by WireBuzz, on Jul 26, 2021 5:10:33 PM
Since 2010, members of the WireBuzz digital strategy team have attended two to three client events every month. Which means we’ve had massive exposure to what works, what doesn’t work and what it takes to pump up the jam on business results.
And now that events have become mostly a hybrid of in-person and virtual, it’s mission critical you understand how to make sure your events generate a return on investment.
Over the next several weeks, we’re going to share some of our favorite strategies and tactics for achieving business goals. This week, we’re going to start by highlighting the three biggest event mistakes we’ve seen. Over the next coming weeks, we will teach you easy strategies for making money from your events.
If you’re a marketer trying to transition marketing qualified leads (MQLs) into sales qualities leads (SQLs), a sales lead focused on accelerating revenue, or an investor relations rockstar, we’re going to show you how to crush your event goals like never before.
Sounds good?
Alright, let’s do this!
#3 biggest mistake: Making your event only for those that attended
Limiting your event just to the people who attended or watched on Zoom is an epic marketing fail.
THINK LARGER! MORE EXPANSIVELY!
Stop and think to yourself: who attends your event? Those who can get away, right?
But they make up a very small percentage of your full list of target customers. For many companies, only 10% of their target customers actually attend their events or conferences. Instead of limiting your event exposure, use your events as newsworthy springboard moments to capture lots of video content you can use to reach out and educate the entire list of target customers.
Basically, the highest ROI-generating teams educate the attendees and the non-attendees by creating newsworthy video assets to extend the exposure for months after the event.
#2 biggest mistake: Not preparing for the needs of different types of buyers
Companies that fail to meet their revenue goals often communicate in one-size-fits-all marketing messages. They are basically treating each of their different types of prospects as one type of buyer. And this little decision means they aren’t speaking to the various buyers they serve.
For example: at a breast surgeon event, a medical device company was trying to sell its new offering to surgeons. So they created all their assets to appeal to surgeons. Makes sense…right?
Until you realize the surgeon isn’t the only decision maker in the process.
You see, the surgeon has very specific needs, pain and frustrations the device solves. But the surgeon isn’t going to set up the device in the operating room, clean it, or make the device communicate with the hospital’s electronic medical records (EMR). The nurse/care team will—and they have unique needs, pains, and frustrations that also need to be addressed. AND once the surgeon and nursing team is excited about buying the device, they aren’t even the buyer! The purchase decision is actually made by the hospitals Value Analysis Committee (VAC) that’s going to make an economic decision based on how this device makes the hospital more profitable.
The device company needs website journey pages to influence:
- Breast Surgeon (Looking for ease of use and ergonomics)
- Nursing/Care Team (Looking for ease of setup, cleaning and integration with EMR)
- Value Analysis Committee (Looking for the economic benefits)
When businesses host events, and they don’t prepare for the needs of each of their different types of buyers, they don’t win as often.
Make sense?
But that’s not even the biggest mistake the WireBuzz Strategy Team sees!
#1 biggest mistake: Failing to prioritize the hot leads quickly
Most companies spend 95% of their event planning time thinking about the event…but 100% of the revenue comes after the event is over. Something we most commonly observe is that the event went great, but the ROI sucked.
Why?
It can be for lots of reasons, but because they treated all of the leads with the same level of urgency, they burned valuable time chasing hot and cold leads equally.
At WireBuzz, we take a different approach. We use the newsworthy videos generated at the event to automatically prioritize and rank all the leads based on the amount of time a prospect watched the videos.
Here’s the tricky secret: the people who watch over 80% of a video…do you know who they are?
THEY ARE BUYERS!
And if you use the right tracking tools following your events, it’s really easy for your sales team to follow up with the hot leads first, close the low-hanging fruit deals, and then move on to the warm prospects.
When WireBuzz started tracking our own prospect’s viewing interest, we became so efficient, we were able to remove 66% of the wasted time out of our sales process. WHY? Because we stopped treating every lead with the same level or urgency.
Where would your event ROI be if you could covertly prioritize who was interested and follow up with urgency?
Quickly, let’s summarize:
#3 biggest mistake: Thinking the event is only for those that attended
#2 biggest mistake: Not preparing for the needs of their different types of buyers
#1 biggest mistake: Failing to prioritize the hot leads quickly
Next week we’re going to dig even deeper into the WireBuzz strategies for Hybrid Virtual & In-Person Events.
If you would like to schedule a free 15-minute meeting about how to best prepare your events for success, click here to fill out a meeting request form.
http://lp.wirebuzz.com/remote-sales
We look forward to hearing about your goals and helping you create the BUZZ that generates the ROI.