Dissecting the 12 Key Traits of a New School Event Marketer

Okay, great. Good. Okay, welcome everyone for the dissecting the 12 key traits of a new school event marketeer presented by Brightbull. Let's just get started. For those of you that don't know about about us, about who we are, we are an inbound Marketing Agency for B2B Media and Events and those are some of the people that we work with. And yeah, if anyone wants to connect with us, they can reach out at brightball or brightball.co.uk and we write a blog about the event industry and that's a photo of me for those of you that don't know me. So let's just look at what we're going to cover today. We're going to explore the new way of event marketing. We're going to look at step by step through the 12 traits that make a new school event marketeer. We're going to reveal the signs that you might still be stuck in the old marketing tactics and understanding where marketers should be focusing their budget and efforts. And then also what I aim here is that with this you have the backbones of a successful modern day Ben marketing strategy. And then through the sessions I'm going to ask a couple of poll questions and again I encourage you to ask as many questions towards the end. Okay, let's just get cracking. I want to set the scene for most of you. Does it feel like your marketing team is on a hamster wheel? I think I was in that situation a little while ago and it is a sentiment that some event marketing teams feel this way too. Submerging the execution wheel. And the idea that I want to propose here today is that give you some tips and tools as to how you can escape this wheel of sameness. So let's get cracking. The first trait of a new school event marketeer is inbound is at the heart of their strategy. So if there's any new marketeer that is out there that it's still doing everything around still based on outbound, they need to kind of change what they're doing. You need to look at all these particular activities and inbound is now what's driving forward any event strategy and the reason why inbound is at the heart of this. I wanted to share with you some research from the eventbrite about what were the channels that they thought were most effective and successful. So email 31%. That's no real surprise. But then you look at free social media referrals. The reality is what drives the free social media? What drives referrals? What drives word of Mouth thing that drives social media and word of mouth is content. The thing that drives content is inbound. Everyone just at this point in time is shutting down every channel, medium possible that they can do that they have at their fingertips to block messages that are unsolicited and reaching out to communities, to the places where they normally hang out with the places where they find out the information that they want. And you want to be that place of information. I want to share with you the inbound for events model. And this is just the tool that we've seen across the industry where you look at where you have a conference or vertical content, whether there's going to be a conference website or whether it's going to be a blog or a community site, you create a variety of interviews and premium content that you're going to go and then share through social media. The key thing at this piece of the top of the funnel is that it is about the user, the reader and the individual. It's not about your product or your event. Now at the point when you, and because you're using this content to attract those individuals, but at the point when you then these individuals then engage with you and come to your website, then is your role to make sure that they engage with you further and then download, fill in a form so that they can become a lead. And then it is at this point when you then start talking about your event, your products and services. Right. And ultimately the name of the game, the objective that you're trying to achieve is you want them to register to attend your event or do you want them to sponsor or exhibit at your event? Now the reality is that old school event businesses assume that their contacts are ready to buy from them. So if you look at this specific chart here, most of the event organizations with databases of 5,000, 20,000, 100,000 in some cases assume they're already and desperate to come and attend the event. That's not necessarily true. Okay, let's look at the second trait of the new school event market here. They don't compartmentalize between online and offline. So it's not about one or the other. It's not about inbound or outbound. It's not about, it's just marketing or sales. It's not about us and them. This is just the whole integrated aspect as to where you will need to then start selecting what is the right channel, what is the right tool that I need to use to reach my target market, my individuals at the right time and at the right place. Yeah. And I Think this is kind of a very, very, very important aspect trait. Number three, content is the fuel is the fuel for your engagement via. That's kind of. Absolutely. Everyone now knows this and it would be silly for me to say that, like, there's kind of a lot of people not necessarily looking at content. A lot of event marketers right now are looking at content in one way, shape or form. And now this is a statistic that I want to share with you, which is content generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, surprisingly enough, costs 62% less. So when your boss is telling you that they might need to spend less amount of marketing, then probably you might want to share some statistic