Sam Birkett 0:05
Hello, one and all and all and one. Welcome once again to Marketing Meanders with Sally and Sam. And today we are talking about conferences. It seems as if the world conference season or we general conferences are actually coming back again, after the COVID pandemic lockdown, and very much, I think a lot of busy conference attendance going on right now, funnily enough, I'll probably come to this in our discussion about some teams who I'm supporting, who are at conferences as we speak, as we record this, and both Sally and I, I think have been involved in supporting and attending conferences in the past, and no doubt many of you listening, have been involved in conferences and events, either setting them up, arranging them, attending them, doing the mopping up afterwards and the follow-up, for example. And so we thought we'd talk about them and see some interesting stories, hopefully, and assess, I suppose, I said, the importance or the purpose and how you can get the most out of conferences, and asking the question, do you need to a) host this or b) attended in the first place at all? So with all of that thrown at you, I'm gonna jump straight to Sally and say, so Sally conferences, in general, good experiences have you had or have you had less, you know, more varied experiences or conferences?

Sally Green 1:28
By and large, yes, good experiences, I think you need to be careful that you don't... I have a thing about conferences because I think they can be an absolutely stupendous way to waste money. And get virtually no leads back and possibly, if you're going to sell things at your conference, sometimes you've not sold full price or you've done some kind deal which can be a stupendous way to waste money. However, it can be also an equally stupendous way to raise your profile. Particularly if you're a new person and you've absolutely nailed the conference and you know that the right people are going to be there. A lot of people go to conferences because they feel they have to. Do you really? Is the audience really going to miss you? So if you don't go are they going to think, "Oh, well, they're not there, perhaps they've gone out of business". That likelihood is extremely tiny. It's very unlikely people are going to think if you're not there, or better not use them anymore, because they're not here. So you need to make sure it is valuable for you to go there. Sometimes it's important to go there to make sure that you can actually ask your audience some questions. So this isn't just you being there and displaying to your audience. You might want to go there, not to display to your audience, but to ask your audience some questions, actually get inside your audience's heads to get to them for some time. But you have to make sure that you have got a goal for this conference and that goal isn't just we get there without, you know, crashing the car or losing all the stuff, although that is a valuable goal. But a lot of people go to conferences, because "Oh, it's that time of year, that conference happens in September, we have to go". Maybe you don't, and maybe it would draw more attention to you if you're not there. People might think, "Oh, why aren't they there? They're really good. Where are they now? What are they doing?" And it just might draw attention if you're not there? And do you need to take a huge stand? Might you just want to have three speakers? May my that be more powerful? So it's a fantastic way to waste money conferences if you're not careful.

Sam Birkett 3:40
Yeah, exactly. Well, I think it's interesting. I imagine there's quite a lot of people out there right now who perhaps, maybe the pandemic and the lack of physical conference events has made them stop and reassess and ask these questions about, well, you know that conference, we always attended the autumn in September when everyone's back and that one we always do in the April, a) do we need to go there and b) what are we trying to achieve? Because I think it's a really interesting question to, as you say, I mean, again, starting with this question of why and having a purpose before you commit to spend, and commit, you know, opportunity cost, etc. to an event. But then also the wash up afterwards saying, Well, did we achieve that purpose we had? Did we sort of say right, but our target is to get 10 new good conversations with people from this sector? Because we know they're at the event. That's what we want to do. Therefore, we're going to follow them up, put them on CRM and so on and so forth. Or was it, do you have unintended outcomes, which are positive perhaps, or unintended positive and negative outcomes of like, "Yeah, we were there. But you know what, we could have got away with just having an attendance ticket rather than paying for that sponsored stand and the presentation and the one-to-one meetings, which we tried to get in" because, as you say, I think it there is a real possibility that you can end up just going through the motions almost and yeah, that sort of presenteeism, isn't it conference presenteeism to say, we need to be there, because we're one of the major players and if we're not there, then that's...

Sally Green 5:12
A disaster!

Sam Birkett 5:13
Yeah! Is it just a... we've got to have a stand bigger than the other guys? I mean, I think there's also this sort of conference subculture isn't there for people who like to go around and just go around and surf the stands and say, "Well I quite like the way they've done that", or "I like the way they've got those goodies, with that, and that screen", and so on, and so forth. But I suppose there's always going to be those peripheral elements. But I mean, at the heart, I suppose say what we're saying is, just make sure that you do have a very clearly defined purpose and some goals around going to the conference. But also, I would say, that set into a wider your wider strategy. So you're saying, Well, how does this support the wider strategy? Will it help us?

