Minisode: Alyssa Peltier on Cutting Through Digital Noise with Event Marketing

Alyssa Peltier:

Starting with every single event serves a different purpose, noting what that purpose is, and then trying to align metrics that you can capture that are very tangible items within the event technology space that you might need to start collecting at those particular event types. And then that's baseline metrics, right?

 

We capture. We understand. We start to digest year one or event one in terms of optimization of future event marketing strategies. We now need to capture consistently over time. 

Great events create great brands. But pulling off an event that engages, excites and connects audiences, well, that takes a village. And we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

 

Rachel Andrews:

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier:

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing. Hello, everyone. What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name is Alyssa, and I will be your host for this week's special episode of Great Events. This week is a special edition, like I just said.

We're doing a minisode style where I'll be answering some questions that we've been fielding from my colleagues, from some of our webinar programs, and from our listeners like you around my role and my background as it relates to market insights and corporate event marketing. So we're really going to hone in on the experiential, the branding, the event marketing space, which is where a lot of my career at Cvent has been squarely rooted. So I have not seen these questions ahead of time.

My production team told me not to look at our run of show until today. So I'm going to be off the cuff, unfiltered and just answering questions as simply as I can in this mini-episode. It's just me and our listeners. All right, so reaching my hand into the box of questions here. All right, first question, how can event marketers ensure that their events stand out and attract the right audiences amidst the noise of online promotions in a digital marketing age? Ooh, I love this question. This is really great.

So I spent about five years in an event marketing role at Cvent actually promoting and generating audiences for our events, working in concert with our digital marketing team. So the first piece of advice I would say is work with your digital marketing teams. Don't work against your digital marketing teams in order to attract those audiences. Every event has a really specific audience that you're trying to get to participate and so is your digital marketing team.

They're trying to draw or attract audiences to your products, your services, what have you. And so these should be working in tandem with one another and not creating more noise as the question kind of implies. So my first thing is really leaning into a holistic omnichannel marketing plan for both your digital marketing efforts, but also for your audience generation as well.

In terms of other tactics that draw audiences to your events, I hate to say it, but email still really is top of the charts when it comes to tactics that work to draw participation to your events, even though we're inundated with emails, which brings out my second point here, getting really creative with how you send those emails, when you send those emails, and what's contained.

So we've seen a lot of success within our own marketing efforts, within other customer efforts when they integrate CTAs to go to an event within a newsletter format. It's part of a bigger message that's coming out from your company. And so the why to attend is a little bit more clear when you're seeing it against other offers from your company. I would also say getting really creative. We have talked over the last couple of years about the proliferation of video in marketing.

And so think about how you could infuse TikTok videos, leaning into social, whether or not that's embedded in an email, and then you're dropping visitors or potential audiences to a TikTok page or a social media page or getting them to look at other content, but getting really creative and leaning into the digital zeitgeist that we have right now, which is a lot of video. I would also say just consistency of your approach. So if you try something and it doesn't work, give it a B test as well.

There's something called A/B testing in marketing, and certainly that applies to event marketing as well. And so just getting consistent with how you test and learn and trial things on new channels, that's going to help you cut through some of that noise as well and figure out what works, what attracts, what draws, and then ultimately what doesn't as well. So you don't have to waste your time doing activities that don't support your end goal, which is getting audiences to the right events.

All right, let's do question number two. Pretending like there's a big box here to reach into, but really it's just a document. All right. Can you share successful examples of corporate event marketing campaigns, ooh, more in the campaigns front, that effectively targeted and engaged C-suite executives? Oh, interesting. So more of like the VIP level. So C-suite executives and decision makers. All right, well, first, and we talked a lot about this in the first question, but knowing who your audience is is key.

So let's dive into the C-suite persona and a decision maker. Well, we can assume that this is an incredibly busy and distracted person or persona that your marketing efforts are reaching, that they're not likely as engaged with your company as maybe your day-to-day users or constituents or followers or whatever it is that you call them, your customers, your day-to-day buyer. The executives are those decision makers. They swoop in, they swoop out. They sign the checks.

