8
Grow a Community by Doubling Down on Live Events and Experiences

What is it about in-person experiences that gives us energy as humans? In our personal lives, we spend money to go to concerts and sing along to the same songs we hear on the radio, or attend sporting events to root for the same team that we can watch on TV. We pay a premium for these experiences—perhaps to be in the same venue as the stars that we idolize, or to post a selfie that proves to our social circles that we were actually there (admit it, you know it’s true). Maybe instead it’s more about community—an innate desire within all of us to share in experiences with other fans bonded and brought together by a common cause. These are strangers we’ve never met before, but when together, we are united by the lyrics to the songs we know by heart and the stat lines of our favorite players. When we feel the weight of being hyper-connected digitally—yet so alone in a broken world—community gives us the sense of belonging that we so desperately desire.

The pursuit of connection and belonging is hardcoded into our psychology as humans and is not a toggle that can be intentionally switched on/off when at work. This is one of the core principles of business-to-human marketing that’s so often underappreciated—the imperative to craft messaging and create programs that can serve employees, customers, and the market at large in their quest for belonging within their teams, companies, and industries. Within the context of category creation specifically, facilitating the development and growth of community around your market is vital to success. The unmet need you’ve identified in the market is the common cause that binds your audience together, similar to the concert and sporting event examples that I referenced earlier. Unlike those examples, however, which have established fan bases to begin with, the early chapters of a new category can often feel very lonely for those who are participating. There can be an overwhelming feeling of being alone in figuring out how to solve that problem, realizing that there are not enough resources to be effective, or navigating a lack of empowerment to contribute to strategy.

That’s where community marketing comes in—a purposeful and authentic effort to gather the early adopters of your category and advance their interests through a variety of programs. There is nothing more powerful in category creation than having those same individuals who are carrying the weight of the market problem be taken in and accepted by their tribe, feeling that perhaps for the first time in a long time they are not alone. In a world where products are increasingly on a glide path toward commoditization, a brand’s community enforces a competitive moat around the business and creates significant enterprise value. Salesforce refers to their community as Trailblazers, while Marketo calls their faithful the Marketing Nation. In both examples, community isn’t limited to paying customers of their products, but anyone within their audience who cares about the category. At Gainsight, we tend to think about our marketable database as the measuring stick of what our community looks like and how it’s growing.

Early in the company’s history, we had observed that Customer Success managers would meet in office parks around Silicon Valley to connect and learn from each other. We made an early bet (between our Seed and Series A rounds of funding) to organize an industry conference that would gather as many folks from the community together as would come, all in the spirit of sharing Customer Success best practices and networking. The conference, called Pulse, drew over 300 attendees and would become the proof point from which we would base our entire marketing strategy. The best part of our first conference, however, could not be measured—it was the palpable energy and spirit of the community that felt impossible to manufacture. This pervasive feeling of belonging that, “Finally, I’m around other people who are just like me.”

Another compelling attribute about community is that, by its very nature, it compounds as your lifestyle brand develops around the category. Members who find value in your content and programming tell their colleagues, who enroll into your thought leadership by filling out a web form. In the seven years since our inaugural Pulse conference in 2013, the conference has grown by 20x and has spawned sister events in the United Kingdom and Australia. A huge part of that growth has been driven by how the brand has developed organically, which shows up in the massive expansion of our marketable database. Building a content marketing program (as we discussed in Chapters Six and Seven) is a critical component of growing and engaging the community to help create the compounding flywheel—however, digital programs can never be a replacement for the live experience.

Creating Experiences, Not Events

Live events have become a critical part of the marketing stack in recent years. As part of their Event Marketing 2019 Benchmark and Trends report, event technology company Bizzabo found that most (41%) marketers believe that events are the single-most effective marketing channel over digital advertising, email marketing, and content marketing, reflecting a 32% increase since 2017.1 Beyond that, the number of companies organizing 20 or more events per year increased by 17% between 2017 and 2018. As the volume of events in the marketplace continues to grow, there’s never been a more critical time to build event programs that stand out from the noise. This challenge has led to the popularization of a new trend in event marketing circles around creating experiences rather than events, a strategy that places a creative premium on activating an emotive and sensory journey for attendees that cultivates human connection and relationship.