Sally Green 5:57
Absolutely. You also have to make sure that you don't just... one of the problems with conferences often is that the measurement times aren't long enough. So you get back, it's all finished and you haven't lost anything. And then you possibly then count all the leads, you've got, count the money you made for anything you sold and that's the end of your round up and go yep, okay, there we go, here are the figures. But no, actually, particularly if you've gone to raise your profile, you might actually want to do some pretty long-term measurements here. So actually, you then need to start having some kind of almost like, tendering processes to everyone that was there, if you've been lucky enough to get the email addresses of all the attendees, you need to do some long term, maybe questionnairing, or some longer term, maybe you can turn some of those people into leads if you try hard enough, but it's not just "oh, we've come back from the conference, and we didn't break the stand", it's not long enough, you need it to last a bit, maybe six months, if it's a particularly big profile, raising whether people noticed you there, and then maybe you might want to give me give the next one, it should be an annual conference, we'll go again, maybe two or three months before the next year's conference, you start emailing last year's conference attendance is saying we'll be there again, are you going to go? Would you like to meet us there? Blah, blah, blah, to kind of beef up what you've got.

Sam Birkett 7:22
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you say, I think it's very much that you've got to have that timescale in your mind, haven't you? And it's, it's almost like a, I suppose, again, post-pandemic, lockdown restrictions, but actually, be able to physically see people and meet them. It sort of makes you think, because it makes me think the conference, really, I mean, it's just it's one big opportunity too, I mean, either you're going to showcase and present some amazing work you did, and people go, "Wow, that's incredible, look at that", and then you'll get the slides afterwards, or we'll have it broadcast live and it's in a video. So you've got other assets, I suppose you can use later on. But essentially, I suppose the main thing is, you're looking to create new and maintain relationships effectively, aren't you looking to say, well, this is either going to be directly to my customers who are going to at the event, or it's other stakeholders, other people who can be involved and, you know, we can collaborate with but it gives a good chance to grab a coffee and see someone, look at them in the eye face-to-face and carry on that relationship, strengthen it or establish a new one. But of course, again, that comes down to who's actually going to be there, doesn't it? Because how often has it been that you've gone to a conference of some sort and come back and gone? Well, who did you talk to that? Or did you say, Well, lots of other people, competitors trying to sell our stuff to us almost. Actually, there weren't as many punters.

Sally Green 8:45
Yeah, we've all been to conferences where actually the only people you spoke to were the other stallholders, all complaining about the lighting is not good enough, my internet connection has gone down, you know, this coffee is revolting and that is all you've done. But actually, they've put the conference hall miles away from any places where any of the attendees are going to be. Really that's not helpful. I mean, there are questions you need to ask the conference people, where the hell is my stand going to be? Because we have all been to conferences where your stand is a) you don't want it to be right next to the toilet. But you want to make sure that it's not at the other end of the building from the toilets because otherwise, we're in between talks and you know, seminars, etc. Most people will be going to the toilet and not have time to visit you and they also don't want to be that far away from where everyone's going to have lunch. So you do need to know where they've put you.

Sam Birkett 9:46
Yeah, absolutely, as you say making the most of that time so that you've, you know, you've got the kind of the right collection of people there in the room who you want to talk to and then you've got a good opportunity of them actually seeing you and getting to you, I suppose because there's that mine boggling array isn't there of conference sponsorship opportunities, it seems to have ballooned. One of my very first jobs actually in marketing/ business development, everything was working for a consultancy where they had lots of people involved about four or five different sectors, professional services sectors and they basically, I had to run the conference sheets, the conference tracker because before that was just randomly people have their own budgets and went, "Okay, well, this is interesting, I'll go to this event, I'll go to that event" and some people go to lots of conferences, some people went to none. And we actually put it together and actually codified it sorted by sector, sorted it by, you know, what our position was, why we wanted to go to it and who was going to be there. So I did quite a lot of that planning, this massive spreadsheet, I'm sure these days could have put it into something far better, or I don't know...

Sally Green 10:50
Maybe not!

