Inbound Marketing Stories: John Whitaker, dmg events global energy

How you doing?

Hi. Yes, very well, thank you, Ricardo. So, yeah, I'm John Whittaker from DMG Events and I'm head of marketing here. We have a portfolio of events both large and small in the exhibition and conference sector, serving predominantly the energy market. And I'm very keen to talk to you about some of the developments that we've been introducing that center around sort of inbound marketing as a complementary element to our normal traditional outbound marketing.

That's very good, John. And I think I have to say that was the first time when we've met, we were at the PPA Connect conference and I was kind of pretty excited to hear your story and that's kind of why we're here today. So I guess let's just kind of begin with a little bit of context and in that sense. So you decided to start a community for dmg, a community and you go the inbound way. I mean, what was the driver behind starting your community and doing all this kind of new way of doing things? What was it?

So we have, I think I mentioned a number of events that address the energy market. They are essentially oil and gas exhibitions and conferences. The data that we hold across all of those events allows us to be able to hopefully upsell and cross sell. And so therefore we're introducing someone who may be familiar with one brand, one event to a similar sort of product within our portfolio. So that was one of the, probably the principal driver of it. The second, so it's upselling and cross selling is the first reason. The second would be that we do a lot of event marketing which is very specific to the event. So it's trying to persuade people ultimately to register. I mean, that's our function. But what we'd also like to do is provide people with or to be less cluttered or junked in their inbox. So to provide context so that if they see a subject line that's a generic piece of content around the energy industry rather than a subject line of event, then they're more likely to open the material. And if the content marketing that is used is allowed to frame the event but in a generic way, then I think it has a far. Well, I don't think. I know it has a far better opportunity of being effective.

Right. And that's kind of very, very useful because I think predominantly, I think most of the organizations right now that I think the event industry, they were thinking, okay, how can we push more events through content, through inbound and everything? And I think, I think there's Kind of potentially a fundamental shift that needs to happen there. It's just to think not necessarily how you can push more events, it's more about the content and everything. So with reg to that, and I think what do you see as being the business case for developing a community instead of continuing doing the same thing? Or perhaps what will be the business case of developing it instead of joining another community that exists out there or leveraging other communities that probably are not owned by you but are pretty big somewhere else?

I don't think they're mutually exclusive, so I'd like to do both. In fact, we do. We have a presence on a number of generic communities that serve the energy industry. The decision to, I think, try and create our own is that we have a huge amount of engagement with a number of different stakeholders in respect of an event. A lot of those stakeholders are very knowledgeable people about the industry, that is the speakers and the exhibitors and so forth. And it seems a shame to me to spend a huge amount of marketing to just get them to turn up for two, three, four days and then really not engage with them until we start mither ing them about being at the next event. So to me, if we can keep the conversation going and consider an event more of a 3, 6, 5 activity than a 4 or 5 day activity.

Then.

That helps us to, I think, have better traction. I think it helps us to stop suppressions within our database. I think it creates a better appetite for a conversion. If we get someone in through content, we draw them in through content and then we explain that that content can be experienced at our event. And I think your initial question was the business case. To me initially it might seem a little bit more expensive, but if you amortize that over certainly a relatively short period, two to three years, I think you'll see marketing costs drop tremendously. Because if you spend money to core people who are interested in your communications, then it starts to mean that you don't have to do aso many communications and B your data doesn't start to deteriorate. So those are two things that are very important to me and I think they're symptomatic of some of the problems that are in the events industry that we're so used to sending out loads and loads of invitations and senior management feel comfortable seeing quantity going out rather than quality. So we're trying to follow more of an Amazonian type approach. And if an individual like Ricardo is interested in a certain element of our content, then we can serve content that relates to our event in relation to that. And then you're more likely to have your interest piqued.