We’ve all been to corporate events that are not experiences—maybe the all day seminar hosted at the Airport Radisson in the room without windows, and eating the barely passable lunch options while counting the minutes until happy hour. The content and learning may have been important, but you’ll dread attending the next one. Meanwhile, in our consumer lives, we’ve attended music festivals such as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival that create incredible experiences that enhance the musical performances, or urban pop-ups such as the Museum of Ice Cream that are designed intentionally to trigger emotive and sensory experiences. Those examples are the new bar and what we are competing against even in the corporate context—a new approach that requires a whole new set of considerations for event marketers.

The details matter when creating corporate experiences—focusing on the little things that often are overlooked when planning corporate events such as the music that’s played as attendees enter the room, the quality of the food being served, or how to manage energy throughout the day. The details play a major role in how attendees network with others and retain the information they learn at your event. In many ways, event experiences become another “product” for your business and should be managed that way. Experiences also put your company culture on display for your community to witness firsthand, which as I described in Chapter Five, is a powerful way to build brand equity with the market as category leaders.

Types of Corporate Experiences

Four types of experiences are relevant and valuable in category creation, all of which play distinct roles in building and growing community: field events, community groups, executive forums, and industry conferences.

• Field Events. While traditionally considered sales-led efforts to generate and accelerate pipeline in new markets, field events are an invaluable way to push category thought leadership out beyond your corporate headquarters and into the community. These programs have been traditionally organized as dinners or private events, but many companies have also developed road show programs that get executives and customers out into the regions sharing best practices around the category. That’s the key nuance for field events in the category creation context—leading with best practices over product demos and sales pitches. Sales will certainly be able to prospect for revenue opportunity, but bringing people together in their local markets to inspire, educate, and connect will create exponential value for the brand and put sales in a better position to prospect.
• Community Groups. Unlike field events, community groups are self-managed chapters of category aficionados organized by volunteer local leaders and run somewhat autonomously to your company. Think user groups, but not necessarily comprised only of customers. Given the compounding effect of community, these programs serve as great opportunities to create and grow a brand presence in major cities exhibiting category energy, even if you don’t have a local team or office there. Think about it this way—you are building a marketable database in key cities across the globe anyway, supporting a local leader in promoting a meetup is only one (focused) email away. Community groups also impact market development efforts and can help the company make data-driven decisions on where to focus or build dedicated operations. The value for local leader leaders is there too, as they have an opportunity to build their professional brands and be affiliated with a category.
• Executive Forums. Since executives will not usually attend large scale conferences unless they’re speaking or participating in meetings onsite, executive forums can package that same thought leadership energy into a more intimate format that’s appropriate for a group of senior leaders. This audience will care more about the strength of the attendee list and which of their peers will be in attendance than anything else. Forums are typically invite-only, high-touch experiences that are a mix of facilitated small group practicums and large group readouts. The truth is that executives get far more value from learning from each other than from listening to a speaker deliver a keynote. In fact, Marketing spends more time organizing the attending executives into small groups (by company size, vertical and other vectors) than any other aspect of the planning effort. At Gainsight, we found that partnering with a professional facilitator/executive coach to help both develop the curriculum and guide the experience has been an extremely valuable way to ensure resonance for our executive attendees. In early markets where strategy definition often precedes a technology purchase—executive forums provide category creators an opportunity to engage decision makers and accelerate the path to a sales conversation.
• Industry Conferences. Over the last decade, corporate event teams have developed a new program at the heart of their strategy—industry conferences. Unlike user and partner conferences (which have been around for some time), companies of all sizes are moving the conference marketing strategy up-funnel and are hosting industry-oriented events as a means of, among other outcomes, establishing thought leadership in their new categories. When done right, industry conferences can become powerful displays of category leadership for the organizers—the growth in attendees signaling the momentum behind the category you’re building. It’s an opportunity for your executive team to set the tone for where the category is headed and to put teammates, customers, and prospects on stage to contribute to that conversation. From the attendee perspective, conferences have become a familiar part of the career journey. Business professionals regularly attend conferences seeking inspiration from industry luminaries, education and learning from best practices shared by those a few steps ahead, and authentic human connection with peers in the community.

While each of these experience types certainly has its merits, the program with the most seismic impact in category creation is developing an industry conference. Conferences check every box in our human pursuit of belonging—powerful activations that create a halo effect around category, community, and brand. It’s no surprise that conferences have become increasingly popular for most companies, but absolutely critical for category creators. Early markets need an annual destination for education and connection, and being the brand that can deliver that value creates sustainable competitive advantage. But the idea of developing an industry conference from scratch sounds complicated and expensive. Where do you begin?

