touch screens to have it, like, arrive without a stand before. So, like, just not usable. I think it's just Flat on a table and, like, no one can use it. I hope so. So, lastly, before we go into q and a, I think let's just, you know, summarize some of the stuff here. So events, clearly between you and I, like, we know that is a very, you know, important channel that's alive and well. Let's let's talk through how do you win mindshare before an event. Some thoughts here. Use social and email marketing great anticipation, potentially hosting a webinar, releasing a teaser. What things have you what things do you always go to? Like, it's a must or else that event's gonna be a miss pre event. Yeah. I would say the biggest thing that I always try to do is if we have other partners or customers at the event that are either speaking or also exhibiting, really trying to focus on them versus us where we can. Especially if it's a customer speaking, we try to make sure that they get as many people to that session as we can. I really I still cringe when I see people posting, like, come meet me at Booth A Hundred And 37. It just it's doesn't really mean anything to anyone but you. So really just post things like, hey. Our customer is gonna be speaking on this day. Here's where you can learn about it. And then anything that you have going kind of on the off-site of the event. So if you have a dinner, if you have a party, at Chili Piper, we really like to partner with others in our space and host things like happy hours to get the most of the event. So anything that you can host kind of offside, even if you're not exhibiting at an event, you can get a ton of ROI from doing those little side events with partners. So really focusing on that versus, again, just come meet at our booth and figure out what the strategy is, why should they come by, and what that looks like. In terms of, like, who amongst your internal team, like, who's doing what? I'm you know, obviously, marketing's covering their bases. Like, how involved are other parts of the company in terms of, like, events? It really depends. I've been on some teams where they really like to send someone from product to trade shows and have them and that was kind of part of the draw to come to the booth was like, hey. Come meet the product manager for this product. Talk to them live about your questions. So that could be a great draw for customers if you know a lot of your customers will be at an event. But, typically, it's been for me, more on the marketing side. And then if you have kind of a face of your company, like a cofounder or CEO type who people will really recognize and know, you might wanna be posting the event updates from them versus your company page. Okay. For pre event, is the whole company posting about the event? Is it just the people attending? It depends. So, usually, we would focus on pretty heavy on the people that will be there because, obviously, their network wants to meet them in person probably, hopefully, wants to see them in person. So they would post for sure. And then where we would get help from the rest of the company is, say, we're two weeks out and our dinner isn't quite full yet, so we need to drum up some extra attention on it or say, we have a happy hour with a partner. And for whatever reason, it's not full yet. Maybe someone dropped the ball in sending enough emails or getting the word out. So we would that's where I would rely on the rest of the team is when it's, like, two to three weeks out and you really need that extra push. But I wouldn't do that every single time because it can get pretty stale if you don't need it. Do you ever, my own curiosity here, do you ever put ad dollars behind promoting an event, boosting a post for someone about it? Like, what are your thoughts on paid ads relative to pre event marketing? That's a good question. So I've actually tried thankfully, I haven't really needed to do pre event because I've always had pretty successful outreach, like I said, on LinkedIn for dinners. We do a pretty good job on email here too. So I haven't had to put any dollars ahead of time. Where I have experimented is at the actual event with things like, hey. We really need to drive booth traffic. Can we try some really tight geotargeted ads? I can't say that that did much, to be totally honest Yeah. Because it's so hard to track. But we wanted to make sure that people at that event saw our brand even if they didn't happen to come by the booth. So that was the justification. And if you're doing really tight geotargeting with something like Meta, it can be super affordable. So it was easy to justify. So so you'd okay. So I'm the same where I I'm like, I just haven't seen, you know, honestly, like, registrations or meetings come in, appointments. Yeah. I see. Ads. But I'm definitely seeing like, I think I saw winter's ad being promoted for spring. Mhmm. It was interesting because it was it was from, I think, Peeps account maybe. But yeah. So I don't know. It's it's always evolving. I feel like you never know. I think one thing in demand for sure is, like, what wasn't working could work tomorrow, what was working could stop working. Yeah. I