- Roger Von Oech quotes
I was thrilled to have the opportunity to host the Corporate Event Marketing Association's first regional event with content in Austin, Texas on September 19th. CEMA is a California-based industry association for corporate event marketers, primarily in the high tech sector, but expanding to other corporate areas as well. The majority of our regional events have been social in nature, so we tried an experiment with a half day of content at the W Austin Hotel. Nearly 50 attendees from all over the country joined us!
Our day began with a roundtable lunch with table topics that attendees selected when they registered. Gathered together by a common interest, conversation could flow freely at the table. By all accounts, few tables actively pursued their table topics, but having a common interest to seat attendees together was a great start to the day.
I kicked off the meeting with my favorite reminder of corporate life: Dave Grady's The Conference Call.
THANK YOU
Carlson Marketing was our underwriter for the event, and they shared a great video about their services. Opus Solutions managed registration for our event. PSAV supported us spectacularly with their A/V set and personnel. Love those guys! And we can’t forget Vivastream – a new social network and mobile app that let our attendees connect with the people who match their interests. Anyone who didn’t attend in person can still sign up for a Vivastream account and join in the networking!
Opening Keynote
After lunch, the content began with Michael Gale of PulsePoint Group. He is a recognized industry expert in integrated technology marketing, having founded Strategic Oxygen in 2001, which is widely seen as one of the technology industry’s primary data toolset for marketers. The company was sold to Forrester Research in 2009.
Michael shared industry insights into how executive engage at face to face and virtual events. Notably:
- 65% of C suite go to vendor events based on a personalized sales invite
- 30% of Tech influencers who have gone to one physical event will go to another
- 25% of the follow up from an event involves a hook type of marketing
- Virtual event only (and not physical event as well) is three times more likely than physical event only
- Physical and virtual events work equally well (or badly) at each of the awareness – consideration and purchase stages
- Over 40% of occasions C suite are looking for customer and industry based insights at these events
- Social and events link extremely well through what we call the Social engagement quadrant
- C suite and IT only share about 38% of the physical event experience but some 65% of the virtual experience
- Do not extrapolate from the US to the rest of the world – Asia, EMEA and LATAM - Events
Rinse and Repeat: How Dell prioritized the globalization of event content
The first was by Denise Michaels, event content strategist for Dell’s Small & Medium Business division who has been driving the global rollout of their content consolidation program. They began their content journey in March 2010 with events managed and executed locally, with no centralized view or standardization.
As they audited the presentations that were being given to customers, they labeled them “Frankenstein Presentations;” local sales teams were building their own slides with content pulled from various (not always current) sources.
Event managers were also on their own for events in their region. The regions were disconnected from each other and they were each reinventing the wheel for every event.
To tackle the problem, they broke the plan into four areas:
- Listen & Learn
- Connect to customers and providers
- Recognize pains/needs
- Solve & Simplify
- Create reusable, relevant content
- Make easily accessible
- Socialize and Market
- Network, network, network
- Communicate value constantly
- Rinse & Repeat
- Listen, improve
- Communicate
How do you L.I.K.E a company?
Ryan Lewis, social media strategist with The Ferren Agency shared some tips and case studies on social media in live events. He used the acronym L.I.K.E. to showcase his points:
- Linkable: Content and Understanding/Sharing Ease
- Using a URL shortener like bit.ly, you can make links usable in social media. But by customizing your URLs, you can give people a clue as to what you’re about to link them out to see (check out this cool short How To video here).
- Incentivized: Making Tasks Fun
- The gamification of event content makes engaging with content rewarding! “Game the mundane!” Earn points or baubles that you can redeem for prizes through various interactions like downloading content, checking in to a location, etc.
- Knowledgeable: Is Learning Easy? Complex Theories?
- Making difficult concepts simple with infographics and analogies makes attendees more likely to share with others.
- Exclusive: What Is The Reward For Action?