like this or I'm happy if you share this one. And there's another aspect too. Most event marketeers struggle to create content. But in my opinion, event businesses are very rich in content issues that they don't know or they haven't found a way to repurpose it properly. And this is the other aspect where I think it's key. And this particular aspect defines a new school of end marketing. You need to be prepared and comfortable with writing that content yourself. And realistically, that is the only way. Because at this point in time, a lot of marketeers out there are still waiting for their producers to write content, waiting for speakers to write their content. The reality is that they have other priorities. The reality is that you are not top of their agenda. And that's going to. And if you are not prepared to write this content yourself, who will? And that's kind of why, if you're planning on creating blogs or premium content, it's going to take time. So if you have the skills of a repurposing the content that already exists or the repurposing the content that you're generating at your live events and be able to write the relevant content or blogs or whatever that might be to reach your audience, then you have a big head start. And I think I just want to take this opportunity now to get a poll from the audience. How good is your content marketing? One is poor, five is very good. So we're going to wait for 15 seconds to do. We have people voting. Okay, 79% of the audience voted. Anyone else? Okay, 93%. Okay, so I'm gonna close the poll in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Let's see what we. Okay. 38% feel that the content is number two, not that great. And number three is just right in the middle. That's interesting. Only 8% of you guys Think it's on the right track? Wow. Well, potentially, what I'm saying is it's not surprising. And I would anticipate to say that one of the biggest reasons why marketers struggles to to get a grip on content marketing is because they're not controlling, directing and instigating what content should be driven, and they're relying on third parties to write that content. Thank you very much. Let's continue. Okay. Trait number four. Buyer Personas are the root of all communications and content. So I asked the audience, or I kind of probably ask you to think about, are you able to guess or understand who is the person that owns that desk that we have, that we have, that we're sharing on screen? Who is he or who is she? Obviously who is he? Because he's got a bow tie there? Are we able to know how we can kind of reach that individual? What will be the best ways to communicate with this person then? I think that's the key, critical part. A new school event marketeer understands the target audience very, very well, and they understand that they know the objectives that their buy Personas are really looking to achieve. Their pains, their challenges, their interests, but more importantly, how they're going to reach that individual, when, at what stage, and what would be the best way to do it. Once you've tackled your buyer Personas, once you understand these key traits, it's very easy for you to then go and derive content. I'm sharing here what Briboul's Personas are. We have four Personas that we need to cater for from our community, and I aim to speak their language, not mine. So I always try to resonate. Everything that I write needs to resonate with one of these four individuals. To me, the happiest moment is when someone says to me, ricardo, you hit the nail on the head. I read your blog and it resonated heavily with me. To me, that means I'm doing my job well with my buyer Personas and kind of triggering their pain points. If you as a marketeer are able to instill and touch or hit a nerve in your audience and you're able to tell them how you're going to be able to help them solve their problems, or how your event is going to be able to solve the problems, you're on to a winner. And I wanted to share with you guys, there's a company in the UK here called Ladbrokes, which is a betting company, and they use buy Personas to, in fact, to promote on their TV commercials and everything. And I thought that they get it really well. So I'll invite you all to search for these guys whenever you have a chance and lapbrooks and if you want to have some resources on how to create your own Personas, then just these two websites, makemypersona.com and buypersona.com those are the best websites that you can kind of find out more information about it and in fact it can help you create your own with some specific templates. And if you want I can send you some of our own templates that will help you achieve that. So let us know through the chat pane if you, if you do want that, happy to help. Okay. Treat number or trait, sorry, trait number five. They thrive on the power of marketing, automation and technology. And this is kind of one of the key parts in which new marketers need to get a handle on. There's so much things out there and I'll share with you just later on. There's so much out there and you really need to be able to know what is out there that is going to help you do your job better. And I'm talking about systems, I'm talking about automation, I'm talking about finding which or what are the things that you and your team hate that is kind of eating a lot of your time. So most of the times is are you able to identify what are you going to be able to outsource? If many of you guys know or remember the old days of diary listings, there's this company called Event that you just literally pay them some money and they just