6 Event Marketing Fails and How to Fix Them

Hear from events expert, Bill Zimmer, on the most common failures and applicable solutions for marketing events of all sizes. The presentation will include tips on creating urgency, developing a well-rounded marketing strategy, and remaining relevant. Find the transcript and time stamps below.

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My name is Dave Asheim. I'll introduce my company and show you a few slides and then Bill will take over and he'll run the show. Bill has given a presentation similar to this to a lot of audiences. So it's a well tested and a great presentation. So I think you will all just love it. I run a company called engaged by cell.

We've been in business about 15 years or so ago, headquartered in San Francisco, but people like myself throughout the country  and our whole goal is to make engagement much easier.  We have six or seven different services. Text messaging is certainly one, probably Bill will address it as a wonderful way to supplement or even replace email because if you get a text, you check it and you say, Oh my gosh, that webinar, that conference, that speaker is starting in a half an hour.

So text messaging is one of our services. We have a mobile app builder. It's great for events and presentations. And quite a few other little services, mapping and polls, and mobile giving, today is Giving Tuesday, and live screen. So, a lot of mobile services, this whole presentation is not about Engage by Cell, but it's all about engagement, and mobile can help play a role in that.

And, as I said, Bill might touch upon it, we'll talk about it at the end, but it's basically Bill's presentation. The kinds of organizations and events that use us a lot of city events, the Thanksgiving turkey trot holiday lighting, all those things, a lot of symposiums and conferences will use text messaging and a mobile site and alumni plan of botanical garden just launched a huge holiday light show.

And of course, every fundraising service likes to have text messaging.  

Thank you all for being here today. I am excited to share with you my six event marketing fails and how to fix all six. Like you, I'm an event marketer. And the way I'd like to start with this is to show you all the ways that I have failed at least as many as I could fit on a slide here.

And I do that because  the business that we're in with event marketing, just to sort of level set and what today's all about is, Embracing the idea that it's okay to fail. We all do it every single day in different ways. But when it comes to events and event marketing, we want to see these opportunities not not as winning or failing.

At least this is the way I look at it. It's it's are we winning or are we learning? This is a famous quote from attributed to Nelson Mandela.  If your mindset is one that is about learning rather than losing or  Not winning then you'll be able to get somewhere you'll be able to build upon your success And so what i'm here today is to share what i've seen In my 20 years experience in direct response marketing in terms of events and what works and what doesn't so Buckle up.

It's going to be a fun, Series of chapters that we're going to go through and feel free to ask questions in the chat, and we can unpack your situation. Attendees,  you know, are waiting forever to register for events. We see this across industries.  360 Live Media, we're an agency that does event strategy, marketing, and design.

And we see that attendees just since COVID are waiting longer than ever. And, by the way, exhibitors and sponsors expect more than they've ever expected from us, from events, from the ROI. And so it's important to understand that we've got a lot of stakeholders out there that we need to make sure we're addressing their needs.

And, you know, the kicker here is not only do we have to Get attendees to pay attention to us and exhibitors and sponsors want more from us, but we have to do it with a shoestring budget at best. And with fewer resources, perhaps people you know, along the way. So  I recognize this dynamic is tricky.

And this hopefully is part educational part support group, whatever you needed to be today. But I'm eager to jump right in.  So it's easy to say all these things, but, you know, what do we do here? Where's the best place to start?  My job is to give you these ideas and yours is going to be to take them and make them your own.

So I'm going to share these examples, but they may not directly apply to your exact event, but hopefully you can see, you know, the spirit of the idea and ways that you can apply it. So my job is to share these ideas, and please, please be taking notes. Please you know, just try to take what I've given you and apply it to your own situation.

And so starting here with the definition of marketing that we use at 360. Marketing is a process, you know, marketing is something that is not just a one and done. It is ongoing, especially with event marketing. We need to create those conditions for a sale to occur in a relationship to be cultivated over time.

And that really starts with the six R's that we use to measure success. So up front here, I just want to, you know, when we're, when we're talking about a successful event marketing campaign, there are a lot of ways to measure success. And these for us have been proven ways of doing that. You know, how many people are we reaching and in what segments and what cohorts are we retaining the largest addressable audience?

Are we relevant and have a high NPS score and are generating earned media? And ultimately, you know, is the revenue there and is the, is the profitability there? And so I'd say before you can have a conversation about is our event marketing working or not? It's got to be more dimensional than just did we hit, you know, a metric?