Okay. And I think you've touched upon a very key aspect that it's in the mind of the events leader of the CEO of the md, which is the cost. And I'm not going to put you in a kind of in uncomfortable situations, but the aspect is, and then you've mentioned also a very key aspect which is amortization over a period of time. So there's two key elements. We know that building a community, building your team is not going to be cheap. And what I'm referring to is not going to be cheap. It's not something that like you could, and you tell me if you agree with this, is that something that someone within the team can do 50% of the time or is not something that someone just let's just hire one person to do this as let's just. And that's about it. So it's going to be costly because you're going to have to devote the team to do it. Right? Whether you hire someone externally or whether you do it yourself, you're going to hire and devote the resources to do it and it's going to take some time. Right. So in your context, and again about that time, so what do you, what do you think are the time frames or what are the time frames that you specifically in your case are seen or are working towards at least starting to see something or at least seeing some of the results that you've set out to achieve?

Okay, let me address the first point you raised about cost. It isn't actually as costly as some people might think. As an example, we used, and I won't mention the names of the suppliers, but I'll provide them with a slightly more generic aspect to it. But we used principally an outbound email service provider and therefore we're sending lots of messages to people. As I mentioned earlier on, we've switched to what I would call more of outbound stroke inbound. In fact, the said company, if you Google them, they would much prefer to be recognized as an inbound multi channel marketing suite. I think is the way that they like to refer to themselves. The cost of shifting from one to the other is not that much more expensive. So that's the first thing. The second part, the content marketing and getting the relevance. That is where it could be costly and it depends on how you approach it. One way would be to use news agencies and provide content in a contractual way so you can at least carefully monitor the Costs and turn the tap on or off as and when you want to, or I think if you feel that you can create a community like we're trying to do, that is predicated on probably more than half a dozen events is where it starts to become cost effective to provide the generic content across that industry and then you can start thinking about recruiting internally and creating a community platform. There is an initial outlay obviously, because you're recruiting and you're essentially going to have to build a platform. Now community platforms can be very, very expensive at the executive end. And again I've previewed some suppliers and they're into six figures. Or you can actually say, well, I don't necessarily need all of the bells and whistles of a fully functioning community site that might be more appropriate to the B2C world and consider something that's a little bit more functional for a B2B purpose. And I think in that respect you can get down to very sensible five figure numbers. And right at the low end of the five figure numbers. The real cost though is in recruiting people because that's an overhead. But I think again, if you can dissipate that cost across probably as I said, I would say the benchmark is about half a dozen events and then you can start to dissipate that across the events and it becomes a little bit more cost effective.

I think that's kind of very, very interesting and I'm going to kind of continue on that wavelength. But on the, on the aspect of when you say let's just kind of, what do you define as community? Because I think one aspect is using content to drive engagement to do, you know, so people come to your website, engage with you, read it, whatever, whatever.

They need to do.

And another aspect is when you become a member of a group kind of creating like a LinkedIn version or whatever you want to call it, what would you define? Because I mean, I think you've talked about that community aspects and on all these enterprise figures. What is your definition of that community in that specific context?

I think, you know, if you define the word community it is people with a common sense of purpose in some respects and in many respects our sense of purpose is to get people to come along to an event. But as I mentioned before, that's the kind of direct marketing. I think we're taking a slightly more securitas route, but I think in taking the securities route are conversions and we can see this actually when we track back, our conversions become a lot better and therefore the initial outlay becomes something that you can recoup later on. But the creation of a community is to try and. And you see it at any event. You see a whole host of people. You stand on the balcony of any major event venue and you see a whole host of people essentially walking towards each other and shaking hands. And the networking that is prevalent in successful events is something, hopefully you can continue online for those other 360 days of the years when they are not in the venue. So it can be relatively simple. Sometimes if you mention the word community, there's a sense that it can be really complicated. I don't think it necessarily needs to be. I think if I was creating a community platform that was a business in its own right, as in the P and L, then yes, you'd probably need to have a lot more functionality and have a revenue stream like recruitment, for argument's sake, that can provide at least a sensible return on that investment. As far as we're concerned, if, if the creation of a community is, if it's cash neutral, we don't have to make a great deal of money on it. It will hugely save us cost in marketing because our conversions become so much more effective and therefore our data is working that much more cleverly and we're not. I mean, the danger in the events industry is I said over, over communicating and losing data rather than adding data.

