The Future of Conference Video …Prepare for a Video Sprint!

I’ve written about the emerging part I think video has to play in the future of B2B events many times (Here, here, and here amongst a few…).  

 

 

I believe it can help promote events, enhance the on-site experience, and extend learning beyond the conference room or exhibition hall into the wider community, all of which helps promote your event.

Through an excellent guest post on the excellent site Conference basics (and @gchicco) by Gabriel Shalom, founder of the KS12 Creative Studio I just had an insight into what that future might look like. You can read all about here: http://www.videosprint.net/  (including some great examples) or better still visit this post on Conference Basics and here Gabriel tell you about his business model.

The most interesting aspects of Gabriels model is the image above (I also liked how there wasn’t any shots of a speaker podium or power points, or people entering and leaving the conference hall but I digress). Gabriel outlines how video can help extend the conversation, the sharing, the learning and the networking both at the event, into the hallways, the online back channels, and after the event into the wider business community by leveraging social media. The future of conference marketing involves video, but like all tools, it will be how you wield it that will make the difference.

Boring Boring Boring…

That’s the knock on most business to business conferences… and certainly the main theme in this great piece “The Posh, Predictible World of Business Conferences” by Eric Garland (Thanks @whoisdarwin for sharing). Eric makes some fantastic points, and they are all true.

The challenge is for event organizers to break the “2 speaker/coffee/2 speaker/lunch/2 speaker/coffee/2 speaker /cocktail” mold, and never has the need to do so been so high. If we want our events to resonate with our audience and cut through all the noise, we have to deliver a different experience. Likely it will involve more work not less, including more speakers (talking less), professional moderators, more flexibile agendas, more interaction, less power point, and more immersive experiences that will require different venues and more site tours. 

With this in mind it was also refreshing to see this great concept from our very own IQPC team at Defence IQ: Live vehicle testing at The Internation Armored Vehicles Show. Anything that promises an experience that includes “sinusoidal waves” and “rough goings” is guaranteed to break the mold, you can’t exactly test drive an armored vehicle online.

I also love this: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/ 20 slides, 20 seconds each. Then the PPT gets turned off!

I also think the unconference format holds great potential.

Giving delegates these type of immersive experiences is the future of B2B events!

The 4 P’s of B2B Conference Marketing

I recently received this great image from Hugh MacLeod:

Hugh blogs at www.gapingvoid.com and has written multiple books (I recommend subscribing to the blog and reading the books). This one image struck a chord, which Hugh tends to do. I think like all marketers chasing the next big social media trend, we are guilty of sometimes forgetting the basics. So here’s my take on the basic 4P’s of marketing applied to B2B Conference Marketing:

Product – So many different factors combine to make up our product, speakers, topics, venue, location, lighting, staging, food the audience itself and the list could go on and on. Yet never before has the product been under so much pressure to change or adapt. The internet has changed the way we develop and deliver conferences, it has also dramatically changed one of the most basic benefits of a conference (but not often discussed), networking. The days of 16 speakers over 2 days committing murder by power point in a dark hotel banquet room are numbered… how will your product adapt? Beyond the basic product characteristics I think many organizations in the B2B conference game struggle to actually define the product (or is it a service?). All that said…. Great product solves 99% of all your marketing issues.

Price – The forgotten P, often set in advance without consideration for the competition, alternate sources of your information,  alternate sources of networking, costs of attending (beyond registration) and sometimes, basic considerations for the cost of delivery. Also worth considering your pricing strategy in context of your product life cycle. Developing a good pricing model that delivers the right number of delegates is also more than just setting discounts. How did you come up with your price?

Place – or the venue, is an essential part of the product in most events, it’s where the product comes alive. Selecting a location convenient for the audience, or the most effective for information exchange, or reflective of the brand, or for networking can all have a massive impact on the event.

Promotion – I think I have written enough about this one in the past.

I also think B2B conference marketing is more service marketing than product marketing so I would add the P’s of service marketing:

People – People typically define the service, but for B2B conferences people can sometimes define the product. This is not as simple as a good registration process, excellent customer service or just delivering on the day, all of which are hard enough on their own. Making sure our speakers are fully prepared and trained to lead an interactive and informative session is often overlooked. Being an expert on a given topic doesn’t always make for a great presenter, so we need to work harder with speakers, delegates and sponsors to make the event as effective as possible. For some very effective events a single person can literally be the event!

Process – The service process is how we help the delegates (& sponsors) meet their goals. How we deliver the customer experience is what will ultimately define the brand.