You know, how many bodies were there? That's one piece of it, perhaps the reach, and maybe that's tied to revenue. But really make sure that as you're setting objectives. And considering the strategies that you're already employing or that you plan to that, that they're rooted in something that's objective and not, you know,  someone's subjective version of what success looks like.

Because if you're clear, then you can take the ideas we're going to share here today and apply them to, you know, And  then I've got the 12 pillars here. Another construct for you. On the level set that  the 12 pillars for us are, you know, in conjunction with the six hours, we've got a lot of letters going on.

12 pillars are really making sure that as we inspect the event and what we are selling, that we are looking under every single rock and making sure that the The you know, we're answering questions such as you know, what is the potential for this event five years from now? What's the what's the grand vision that we're aiming towards?

Or, you know, how are we leveraging the place, the city, the venue more than just The place where people go to, you know, experience your event. Is there a campus? Is there, you know, are there extracurriculars that we can promote in the event marketing? So again, I'll use these words throughout my presentation, but just wanted to level set and share them with you that when you have these familiar constructs and you can come back to them, then you can improve upon these categories.

You can, you can accelerate growth if you're more clear on what you're you're working  with that. My first fail here that I see  across organizations and events of all different sizes is that  everybody thinks early bird pricing is the fix. Early bird pricing is integral, but it is in and of itself not enough.

You know, as I said before, that attendees are waiting longer than ever. We're seeing, here's an example redacted in terms of the organization, but this applies to events of all sizes that people are waiting.  The last half are coming in in, you know, six weeks before the event and this feeling of looking at your numbers and seeing that 25 percent of people are registering in the last one to two weeks and sometimes it's 10 percent or more on site.

This is a problem and this is a fail because It's  way too late to make resourcing decisions, and, you know, if we don't know who's coming, it's harder to sell sponsors and exhibitors earlier in the cycle, and so our job is to try to, as event marketers, is to pull the, the demand forward in this demand curve so people are registering earlier,  and so we need to question that assumption about early bird pricing.

Being the be all end all and really think about it in terms of demand based pricing. I mean, we can't just have early bird and an on site price and expect there to be urgency throughout this campaign.  We need to engineer urgency as marketers. You know, you can do a, use AI, you know, look it up, read, read you know, articles on pricing and you'll find this vernacular being used across not just events, but.

You know, airlines, hotels were familiar with demand based pricing, but so often event prices are set and never adjusted throughout the campaign.  It's important to instill urgency in our event marketing and upfront in the plan to have multiple price tiers that people can you know, see that are coming in terms of, you know, there's the early bird price, there's advanced, there's regular, there's onsite.

We want to have multiple jumps. In our price during any given campaign because that's the thing that moves the needle We're all way too busy and what you can see here on screen is an example where you know having an early bird price in july in this event and One at the very end just  You see a flat line of reg  and it's nowhere any event marketer wants to be when no one's paying attention and no one's buying  What we did with this organization was we actually added multiple extra price points That's the the lightning bolts that you see there for the the  subsequent year Where they did introduce more pricing options and you can see how the demand stays consistent and it's not perfect But what it does is it it allows us every four to six weeks to say hey You Now's the time to pay attention.

Now's the time to act. Now's the time that you should register for this event. Because once that first early bird price is gone  and you don't have anything in between, you're just left hoping that people see the true value on its own merits of coming to your event. But again, we're all just way too busy to be able to prioritize something that's not feeling as urgent or time bound.

So that's the point here is. Let's let's really think about what our pricing strategy is to make sure we maintain that urgency.  Additionally, in terms of pricing and ways of positioning the event to be more interesting and create that urgency is having targeted campaigns for different types of behavior of attendees.

For example, people who've added to the, their, the registration to their cart, but didn't check out. We should have an automated campaign set up in terms of email and texts and advertising to retarget them and get them to come back. We need to make sure that we are segmenting groups that are distinguished from each other and we are not just targeting one group.

Blanket flash sailing everyone all the time because that's going to reduce the value in, in the event in, in our attendees eyes. And so I would encourage you as you're thinking about strategic  campaigns,  that the audiences you're targeting are  truly unique, different, and that that message is being delivered in a way that's more focused and not blasted out and publicized everywhere.

It should feel something that's unique to them because of their connection to you or your organization.  Another key in terms of driving registration and demand earlier is to not neglect the people who have already registered for your event. And so  we call it nurture, but you know, someone who registers today, let's say the event is in six months.