They're aware of the purchase, but they may or may not be engaging on a day-to-day basis. So acknowledging that they are busy, they're distracted, they have other priorities that extend much beyond your company is primary. So a lot of that is thinking about how you're building your event experience that caters to that need. We have trialed with our executive stakeholders that we engage with at our live event programs with shortened agendas for those individuals.

So while we may have a two to three day conference or experience for others that we're trying to give longer form content to, we build half day or single day events for the executives that work in tandem with other individuals from their organization, but that they can come in and come out with a more limited agenda. So really acknowledging that busy distracted schedule.

The other thing I would call out for this group is not to discredit, and we talked about this a little bit more, is getting creative with those tactics that you're engaging with them. So we've done some really interesting things with our virtual event programs that are trying to give gifts or incentivize with more tangible items. So instead of just an email that's trying to get them to participate, executives may appreciate some of the more physical objects, gifting VIP up-leveled things.

So we engaged in a really great partnership with Duckhorn Winery and Vineyard. I think it's a California-based brand, and they will ship bottles of wine and do a wine tasting event in a virtual setting, but the Duckhorn brand is up-leveled. It's got a little bit more of a luxury tone to it. It feels elevated for these elevated individuals that we're trying to engage with. And then that pairs really nicely with the experience of coming and sitting and listening to Cvent talk about its technology and solutions, but also you get a little mini wine tasting out of it as well.

So those experiential type moments, they don't necessarily need to just be reserved for the broader. They can be really targeted for these niche groups of individuals that you're trying to engage with too. So thinking through what are their needs, what do they like? Are they winos or would they benefit from something that's a little bit different, chocolate, all those different types of things? Gift cards to elevated restaurants are all things that might work, but really acknowledging their need and how you want them to feel is important.

All right, question number three, how does event marketing strategy differ for trade shows, conferences, and product launches? Great question. And are there specific tactics or approaches that vary based on event type? I think I tell this almost on every episode, if not every other one, but knowing what your event is doing for your business should always be paramount. So really acknowledging the purpose of your events and that every event that you participate in, whether you're hosting it or attending it, is not a one size all fits approach.

So certainly for a trade show where you're trying to engage with individuals and drive traffic to your booth and presents is not going to be the same as trying to get an individual to book a flight, come to a conference, spend multiple days with you. We're talking about a 10 minute to a 30 minute to potentially an hour drive by at a booth or even a meeting at your booth versus a multi-day engagement with your company. So the barriers to get those individuals are going to be vastly different.

And so your strategy should acknowledge that. Also, understanding what you want as an outcome of those events. Events are all purpose-built. So we just talked about trade shows. Usually companies attend trade shows for leads and converting prospecting business to actual closed one business coming out of that event to leverage a relationship and a face-to-face touch point as a conversion opportunity. Conferences are more about networking and engagement, about training, about advocacy, about thought leadership.

It can be multi-objective, longer term engagement. They could be more about networking. And so we're talking about facilitating experiences that bring out best practice sharing amongst individuals, as well as delivering messaging from your own company outward. And it's a lot about that industry knowledge exchange. So very different from what a trade show and the leads and conversion, very tactical, very transactional conversation can be about. Conferences should be treated very differently from that.

And then product launches, broad. We're talking about getting broad awareness about a new offering that your company is bringing to market, whether that is a service, a new team, a new product itself, a new tangible item. And so you want everyone to know about that. And when we talk about everyone, it's a broad awareness. It's more of a brand play.

Again, yes, every event marketing strategy needs to differ and those tactics and channels that you're activating and driving audience or attendance or getting interest in your participation in those different types of events needs to address that. Considerations for event marketers, keeping in mind when creating a cohesive brand experience throughout an event. Okay, perfect. Next question, as we were just talking about product launches and branding there.

I think first and foremost, and this feels like table stakes to me, but again, can't stress the mundane enough, cohesive and consistent not just from a technology standpoint. Obviously that's where Cvent sits in the space. So whether you have a registration to your event website, to the housing experience when you go to book your travel, to the mobile app, to the check-in, when you check in on an iPad or what have you, that page reflects the event brand, all of those things woven together, but also all of the items that are not related to technology.