Sam Birkett 10:51
You know, colour coding, I loved it all the colour coding, I've got to deal with all that stuff. Which is good. But interestingly enough with that, we then started to try and develop strategic relationships, they say with conference organisers. So instead of just attending, we'd say, well, we'd like to speak and ideally, my main mission was to get some of our expertise, and are experts at the conference without having to pay anything, or pay very little, you know, because, effectively, you know, we're giving our expertise to the conference and contributing content. And so I did get a few of those sorted out, which was great. But the thing that really interested me was the fact that was this explosion. I mean, during that time, I was doing this just explosion in opportunities for all sorts of different things like, you know, do you want to sponsor an email, sponsor an event, sponsor a breakout session, sponsor a coffee break, sponsor bags, sponsor this, appear on this, appear on that. It was just this, you know, mind-boggling options. So you just have to go? I don't know, I've got a budget of a few grand, what can you do with this almost? And then try to assess how you can make the most of it. But I think it's quite challenging, isn't it for people to sort of, you know, if even if you've got a quite a clear objective of, we want to achieve X results, and this is why we're going to the conference, you then have to match that too, are you going to invest in the first place? And if you are, how? What combination? Because there's so many options these days, I find.

Sally Green 12:15
They're mind-boggling, and often what you're having if you're a gold sponsor or a silver sponsor, or bronze sponsor of this conference, and in there, there'll be you know, yes, you get, you get an advertised stand or you get seven chairs or whatever you getting, and you're right, they completely break it down granulated massively. And actually, a little bit of you is thinking, maybe you should go back to conference organiser and suppose you are the market leader, don't just go "okay. The market leaderboards have a gold sponsorship will pay for that". Maybe what you should do at the conference organisers say, "We are the market leader here. I am not prepared to pay that to have the best possible opportunities at this conference. If you don't have the market leader there, will it make this conference look a bit off dodgy or not worth attending? So actually, as the market leader, I want this". So there's no reason you should just look at their what they're offering you and say, oh, yeah, okay, I'll do that. You absolutely, as you say, develop a relationship with them and go back and say, "Oh, no, no, no, we're not coming unless you do this". It matters to them. If they don't have market leaders it ruins their marketing. Because just suppose there were a conference about, you know, fizzy pop and Coca-Cola said no, then you're going to look a bit silly.

Sam Birkett 13:44
Definitely, definitely. Because it's that thing, isn't it, whatever they put on these rate cards and things is never set in stone. It's all flexible and negotiable, and up for grabs, which, again, I mean, I think it... I say ascribing it as a challenging thing, but I suppose really, it just puts the ball back in your court about, what is it we're trying to get out of this t the end of the day? You know, what is a reasonable expectation of what we can get out of this. And I suppose if you're looking at, you know, perhaps someone's already got a budget in place and say, "Well, you've got fifty-grand a year to spend on conferences, and you know, at the moment we attend these four, these are the four key industry events. I mean, I think it'd be, it's quite an exciting thing to say, I'm going to challenge that and look at it and say, "Are all of them worthwhile? Can we get more out of them?". But also, that assessment of search, going back to the start, what are we getting out of them? And do we ever really, you know, genuinely and over the time period you described as well, sorry, about, you know, do we genuinely understand any sort of return on investment over a longer period. Is it the case that actually that money can be repurposed? And we host our own series of events, which are very good when they're online? Yeah. So it's almost that constant... I mean, I suppose really, I was describing, you know, conference there's any other sorts of campaign really isn't it's just having the purpose behind it. You know, it's part of your strategy. But conferences can become, they can always stand standouts as something different, can't they from other marketing campaigns.

Sally Green 15:16
Oh yes. You're right people do not align their conference activity with all the other activities that are going on, like your email campaigns or your LinkedIn campaigns, people tend to have your conference campaign just happens separately on its own little bubble over here and you don't mention it in your LinkedIn campaigns that you're doing it, I have a LinkedIn post, but it won't be part of the LinkedIn campaigns that you're running alongside it, and it should be, it should be continually tied into all the other activities you're doing. Because it's almost certain that the people that are going to be reading your LinkedIn campaigns, hopefully, may well be going to this conference. They're your audience if you're getting it right is your audience, and they're not stupid, and they too will be doing both. And you can go to a conference. Just suppose you are a market leader, when you go to the conference, organisers say we will market your conference to our key niche people on our CRM if we get a free stand and that's a nice big thing to do. And it ties into all the rest of your marketing activity.