How to Plan an Industry Conference for Your Category

While planning an industry conference is primarily the responsibility of the Marketing team, make no mistake, it ends up being a company-wide effort. The annual event becomes a rallying call for each department across the business to drive toward, whether that’s Engineering readying a new product or feature to release, Marketing launching new and refreshed messaging, or the Customer Success team preparing new services and education offerings. As a result, well-executed industry conferences can impact every aspect of the business in profound ways, including generating net new pipeline, accelerating existing pipeline, increasing product adoption, driving higher net retention, and fostering teammate engagement.

Creating an organizational culture around the planning effort for your conference is critical, but for the marketers given the charter, there are seven important principles to keep in mind.

1. Make It About the Movement, Not Your Product

One of the key distinctions of an industry conference over others is the complete focus on category best practices over company product and sales pitches. We have spent a lot of time going into detail in Chapter Six on why this is important from a content marketing point of view, but the separation of church and state is exponentially more sacred at industry conferences. Attendees invest time and budget to attend these programs in order to learn and network, and not to be forced into a surprise sales pitch. If you violate that trust, they will not be afraid to let you or the general public know on social media, the event mobile app, or the Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey afterward. In early markets while you’re still building brand equity in the category, just having your company logo as the host of the event is enough. The market is smart enough to recognize and appreciate the company behind the program, and if they gain real value from attending, will give you due credit as the organizer and thought leader. If you’re able to continue to walk that fine line and maintain that trust with your audience, you’ll find that conference demographics will typically skew heavier toward prospects than customers. Seven years into planning Pulse conferences at Gainsight, more than 60% of our attendees come from prospect (non- customer) accounts, a reflection of the registration campaigns driven into our marketable database and the focus of our sales and SDR teams. Our intention is for all of our attendees—whether customers or otherwise—to feel inspired at the conference, that they’ve chosen the right profession, and that by being pioneers of the new category are playing their small part in advancing the community and movement forward.

Over time the line between industry best practices and product innovation can blur, especially as the category matures, customer attendees grow (on an absolute basis), and the notion of procuring products within the category becomes more understood. In fact, eventually, the pendulum can swing the other way entirely as some of your attendees will want to hear more about your product than perhaps you were initially willing to share. Knowing when to start turning up that dial is tricky, but you can experiment by announcing product-oriented tracks that are clearly identified breakouts on the agenda. Attendees shouldn’t be surprised to find themselves in a product-oriented session, but instead, should seek it out intentionally. Once the category really matures and your product becomes synonymous with innovation in the category, experiment with a product keynote in front of the entire general session. We introduced a product innovation keynote at Pulse in our fifth year and did not hear any negative feedback from the audience. In fact, our learning from the qualitative comments in our survey were that they appreciated seeing what’s coming next from a product perspective—whether they were customers or not.

2. Source Speakers Who Add Credibility and Validate the Category

One of the insecurities that comes with launching a conference brand from scratch is whether or not anyone will show up—a fear that, being new to the market, there isn’t enough credibility in your brand to justify paid admission to the event. While there might be some rational thinking there, the best way to build and scale the credibility of your program (every year) is by leveraging the brand equity of your speakers. Having an impressive speaker roster serves many purposes, but principally, it signals to the world that a collection of the best minds in the industry, from reputable and notable companies, have something to say about your category. What better validation than that? Beyond driving registrations, having great speakers at the conference signals to those in attendance that they’ve chosen the right career path and are indeed critical to the success of the business.

While building an exciting speaker roster is important to the credibility and impact of your conference, so is understanding the different types of speakers and the distinct role they play within your agenda. Figure 8.1 illustrates the three types of speakers that each industry conference should include: VIP keynotes, executives, and practitioners. The design of the illustration is intentional, as companies should only consider paying for one or a few keynotes while your target buyers and users can make up the long tail of your agenda. Let’s walk through the details of each.

