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Things You Need to Know About Optimizing Event Results

3/10/2020

In a podcast collaboration with Sarah Gretzinger of BMore, we deep dived into how you can maximize your events and productivity to optimize event results. So, we’ll go through the topics we discussed and then we’ll deep dive into each of them:

Common Misconception About Events
Event Planning Goes Beyond Logistics
4 Mistakes People Do When Using Events as a Marketing Platform
Asana Can Increase Your Productivity

Listen to the full episode here, or continue reading for show notes:

Common Misconception about Events
When people hear the word events, usually, the first thing that comes to mind is birthdays or weddings. And usually, we think event planning is all about the logistics like who needs to be where and when and what needs to be where and how. This is what I call logistical event planning. Event success goes beyond the logistics - beyond the who, where, when, and how. There are also many other reasons to why use events as a platform and not just for birthday parties or weddings.

A lot of companies use events as a marketing platform to physically connect with their target audience. In terms of event planning, the usual question that I get is, “Can I have this event in this time frame?” Absolutely! Just send the invites and pull out a couple of chairs. Logistically, you have an event BUT it isn’t going to optimize your event results. This is how my process is unique.

Event Planning Goes Beyond Logistics
Many companies use events and think that every event has the same planning execution requirements as other events and then end up wondering why they’re not getting their desired results or even say events don’t work. What many people fail to realize is that every event is different and therefore has a different execution process. For instance, if you are doing a networking event, you may have a different marketing, outreach, and nurturing processes than when your launching a product or sponsoring an exhibit booth.

My core is really helping people set the key foundations of events so they could optimize events results and convert marketing cost to Return on Investment (ROI). With key foundations, I mean Strategy, Logistics, Outreach, Nurturing, Sales, and Metrics. To use events as a platform and to optimize event results, it has to go through these six foundations.

The event planning process can be the same as what others are using BUT the execution process is what makes the difference. For instance, conferences go through the same event planning process but there’s a reason why your conference is going to be different and it’s because of how the planning process is executed and how the six foundations are being answered.

So, what makes my execution process unique? First and foremost, I always have an assessment to know where you are, where you want to go, and what you need to do to get there. And then we also need to re-assess in the middle to see what we might have missed. I have a free assessment that helped me and a lot of organizers to get a clear picture of where they are struggling in the event process. AND THEN you can start defining your intentions to why your doing the event in the first place. You can now dive into defining your objectives, ranking these objectives, and the goals you have for this event. When you understand your intentions then you can start mapping out the customer journey. I have a workbook on Creating an Event Marketing Strategy Blueprint that covers all these steps and I give it away for FREE. If you want to have a copy, feel free to leave comments or join my facebook group, Masterminds ‘n’ Events. That’s where you can get all the resources that will give you deep dive information about my planning execution process.

4 Mistakes People Do When Using Events as a Marketing Platform

Inviting the wrong people to your event. If you start inviting attendees without a clear understanding of what you actually want from the event, most of the time, you’ll end up inviting the wrong people unless you just want anyone to come to your event.
Doing outreach without knowing where they are in your Customer Journey. It’s easier to invite people in your warm market because they already know you and they know they can trust you but the PEOPLE who don't know you need to be approached differently because it’s a big ask if you ask people to invest time when they don’t even know you yet. So, mapping out your customer journey, and understanding how to outreach based on where they are in your customer journey will make the process efficient for you and your target audience.
Only thinking the logistics. While logistics are extremely important, it is just one piece of the puzzle. As mentioned earlier, events has six foundations and planning process are executed differently for each and every event. And if you're only thinking about the logistics and spending your time and efforts in the decision making, it will not allow you to optimize your events result neither convert your marketing costs to ROI.
Not having a clear outreach and nurturing sequence. This is in relation to Mistake No.2. So, it’s starts with attracting your target audience and what happens a lot of times is people jump onto step no. 7 which is the invite. That works pretty well if your target audience already know who you are - You can absolutely go from attracting to inviting this person. BUT for those who don’t know you yet, you need to nurture them. In this case, you need a clear nurturing sequence, a "hopscotch" that has a clear call-to-actions that leads to the main intention of why you’re doing the event. If you want to learn how to to that, I'm doing a Trade show ROI Accelerator Program where you can learn (for free!) about my "hopscotch" tactic to help you map out your pre-, during, and post event customer journey.

Asana Can Increase Your Productivity
Asana is a project management tool that allows team members and clients to collaborate together. check out the video I made of the 5 Ways to Use Project Management System for Efficiency. You can organize different projects in different views depending on what works for or sort it out by projects, by status, and by clients. What also makes Asana a great platform to use for project management is that it allows you to put everything into one platform. You can keep track your team progress as it shows what and when things need to get done and who is responsible for it, and you can add attachment files to so everything is there.

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6 Organic Outreach Tactical tips

3/3/2020

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Why is my outreach process not getting me anywhere?

My clients have asked me this, wondering how to get their awesome content in front of the right people. Maybe you’re stuck on how to find an audience. Maybe you already have a following but you don’t know how to stir up engagement. Maybe your following is nothing at all your target audience and you have no idea how to tweak your strategy. Whatever the issue, check out these 7 tips to improve your outreach efforts and secure dedicated followers.

Ask Open-Ended Questions
Engage and Be a Resource to Your Audience
Learn and Discover More Info
Be Authentic In Your Intentions
Make Your Call-to-Action (CTA) reasonable
Balance Content Creation vs Engaging Real Conversation

Let's Elaborate:

Ask Open-Ended Questions: on social media. Relevant Facebook groups are great because there’s already a built-in audience!
Engage and be a Resource to Your Audience. This is why it’s call social media. Once you find people who are interested in what you’re talking about, visit their page. Like and comment on their posts, give them a follow. Keep the discussion going and engage with their future posts - build genuine relationships and they’ll want do the same for your content and introduce their audience to you.
Learn and Discover More Info about your target audience. Where are they based? In an example post I asked users to drop their cities in the comments. This 1) boosted organic social media engagement, and 2) gave me a way to see if I’m in the right community. If you aren’t in front of your target audience, figure out who you need to reach out to to get you in front of them.
Be Authentic In You Intention. Pride yourself as a resource. If you indicate you're interested in connecting to network - then set up a call to understand how you can collaborate and be introduced to ideal connection. Networking in not a sales activity, so if your intention is actually to prospect and qualify a new connection as a potential lead, then your messaging should reflect so and not catch someone off guard thinking your intention is to network when it's actually to "pitch" them - not cool.
Make Your Call-to-Action (CTA) Reasonable, because nobody likes a pushy salesperson or irrelevant information they didn't ask for. Asking too much (or irrelevant) from new followers too quickly will likely increase disengagement, not conversion. A client of mine asked a cold audience to go to his high-ticket offer event without any prior info about what his company’s all about or the impact they would have…and as you might have guessed, nobody took the bait. Gauge individual interest and qualification in your brand and offer before trying selling anything to them.
Balance Content Creation vs Engaging Real Conversation. Make time for both in your outreach process so you can build personal relationships with your audience and maybe even convert some people into clients. After all, if you don’t have an audience, nobody knows your content exists. Engage with people and THEN drive them to your stuff.

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Things You Need to Know About Optimizing Event Results

6 Organic Outreach Tactical tips

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