Physical Evidence – It would be easy to limit this to the physical venue for an event, but I think B2B conferences need to go beyond this to build stories of improvement that can provide physical evidence of how their event created changed or helped a sponsor meet their target. These are not simple testimonials, they must go beyond the quotation marks.

This is only a quick (light-hearted) review from my opinion, I think if you can use these as the foundations of your strategy or marketing mix you will be well on your way to success. Want a deeper refresher on the principles of marketing read this.

The State of B2B Event Marketing

I believe it’s a great time to be in marketing and in events. Social media, social networking and the internet in general are driving sweeping changes.

So with this in mind I recently watched a webinar on the State of B2B Event Marketing put together by B2B magazine featuring John DiStefano, Research Director at B2B, and Maria Pergolino, Senior Director of Marketing for Marketo. Unfortunately it was more directed at the potential impact of marketing automation rather than the actual state of B2B events, it would have also been nice to get a few big event sponsors on the panel, but it did raise some good points based on some very good scientific research.

According to the research B2B companies invest in 26 events a year, 14 of their own company led events and 12 third-party events, representing 20% of their marketing budget. Interesting this is versus 5% on social media! Even more interesting in terms of driving results, third-party events delivered 61% of all the revenue from events.

Not surprisingly, the three top goals for B2B companies with their events is lead generation, customer engagement and branding. As a result of the focus on lead generation, the measurement of those leads through the corporate sales funnels is becoming even more important. This is where more marketing automation can kick in.

But more importantly for professional B2B event organizes, we must ensure we are delivering the right level of leads and are driving customer engagement for sponsors through our events. Even more importantly, we need to recognize this new focus on measurement and help our sponsors (or partners) gain more intelligence through the process. As sponsorship revenues become more and more important to third-party event organizers so to does ensuring we exceed their expectations.

I think this means third-party organizers also need to consider more changes:

Creating products that may be designed for sponsors customers at various levels of the sales funnel. Segmenting or streaming events to allow customers at different stages of the buying cycle to have different information and different interactions with sponsors. Creating mini events for existing customers vs new leads. Crafting the content to help drive new engagements or up/cross sell existing customers into deeper engagements. Also providing pre and post event opportunities for enhanced networking both online and off.

From a marketing point of view it may also mean crafting different messages or content marketing to the various stages of the vendors buying cycle. And as always tailoring those messages to different channels.

It also means (capturing and) providing more data to our sponsors, pre and post event. More information on who is attending, why, what they hope to get out of the event, what their budgets are etc. and then helping sponsors with the measurement and tracking of these leads post event. Providing the data and utilizing our social networks to make sure we continue the engagement for sponsors post event will mean more return sponsors.

Interpreting Some Fascinating Event Marketing Stats

Constant Contact and Hub Spot recently published an ebook on “Fascinating Event Marketing Stats”. I haven’t seen the actual results of the survey but their presentation made some interesting reading.

Here’s my interpretation of some of their key findings:

68% of B2B companies rate events as important. Clearly still a valued marketing channel for a lot of companies. Top 2 reasons for running events, in order, are education and lead generation. Showing again how important it is to deliver a quality audience to sponsors and a strong educational opportunity for delegates.

Educational events included classes, workshops, training, seminars, and conferences. Some what conspicuously missing in my opinion are webinars or online/distant learning, this is an ever growing option for many B2B companies trying to reach time (and cost) sensitive executives.

Non-Profits host more conferences than B2B and B2C companies combined. Combined with the fact (also in the report) that most companies don’t charge for events (59% of B2B’s never charge), it highlights the need for paid events to deliver a superior networking and educational experience.

The top five promotional channels are not surprising: Email, own website, word of mouth, mail and phone calls. The phone came in only 5% more than social media, yet almost 60% said they rely on social media, showing the growing importance of being part of the conversation and integrating social media into your communication mix. The top five also show how important a solid database remains to event marketers, but interesting that database didn’t rate a mention in the report.

47% still use direct mail – Which is very surprising given the news USPS looks to be in financial trouble and the falling response rates of direct mail. Either, a lot of event marketers are sticking with this tried and tested channel or they fear replacing it with newer online channels or those online channels still aren’t delivering a strong enough response.

Only 11% use blogging? This is staggering… but probably highlights a broader content or thought leadership challenge faced by most event marketers.