submit your event to hundreds of websites to list your event. If you spend a lot of time updating your website, can someone else do it quicker? Can someone else do it cheaper? Yes. That means potentially hiring an inter or potentially even hiring that process somewhere else and building the business case for it. And also I think marketeers that I speak at day and day out, they struggle with reporting and they spend a lot of time creating reports for the senior management team. Sometimes the senior management team asks okay question about that report they need to spend another two hours trying to find the answers to because obviously that's all linked with data processing. So whilst it is about systems automation, email automation and all that sort of stuff, it's also about taking a step back and thinking, okay, where am I spending the most amount of time? And, and in my view wasting the most amount of time because your time as a marketing could be used more profitably elsewhere. This is, this is what I call the market or this is the marketing technology landscape that existed in 2011. These were the number of companies that marketeers or tools that marketers could use to make the job better move on five years down the line. This is the way the marketing technology landscape now looks in 2016. A lot. There's plenty of things that you need to do that you can keep an eye on it. And to be honest, I am not pretending that you are aware absolutely everything that is on this particular infographic, which by the way, you must download it. The link is there, but it just outlines the fact that you have a lot of tools at your fingertips that are going to help you do your job better. Some of them are free, some of them are paid, but again is an aspect that you really need to keep an eye on and see how you the reality is you need to be aware what those tools are. You can search for marketing technology landscape on Google to get a copy of that. Okay, train number six. New School event marketeers. They're smart about email and they do not solely rely on outbound. Can you relate to that photo there? Is that how your company is perceived by your buyer Personas as a Rambo, doing all this firing out emails and firing out sales messages day in, day out all the time? Probably you are. But the New School event marketeers, they won't do without workflows or drip campaigns as they call it, depending on the system that you're using. Because if you are expected to work with your buyer Personas, you will need to create more emails than normal because you're going to have to segment, you're going to have to personalize. Obviously, if you're going to do that yourself or within your team, it's not going to happen. So you need to consider how you can use workflows and drip campaigns with whatever system you're using to the best of your abilities. And one thing that I want to share is relevant emails. They drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. And I think there's something important for you to highlight in there. I think I want to ask another poll at this point in time and ask the audience, do you use a marketing automation platform? See, 41% voted 56, 60. Okay, let's just kind of get some more votes in, please, if you can. By the way, all this information is confidential in the way. We're not going to name and shame with this exercise. Okay, closing the poll in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Wow. Half and half. Interesting. So good. For those of you that are doing it, the ones of you that are not doing it you really need to start at least investigating how you're going to approach that because if you're not doing any marketing automation platform, I can only assume that you're either not segmenting, not you're just kind of still doing, being the Rambos out there, or your team is extremely, extremely busy and in the, in the execution wheel. So if I am mistaken, please hold me accountable for it. But, but yeah, that's kind of what we can normally see and I'm happy to share some info as well for those of you that are not using it on what's out there for you. Okay, let's have the results. Let's continue. New school event marketeers, they love data and they measure absolutely everything. And I just put a bracket there at the touch of a button because again, you don't really want to spend a lot of time of your working days collecting data from many different sources, etc. Etc. And I'm going to share with you guys later on why that is and how that can be fixed. But yeah, ultimately any marketeer needs to be able to understand how many visits they're generating on the website, how many contacts or leads they're generating and how many of those convert to sales. I was there in that situation many years ago when I worked for Global conference company and it just took ages. And to this day I think sometimes marketing teams struggle to get information like this at the touch of a button. So I think it's quite an important piece and there are data integration tools out there that might be able to help you with that. But yes, the reality is you need to, you need to measure absolutely everything that you do. And again, are you able to know what your conversion rates are for organic from social media, from page search, etc etc. If you're not, then it's very likely that you're going to be spending money using channels that aren't necessarily that productive and that profitable. So yeah, it's very important to have that tool and I think that's kind of the one of the biggest part of the problems. If you don't have the data to support your decisions, your strategy, then