Sam Birkett 16:32
Yeah, definitely. As you say, I mean, it should absolutely be that so that you feel that when you're going to an event, you're just getting closer, and you're helping the conference organiser get closer to the target audience they're after, or one of the multiple target audiences they're after. I suppose if it's a large, large event of some sort, you're saying, " yeah, you want to get handbag makers or leather producers, you know, in the UK, we need to be there because that's that's the industry event. And that's where we want to go". I mean, there are some people who do this well. I mean, the ones who, yeah, they have to find idea of you know, there are a certain number of conversations we want to have with people at this event, it's perhaps an industry-leading event or it's the one where it's slightly harder to get people but there are the right sort of people there who are helping us to, you know, maybe it's even risk referring maybe it's, you know, like with our handbags, it's getting there amongst the people who write about luxury goods, living things like that. And so very much there you're looking to present the picture of the lifestyle you're offering, your proposition, aren't you? You want them to understand, and then get a follow up with them to then write about it, share it on their channels, start to get you know, maybe they're interested in advertising opportunities, wherever it might be you're looking to do that. But you have to have that campaign approach and that idea of how you're looking to... because you're not looking to sort of go well, this the first time this event where we're going to talk to people like this famous like, Well, I mean, perhaps when you starting out as a startup business, and yes, you haven't done that before, but you will have hopefully started doing some marketing before you go plunge straight into a conference and, you know, you're supporting the ongoing proposition and it's sharing your messaging and starting conversations at that event. But again, clearly defining who their audience is that you're talking to, what you're trying to achieve with them, and did you do that or not? Is the thing as well, it's like these. We've talked to someone the other day about banking, business cards, and whether business cards are now sort of a thing as much as they used to be, or whether you should have a digital QR business card and it was about, you know, people who do some raffles for like, put your business cards into the golfers bowl or do a raffle card out, and you win some pamper or something. And then we sort of talked about listening. But the thing is, does that actually, you know, so we might get 50, 100, 200 cards, but are any of those people relevant to us? Or have we just done a raffle? Yeah, it's a very good point. So we've done something fun and interesting, but does it actually add to what we're trying to achieve at all in first place? Or was it that one conversation.

Sally Green 19:21
The other thing you need to do is to make sure that it's not just your external audience, it's your internal stakeholders because I've been to conferences where there's been the marketing team, and they've spent, you know, six months getting the stand right and making sure you have the right sweeties on the stand and 101 bits of collateral all over the place, and it's cost a fortune and they've arrived, they're there, they're a nice presence. And then there is the sales team, who also need to go here. But a) they only ever come to the standard dump their coat there and you haven't spoken to them about it, and then they just drift off and do their own thing, possibly with different messaging to you you. And sometimes you will find that they've actually commissioned the little kind of welcome hosting thing as a sales thing and you think hang on a minute, why is this not all linking together? And you can see it, if you look around big conferences, you will see those where the sales teams are doing their own thing, which isn't wrong, but they need to be doing their own thing and the marketing team needs to know what that thing is.

Sam Birkett 20:26
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, joined up, because that's the thing and I suppose if we take a scenario where we assume that you've done your homework, you've integrated attending a conference and sponsoring and getting a stand and it's part of your plan, and you know you're after X, Y, and Z audiences there, and you're looking to achieve, you know, X number of conversations. So you've got all that, all the planning so good. You've turned up your goodies at the standard, it's all set up. And then as you say, it's like, well, the assignment of roles isn't it's like, Well, are we taking five people? And if we are, a), what are they doing? and b), as you say, is it joined up thinking about what are we trying to achieve with people? Someone might think, if they don't have that plan of, well actually, what we really want people to do is sign up to a free trial, say, that's what we really want to get. We want to maximise the people to sign up to a free trial of this product, someone else is going out there saying, I'm just trying to sell, you know, off the bat, that that's what I'm closing. So I'm looking to get as many sales opportunities as possible. I'm not even aware of this free trial thing, you want to know. This is the funnel. This is how we're trying to you know, this is our key thing. This is why we've got it here. Yes, we need people to come over to this console and input their details and they'll say "well, no, I didn't I didn't do I've got business cards". But I didn't get that and you have to go. Okay, well, recalibrate and get back in touch with them. But yeah, joined up, that's the joined-up thinking.