We better talk to them more than just the know before you go email because Those people signed up early and they they were bought in and let's let's honor that by communicating with them updates about the event on a regular basis and really generate enthusiasm and excitement for the event. And even use them as brand ambassadors to help us activate other registrations.

We're communicating with people who have already purchased, you know, a ticket to pass whatever your version of that is let's include in those monthly newsletters to attendees before the event.  Incentives to bring their team incentives, bring their colleagues and we can automate this. It's something that you don't have to work too hard to enable as much as it is a conscious thought.

And the reason I share that is because it often leads to increased verified attendance on site.  So for the example I'm sharing here, plastic show from earlier this year, we had it. And intentional  attendee nurture campaign that drove an increase in attendance on site compared to the prior show cycle.

So just by staying engaged with people who've already purchased, you can get more people to show up in addition to driving additional registrations.  All right. Fail number two a familiar feeling for event marketers. We feel, you know, we can want change, we can hope for change, but sometimes it's really difficult to, to see it or and, and, and actually make that effect.

So.  By that, I mean, you know, there's, there's always a conversation around brand consistency, right. And make sure that our brand stays consistent year to year. And you're seeing, I just mentioned the plastic show as an example of. The 2015 and the 2018 creative, this show's tri annual, so every three years some pretty consistent, straightforward branding from these two show cycles to each other unfortunately in 2021, this show, this tri annual show was canceled because of the pandemic was still very much active at this time, and it just It wasn't something that the organization could you know, deliver on at this moment.

So,  we have the, the branding of the past, the legacy, we have this gap in 2021, and then a need in 2024 for this show to, to really, you know, break the mold and get out of their own way. They were stuck in the past and looking for something to re energize their audience.  And so, in order to be relevant, we were relentless in how we repositioned this event, this conference.

To be not just the premier, you know, destination that convenes the industry each year, but, but really an event that had a new purpose and a launch pad for innovation. And in, in doing so the theme was integral in that's made for you theme and the creative needed to stand out and be so different from, from where this organization had been.

And just theming is such a good way of getting you unstuck and changing the way you talk about your conference, because Theming is fleeting. You know, while it does have to relate to your brand and be cohesive and relevant to the value proposition that you deliver it is also something that can be flexible and should be timely given when your event is.

So,  again, this, this theme, this idea of, you know, made for you in the plastics industry this organization needed to tackle ideas such as sustainability and workforce depletion, and they needed a new way of talking about the  personalization of plastic material in our lives and making it more than just plastic.

A heavy equipment show or a large trade show. It needed a story, it needed a voice, and the theme helps us in event marketing to do that and to really address the needs and concerns of the individuals as well as the industry. When it comes to marketing strategies for this, so taking the theme and operationalizing it, it's important to have an integrated campaign where that theme can be adapted across different segments.

Personalized so that it's not just come to the largest annual meeting for our industry. While that can be true, it's not as personal or compelling of a reason to attend. And so, when you go through all the different things we've got to work on in order to deliver a great experience in terms of marketing and promoting it, you know, it, the theme needs to be adaptable, whether it's, you know, more visual or more of a narrative or, Earned media versus paid.

There's so much that goes into an event marketing campaign that we, what we want to do is give ourselves that flexibility with theme and making sure that the website  and all marketing channels really are  able to adapt that theme and, and really connect.  And feel like the organization is modernizing.  We expect this from consumer brands, naturally, as people, as humans, that, that, that, that our brands that we're affiliated with, they're going to make us feel like this was made just for me.

This is tailored, this is segmented just to me. But really the idea here is  we, we need to get out of, you know, this, The habit of saying, let's send an, let's send an email or a text or whatever the campaign is to members and non members, you know, that can be an element of the segmentation and the theme coming to life.

But we want to go levels deeper job functions and you know, where people are living and what the industry is, you know, plastics, plastics, such as every industry, you know, so we need to campaigns that were  automotive and packaging and medical and building and construction and showing how our material, our.

You know what we have in Stanford for this industry is really more diverse than people give a credit for and doing so. In talking about it on social media and a hundred different ways, testimonials and infographics and hype videos and giveaways, we're able to  really challenge ourselves to level up what it feels like to be at this event and who belongs at this event, and  I'm sharing with you perhaps something that's You know, far field or feels like it's, you know, harder to attain.