will say I was answering your question from the frame of mind of a trade show that we're going to, not a hosted, like, our own event. I think it's totally different if you wanna put your brand budget behind your own hosted event. But Have you seen success? Necessarily do that for a trade show. I mean, have have you seen any have you done that? Have you seen success for, like, a hosted event? So I haven't hosted a ton. The big one at Chili Piper, they hosted it, like, a month or two after I left, so I didn't have a ton of exposure to that one. But we're hosting our own event here in Toronto in June, so we'll probably be experimenting with some paid there. Awesome. We'll have that. Tuned. I'll let you know how that goes. I forgot too. Let me see the next slide. So post event. So I know we started off being like, it's really hard to get demos, meetings on-site. So what kinds of things should everyone think through post event? Right? So got those few meetings. What are we doing with this the list after? What should we be doing? What kinds of things have you seen success successfully work, I should say? I would say this starts while you're at the booth too or even before is making sure that when you do talk to someone who's in in your ICP and they're interested, there's a super easy way for them to book that follow-up meeting. So, obviously, we used to, like, Piper, but I won't get into that. So just having it super simple when you do talk to someone who's interested to make it, like, hey. I know we're busy at this trade show, but let's book a time for next week when we both have a little more free time. Get that scheduled, and then you can follow-up directly with them. So that's one segment of the people that you meet. And then you're also always gonna have that list of people that maybe there are things like badge scans, they came to a session, they came to your booth. So I would have a plan for automating that routing ahead of time so that you're not scrambling when you get back to the office because the worst thing you can do is sit on those leads because by the say, the event wraps on a Friday, if you haven't already emailed them on Monday or Tuesday, they've gotten probably dozens of follow-up emails already from a large trade show. So you don't wanna be the last person to email them because that's where it really gets dropped. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. Alright. Let's see what what questions do we have. Just as a reminder, please drop your questions into the q and a tab. Alright. Okay. So the first question we have is, what is the best way to get someone to commit to your dinner when they have so many options? This is a tricky one, especially if you're targeting, like, say, the VP CMO type people. Everyone is also targeting those people. So, again, it's if you can share who else will be there, that's their peer. That seems to work super well. And, also, again, being early. So if you have a dinner booked, even if it's two or three months out, getting that on their calendar now can really help because it's just an easier way to say no to someone else when they already have that commitment on their calendar. So an event two to three months out, you're you're promoting now? Ideally, if it's something like inbound because they're gonna be getting invites nonstop for dinner. That's funny. I was like, I think that question was so relevant because inbound, like, it's on Dreamforce. So, like, so much going on. Yeah. For a smaller event, you don't need to invite them three months out. But for a big one like that, I would try if you can. Okay. So for inbound, you said two to three months out. The the next question is how far out do you start inviting attendees to dinner outside events? So Not too many. Let's say not inbound related or potentially a conference of a much smaller scale. What are your tips? Yeah. I would say as soon as you confirm the venue and you are set on the ICP that you want to attend, I would start. What I would recommend is starting with a handful of customers because they're more likely to say yes. They already know you have a relationship. And then that way, you can fill in the dinner around them. Another thing, if you're planning it a little later than you wanted, which happens a lot, is if you have just a handful of spots left, you could email everyone that's coming or maybe handpick a few people and say, hey. We have a couple we someone just dropped out or we have a couple of spots. Can you do you have a peer that you wanna bring, or is there someone on your team you'd like us to invite? And that can work really well too because I think you brought up earlier, Cindy. You never know who's gonna be there and if it's gonna be the best use of time. But if you know, oh, my coworker is gonna be there. I never get to see him in person, so this would be a great time to connect. Then there's no reason for you to drop it. Yeah. I we're experimenting with that as well. Like, how do we encourage because one thing I've been hearing with some of the events we've been planning is that they would go like, the them and their friend who works in the space would go, but, like, they're