you just be doing, or you are likely to be doing whatever everyone else is doing now. Trait number eight, they manage their time. A new school event marketers manage their time. And I think this is one of those situations where you're not alone in this aspect. Everyone struggles to manage their time any level from any organization. They still struggle with time and being efficient with things that they need to do in due course Especially marketeers. The lists of event marketers are long so unfortunately I don't have a specific solution for that. But I think being aware of how you're going to be able to manage your time efficiently, looking at what works, what doesn't and seeing where you can gain some efficiencies, it's down to you as an individual. But if you feel that you're telling friends, colleagues and everyone I don't have enough time or I haven't got round to do this that I've been expecting to do, then that might mean that you might have an issue with time. Because if you're always struggling with time then you have a time management problem. What I think is I can say I can share with you the Covi time management matrix was very, very good for me and I use that still to this day when I'm coaching an individual. And that is from these seven. I can't remember at this point in time but yeah, the most efficient people that Stephen Covey wrote that book, which is quite good. So check for that. The Pomodoro technique is another technique used to manage time and to just basically splitting your tasks in small chunks. So check that out. Some people have found that very useful. I personally didn't find that useful for me, but yeah, it works in some aspects and in some specific areas of your job. A lot of people out there are talking about Slack, if you don't know about Slack. Slack.com is like a collaboration tool and it's particularly useful for those marketeers that are submerged and they like just having all these kind of death by email. Everything is done by email and they can't do anything because they keep on checking, checking their emails. So some individuals, some marketers have just completely shut down email for most of the day and they speak with their internal teams through Slack, which I think is useful especially if you have remote teams or if you're using freelancer, if you're using kind of marketing teams all over the world. One other person that I wanted to share with you guys is Tim Ferriss and if you look at Tim Ferriss email he has some templates that you could and some templates that you can use, some autoresponders when people kind of ask a lot from you via email or like to have email conversations. And in general, if you want to find live hacks to become more efficient in your day to day check the four Hour Workweek blog. That's absolutely fantastic and very, very useful. And if that's not enough, we have a guide that we are very happy to share with all of you out there and Sonia is happy to put it on on the chat panel for you guys and so you can kind of have a link. But yeah, if you go to info at info, sorry info.brightball.co.uk time saving so you can download that guy. Good. Oh, this one's the best one. Trait number nine, they know how to seamlessly integrate with sales. How many of you guys have a integration like this with sales like the one in the photo? I'll be curious to know. 83% of marketeers have cited increase in sales as the top event marketing goal. So more and more, as you know, technology advancements, as more and more organizations develop and move into this new way of doing things, marketeers are going to be responsible and more accountable for driving sales as means to, to and demonstrate how much money they're bringing to the bottom line. So the, the better you you are at this, the better or the more respect you're going to gain from your team. This is now where the measuring everything and having and using data and dashboards to report to your marketing team or talk to anyone within the business on, on how marketing results are doing that that's great. And I think one of the aspects that I wanted to highlight, marketing teams are not necessarily great at flying the flag of marketing. And yes, I'm generalizing, but yes, that's what I've seen from most of the companies that I work with. We all sit down and just kind of do our job quietly and huff and puff when things get busy. But when things get really, really good and we get kind of really good results, we don't necessarily fly our flag good enough or well enough. So do your, do your sales. Does your sales team kind of tell you your leads are rubbish? And is your relationship with the sales team like the one on the photo? Very likely. Today we released a blog on. I think we may have lost some connection there, Ricardo. Sorry if it affected everybody, but I think we lost a bit of connection. Okay, just. Is everyone able to hear me well at this point in time? Can you raise your hand from your. Can you digitally raise your hand? Let's see. Yeah. Okay, so people are saying that they can hear me. Okay. Let's just trust that you are. Sonja, where was the last thing that you've heard from me? I think you're about to explain about these two guys that are wrestling and the leads are rubbish. So maybe backtrack to that point. Okay, so what I was saying is that how many of you guys have a relationship with your sales team that looks like the one in the photo. And what you get from the response that you get from those guys is that your leads are rubbish or your leads are not great or I'm spending a lot of time trying to find out the leads. And I think the reason for this