You know, if your show is not 50, 000 plus people, if it's 500 or 1000, this still applies. You know, let's take what's what we've done. And let's really challenge ourselves to get a little more specific about how  what the verticals are here. You see automotive and packaging, as I mentioned, but also job function or the way we reach out to people.

You know, we're on a platform. Webinar right now talking about with text marketing is one of the, you know,  venues of reaching new attendees linked in direct messages can can also be substitutes for more traditional email marketing and that sort of thing. But  really, you know, as you're planning for your next conference, try to challenge the convention in a way that will spur some thinking and, you know, still curiosity of your colleagues who are helping develop the strategy.

It really takes a lot of work. Maybe you don't do too much paid advertising. I suggest testing new platforms or, or targeting strategies in that paid media if you do it it's, it's just  nowadays we have to work harder to get back to similar levels of engagement and attendance at events. I mean, you know, for a webinar, we expect there to be attrition.

For an in person event, we expect there to be attrition, or, you know, by that I mean people who register and then they don't show up. It's really important to look at all the types of media that it takes to get people to pay attention, including earned media.  Public relations was huge for this event, and it was not really a focus in the past, so earning media, building media relationships,  and getting coverage in advance of the event.

And so, you know, how is PR, how is earned media factoring into your event marketing campaign? Is it just the press release that says how many people came, and it was a great week, and we had record numbers?  Or can earned media really help us earlier? Can we break the mold there and get, you know, this is the, we're stuck in our ways chapter.

So, just sharing ideas of things to say, hey, have we thought about this? Have we thought about how many media are coming? Or do we have a new goal for this? How big of an impact we want abroad with our earned media and this event or  could be localized to just let's have conversations about earned media  and barter partnerships as a way of extending our reach without increasing our budget.

This event  was  25 percent roughly international audience and partnerships are huge for that people were in other countries or other verticals or other industries who can help  amplify our message to their audiences. So building relationships. With other similar organizations or adjacent organizations to help  deploy the communications you're already making for your own website and email and social, let's get other groups activated and not stay stuck in a very straightforward way of  addressing our audience and their needs with this event.

Our third fail you know, as marketers, we think a lot, we think, Will people think this is a good subject line? Will people think that this is a good email or value prop elevator pitch for what we're trying to promote?  And I'd say it's natural to feel that way, but there are fixes for that too. You know, as I said earlier, it's not about winning or losing.

It's about learning. And if you, if you maintain this mindset and just, you know,  we're all human beings at the end of the day and If you can  foster a more curious culture,  you will find ways of overcoming whether something will resonate or not just by  testing. These are just some very simple examples, and I'm sure you've got plenty of other ideas in terms of what can be easily tested when you're deploying marketing, communications, or ads, or any sort of execution.

It should be part of the conversation. What are you testing this week or this month and tracking it? And then you know, making the winners of your tests the new control to try to beat? You know, I just talked about getting stuck in our ways and challenging convention there in terms of the strategy.

Well, this is related to that, but this is so much more of a mindset that, you know,  when you can use data, it will help you make decisions  on your team. And what I'm showing here is just a very simple example of. You know, years ago, we were working with an organization that had differing opinions on which creative direction to go.

And so we just did a simple online poll. There are platforms out there that are, you know, you can use Google or free platforms. There's also pay to play survey platforms. But ask your audience if you're not sure which, you know, imagery they prefer or which, you know,  Event theme best resonates with them, or what topics best resonate with them.

This could be done on social media as well. It doesn't have to be an in depth study, you know, rigorous research study, as much as it is, Hey, we've got two good ideas, let's prove which one works, without having to argue about it all afternoon. Let's, you know, field a quick little survey, see what resonates.

We can conduct interviews. You know, with the audience with our attendees that match the profiles that we seek to attract first timers, loyalists, people who belong in this event, but have never seen their place in it. Let's ask them what their challenges are, and let's make sure that the event can pay that off because that marketing will be so much more effective and influential if it's rooted in truth from the audience's perspective.

So using data  qualitatively, quantitatively to,  again, just eliminate the swirl that inevitably, inevitably happens on a team where you got a lot of people working hard with good ideas, but they're different. And so we're looking for ways of  removing some of that subjectivity from the conversation.

Just be relentless about insisting that we test something, you know, what, what could be done that we will learn from that we could build upon and eventually grow this event.  This is actual footage from me on vacation this summer. No, I mean, this is what it can feel like though as an event marketer.

