Event Heroes Academy: Unlock the Secrets of 5 Event Marketing Masters

Chapter 1

How to map your event strategy to the prospect lifecycle stage:

Lessons from Vanta

Events have evolved from a simple gathering of people to complex agenda driven multi-format programs. There are so many different permutations of blending virtual and live formats you can employ, based on your creativity and your event goals. But with this choice comes complexity - how do you determine which format is the best for your event? Should it be a virtual event or a webinar? Does your in-person event need to be hybrid? We asked Kelsey, who has 10+ years of experience in organizing events, to weigh in.

‍

Kelsey’s key recommendations for choosing an event format:

Let event goals dictate your format

Defining the desired outcome of the event will inform you about which format will help you achieve it best. For instance, if you're launching a new product or have new features to share, a webinar (either pre-recorded or live) is a great way to deliver this message. Or if you’re looking to strengthen customer relationships, an in-person summit would be ideal.

Calculate your event budget using average deal size

A handy way to calculate the budget you need for an event is using your average deal size as an indicator. If you're going to have 10 people at an event and an average deal size of $10,000, you need to have at least double that in the room to make it worth it.

Then, with your budget in mind, evaluate which format is best to use, as it will impact factors such as venue selection, technology requirements, and overall production quality, ultimately shaping the attendee experience.

Use the crawl-walk-run approach to mixing event formats

Marketers can, of course, use all three formats across their event programs — virtual for webinars, and in-person or hybrid for ABM events for example — to stay connected with clients, partners and industry throughout the year. But it's best to start with simple, low-stakes events, and gradually increase the complexity and scale over time. This can help organizations to build necessary skills and infrastructure to execute larger, more complex events in the future.

‍

‍

Chapter 2

How to plan events for a community:

Lessons from Partnership Leaders

Most B2B marketers will agree that events and communities are different sides of the same coins - and importantly that they can synergistically reinforce each other's impact. That’s why it’s in a B2B marketer’s interest to be extremely strategic about building an event program for a community. To understand this from an insider’s perspective, we asked Asher Mathew who runs Partnership Leaders - a community for partnership professionals.

‍

Asher’s tips on planning events for a community:

Build your event calendar around what members are talking about

In building the event strategy for Partnership Leaders, the team would take the top conversations happening in the community, and run a webinar or event on the topic. During a quarter, the event program would be typically follow this structure:

• Month 1: A crowdsourced event
• Month 2: Another crowdsourced event
• Month 3: A larger virtual event featuring external thought leaders talking about the previous 2 topics

Co-creation is key to your success

To truly run events that make a difference to your community members or promise value to prospective members, it pays to build community experiences together. To this end, involving your members at all stages of your event is important, from conceptualizing your topics and sessions to getting real-time inputs as you put your event together.

Measure event success from both a customer acquisition and customer success lens

Yes, events serve as a vehicle to attract new prospects and convert them into customers, but they can also function as a medium to help promote people’s brands, help them tell their stories and humanize them. With this in mind, it can therefore be helpful to consider success in the following ways:

• From a customer acquisition perspective: look at how much your database has increased in terms of new sign ups, post your event.
• From a customer success perspective: track how many members attended your event, and how many times have they attended your events in a year. This will help you with renewals.

‍

‍

Chapter 3

How to plan a virtual conference right:

Lessons from Rocketlane

Planning a large-scale B2B conference can be intimidating. There are lots of moving parts involved: coordination with teams, sourcing speakers, setting up your event, promoting your event - we can go on and on. What are some essential factors during all this planning that helps deliver a valuable and impactful experience for each attendee at a large-scale conference? We asked Varun, who oversaw Rocketlane’s Propel ‘23 virtual conference, (attended by 3500+) for advice:

‍

Varun’s 4 key takeaways on organizing a large-scale conference:

Don’t lose heart if initial registration numbers are low. Stay persistent and persuasive with event promotions.

Most events marketers will agree that driving registrations and turnout is one of the biggest challenges they face. Usually, a holistic demand generation strategy for webinar and events, which usually involves a combination of paid ads, social media promotion, and email marketing is the way to go.

This was the strategy used to promote Propel (amplified by influencer marketing) explains Varun. But the team noticed that when they first started promotions, 4-5 months before the event, the registrations were just not rolling in. However, the team kept at it - sending out emails, defining the right frequency. And it paid off: there was an uptick in registrations the final 30-40 days before the virtual conference!

When building the event agenda, narrow the scope. This will help you deliver more focused content.

At a large conference, your audience will be a mix of different profiles, so it can be challenging to ensure that every attendee finds value in your event. To this end, when setting the agenda for Propel ‘23, Varun and his team decided to narrow the scope of the conference in order to provide more depth. This way, they were able to create a mix of dedicated sessions for each profile, while still providing a few sessions of common interest.