is that there isn't a definition internally between the two departments on what a lead is, what an MQL is and what an SQL. And then you need to agree on what are the leads that are good for them. So let's just, I want to clarify in this part, if you as a marketeer or if you as an organization start doing content marketing to engage with people out there to drive leads, yes, you're going to generate more leads than normal. The reality is that between 30 and 40% the leads that you generate, or let me just kind of say it better, between 60 and 70% of the leads that you generate are not going to be relevant. The reminder what you have is between 30 and 40% of that are marketing qualified leads. What are marketing qualified leads are leads that meet your buyer Persona profile. So the fact that you have some MQLs or marketing qualified leads does not necessarily mean even that they're ready to be sent to sales. And sales qualified leads are what are just simply leads that are ready for your sales teams to have a communication with them. So the best thing that you need to do that I can't define what an SQL is for you, you as a marketeer need to have a mutual agreement. So have a conversation and sit down, take your sales guy for beers or sales, your sales director for beers and actually get that clarification. What are the traits or what has, what are the things that someone or an individual on our database or on our website? What's the behavior that they need to exert before you pick up the phone and give them a call and have a conversation. So most of the times you need to combine that with either do they meet the profile of the right company, but again, engagement with some pieces of content on your website, that means attending a specific networking ring, so attending a webinar, etc, etc, I don't know what that is, but you need to define that. So the holy ground really between where you want to be able to have a relationship like the initial picture is the SQL. So businesses that use the Martin Automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. Right. What I mean by this is they take the MQLs into a nurturing program and put them on to exert some certain behavior, to instigate certain behavior until they're ready to buy. So if I want to go back really, really quickly into the marketing funnel, these leads that you generate here are going to be all leads. Some are going to be MQLs and the MQLs are going to go onto a nurturing program. Right. Until they are either ready to buy and they buy directly from your website or. Or until they are ready to be passed on to sales. Yeah, and I just really want. It was important for me to clarify that and I'm not going to bore you with those details until I jump. So I'm just going to jump straight onto to that part. Yep. So the holy grail is the SQL. So ensure you have that internal and mutual agreement with your sales guy and then that's your way to keep them very happy and your sales are marked in nirvana. Okay. Trait number 10, the masters of social media. I'm sure that that's no surprise. Social media has a 100% higher lead to close rate than outbound marketing. So let me just repeat that because I think that's very, very important. They have a hundred percent higher conversion rate from lead to close than outbound marketing. And what does being masters of social media mean? That means that they embed social media in everything they do. That means that social is a habit, that they just kind of do it naturally. They do have a thought out system on how they're going to Internet issue. Ricardo, Sorry, kind of went in and out of connection there. Sorry. Yeah, just tracking back to embedded in everything you do. Yeah, we just lost you at that point. Okay, I hope you can hear me now. So they have embedded in everything they do. The other aspect, social is a habit and they're used to doing absolutely everything and social is a part of it. So they wouldn't find it a struggle to find the time to do it. They use or we can use a thought out system. As to how you can engage on social media, I normally suggest you use the 7020 10. So 70% of what you do and share on social media is adding value, sharing your own content, building conversations, having conversations on LinkedIn groups. And if you're not building conversations on LinkedIn group, you're answering questions or you're participating in discussions are out there. 20% is about sharing what someone else is doing that is relevant to your audience and 10% is about your event. What most old school event marketers do is that they just simply use social Media, Twitter and LinkedIn to talk about their event the reality is that they run out of things very very quickly and again reiterating that aspect on the interaction they interact on social media they interact on LinkedIn and they have the guts to answer questions in specific forums or in specific aspects or put comments on blogs and they're not scared of topics because there's some marketeers that they feel that they don't have enough knowledge about the topic the events that they're marketing so they don't feel the authority to comment socially about it. My view is just do it. Your producer and anyone else outside the organization is not going to do it. It's not the priority unless they are masters of social media themselves and they are social media natives more importantly they don't broadcast. Okay this is kind of one where there's a lot of debate but I think new school event marketeers they get their hands dirty and the reality is that they get their hands dirty on things that are not necessarily their remit because.