Events: Think Product, Not Party

We are firmly in events season, and hosting an event as a vendor is the ultimate act of content marketing. In fact, if you are hosting an event, it’s a key part of your content marketing program, setting and reinforcing the themes, tone, and topics, and supporting your content brand.

We can bathe in the social proof halo effect of influence, from the famous (for our budget) industry speaker’s keynote. The thought leaders’ presentations on the undercard spin off social content, video replays, and future blog posts.

Customers who agree to speak can be seamlessly guided to turn that presentation into the gold standard of B2B content: a case study and a testimonial. After all, we’ve overcome the objection to them saying those lovely things in public.

The customers attending have access to the leadership and the opportunity to kick the fella in the shins who decided to move the save button.

Err… try that again…

Customers, industry influencers, and analysts can gather for a collective feel-good moment, slightly hungover, to be wooed by the company’s future and its products.

Above all else, this is useful (the watchword for good content marketing) to those who attend - (even the fella that got kicked in the shins), and we get a whole heap of buzz, future content, advocacy, renewals, and the opportunity to thank our clients, people, and our community.

Host it somewhere lovely, build it, and they will surely come.

Sounds splendid, right?

The challenge is that an event, even if it’s just a webinar, a roundtable, or a full-blown conference, like all of our content marketing, needs to be marketed, but unlike a whitepaper, ebook, or video, not only does it need to be marketed, it needs to be sold.

Suddenly, we have a second business; we are now an events company, and the sales team has a new line item on their price list, the event, and an expectation, pressure from leadership, and a target to make the sale to pull in the punters.

And... well... as the budget got a bit cut, the product is not that good. We no longer have an internationally bestselling author and the first woman to win on The Apprentice kicking things off; we have the CEO giving the keynote.

If we don’t have a sales and marketing plan for our event beyond “build it and they will come”, it becomes a huge distraction for the sales and account management teams.

Yeeeees…. you could outsource this, but leadership prefers to spend the budget on better canapes, and our sellers know the audience.

Aside from the time lost to frontline commercial activities, sellers find themselves trading goodwill, future leverage, and discounts to encourage folks to spend time, cover travel costs, and sometimes pay an entrance fee to attend.

Let me correct that: the sellers are trying to sell their contacts on the idea that they need to make the case and sell this to their bosses, budget holders, and finance.

I love events, for all the reasons I kicked off this article with, but we need to consider that this is a product.

• It needs to be good enough to be useful to its audience (not a vanity project for leadership)
• There needs to be a large enough market for it to cover or justify the costs.
• It needs to be sold by someone.

We need to do a bit of product marketing due diligence before we embark on a path of distraction for our sellers.

So, that’s my thought for this week: Events, think product, not party.