• VIP Keynotes. At the very top of the pyramid are keynotes, (typically) paid speakers who are either represented by a speaker bureau or otherwise require an honorarium to participate. These can be famous celebrities, athletes, authors, philanthropists, politicians, or other notable individuals who make themselves available to speak at events—often at a non-trivial cost. You’ll also encounter “career speakers” who are on the circuit, effectively speaking at events all year round. Contracting one or a few of these speakers is typically a good idea for your conference, as their celebrity becomes a “draw” for prospective attendees, adding instant credibility to your event. Their participation is also a great thing for the attendees at the show, who look forward to hearing these individuals speak or maybe even getting an opportunity to sneak a selfie. For the most part both celebrities and career speakers will have little functional knowledge about your category—but that’s ok. The purpose they serve isn’t to be subject matter experts, but rather to contribute to the buzz and excitement about the conference brand you’re building. The challenge is that this tier of speaker is typically pretty expensive, ranging anywhere from $5k–$500k per engagement, and well into the $1M+ range for the Oprahs of the world. If you do decide to anchor your conference around a paid keynote, take advantage of their presence at the conference by negotiating other activations around their stage time into the contract up-front—whether that’s a meet and greet with VIPs or book signing.
• Executives. Once you’ve identified an anchor VIP keynote as a draw (whether you paid for him or her or not), the rest of your general session/keynote stage should be represented by chief executives from companies in your target demographic. Whether CEOs or some other senior leader from brands that your attendees would find both relevant and aspirational, these speakers will add credibility to your event and give the audience a lot of practical validation that what they’re working on matters. This is especially important in early markets where the pursuit of belonging is often exacerbated by an insecurity as to whether or not senior leadership recognizes your efforts. These executive speakers will very rarely charge an honorarium, but view their participation in conferences like yours as part of their executive communications strategy. With that being the case, getting executives to commit is no small effort, as they are extremely busy and selective with their time. At Gainsight we typically focus on sourcing executive speakers from our customer accounts first, but will also engage executives from target prospects/accounts as a way to develop a relationship with them. In the long-term greed of category creation, relationships matter, and giving executives a stage to share their perspectives as thought leaders in your new category is powerful.
• Practitioners. The majority of speakers at your conference ought to be target buyers, users, or administrators of your products and services. While keynotes and executive speakers can both inspire your audience and educate them at a very high level, attendees will typically want to go deep on topics that require the domain expertise that only practitioners carry. These speakers can typically be at the director/VP level for most organizations. Users/admins can lead practical sessions and workshops that benefit the individual contributors and front-line managers who attend the conference. Like executive speakers, there is rarely an expectation of paying for practitioner speakers; in fact it’s quite the opposite. In time as your conference brand becomes recognized as the industry event of record for your category, a premium will be placed on the opportunity to speak there. These become career moments for members of your growing community—an opportunity to share their learning on the industry’s biggest stage.

Figure 8.1 Three Types of Speakers at Industry Conferences

Ultimately, as the event hosts and stewards of the community, the responsibility lies within you to source speakers who come from reputable companies, have a great story to tell, and can deliver that story in a compelling way that connects with the audience. Checking all three boxes is difficult in planning, as sometimes the biggest names from the biggest companies in your network can draw a big crowd, but disappoint when they get on stage. You can likely find videos of prospective speakers on YouTube to get a better idea of their stage presence prior to extending an invitation to participate.

Doing Your Part—Diversity and Inclusion at Events

By: Lauren Sommers, VP Corporate Marketing at Gainsight

If you have not thought about a diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy for events, choose to make this a priority right now. Diversity and inclusion is not a communications or HR strategy, but rather a critical path to creating cultured events and experiences where equal opportunity and representation are available to all. Events are by nature microcosms of community—anthropomorphic programs that give a human face to your industry as represented by the individuals both on stage and in the hallways. As event marketers, we need to work together to disrupt the current state of diversity and inclusion at corporate events in a meaningful way. We have a responsibility to be part of the change that shapes the future of event marketing by creating experiential platforms for anyone with a compelling story to tell, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, education level, or any other underrepresented attributes. It’s the right thing to do, but beyond that, diversity makes our events better and more representative of the wide array of voices in our community.

If you are thinking to yourself, “Where does one even begin to develop a D&I strategy for event programs?” you’re not alone. The reality is that most companies are being challenged to think about this in a meaningful way for the very first time. As an industry, we started the dialogue around gender balance on the speaker agenda, but a world class D&I strategy at events goes well beyond gender. Here are some important things to think about when developing your event D&I program:

1. Make sure your company values are aligned with your event D&I strategy. Live experiences are powerful opportunities to live those values out loud.
2. Think about D&I across all aspects of your event, not just speakers. Cast a wider net for attendee recruitment, offer flexible registration options, and consider incorporating sessions on diversity itself.
3. Set goals that allow you to create a work back plan that holds you accountable to achieve them. Measure progress toward diversity goals throughout the planning process.
4. Fill your speaker pool with as many diverse speakers as possible—beyond just gender. There are several great resources online for identifying great conference speakers from diverse backgrounds.
5. Provide branding opportunities—think about how you can shine light on the diversity within your community in prominent ways.
6. Develop a meaningful D&I policy on your event website. Share your intention and open your doors for ideas and ways to include others.
7. Think about ways you can provide free or discounted tickets to underrepresented groups who can’t gain access to your event. Many companies have developed a scholarship program to help offset attendance costs.
8. Don’t use this as a PR opportunity. Your actions will speak louder than any words.
9. Own up to any mistakes. While there will always be room for improvement, taking an honest and self-aware position on the progress you’re making is good for both your brand and other event marketers, who are all learning together.

By doing your part to create diverse event experiences that are inclusive and representative, you will only contribute to the leadership equity you’ve built in your category and growing community.

3. Build an Agenda That Inspires and Educates

While there are many aspects of the conference experience that stick with attendees long after the event is over, nothing is more critical to get right than the quality of the content represented in the agenda. Remember that the primary reason that people attend industry conferences is to learn—withholding any real learning from the sessions at your event can be catastrophic for both conference and category leadership. A good starting point on this effort is to map out all attendee personas (individual contributors, technical admins, people managers, and so on) and ensure that each of them has a curated journey and experience at the show, identifying any gaps that you might discover. Also consider the different form factors for session types—panels, fireside chats, keynotes, TED-style “flash” talks, workshops, or something different entirely. Panels, as an example, are becoming less popular with audiences unless restricted to only two or three panelists since the content is often not deep enough given time constraints. Regardless of session type, make sure to include audience Q&A whenever possible—ask your production team about audience interaction solutions such as Slido that can facilitate audience Q&A and live polling in non-interruptive ways to speaker and session.

4. Create a Memorable Experience That Puts Your Culture on Display

Another key principle of the B2H era is that customers, prospects, and yes, even event attendees do not check their humanity at the door before entering your conference venue. Within our personal lives, we look for opportunities to laugh and be entertained or to ask the deeper questions that inspire us to live for something greater than ourselves. Despite any dystopian criticism that may exist, business is fundamentally a human endeavor. Finding ways to appeal to that humanity at your conference, rather than planning that Airport Radisson seminar of years gone by, will contribute to building a memorable experience for attendees and put the best of your company culture on display.

One of our company values at Gainsight is “Childlike Joy”—the idea that we should aspire to bring that same limitless joy that children possess to our jobs every day. We’ve planted surprise moments at Pulse over the years to catch our audience off guard and delight them in the spirit of Childlike Joy. We’ve produced what is surely the only Customer Success musical theater performance inspired by Broadway and Disney. We branded our keynote stage as Central Perk from Friends and re-enacted a lost episode of the hit 1990s TV show using impersonators as actors. We hired a stand-up comedian to pretend to be the CFO of a publicly traded company and poke fun at the moderator (which, sidebar, accidentally offended the front row). We staged an impromptu audience sing-a-long by planting an a cappella group in the crowd who took to the stage to lead the audience in a rendition of “Shout.” These are only a few of the moments we’ve created to inject humor and delight into the programming of our corporate event—moments that helped control energy that powered attention and information retention, create conversations that facilitated better networking among the attendees, and deliver a brand around our conference and community that makes Pulse so much more than just a business conference.

However, creating memorable experiences doesn’t have to be musical theater and a cappella groups. Here is a list of things you can take into consideration to challenge the status quo of event planning and build an experience that will leave your audience talking:

• Creative Venues. If you’re just starting out, or if the current size of your conference is modest, consider bucking the hotel and convention center trend and finding nontraditional venues to host your conference. Art galleries, sports arenas, or even historic venues such as libraries, gardens, and retired castles (yes, I’ve seen it done) could serve as unique environments that would make your program stand out from the pack.
• Better Food. While some venues have strict food and beverage (F&B) requirements, pushing back from the traditional buffets or boxed lunches can make a big impact on the event experience. Consider bringing gourmet food trucks to the event venue or hiring a notable chef to create a custom menu. Just remember to account for all dietary restrictions by capturing those requirements on your event registration forms.
• Convenience. Large events, by nature, are inconvenient for things like charging your phone, finding a quiet place to take a call, or even hosting an impromptu meeting. Make it easier for your attendees by building dedicated spaces on the show floor that address all of the little things that they may need. We’ve made it a point to create dedicated spaces at our conferences for mother’s rooms, prayer rooms, and even wellness areas to just get away from it all. Make sure the event Wi-Fi is strong and reliable, and you’re guaranteed an extra +5 points on your post-conference NPS survey.
• Themes. Some companies decide to use themes as a way to brand the experience at their conferences—whether those themes are contextually relevant to their category positioning (the future of work, etc.) or just for fun (sports, music festivals, or nostalgic era themes). One of the best themes we’ve ever activated at Pulse was the 1990s, which included a surprise performance by Vanilla Ice, sliming our CEO on stage, and an incredible 1990s cover band that blew the roof off of our after-party.