Of course, and I think again in that particular aspect is, I think the message that I'm getting across is that less need of trying to make this roi. And I probably will ask, I'll ask you about roi, but it's making it less about how can we recoup the money as quick as possible and how can we invest in this to, to generate that level of. Again, the aspect that you're talking about is, you know, if you see it from the angle of saving on the, on the marketing spend saving on the time that you will kind of probably spend on the phone calling people and everything. And if it's, as you say, neutral, then the benefits will realize the conversions in themselves is where you start seeing the ROI and everything. So I think that's kind of an interesting message that I'm getting across from you and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that is the aspect most events professionals, almost, let's not call it event professionals, event leaders, event directors, they want to see the return immediately and say, okay, so a community. How many delegates I can expect from that community and when. And how many sponsorship deals can I expect from this community and when. And I think it's a little bit of aspect of the mindset. So going on the, on the team, I think it's important as well. So everyone always asks me, Ricardo, how can I start? What would be a starting kit in terms of team that would just start this community to start this inbound process? What would be your views on that or how big is your team or how are you starting that?

Okay. I mean we don't have a huge team. There's only three of us involved in that part of our business. I mean make no mistake about it, Ricardo, the, our core competency as a business is organizing events and that is where really the profit and the, the pain of all of our wages comes from. But I think when you try and evaluate the effectiveness of things like marketing and marketing channels, there seems to be a lot more consideration now of the, of data building, providing marketing to that data which becomes an MQL or a marketing qualified lead, passing that MQL to the sales team as an SQL, a sales qualified lead. And no doubt you can then hopefully track that loop back to your original data. And what we're trying to do, we're on a journey here, we haven't necessarily cracked it all, but we're trying hard to make sure that we understand the cost of building that data, the cost of the marketing to it and then the cost of the conversion and if we can bring all of those elements down and become more efficient because we're not having to re. Engage data or to keep acquiring new data. And I think that's really the definition of a community is data that is engaged with your company and, or your products.

Yeah, and I think that's a key aspect because again the mindset, and I would call the old school mindset, is to start by acquiring, researching new data from zero. And I think that's kind of one of the problems and just a little bit of detail on the skill set of those three individuals because I'm just again the question is always asked and again I'm going to touch on it. Everyone says, oh Peter is can only use 50% of their time doing it. The conference producer can only use it can write a couple of blocks every night. So what would you think is that skill set of that set of three people?

So we have a community and content manager. So that person's responsibility is not necessarily in the old traditional sense of being an editor of a magazine because it's more about trying to engage with our stakeholders. So we have lots of speakers, we have governing bodies and technical committees that run our Conferences. So they're in charge of the content of the event. So we use our content and community managers to make sure that they engage with all of those people on a more consistent basis and outside of the normal aspects of submitting an abstract or a paper or so forth. So they're trying to talk to them in a more generic way and encourage them to in a sense engage with that community by submitting articles. So you know, we've got blog trails where hopefully with where we're trying to encourage discussional type articles. So not something where it's a question and then a single answer, but a question with different views to provide discussional points. And then once that trail starts, obviously we like to try and stoke it. The more we can stoke it is by putting more and more comments and getting more and more people involved essentially. So building on that community.

That's good. So in there, so you've got that person that deals is not necessarily the editor, but that is the content. And while the skill set is within.