That we're all working a little bit too hard and can't, you know, catch a break and still trying to,  Catch up to that registration goal, but you know, a fix for that is activating other people and by that, you know, in this case, I'm saying brand ambassadors, brand champions, people who want to tell a story that's related to what you have, you know, going on at your event and let them be the ones who help convince other people to attend.

This example, can  Ascend, which is an event for the aerospace industry, and it was built by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, rocket scientists, people who are building spaceships and going to the moon.  This was a technical conference for engineers and and more researchers  in the past.

What we did was we built something that would attract the full ecosystem of everybody. It's going to take  to build our off world future. And so we declared and what we learned in building this event and marketing it was that there were so many people out there with their own perspectives on what it meant to build an off world future.

In outer space, if you want to go live on Mars, we're going to need some way stations on the way to refill, we're going to need to take breaks, we're going to need to communicate back to Earth, and  who's in charge in space, and who's cleaning up the trash, and who's, you know, there's a lot of things that you start unpacking when you, when you make an event bigger than just a narrow segment, but for everybody with a similar interest.

In order to communicate this value and communicate that this was an event for people with diverse backgrounds. We opened registration and then we interviewed people who were registering and said, Hey, you don't seem to match the profile of an engineer, but you're interested in this event. Tell us more.

And we recorded those stories and we put them in advertising and social media and on the website. And at the event, they had roles and and perks for being part of this. But, you know, as you can see, we, we, we represented the teacher here in this case was the seventh grade science teacher who wanted to teach her students about you know, Space in the future of innovation and in developing our off world future, she wouldn't have normally come to this conference.

But because we appealed to a broader spectrum you know, this teacher came and plenty of academics came who wouldn't have normally been at an aerospace event. So what, what this chapter, this fail and fix is. Intended to communicate is  you don't have to do it all yourself. You can put people out there who  really just, they're going to be so much more credible than you can on your own as a marketer in  articulating the real essence of what it means to be in the company of other entrepreneurs and visionaries in this case, or, you know, think about your own industry and, and who are those kinds of people who you want to see represented, but who may not be there yet.

Find them, capture their stories, and then leverage them to help find others like them.  The reason I share that story too is because two thirds of the people who came to this event were not members of the organization. And so if you have a membership type organization, this should appeal to you because you're always looking for new ways of attracting non members to come.

And the point there is, we didn't start with a member mindset. We started with a, what problems are we trying to solve? What opportunities are there in this space? And then anybody who has that mindset can come. And that's the place you need to be at this event. Because you'll be in the company of people who are like you.

So, you know, telling better stories is that fix in a simple way, is what story are we telling and can we tell a better one? Or can we tell more diverse versions of our story to appeal to more people?  Fail number five you know, as we are  developing our narrative and seeking to attract new audiences, it's easy to go to words like Come for the networking or come for the education while those features may exist at your event.

It's not A human motivation to want to network  the word itself is not something it's got the word work in it, right? It's a tough idea to want to wrap your arms around if it's if you don't already know what that networking is going to lead to.  I share this example in terms of tapping into motivations.

Just when you look at this email from that I received from Twitter,  it's talking. The subject line is be more recognizable. Stand out is the headline when I open the email. You know, it'll help you get more followers  that they were seeking to have me update my profile photo and they could have just led with that.

But who wants to update anything? Who wants to update a profile? Nobody  by leading with the human motivator of being recognized and standing out, getting more followers. That's appealing to ego, right? That's appealing to human nature. And so, you know, what are the motivations? That your audience has in relation to your events and what your event can help solve.

It's important to get clear on that because you know, humans, there are a lot of motivators, but there's also, you know, probably a finite set that, you know, are compelling and you can deliver on in your value prop and make sure that you're really talking about all of those over the course of your campaign.

It's not just, you know,  the, the boilerplate language that is easy to pick up and change nuances about, you know, where the event is this year really push yourself to think, what is the,  what is the CEO or what is an early career or what does the supplier really think, you know, because these are the things I care about, this is what I'm looking for, why, and, you know, how will the event deliver on it, you can develop it.

Your own constructs here that's going to do you wonders for messaging because  In event marketing, we're all too busy, as we know, and people are waiting longer than ever, and it'll inevitably be, you know, a Tuesday morning, and you'll be trying to write copy for something, and you'll be  getting it out the door as fast as possible, and every, there's just too much, and so you need some sources of truth.