So think about any installations that you're pulling together, any promotional products that you're bringing together. All of those need to be consistent and cohesive from A to B, all the way down to Z. I will also say not just from a look and feel standpoint, because I think we often get caught up in just the colors and the look of things, your voice is also really important. And at events, there is a lot of content and a lot of talking.

So think about how your word choice, the tone of those words, how does your brand manifest itself even in your speaker selection or the content you would prioritize in your agenda. All of those things are truly a reflection of your brand and they create that consistent and cohesive experience from end to end. I would even say be really conscientious of your panel lineups. We heard the term NANL for a very long time, and I believe that we're seeing a significant shift towards more diverse voices.

And oftentimes that is a reflection of the priorities of your corporate brand and what it is that you want your company to say in terms of diversity of speaker and voices and how progressive you want your brand to come across through the lens of an event. I also do want to call out the differences between event themes and corporate brands or event brands and corporate brands.

It's really important to think about how those are different, but also how they complement one another and how an event brand or theme connect to that broader corporate position. So if your event theme is, I don't know, accelerate, what does that mean for your company in terms of pitching itself and positioning itself as an innovative thought leader, something that's pushing boundaries versus something that might be more grounded.

And what word choice would you choose if you wanted something that was not about innovating but was more about grounding? Okay, last question, which key metrics should event marketers track and analyze for corporate events and how can they use this data to optimize future event marketing strategies and improve outcomes? Well, we talked a lot about purpose-built events.

So the differences in trade shows and road shows and conferences and product launches, each one of those should acknowledge different data. I'm not going to give you the keys to the castle in this episode. We could go down a very long, large, lengthy, long rabbit hole on event metrics of priority. There's certainly a plethora of webinars that are available on Cvent.com that are related to ROI and value.

But really thinking about what data matters to the event objective. What data is it that you must capture in order to prove something? So we get a little bit scientific here. It's, if I don't capture this, how would I be able to prove that I had a large audience participating in my product launch? What data might be necessary in order to prove eyeballs on a product at an event?

So one would think attendance metrics. Did they attend? Check. Now I know that they were participatory in a product launch. But what if that product launch happened in a session? We might need to get session information. It wasn't just about their participation in terms of check-in at the event, but it was check-in for a particular session. Then we might need to talk about conferences and industry knowledge exchange.

How can we prove industry knowledge exchange? Well, they might need to have participated in a session on a particular topic. So there's another caveat there. Was topic covered? Yes. And how long did this person participate in that session? There is a duration component to that exchange of information that needs to be acknowledged in the data set in order to prove the impact or the outcome that was necessary.

So starting with every single event serves a different purpose, noting what that purpose is, and then trying to align metrics that you can capture that are very tangible items within the event technology space that you might need to start collecting at those particular event types. And then that's baseline metrics, right? We capture. We understand. We start to digest year one or event one in terms of optimization of future event marketing strategies.

We now need to capture consistently over time. So when we're talking about data maturity, it's not just about the collection of information, but measuring year over year success and year over year progress. So this takes time certainly if you only have one event that takes place year over year. Sometimes when we have more repeatable events like road shows that might be happening weekly, monthly, quarterly, you can test and learn in a little bit more of an accelerated fashion.

But that's how we start to get events to tie back to business purpose, events to tie back to business outcome. I think that's a really good place for us to end today. Really that's what I love to talk about. That's what my career has been situated here at Cvent is really about events that matter and events that mean business.

So a lot of what we've talked about today is really about the marketing function and how events drive towards those growth goals that any company is really aiming towards, regardless of if you're in a corporate space, whether you're in nonprofit space, whether you're in an association space. All of us are at the end of the day really looking to grow through our event programs and through our in-person touch points. So with that, I love these mini episodes.

This is really fun. It's just me talking to you all. Oddly enough, I thought I would be a loss for words, but nope, no loss for words here. So with that, look forward to doing another one of these with you again, listeners, and we'll see you next week. Bye! 

Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Rachel Andrews:

And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover Great Events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Felicia Asiedu:

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Rachel Andrews:

Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM, or drop us a note at GreatEvents@Cvent.com.

Felicia Asiedu:

Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

Alyssa Peltier:

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.