Your team, the other side of it is the commercial side. So we have a sales marketing manager on the, to complement the. The content side. So they're selling the advertising that goes with the community site. That's normal traditional digital advertising, leaderboards and MPUs etc. But then a whole, we have a digital media pack that's not related to the event in some ways complements the event. So if a person is attending an exhibition in a time honoured fashion, we'll put digital additions to how they can market themselves through the event. But the main focus of this individual's work is for things that are outside of the event. So there's advertising on the sites and we do, rather than just refer to the advertising, we actually put the figures behind it. So we put the impressions behind it. We sell not just in tenancy, but we do sell in terms of results. So that's one difference. We also sell other related products like webinars and options to do third party emailing through our database. So there's a whole host of digital initiatives that we are introducing which are available to our client base as a commercial opportunity over and above their exhibition stand or their conference paper.

That's absolutely critical. And I think, you know what I like the most is what you said is this sales commercial stroke marketing. Because this individual needs to know that the two sides of the coin, right? So they need to have that commercial mindset. They need to understand what are the key points that an exhibitor needs to achieve and their goals and then help them accomplish that. And in essence, when they're selling or when they're having that conversation, I'm assuming this individual also needs to understand how they are going to translate that into key marketing tactics, whether they are templated aspects or it might well be kind of bespoke. Right. Am I right thinking that?

You're absolutely right. So within the digital media pack there are a number of items that are relatively off the shelf items now. So they're fairly understandable to most people. And they, there's a rate card price attached to. In addition to that, we sell what I would call price on application opportunities, which really are what I would call a consultative sell. So it's not about selling something that you can necessarily translate in just one telephone call. It's probably a consultative sell that requires a number of visits, a handheld approach and almost an educational approach rather than sales approach. Where we've done that, we've actually been more successful in terms of their presence at the event itself. So we've got a number of case studies now where. And they're not necessarily the bellwethers, they're actually usually people who are sort of what I would call the medium sized operators and they work harder at getting the promotion that they need at an exhibition and they tend to actually use those kind of services over and above really the bellwethers. The bellwethers are there just because it's a sort of a branding exit.

They need to be there, they need to be seen. But those guys that are making, they're squeezing a little bit more for the, for their money and they're really investing in seeing that ROI in that lead generation activities that.

Right, indeed. And it's so obvious when you actually visit the show because the, and I'm not saying, you know, we have some of our events, we have up to 500, 600 exhibitors and the, you know, you could, you could actually quickly look at the floor and see the 10 to 15 that are using some of the digital services to make sure that they have a busy presence at the show. Is that obvious?

And then I guess, John, the third skill set is the, is I guess the project managing, which I'm assuming you are fulfilling that particular role. Is that right?

Yeah, actually it's a very good, that's a very good point. Sometimes it's relatively easy to get the digital products together, put them in a media pack. It's relatively easy to provide third party suppliers to give you that opportunity to have the digital breadth. But the execution of it, interestingly, as you raise is sometimes, particularly when we're almost operating as an internal digital agency.

Correct.

And you know, three people is not a great deal. If Suddenly you've got 15, 20 clients, want to avail themselves of 60% of your digital opportunities and so scheduling and making sure that we can actually provide a proper service to those clients. I'd rather actually have fewer clients and provide a really good service so that we have excellent case studies that we can communicate later than to have a lot of customers where we're providing a relatively inferior service.

Yeah, no, I completely understand that. And that's actually very refreshing to hear someone like you talking about this because everyone is just kind of so behind on this and on the other angle. So things on that, on the skill set. So in terms of the time frame, how long do you think from start, if you're going to, let's say we're at an event and you've got the owner of an events business saying, okay John, can you just tell me how long does it take me from start to launch and what is my expectation in terms of time frame to get this going? What would you say?

I think the Quick Wins are evaluating your current marketing channels, principally looking at your email marketing, which is probably the mainstay of all events organizers now, and just sitting and do the very simple exercise and say, do we think that we are providing the best service to both ourselves and our customers by just doing lots of outbound marketing? I think if every marketeer or event director sat down and thought through that process and considered how they buy online products themselves through companies like Amazon, then the light bulb moment is just saying, well, if I could provide you with relevant content, then I'm more likely to get conversions. Therefore I should be thinking about inbound marketing tools as well as outbound. So that can be done reasonably quickly. That time frame, I would say three to six months. By shifting from an outbound marketing business to an inbound one. The reason I mentioned three to six months is it's relatively simple to change supplier and it's relatively simple to get it up and going. But then you've got to make sure that your marketing team can use the tools accordingly. Otherwise they'll just continue to do outbound marketing. So it's a bit like having a more fancy car computer product, but still only just doing one or two things from it. So you've got to make sure you avail yourself of all of the advantages of using an inbound marketing multi channel marketing suite.