Fortunately for event marketers tasked with figuring all of this out, planning a corporate event typically requires working with external agencies and vendors who do a lot of the heavy lifting. To create an incredible experience for attendees, choose partners carefully and don’t trade off investments in quality AV production that can bring even the craziest ideas (see above) to life. Your partners will work with you to co-develop a show flow (or Q2Q) document that records even the smallest details in the sequence of your show and gets the entire team on the same page.

5. Use Pricing Tactics and Team Activations to Drive Registrations

You may wonder whether conferences subscribe to the adage popularized by 1989’s Field of Dreams—“If you build it, they will come.” Unfortunately for marketers that’s not quite the case—driving registrations to your event takes a bit more effort than building a baseball diamond in a cornfield in Iowa. Table 8.1 highlights the five primary levers most effective in driving registrations for your conference when you’re ready to launch.

Table 8.1 Five Levers for Driving Conference Registration

Lever	Functional Owner	Intended Audience
Advertising	Marketing	Followers, Target Accounts
Database Emails	Marketing	Opt-In Audience
Outbound Cadences	Sales Development	Prospects from Target Accounts
Relationships	Sales, Customer Success	Active Pipeline, Customers
Influence	Executives, G&A	Investors, Analysts

With so many different functions on the hook to drive attendance, this is another example of how conferences truly become company-wide efforts. Marketing can play a central role in enabling each department (or frankly, employee) with promo codes, email templates, social images, and other assets to help amplify registration efforts. I’ve found that despite all efforts, however, the lion’s share of registrations are driven by Marketing-led email campaigns to the marketable database. With that in mind, what kind of campaigns are effective?

It turns out that campaigns such as speaker announcements, general availability of the agenda, or any other aspect of show programming are great to create buzz for the conference and nurture your audience toward a decision—but there’s only one type of campaign that actually convinces them to the point of swiping their corporate card: money. Messaging to your audience that a specific pricing band is set to expire, or pricing will increase on a given date, or that tickets are running out will move the needle in securing registrations. With that in mind, it’s absolutely critical to develop a pricing strategy and promotional calendar in planning that optimizes around several urgent calls-to-action of price increases. As you build the financial model for the conference, arrive at a terminal revenue per attendee number that satisfies the budget and carve out Super Early Bird, Early Bird, and Advanced SKUs with discounts down to that terminal price per attendee. You’ll find that honoring expired pricing or enabling your Sales Development, Sales, and Customer Success teams with promo codes to adjust pricing around the different bands can be effective motivators (and make your team look like heroes along the way).

Since industry conferences are primarily focused on best practices and networking, companies may be interested in sending several members of their team to the event rather than just signing up with a single ticket. In order to incentivize that behavior, event marketers can create team packages that both discount pricing by volume of registrations and provide experience boosters, such as dedicated meeting space onsite, conference swag, exclusive access, and educational resources. While prospective attendees have come to expect discounted registrations, some of the value-added activations that enhance the team’s experience at the conference can profoundly impact the decision to transact. Many companies have dedicated budget for education and training that can be unlocked for conference attendance—building a program around this initiative and putting collateral into the hands of your field organization can result in dozens (if not hundreds) of registrations from a single account. As your category matures, the growth in conference attendance every year is a great proof point for the momentum behind your category and community, so being thoughtful about how you scale the registration effort is critical.