Perhaps most interestingly (but not surprisingly and somewhat repetitive) the top 5 challenges for event marketers:
1.    Getting people to respond to invites
2.    Getting people to pay attention to invites
3.    Minimizing no-shows
4.    Getting people to the event
5.    Confirming who’s attending

So the challenge for all event marketers is the same, getting qualified executives to attend your event. Making it happen is part art, part science and all marketing! A quality product, with great messaging delivered via a multi-channel marketing plan.

Case Study: Email Marketing for Web 2.0

A while back I received this great email for the web2.0 conference. It struck me as a great email case study to highlight for conference marketers, it’s an excellent email and a remarkable piece of content tied together into an amazing piece of conference marketing.

The email has a lot of valuable points, but for me the highlights are:

• The from address is two of the most influential people in the space – You open it ASAP.
• In case you forgot there’s a photo of them talking to one of the most powerful men in the world in the header.
• There is a clear call to action – Register Now & Save, repeated 4 times – twice as a button, twice as a link (not too much but just enough).
• It links to an amazing interactive piece of content, a blog post explaining it and to the conference page. More value and engagement with the audience, past and present.
• It has the main social media sharing tools and ways to stay engaged (if you want).
• A strong tie into last year including – A highlight that this amazing piece of content has been updated, and made more interactive, video, slides and photos from last year in case you forgot what an amazing event you attended. And how they are planning to delve deeper this year.
• Still highlights speakers (with photos – they are real people!) and you can check out how they crowd sourced the event with the advisory board.

The content and the blog post also help drive the engagement:

• The map (content piece) is interactive, it pulls you in, if you are into the topic.
• The blog post is informative and also pulls you into the notion behind the event (with some very valuable insight and data).
• Both are aligned to the topic area, viral, interactive and highly relevant to the topic.

I’m not saying every event needs interactive maps or infographics, but we should be working on remarkable content like this that drives engagement and think about how we communicate our event VP in different formats whilst still driving registrations. Of course, it’s not perfect, there are some improvements I (and no doubt you) would make, but….. compare this to the last email you sent for your event?

A Conference Marketers Mindset

A colleague recently forwarded me this great blog post from Future Buzz which happened to be commenting on another blog post at Six Pixels of Separation, both posts are on how the modern marketer needs to think like a publisher, essentially they need to have a Publishers mindset.

I agree, wholeheartedly, but I prefer “Movie Producer Mindset”, a movie producer is more aligned to event marketing than publishing. A movie, might have a sequel or it might not, like a conference. It should also have star power, like a conference. It should also have a strong story to share that’s relevant to a particular audience, like a conference. So you need the same mind set as Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino or Steven Spielberg! Lights, Cameras, Action!

The traditional mindset of an event marketer is to find the audience and push your message out, through efficient use of direct mail, email and other channels. But in order to be successful in cutting through the noise and the range of information and networking opportunities out there today, event marketers need to have a different mindset. I would characterize this mind set with these main qualities:

A block buster mentality – Why will this event be huge? what’s different? when did it become different? who’d driving the change? how do we best capture this change? what will capture peoples attention and how will we keep them engaged.

Agile Communicators – We need to communicate frequently, both internally and externally. We need to create remarkable content that will spread and also create immediacy.

We can think like the customer – We are constantly thinking about “ways in”, how are new and old customer going to find a way into this new event, what’s the best way to give them insight into the event without them being there.  What part of the event is most relevant to them.

A story teller’s mind set – There needs to be a beginning, middle and an end. Preferably there is also some twist, some notion of improvement post event.

Consistency – We must have consistency in our messaging across all of our channels. We also need to consistently produce quality events that resonate with the market. (All said whilst being guilty of not being the most consistent publisher with this blog….Irony will be left for another post).

Sharing – We act as aggregators of niche content from multiple sources, creating an opportunity for people who can and can’t attend the event to benefit. We also incorporate others in the messaging, finding the influencers.

I think we also like the project management aspect of the role, starting and finishing something quickly, learning from the results and doing it better next time, refining the craft and art of conference marketing as we go. We ship, but we learn as much from the failures as the success. Ultimately a conference marketers mindset is not about budget, it’s about passion, and adding more value than you can capture!

Infographic: Conference addicts?

Great new infographic from Fast Company highlighting some of the conferences changing the shape of our industry (and planet). It also highlights the high level people who attend and the deals that get done!