That's good. And I'm very conscious of your time And I'm going to have the last three questions, John. So what would you say, and let's say in that conversation while you're drinking your beer with that event leader that's probably scratching their head, what would you say are the three key things that they should consider before jumping on an inborn journey? What would your advice be on that?

I think some of it depends on the type of exhibition or conference that you're doing. The more in depth I think it is then I would say that that's the absolute reason to go more inbound. Because if so, in the energy industry they are long term relationships. They're not people who go along to an exhibition and buy a few small products. It's all about, as I mentioned, networking and networking over a period of time. And that's the same of industries like the pharmaceutical industry as well where there's a long lead time to product. Sometimes it can be three, four, five, 10 years. But the rewards of course are huge. I think if you've got that type of industry that you serve, a community is absolutely right for it because it's about getting people's faith in your brand, providing important and relevant content. I think if you're in more of a business that provides a relatively small product at a far cheaper price, it's really just a impulse buy. Or then I think that's, that's, that's less of a market to consider in terms of building a community. So I think if it's high priced products with long lead times to market that is predicated on networking and long term relationships, then a community is the absolute ideal route to go.

Right. Does that mean then that like perhaps inbound is more. And I'm just being, I'm just kind of throwing like a curve ball to you. Is that, do you mean that then inbound is more applicable for sponsorship and exhibition sales than it is for delegates?

Oh no, I think it's all customer types related to event. So I was really just referring to the types of industry that you might address with your event.

Okay.

As to the individuals, whether they're exhibitors, sponsors, delegates, visitors, inbound marketing works for all of them. So to use to go back to the Amazonian analogy, if you're, I mean books are relatively cheap, but if I have bought a number of books, I'm then recommended other books that are similar to that, then I'm likely to buy. So I don't think it's, it's. I was referring more to the facts of a community I think is something that is More likely to have success on a longer term type industry and a longer term type buying process.

Fair enough on that.

For the customer types, as you referred to within that industry, whether exhibitor, visitor, delegate, press, sponsor or whatever, then the notion of a community and inbound marketing holds true.

That's fine. So, and I think on the aspect, at what stage are you, have you gone live with your community? Is it live?

And it is live. But it's something that I think, as I mentioned at the conference, that we're looking to embellish quite dramatically. So at the moment, I think I said, and I mentioned a number of times, there are things that we are currently doing behind the scenes which will improve it quite dramatically. I was talking essentially more conceptually, more theoretically at the conference. All right, yeah, certainly by the end of this calendar year, I mean, we're up in and running in a number of ways. We do inbound marketing and have been doing since around about May. And one of the huge advantages there is that I mentioned about MQLs to SQLs, our sales team. Now they use Salesforce as their database system or contact management system, but we are importing point scores. They're able to see quite obviously the hotter leads by virtue of their score. So an example, if someone's opened an email, fine. If someone then clicks the email, fine. But if they've got web behavior that involves looking at a program page, then a registration page and possibly they abandon the cartoon, there is a point score attached to that individual which remains within the database system. And that applies to all of our customer types.

What are the learnings so far that you've had at this stage where you're at right now?

I think some of the learnings are that you need to be very careful when you set your expectations. That's more of an internal thing. So I think these are not necessarily revolutions overnight. These are evolutions through a period of time. And I think it's very important to make sure that you set realistic expectations. You mentioned before about, you know, senior management and obviously the finance side of things would be keen to see results quickly and that's understandable. But I think it's only, I think it's. You've got to be very careful and to make sure that they are deliverable. And indeed, I would encourage people to be just a little bit cautious because I think if you try, and I like to try lots of new things, if you put far too much importance on it and far too much excitement about what it will deliver, then you are probably up for failure.