Collect event feedback immediately after the event

The trick with event feedback is that it needs to be collected while the impact of the event is still hot in the attendee’s mind. Team Rocketlane sent out an email with a feedback form the very day after the event had ended. They used a combination of quantitative and qualitative questions to source feedback on the quality of content, speaker performance, and then put the sourced suggestions to use.

For instance, attendees suggested holding more workshops at the next edition of Propel as well as factoring in more breaks between sessions. These recommendations were implemented in Propel ‘23.

Make a plan to repurpose event content way ahead of time

While most marketers are onboard with repurposing as a content strategy, logistical challenges with exporting and editing event content can cause delays. Planning how you’re going to repurpose your event content in advance can help eliminate last-minute bottlenecks.

Videos from Propel ‘23 were made live within 4 working days from the event on Rocketlane’s website, says Vishal. And the team plotted out how they would repurpose the videos beforehand too: cheat sheets based on conversations from tracks that were focused on specific subtopics; an Idea Book compilation made from snippets of various sessions; blog summaries based on each session from the event. “We tried to get everything out at max a month and a half after the event”, says Varun.

Here’s a guide to repurposing content for you:

‍

‍

Chapter 4

How to design feedback loops for B2B marketing events:

Lessons from Explori

As per our B2B event trends report in 2022, today’s attendees are hyper-focused on finding tactical value at an event. To meet this need, event organizers line up high-profile speakers or put together workshops on topics important to the ICP. And then? How do you know for certain your webinar or impact has? Without asking attendees directly for their opinions, you're left guessing yourself into a hole. That’s why assembling efficient feedback loops can unlock the full potential of your events.

‍

Alex’s 3 hacks to designing feedback loops:

Let your event objective be your guide

The first thing to do is identify the goal behind your event. Why are you having the event in the first place? What do you want to help your attendees achieve through it? By answering these questions, your approach to your survey or questionnaire will be more focused. Design questions around how you can better understand how people have met the objectives that you want them to meet.

Analyze your event metrics from a holistic point of view

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is usually seen as the most important metric to use in terms of feedback, but it should be looked at as one in a suite of metrics. Measure different aspects of the event experience and then bring those together for a more fuller understanding. For instance, you can look at how many attendees have voted for a particular score and also why. Examine their comments too for a more qualitative understanding. By implementing their feedback for next year - just like how Rocketlane did at Propel ‘23 - you should be able to improve your NPS too.

Always close the loop at your event to drive better feedback for future ones

Involving attendees in the process of building their event experience can have a significant impact on the quality and honesty of the feedback received. By giving them a sense of ownership in the process, attendees are more likely to provide thoughtful and insightful feedback. To this end, once you have decided that you're going to make a change based on what your audience said, tell your audience that's what you're going to do - and do it.

Here’s a simple 5-step feedback loop methodology to get you started:

‍

‍

Chapter 5

How to manage internal stakeholders around B2B events:

Lessons from Quantum Metric

Getting buy-in from internal stakeholders is, let’s just say it, not easy.
Each stakeholder has a different influence and role within the company; each has wildly different goals and needs. And they can be either a headache or a major source of help in hitting your targets.

Your event success depends on how you engage, influence, and build your working relationships with them. Managing internal stakeholders successfully requires a high level of tact and savvy.

‍

Here are Ashley’s key recommendations:

Overcome resistance through trust and communication

When someone in the team is clashing with your idea, ask why. Get to the root of where that resistance is coming from. By actively listening and understanding your internal stakeholders, you can establish trust, laying the groundwork for a collaborative relationship.

Align goals and objectives at the outset

Making sure that everyone's in agreement on the goals, the ‘why we're doing this’, and the ‘who's the audience’ is essential work that needs to be done well before the actual event. Aligning goals of each department and highlighting the interconnectedness of each team helps to build synergy.

Be proactive in working with your customer success team

The CS team is an internal stakeholder that is frequently overlooked - don’t make this mistake! They’re arguably the most crucial because they're responsible for getting your existing customers to your event. And this is critical because nobody’s going to be stronger at selling your product than your existing customer base.

And with your partnerships team as well!

Another overlooked function, according to Ashley, is the partnership team and ecosystem which can really strengthen your brand when it comes to events. But to successfully get their buy-in, it’s important to understand what your partner brands’ needs are and why they would want to participate in your event, and work together towards that.

Acknowledge internal marketing efforts

Recognizing the efforts of your internal marketing team and giving them the kudos they deserve can foster a positive and collaborative environment. Even if it’s a small shoutout on Slack every once in a while, it can really go a long way.

‍

‍

Conclusion

As we come to the end of this guide, we are reminded that navigating the modern event landscape can be scary as change is constant and quick, but also, that as event marketers, our greatest resource is: each other.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. By implementing these proven strategies shared by leaders in the industry, you'll be one step closer to planning and executing successful webinars and events that leave a lasting impact on your audience.