- Attendees like to feel like they’re getting something exclusive. Offer things just to them for attending, or offer to them first and let them share with friends and colleagues. Feeling like they are “in the know” is a great way to bring exclusivity to the masses.
Chris Meyer, COO of INXPO, shared some great industry insights on virtual and hybrid events. Some snippets:
- Virtual events are rated as more influential than many social media marketing tactics
- Hybrid meetings are not a threat to face-to-face, but an opportunity to raise the bar
- Getting content to attendees who can’t travel is a vital part of a marketing campaign
- Cisco saved $19m by making their global sales conference hybrid
- 42% of virtual event attendees are international
- Data from SAP Sapphire and Cisco Live! shows face-to-face attendee growth driven year over year by offering the content virtually
- Tradeshow Property: Rent or Buy?
- Event Apps: Custom build or buy off-the shelf?
- Roadshows: Dead or Alive?
Closing Keynote
We closed the day with GasPedal CEO Andy Sernovitz. With his bag of tricks (ranging from chocolate to Facebook and Twitter earrings to fake mustaches to autographed copies of his book Word of Mouth Marketing, Andy closed out our day with a bang. He shared stories about how to harness the power of the buzz to keep event attendees talking about your event and telling others why they should go.
Some pointers from Andy:
- Give people a reason to talk about your stuff
- Make it easy for that conversation to take place
Find Big Talkers
- Get your VIPs in early – celebrity bloggers in your industry
- Other stakeholders in your event – sponsors/partners
- GasPedal gives attendees a welcome box mailed to them including signed copies of books by presenters at the conference
- GasPedal gives speakers customer shirts with a custom URL – speakers video themselves wearing the shirt and put it online
- Give sponsors extra passes to share
- Do audio previews of each speaker and share them online
- Tell-A-Friend campaigns for attendees, speakers, sponsors, VIPs
- Tweet interesting things that can be retweeted
- Discount code campaigns where you tell people they have “the inside deal” to a discount and let them share it with the people they think should get it
- Passes to share
Social media support
- Live blog it – so people can just re-blog/re-tweet instead of trying to write while they try to listen
- Twitter: Hashtags, constant reinforcement, have staff tweet easily retweetable content
- Surprise your attendees constantly… but not with bad things (like a naked lady covered in sushi as a centerpiece)
- Half-time show: every heard of BlendTech? What if they did a demo in the middle of your event? Blend a cell phone! Now THAT would get people talking.
- And, of course, always have great content
- Make sure you are giving away stuff that people will keep like:
- A genuinely good bag
- Signed copies of speakers’ books
- All swag must be travel friendly
- Book signing with author + photos shared online
- Photo booth, other sharable memory-makers
The conversation is just starting when the event is over. Capture as much buzz after the show as you capture at the show to build demand for next time.
Post-event content
- Assign photo album staff and allow it to be user-generated, too. If you get everyone tagging and sharing, you can spread the buzz far!
- Summaries, trip reports, wrap-up videos that share the content make it super-easy for attendees to reuse or share
- Record sessions and share snippets to start word of mouth for next year
- Share slides from every presentation on slideshare
- No one has time for a community created just for the event. We’re too busy. But if you keep the conversation where people already are, you can keep the buzz alive
- Keep it to FB and Linkedin group – often the best because 100% people are there already
- Share speaker Q&A, discussion of sessions, and networking in those areas or through smaller in-person get-togethers
- Ship the giveaways/handouts/gifts home for the attendees
- Have videos and content to share with non-attendees
- Send something nice to your speakers. GasPedal sends a Carnegie cheesecake!
- Thank your sponsors with something nice – food! Include the booth workers.
So as you can see from my wrap-up, I was blown away by the stories shared at this event. The networking was great and the content was wonderful. Thank you to our sponsors, our attendees, and our speakers for making this a truly spectacular engagement. Please contact me if you have an interest in learning more about the Corporate Event Marketing Association, our future events, or any of the content we shared.
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