Yeah, yeah. And it's so common. It's so common. And I find this in my specific environment as well that is setting the right expectations. And I know everyone is really excited when they go into an inbound project or anything like that. And it takes a little bit of time to get, to get going. And again, I think it's been realistic is that aspect because you have to count with your team. Any other learning that you want to share on that?

Sorry, I just missed that last question.

Sorry. Any other learning. So what key learning is setting the right expectations and be careful with the expectations and making sure that they are achievable and realistic. And any other learning?

Yeah, I think the other thing is to make sure that. And this might sound obvious, but, but in buying software or SaaS products, software as a service, there's a great temptation to buy the shiny toy and we're all attracted to the shiny toy. I actually would again probably advise people with a little bit of caution in terms of shiny toy because it's actually the people behind the product that are more important. So you know, as well as setting realistic internal expectations, the other watchword that I would put out is really rigorously test before you buy the support and the services that you would get with technology or software. As a service. And as an example, as a real example, if you are shifting towards an inbound marketing multi channel suite, there's a whole host of things that you can do, but you will not do them unless you get the proper training and the proper advice and the proper encouragement to do them. Because people will tend to revert to type the thing that they feel most comfortable with. So the thing is to try and tease out of people the ability to get outside of their comfort zone, jump into the cold water and then when they find that it's not actually as cold as it appeared on the outside, then they will start to add skills to their job. And the important thing there is you're providing education to your internal staff as well. You're looking to provide what I would call as training on the job with the products, involved with the products and.

Then they will end up with the certifications along the way, kind of badges of credit. That's very interesting. So thanks. On that note, the very final question is always the usual question, which is the unfair one, which is what's the ROI and how are you going to measure it? And I know that you've outlined the conversions ultimately when you backtrack those conversions, but what would you say is the ROI of this community or what, what can you expect to get as a return on investment over a period of time? And then how are you going to measure it?

Okay, well, there's one obvious ROI is on the sales side. As I mentioned, we have an array of digital products that we sell. So that's an obvious one, although that is in its infancy at the moment. We have made some sales, but that is not yet quite at a level where I could say to you that we've got full return on investment through our sales side. But it's one side of it to me. The other element, and it's not as easy to measure, is the money that we save in marketing terms by creating an engaged community as opposed to having to always completely convert someone from scratch. That to me is the bigger part of the sell and the return on the investment, although it's essentially a cost reduction rather than a revenue to provide you with a return on investment. So I think in the first instance, yes, we can make some sales, but that is not necessarily going to really excite the CFO yet. I think what might in due course is the reduction in marketing budgets because we are, we're talking to people, not shouting at people.

Exactly. Or in some cases, I guess either reducing those budgets or what we've seen is making a more efficient use of those budgets. And if there's any reduction, then perhaps then you have more money to devote to ppc, to, you know, programmatic, all those kind of other things that can be done. So. But. Well, John, I really, really appreciate your time and I think this is a very interesting story. I personally look forward to seeing how all these pans out and it's very exciting to see, especially an organization of your size jumping onto this bandwagon and already in progress with the community. Is there anything that, like if someone wanted to check you guys out where, if you can, if you can share it, but where can they find it, where can they see it and stuff like that that you want to share?

Yeah, I think if anyone is interested in some of the things that we are trying to address and also if they would like some advice, then I think the best thing to do is to email me and I can then, because I think rather than just give you a website, I'd rather people consider this as something where I could provide some kind of consultancy, no cost, I'm more than happy to share the experience. So if anyone would like to email me@johnwhittakermgevents.com that's the best way to, I think, start the process and then I can then talk someone through what we've done and actually reveals some of the products and companies that we're using as. I've just referred to generic aspects.

Even though they are kind of generically like there's a finite number of the top five, which everyone can do, but.