You need some places to come back to, and in this case, for messaging.  That you've developed in advance, that you can pick up from, that you can make sure you're, you're hitting all the notes, that you're really staying relevant to your audiences in a segmented approach.

My sixth fail is one that's, Universal  in that,  you know, as  people who are building websites and sending mass communications and, you know, all of the things we do as marketers, there is this sense that if it's not right, we shouldn't do it because too many people will see it. And, you know, that might jeopardize how they feel about us.

But honestly, there are ways of staying engaged with your audience in marketing that don't  mean it has to be perfect. Here's an example of an event. That the day this event ends, they put up on their homepage, a simple lead gen form that says, Hey,  our event isn't for a year, but if you give us your contact information, we'll send you a free code for 50 percent off when it is available.

So what I love about this is that  you don't have to have registration set up. You know, I know reg systems take forever to get implemented and organized and approved. And.  Often, you know, that's months of time that come on the heels of an event completing, and then  finally there's a moment, you know, six months before the event or six to nine months for registration reopens.

We could generate leads all year round if we just have a little more intentional approach here where  we're capturing email, we're not actually having anybody register. But we are open for business. Our websites are storefront, and so goal here is to not go dark, because we're just missing opportunities, people who could be coming and giving us their information, we're interested, but now we can't take their reg, we, you know, they can't register, so.

Let's not make it an all or nothing decision. Let's find ways of putting content behind this form, putting discount codes. It doesn't always have to be monetary. It could be  could be, you know, subscribe today and, you know,  be entered for a chance to win one of these five things or You know, be the first to know when the agenda is available.

It doesn't even have to be a giveaway as much as it is  access to information, access to something that not everybody will get. And by engaging with us, you'll get that access. So the fix there is don't, you know, we don't want to wait till everything is  Perfect. Before we start, we can really get started today in some way.

So I flew through these because I'd love to hear from you and your questions and have, you know, any follow up conversation here. But,  you know, there are ways of being more, if you've heard a theme, it's about being more intentional with what we're  doing and approaching our marketing strategies for events, challenging ourselves and others to look through a new lens.

Whether it's about pricing, whether it's about the way we market in the different channels and the segmentation approach or, you know, on and on about testing and activating others, it's,  Simultaneous equation event marketing. We're always working to perfect it. And I guess the good news, bad news is it's never going to be perfect, but as long as you keep trying, I'm confident you'll learn and get better each time around.

So we're either winning or we're learning. That's my presentation for today. And you know, if you have ideas or this sparked anything, please.  Please do reach out. I'd love to talk hear more about what you're experiencing. And Dave, if you want to ask me any questions or any from the audience,  let's do it.

Great. Well, I wrote down about 10 for you Bill. So, but maybe we'll see if some of the folks that are listening have some questions and we'll weave them in. Maybe I'll start with one and then we'll take all the questions, but folks, Bill is a real expert in this. Their organization really puts on huge events, small events.

And so  when, when Bill gives you these ideas, this is, this is almost truth. Just some random questions, Bill slide one about the, the, the urgency targeting based on behavior. I love that. That's such a great idea. What about targeting based on.  Trying to encourage people that normally wouldn't come to this conference.

I was at a waste expo conference this year, nobody from marketing and nobody from communications, nobody from PR. And I'm thinking what a missed opportunity. It was all, you know, fixed assets. Would you ever try to reach out with special pricing to certain kinds of titles?  

Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, when you've got an ability to target a group of people with a certain criteria, job function,  region, you know, sometimes people who are local could be a segment.

But yeah, let's use job function as an example.  If we are saying, Oh, You know, as someone who is, you know, clearly is matching this criteria,  you are offered, you know, a discount or an incentive to register for this event, because we're basically saying this is something that we want you to experience and, you know, free samples and word of mouth are the top priority.

Tools of a marketer. If you can employ them in any campaign, you know, getting somebody to try something and having that credibility. So absolutely. And it just comes down to  building in the time to do that work and make sure that there is a segmented offer that's relevant to them and yeah, having a landing page to drive them to and.

What about the size of the organization? Some of these conferences can be three, four or 5, 000. And if you're a little charity,  you know, you're going to the ASAE conference. That can be pretty pricey. Do you see a trend where discounts are given for either first time attendees or small organizations?  