at the park. Right? And so knowing that, if you can bring a friend, right, like, how do we how do we offer that to people but also, like, try to avoid, oh, I'm just gonna bring my random friend so we can, like out. So I I definitely, think that coming with a a colleague or someone else is, like, one way. Actually, most recently for me, I was telling folks, for a VIP dinner, I it was out of the way. I got it really last minute, and I was interested very much so because of the speaker or the other attendee list. Mhmm. Also because I was like, oh, I have a colleague, like a peer that's in the biz who would, like, add a lot of value to this dinner. And I think for sure, if at any point in the day, she would have been like, I'm gonna bail. I probably would have bailed myself because we like, we really want it. And it was the best experience. And the funny part too is the names that were circulated prior to the event that I wanted to see the some of those folks didn't even show up, and I really wanted to talk with them. And so I tried to connect with them, you know, as I could have before the event. But, like, the folks I met at the event were were great. And so, it's just funny on both sides. It's like, as a court organizer event, you're like, you don't know who's gonna show up, but as, like, an attendee, it's like sometimes it's better than you could have imagined for yourself. Mhmm. The next question I have for you is how do you delineate roles and responsibilities for events between growth marketing and events leaders? Yeah. This is a great question. It really depends, I would say, on the structure of your team. So if you're lucky enough to have an events team and function, then you're in a very different spot than if you're, say, a growth marketer who's doing half her time spending on events. So very different situation. But assuming it sounds like you have both, the way that I've split it up in the past is that the events team is really responsible for execution and getting people there, getting people excited about our activations, and really just owning the whole event execution wise. And then the growth marketing or maybe your ops team owns things like, what are the lists that we can invite, what segments do we have that make sense to email, and then owning what that follow-up looks like with sales typically falls to growth or ops as well. Did I miss anything on that, Cindy? No. I I mean, I think it definitely depends. It depends on the team is for sure, but, I think what you laid out, I'm definitely in agreement with. Zachary has a question. We are going to our first event at the April. Oh, I didn't even see all of this. Any best practices for first timers to ensure we walk away with leads? Best way to collect contact info, specifics that drive leads, types of content. So, Tara, pretty much you're in your playbook. Please hand it over. Yeah. Sure. So this sounds I'm assuming that you're a sponsor based on this question, but I could be wrong. I would say if you're worried about being too pushy, you're probably not. People that are too pushy at events, I don't think that they have that self awareness. So you already have that self awareness, so I think you're good. In terms of collecting contact info, again, it depends if you're a sponsor. If you're sponsoring, like, a they'll give you a way to collect that contact info. That'll be built into your sponsorship. If it's not, then you might wanna do something like having a form on an iPad at your booth where you can have people fill in their information if they wanna hear more from you. Mhmm. Any specifics that drive leads? Yeah. I would say in terms of connecting after the event, I would work with whether it's your BDR or SDR team, whoever else typically owns those inbound leads that the marketing team brings in and figure out what that cadence looks like, whether it's they give them a call, then they send an obviously, you can sequence this out in tools like SalesLoft. But, checking in on what they're already doing with the different types of leads the marketing is handing over, this is really just one more for them to to out later for sure. I think, oh, yeah. You're breaking up a bit for me. But I I agree. I think there's, obviously, one, so many things to do. But it it really I think a lot of it comes down to, like, your audience and your prospect. Like, what what what do they what's of value to them? Right? Like, why should they why should they come talk to you? Yeah. What are you solving? And then even from a content piece, I've, like, heard a lot of people say, like, you know, like, get leave behinds, marketing collateral. Mhmm. And it's like, I've been in industries where people love that. And, like, they they literally come by just to grab it, and they'll look at it later. And then, obviously, I've seen that where they all are in the trash, in the hotel room, or Yeah. Way out in the lobby. I think my tips on the contact piece is, like, Clay is a very useful tool for things like that. If you get a list, that's really great. Sales Navigator is a really good tool as well. Clay to look for folks that are in your ICP. And then with just on a very basic level