Sally Green 21:58
And it means that it's not just something you do five days before the conference starts, and that's often the other thing, so you've set all the conference and they think, "Okay, so it's next Monday. But I talked to sales", and that's not joined up thinking, and your absolutely guaranteed one of the biggest, biggest complaints you get everywhere, every single conference, it will be marketing personnel, are the people sitting standing behind the stand. a) they're the ones that do all the setting up. They're also the ones that do all the backing down and they're always the ones having to stand on the stand and maybe it should possibly be ought to have a rota. It's really boring, because actually, maybe sometimes sales could join in that. Because you'll often be there and sales go, "Well, why didn't you get a handbag brochure? Why didn't you bring that?" and you go "because we didn't speak to each other about what we want to before we left". And you get this horrible bitchy, blamey stuff and you start having differences and you'll say "I'm not buying you a coffee, because actually, you didn't bring the yellow handbag brochure". It just gets petty and although that sounds silly, it's talking to an underlying problem you have that your sales and marketing isn't aligned. So, you know, did sales tell you they wanted that brochure there? Did you talk about what's going to be there before, and it's important that you kind of make sure that weeks and months before, you've both got together to make sure the right things are happening?

Sam Birkett 23:27
Yeah, definitely, definitely. It's really important to do that. And then hopefully, you have that ongoing understanding, but it's just reaffirmed each time and everyone's up to speed about what you're going to do. That's the worst thing if you go to the stand and you see people not looking at each other and be miffed off. There are those things I mean, I was going to move on to merchant merch and stuff like this. But also you know your team there on the day, so as you say, you want to approach a stand that's welcoming and open and people are aligned, they know what they're talking about. You don't feel that they're trying to leap upon you and push you towards anything but they are gently... because there's definitely a skill to that I think isn't there actually hiring people who have the ability to engage and show that they're interested in their topic and that they're interested in finding out more about you. But also that you know, your design and everything else you've done around the stands for example, if you do have a stand, is it's clear who you are, what you're doing, why you're there. So you've actually done effectively, you're creating like your little shop windows aren't you really. I mean you are creating your shop window there and you know we've all seen, say we did take our luxury handbags off somewhere we were competing against Prada and the like and you know we wouldn't just say "well look, we're amazing we know Prada or someone else is gonna have an amazing stand", but we can make ours, for the money we have about us and about what we are selling. So going back to our core proposition and what people can expect of us, and also linking into other campaigns again isn't so how do we stand out? How do we differentiate ourselves in a sea of other handbag providers and people like that? It's all that thinking is it, which is, again, why it has to be, you know, in with the rest of your strategy and your creative that you're your brand.

Sally Green 25:25
It's also a really good idea to have a wee practice because you know that your table is going to be, let's see, eight foot by two or whatever it is, sit down with sales and decide what is going to be on the table and where. Because if you sent 25 boxes of catalogues of you know, 17 different varieties, is that going to fit on the table? Are people going to going to be able to find it on the table? If you've got a pull-up stand that you're going to put catalogues in, which catalogues are going to pull-ups and in which aren't, all of that kind of thing. Because what you don't want to do and you see this quite often is that marketing have set up the stand, but before they're allowed in, and everyone comes in and reorganises it, because in their eyes that catalogues are in the wrong place. What you don't want your audience to see is somebody fluffing about your standard moving things. You really don't. So have a practice in the office, just set it up and say, "do we want it to look like this?"

Sam Birkett 26:35
Yeah, definitely.

Sally Green 26:36
Because it will also point out to people that no, we can't take every single catalogue or sample that we have, because they don't fit, we are going to have to prioritise. So it's the best thing to do. Otherwise, you'll get people going, "Oh, no, but I didn't think you'd have brought this one. So I've brought this sample I'm gonna put just plant it on the table". Yeah, that's really not helpful, but thanks a lot.

Sam Birkett 27:04
Well, that's the end of episode one of this particular Marketing Meander. If you'd like to ask some questions or just get in touch and have a chat and you can contact us at meanderspod@gmail.com or you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and you can also get in touch with Sally and myself via LinkedIn. Connect, reach out, get in touch. See you soon.