10 tips for conference websites

I recently attended a webinar called “Converting Website Viewers to Event Attendees” run by ICEEM and presented by Joyce McKee @letstalktradeshows and Christoper Justice @sparksight. Unfortunately Chris and Joyce had a few technical difficulties which make the webinar a little disjointed, but the content was generally very good, it’s more focused on tradeshows than conferences but had some good take aways. You can download it here or read my summary below… 

One of the best parts of the webinar is the overview of the industry from the perspectives of delegates, speakers and sponsors:

• Delegates – Want more for less, they want discounts (partially trained by event organizers in my opinion), and they must have a strong reason to attend. So your value proposition needs to be very strong.
• Speakers – They are your greatest promotional channel. Make sure your record them! Get them involved, ask them to blog, tweet or spread the word.
• Sponsors – They want detailed demographics of who will attend or who has attended in the past, they also want to know how you are reaching the audience and new ways to interact with them.

Chris also points out the nature of the saturated information levels of the market, with so much free information flying at people and so many messages, advertising is diluted. The only way around that is to engage your audience through content, pull marketing. He also highlights some interesting math that states one free attendee is worth five paid! But only if the leverage their attendance by telling people about it. So choose your guests carefully and use the same tactics as you do with speaker marketing to help them promote your event!

Here’s my take on the top 10 tips from the webinar:

1. Mobile first – I agree mobile is important, but not sure it needs to come first…He also mentioned Go Daddy having a cheap and fast mobile solution.
2. Simplify registration – Keep the forms and process quick, if you need more information for demographics, go back and get it later!
3. Event archives – Capture everything at your event and use it post event as part of your content marketing. Publish it online for SEO benefits (linking by the way more than keyword). It will also become your most valuable conversion tool for delegates who are thinking of attending – it’s a powerful demonstration of the value of attending. I would add make it easy to share it via social media.
4. Affiliate marketing – Not enough events do this.
5. Contests and Awards – Good point, but I think some of the nuances to this strategy where missed, like the badging for SEO and the gamefication aspects if you get the community involved.
6. Inbound linking – Again this is the most basic aspect of online marketing – but always the least done! Chris recommends 100 inbound links from bloggers, conference directors, white papers, speakers, sponsors etc… I have ranted about this before!
7. Video – A picture paints a thousand words. Chris paints a good image of how the constant torrent of information has made us all illiterate (really what I think he means is to busy to read everything), but yet we will always press that little play button in a player.
8. Syndication – Chris shared some insight into the power of RSS on search.
9. Tech is easy content is not – This is critical, too many people focus on the technology or design when content is king! Not just the copy on the site, but also your content marketing strategy.
10. Chris also gave some good examples of sites he likes, including; NAB, BlackBerry Devcon, and How Design Conference.

Great webinar, but for me the number one thing online is to engage influencers…Chris mentions it a few times, but next to links and content, finding those influencers and getting them involved is key! Chris also produced this great download 100 Best Practices for Event Websites. Worth a read…

“Forget the quotation marks”

I want to rant about testimonials and the power of sharing in conference marketing. I blogged a while ago about FREE, and the powerful effect it had on TED conferences, but really it was about sharing ideas, this is a well documented story. I also think sharing in and of itself is the best testimonial anyone can ask for, we like our testimonials in conference marketing, but they tend to be more quotes from happy sponsors or speakers, as opposed to people sharing the power of your event, which is much more powerful than quotation marks.

I recently came across three incredible ideas that essentially revolve around testimonials and sharing that all conferences could use:

1) The testimonial video: We all love video, and one can doubt the power of it as a medium for sharing and spreading the word for your event. But I have seen so many rubbish testimonial videos, so here is how you do a testimonial video:  (Please note there is some swearing)

Why? It speaks directly to it’s audience, it’s fun, it’s got inside jokes, and it will spread… other people in the relevant audience will “get it” and want in! The early bird offer on this event has already sold out.

2) The post event ebook: This is a great idea from Seth Godin and the Domino project, put together an ebook on people who attended your event and made a dramatic positive change in their business or life as a result of attending your event. Here’s the Domino Projects ebook from SXSW:

Why? This will be the ultimate testimonial for anyone wanting to attend SXSW. It’s already a huge event, hard to define but full of resonance with the community and an event that will only grow as a result of this ebook.

3) Publish the findings, actions or ideas from the event:

Why? Your event’s benefits should go beyond the conference hall it was held in. Through sharing the findings with the whole community more people will want to justify the time and expense to come next time, and the more likely your event will drive real progress, making a mark on it’s community that only makes marketing the event next time easier. It’s the ultimate testimonial, proof your event had an impact!

All conferences must create social objects that are worth sharing, they become testimonials for your event. The kind of testimonial that people share is more powerful than your quotation marks.