Events are not created equal and there's a specific purpose to each one: some nurture and accelerate leads, while others create and fuel. However, the majority of events are best at moving prospects and existing customers through the marketing funnel and straight to close or renewal.
But what about driving net new leads? How do you use events to do that?
In the newest Run of Show Weekly video, Splash's CEO Ben Hindman shares his event strategy on driving the net-new leads, partnerships and sponsorships, and how to amplify it all with demand generation.
Check it out below:
Love the animation in this video? Check out Ink Factory.
Want to see more Run of Show Weekly videos? See our archives page here.
News flash. Events don't drive net new leads. Well, some do. Let's talk about it on today's Run of Show.
One of the most important things that an event marketer can do is to manage expectations.
Recently, I went out to coffee with somebody who had been let go from her job. She was a very talented event marketer, but she didn't manage expectations well. She was brought into her company to drive demand generation, what's called net-new leads, leads that weren't in the database before. Her skillset and her expertise was in events. The types of events that she was particularly good at were events that were great at converting people inside of the funnel.
These were prospects that they wanted to turn into clients. Or she was trying to take clients and turn them into bigger clients, and that's what events are great at, converting people who are already in your funnel.
Now, this resonates with many of you at home. Your boss wants you to drive new leads, and they want you to use events to do so. Today we're gonna talk through the types of events and tactics that actually do drive net new leads, and the types that don't.
First things first, all events are not created equally. A happy hour is not gonna have the same effects as a VIP dinner.
A VIP dinner will have a different clientele and a different impact than a road show. You want to plan and measure these events differently. Think about it, you wouldn't use a measuring cup to measure your four-minute mile.
Each event is distinct and different, and you wanna treat them as such. As you plan out your year, it's important to think about every event type, from your happy hours, to user conferences, to your VIP dinners, and to try to map that to a primary part of the funnel.
What is it going to impact? What kind of guest list is gonna be in the room at that event type?
A really important thing to do in the beginning of your year is to tag up your events by type. Every event should have a type, a bucket, a category, that you use over and over again to measure it against other events of that same type. This allows you to measure apples to apples, and really keep the numbers consistent and track those KPIs across equal types of events.
So we've established that events do a great job of driving funnel, but not the best job of driving net-new. What events drive net-new, and how do you make the most of that?
Well, let's talk through that. Again, net-new means that it's the first time the lead is on your database. You've never seen these people before, they come from the anonymous world, and all of a sudden they're a prospect and they're in your CRM. The best way to find net-new leads through events is to choose your event types wisely. We've identified four different event types that actually drive net new leads.
1. Big conferences.
We typically find that a big conference has the ability to drive about 10% of the attendance as net-new. The reason is, it's a big enough conference, it made a big enough splash that you were able to find new people, and new people were able to find you and actually attend your event.
2. Satellite Happy Hours.
This is building off of other big events. If you're able to find a trade show or a large conference like Dreamforce and have a satellite happy hour or dinner around that event, that's another way to actually drive net new leads. There are also people who are just at that trade show and show up to your happy hour.
3. Partner dinners.
One of my favorite ways to drive net new leads is to partner up. Pick a company or a media publication that has a similar audience to yours and host an event together. What we often find is about half the guest list is yours, half the guest list is theirs, and their guest list often includes a lot of net-new leads.
4. Sponsorships.
The most effective way to drive net-new is with sponsorships, and this includes trade shows, field marketing activities, curating events, cross promoting an event or simply sponsoring an event and putting your logo on it. Because sponsorships are such an effective way to drive net-new leads, there are three tactics that I found effective to make sure you're capturing as many leads as possible.
Let's dig into it a little more.
The most effective way to drive net-new is with sponsorship, and this includes trade shows, field marketing activities, curating events, cross-promoting an event or simply sponsoring an event and putting your logo on it. Because sponsorships are such an effective way to drive net new leads, there are three tactics that I found effective to make sure you're capturing as many leads as possible:
1. Have them share the attendee list with you. Try to make this a non-negotiable with the event organizer. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes they'll say no, but it's at least worth asking and I try to do it every single time I spend money to sponsor an event.
2. Capture engagement information when you're capturing leads. If you're business card scanning, capturing leads in the field, or trading business cards, try to make sure that people are writing down how they engage with those net-new leads. This will help your sales team prioritize who to follow-up with first and how to follow-up with them.
3. Try to get ahead of the game. Get your BDR or sales team to start calling and emailing people before the event actually happens. Try to also set up meetings. Now, these aren't exactly net-new, but if you're doing a sponsorship game, you'll find that you'll see a lot more impact if you're actually getting ahead of the game like a month in advance.
An easy straightforward step to take at events is to keep track of the plus-ones. We typically find that an event has about 50% of the attendees that are gonna bring plus ones. That means that you can actually see about 50% more attendees or more net-new in your database. This is especially if it's a B2B event, the plus-ones might be really important. It might be their boss, it might be a co-worker, or somebody really important to the sales process.
Think about partnering up in any way you can. Sure, you can partner with another company or another team, another organization, but maybe you partner with your speakers or maybe you partner with the influencers who are attending the event. You may even partner with the DJ, to get the word out and spread the news about your event and try to get some new net new leads.
Last but not least, we're seeing event marketers level up their digital sophistication. They're teaming up with their demand generation team and their digital marketing team to drive net new leads.
The way they do it is pretty simple. They send information about their attendees to their demand generation team. Their demand generation team is using that information to create Facebook lookalike audiences -- people who look like those attendees. They're actually taking out retargeting ads and paid social and advertisement across the web, and they're re-targeting those attendees specifically to make sure that they actually attend their event. Teaming up with your digital demand generation team is really effective.
To recap, the best way to drive net new with events is to:
1. Choose your event types wisely.
2. Track those plus ones.
3. Partner with everyone you can and create incentives to do so.
4. Amplify with your demand generation team.
Before I let you go, please, if you remember one thing, remember this: tag your events by types. It's gonna save you a world of pain at the end of the year when you need to compare everything.
What is the secret to a seamless event? Team alignment. Ben outlines the event planning stages and tactics for ensuring team alignment for every event you throw.
Ben Hindman is co-founder and CEO of Splash, the country's fastest-growing event marketing platform that helps businesses and brands more effectively market through their events. An event planner turned tech entrepreneur, events are in Ben’s DNA. Prior to starting Splash, Ben was the Director of Events at Thrillist, where he produced large-scale events from concerts to mystery fly-aways.