We have seen examples where For very niche cohort segments, there are scholarships that sponsors will pay to have groups come to be able to come to an event subsidizing it.

So you get, you don't actually trade off the revenue as much as you get someone else to, you know, contribute to have that strategic group of people come. Perhaps it's early career. Perhaps it's an adjacent audience that, you know, different industry, but belongs there and having it not have to be something that breaks the bank in order to give away that discount.

I think that's a really smart approach, but you know, if there is a group that you're willing to allow in at a significantly reduced rate in order to Have them there because the value that they'll bring and who else they'll attract. I think that's totally a, a great idea. Just building into those goals.

Right. That we're not expecting as much revenue from that cohort because Right. They're there for a different reason. That's

right.  Your second topic talked about branding, and I would love to hear from people that are listening, and I'll ask you the question.  When I saw the new branding for that organization, instantly it conveyed to me, oh, this is a, this is a whole fresh approach.

I'm good. I'm going to learn so much more now because it's, it's slick. It's fresh. Maybe I haven't been for four years, but maybe I need to go because it looks so sharp. Folks that are on the webinar, I'd love to hear from you. Do you think that that would convince more people to attend instead of use the same branding that we've used for the last 20 years, or does it not make a difference Bill, I'm sure you're biased on the, yeah, it makes a big difference.

Yeah, I'd say I'm biased, but I'm also reasonable in terms of, there's, there's a rubric for direct response marketing that is lists, offer creative. If anyone's ever heard of that, 40 percent of the success of an event of any marketing campaign is the list, the audience, who you can reach.  40 percent of success is the offer, the product, the value prop and what's compelling about it.

And then 20 percent is the creative and how it's packaged. And so to me, I see it as the icing on top that.  We know who we're talking to. We have such a good, therefore we have such a good compelling event to deliver for them. And then that creative, if it matches that vibe and that personality that, you know, for that audience.

Then it seals the deal, but it really does start first with the audience and the event itself.

Yeah, okay  You also mentioned in your fifth topic about human motivators  I have often got I go to ten conferences a year And when I ask people why they came, the words oftentimes are never in any of the promotion material.

It's fun. I've never been to Cincinnati, or I love going to Vegas, or I want to come to Orlando with my kids. So the fun part,  I'm going to meet some really interesting people. So the whole networking part oh, and back to the fun, a lot of these conferences will have events at the aquarium at Universal.

They're not promoted. Oh, I've never been to Universal. You know what? Maybe that's going to sway me to go. I'm looking for a new job. I'm not that happy at my job and what a phenomenal place to go network.  Education, of course, is the one that's pushed. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to attend these sessions.

And then finally,  the vendors were always a vendor at these conferences. You can learn so much by just talking to these vendors because they're talking to. People like the folks on our webinar all day long with really interesting ideas. So what's your feel about that? I just oftentimes think that the whole marketing pitch is not really hitting the human motivators as to why I really had a great time.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, I see that as well. And I think. You know, the reasons for that are probably a combination of, you know, we've all got a lot to do. So we're, we're working fast and we're, we're using words that are true. We're saying things like come for the learning and the education and the networking and, and really, but you know, those examples that you started sharing about, you know, the concerts and the meetups and getting a job.

And like, those are the real rewards and the benefits of those features of networking of the education.  Asking ourselves the, you know, the five, why is the, why is that interesting? Why is it networking going to be good there? Well, you know, if you can get, ask yourself that same question a couple of times, you should come to a, you know, because you could find a new job that'll help, you know, pay you 20 percent more than you're making right now, you know, say it in real terms and say things like that, that will happen as a result, then it becomes more compelling, but yeah, the X factor stuff, you know, that's why people really go, they may not tell their.

Their boss or whoever's proving the costs, but people need to hear that stuff. And I do think it should be part of the equation for sure. I

do. I do too. Well, Anna's going to show the  contact information for Bill and myself. Any more questions for Bill and Bill, you would love to chat with everybody that's on the call or listen to this later, just reach out to you via email and set up a chat.

I'm sure.  That would be great. And same for me. If anybody is intrigued about using mobile to try to help at your events, give me a holler and we'll have a, a conversation. We're going to send out the slides tomorrow and a copy of the video as well. We'll post it on our YouTube channel. Bill, thanks so much.

I learned a ton. And I'm sure many of you in the audience did too. But thanks so much for joining us today and we'll we'll wrap it up. Thanks again.

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