for, like, making sure people show up, I think we forget in the hustle bustle of things, like, just friendly reminders. You know? Not not being too intrusive, which I think having the self awareness already and wondering if you're being too pushy gets you ahead of that. But having a simple text, I mean, like, see you tomorrow. You know? Don't forget. Or, like, sending them an email and being, like, here's some materials in advance. I think that goes a long way. Let's see. What other questions do we have? Oh my gosh. Couple more. Alright. Couple more to go through. Mhmm. K. What are the top three things that indicate to you that your event was successful? Oh, again, it really depends on the type of event and what your goals are. So I would decide on your goals ahead of time. They can be so different. So, for example, for us at Chili Piper, when we hosted things like parties or happy hours, we would send a survey after the fact, and we would essentially have an NPS score for the party and decide if it was successful that way. Because, obviously, you you're looking at things like attendance rate, did they show up? But at something with, say, a 50 people, you're not talking to every single person, so we would use post event surveys to collect that feedback. And that's also a really good time to just another soft ask for if they're interested in a demo or learning more about your product. It's just another way to get that in there. So, yeah, it's not really top three, but that's just one idea of how to measure a more nontraditional type of event. I'm gonna jump to another question because it's kinda tied to your response. But do you have any tips, for post event strategy that helps you stay top of mind? So you started off with, like, post events today. What other things should thinking about? Yeah. I would think about again, it goes back to what your offer was and why they came. So was it a dinner and they wanted to connect with people? Then make sure you're making those connections even if it's a simple email of, like, hey. Here's all the LinkedIns of everyone that came. Loved connecting with this group, hope we can stay in touch. That's a great way to stay top of mind. If it's they came by your booth and they wanted whatever your activation was, then I would try to tie that activation back into your nurture some some way. So it really depends on what that reason was for them to stop and chat with your team. And then another thing is, typically, I would recommend just putting these lists into your regular remarketing nurtures. So whether you're running LinkedIn, Meta, whatever the combination is, and that way their brand will naturally be top of mind for them post event. Obviously, making sure that you're not spending money on people that are outside your ICP, but cleaning up those lists first. Man, spending money outside of your ICP is, like, the name of the game when it comes to It happens. You know, the amount of money you can burn off that you're like, that's not who I Especially on LinkedIn, it gets expensive. So, yeah, be careful. I think the last question I saw that we'll take today is, in general, what are you finding to be a good ratio of proprietary or owned events versus third party events? It's a tough one because I've never had a huge events team where we were doing a ton of our own hosted events. So I think for me, I'm I'm always experimenting to find what that perfect ratio looks like. But I would say if you're hosting your own, you need bandwidth and time to do that properly. So I wouldn't rush to that. I would experiment with third party events first. Maybe tack on a small dinner, see if people can if you can get the right people in the room, get them excited, and then go from there. I I was gonna say that before you beat me to it. I think, I think that the owned event, unless there's a really high demand from your, like, customer base. Like, people are actively asking for it. I definitely think that the gateway into it is to, like, tack it on to a bigger event that whether you're at or not, to see how that goes. It's always nice to see if you catch the tailwind or get ahead of the show. Yeah. And experiment with virtual, see what topics people are interested in. But you'd be surprised how hard it is to get people to an event that's just hosted by you. Even if you give away free tickets, give away tons of offers, it's it's really tough to get people to give up a few days of work to come to your event. It's tough to get them to register and then to show up. It's like Mhmm. So yeah. So It's a full time job. Yeah. Yep. For sure. Well, thank you so much, Tara. I had a blast. Hope you did as well. We're we're definitely gonna look to see how your your event goes, in the coming weeks, and we'd love to have you back to hear, the retro on that. But with that, thank you everyone else for joining us for this month's Insider. We hope to see you at the next one. Please look out for that registration. And like I mentioned to everyone, this is recorded and will be available on demand through the link, that you used to sign in. So thank you so much. Hope everyone has a wonderful day, and enjoy the rest of the week. Bye, all.