6. Monetize by Adding Value to the Prospect Experience

I opened this list of seven principles by convincing you that industry conferences are meant to be about the movement in your category and not about your company or products. That is indeed true; however, unless the conference is your actual product, you do have an underlying product or service that you intend to sell into the community you’re creating. Striking the balance between building and monetizing community is tricky, but there are thoughtful ways that Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams can work together to drive business results by adding value to the prospect experience. Do this right, and your conference program can create, accelerate, and influence revenue unlike any other marketing program. Here are a few strategies that have proven successful for engaging prospects and customers at an industry conference and directly correlate to revenue impact:

• Agree to Meet at the Conference. One of the single most important metrics that we measure in our conference programs is the number of prospect and customer meetings that are both scheduled and conducted at the show. The asks are pretty straightforward for Sales and Customer Success teams, but for cold prospects, we coach our Sales Development reps (SDRs) to serve as concierges, offering up white glove service for our prospects, such as helping them plan the sessions they’d like to attend and facilitate any introductions on their behalf. This program gives our SDRs a reason to reach out to our registered database without compromising any trust as conference hosts.
• Executive/VIP Dinners. Marketing will assist in coordinating several executive dinners for the Sales and Customer Success organizations to engage executive buyers and influencers in a more intimate format. After a long day at the conference, executives would have benefited from seeing the brand on display throughout the day as category creator, industry thought leader, and community curator, setting a great tone for a more sales-oriented discussion over dinner.
• Booth Presence in Expo Hall. Most conferences require activating a partner ecosystem to help offset the expense of event production, a program that will typically include an expo hall filled with booths and buzzing with discussion. This is a space within the show floor dedicated to solicitation, and as such, a perfect venue to exhibit as title sponsor of the conference and demo your products. While exhibitor booths will typically be turnkey and range in size based on level of investment and availability, ensure that your booth is custom and stands out from the others in size and scale.
• Onsite Executive Briefing Center (EBC). Dedicating real estate at your venue to host the meetings you scheduled leading up to the conference is a great idea, especially if you’re able to build a branded space that can impress. These spaces should be designed as private meeting rooms, enabled with AV, and fully catered with water, tea, coffee, and healthy snacks throughout the day. Create a process for internal teams to book meeting rooms in advance in order to invest in a great experience for prospects and customers, and keep everyone on the same page logistically while at the show.

7. Measure Your Success

Make no mistake about it, conferences are a lot of work. But there is arguably no more effective weapon in the category creation arsenal than launching and scaling a conference program. In Chapter Twelve, I’ll go into depth on the specific impact that conferences can have on company growth, but it’s important to call out how to measure the success of the program itself. Here are a few metrics to consider:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS). Calculate your NPS by issuing a post-event survey to all attendees asking for an answer to a key question, using a 0–10 scale: How likely is it that you would recommend our conference to a friend or colleague? Respondents are grouped as follows:
  • “Promoters” (score 9–10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep coming back to your conference.
  • “Passives” (score 7–8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic and vulnerable to competition.
  • “Detractors” (score 0–6) are unhappy attendees who can damage your brand through negative word-of-mouth.

• Subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters yields the Net Promoter Score, which can range from a low of –100 (if every respondent is a Detractor) to a high of 100 (if every respondent is a Promoter).

• Growth in Attendance. Close the books on how many unique people attended your conference, what the registration-to- attendance ratio looks like, and how this year’s performance stacks up against previous years. Again, for category creators, this metric shows up time and time again on investor and board slides as an indicator of the momentum behind your category.
• Meetings and Impact to Pipeline. Consider the number of meetings booked ahead of the conference and how many actually happened at the show. Segment the data by proving impact to sourcing net new pipeline and advancing existing pipeline.
• Closed Revenue. While this might be difficult to forecast immediately after the conference, continue to monitor the new business deals sourced and influenced at the conference, as well as impact to renewals/net retention and upsell/cross-sell revenue generated.

Beyond these metrics, conferences can impact your business in exciting and intangible ways that often don’t show up in spreadsheets. Your customers at the conference will take great pride in being affiliated with the market leader. Your employees will leave hyper- motivated, knowing that they’re contributing to something bigger than just the company. Your investors will leave confident in the bet they’ve made on you and your team.

By following these seven principles for planning an industry conference, your company can harness the most powerful part of category creation—growing a community of loyal brand advocates (whether they’re customers or future customers) and helping them self-actualize within your category. These programs appeal to our basic human pursuit of belonging and, in turn, help build incredible affinity between the brand you’re building and the people in the community you’re leading.

Note

1. 1 Anna Sang, “2019 Event Marketing Statistics, Trends and Data,” The Bizzabo Blog, December 17, 2018, https://blog.bizzabo.com/event-marketing-statistics