The Outlook for Events is Gloomy

If people don't want to come to the ballpark,

how are you going to stop them?

— Yogi Berra

This week marked the second anniversary of WHO's admission that Covid-19 was a problem.

Perhaps no other segment of the economy, except for the airlines industry, suffered worse from the pandemic than the face-to-face meetings industry.

I've been a Cassandra all this time, I'll readily admit. 

But four decades working in the industry told me the road would be rocky.

It will continue to be so for quite a while. 

As Covid-19 remains a threat to our wellbeing, organizers should expect no more than half the pre-pandemic audience to return to their live events in the coming three years.

That means organizers, if they honestly want to serve their paying customers, have a duty to reimagine their events with only half the customary audience.

Pollyannish thinking won't cut it.

Educating exhibitors in sales and lead-gen is the place to start.

Were I still an organizer, I'd devote an hour a day to learning from my smartest exhibitors precisely what they need to make my event pay off. 

Then I'd use my findings to create simple programs of benefit to every exhibitor—even those who in their unfounded arrogance believe they "know it all."

Yogi was right. 

You can't stop people who don't want to come to the ballpark.

But you can teach the players to up their game.

POSTSCRIPT: A bellwether event, SXSW opened Friday to a "noticeably smaller" audience.

Suite Nothings

At the conventions, fella, everything goes.

— John D. MacDonald

I have been whiling away the lockdown reading John D. MacDonald's "standalone" thrillers, paperback potboilers from the late 50's and early 60's. 

It's no wonder Ian Fleming and French mystery readers loved John D. His prose is pungent and punchy, and his take on Americans' habits raises his work to the level of the "literary" writers of his day (think of Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal).

A Key to the Suite, which earned John D the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, “examines the ferment of a big-time convention," according to the cover of the original 1962 paperback.

Corporate hatchet man Floyd Hubbard has been sent by the home office to a trade show. His mission: to dig up dirt on a has-been sales manager, Jesse Mulaney. Management wants Mulaney gone and knows his obsolescence is on full display when he attends trade shows.

But Mulaney's ally, Fred Frick, knows Hubbard has it in for his buddy, and plans to turn to the tables.

Frick hires Cory Barlund, a classy prostitute, to woo the family man Hubbard. He instructs Cory to bed Hubbard, then “make some horribly slutty embarrassing scene" in front of his coworkers—a scene guaranteed to send Hubbard running back to headquarters.

The gorgeous Cory rather quickly seduces Hubbard, but then feels sorry for him and tells him about Frick’s scheme. 

And that's when the fireworks start.

As a veteran of the industry, I'm captivated by John D's taut descriptions of trade shows and the goings-on behind the curtain—both the innocent and the vile.

You find yourself so on edge following the fates of the husbands, wives, whores and hoteliers who populate the pages of A Key to the Suite, you can hardly put it down.

It's gritty realism at its best.

Event Shock

Brace yourself for Event Shock.

Working with event organizers, as my business partner and I do, I feel their anxiety.

They're constantly worried there's a glut of events. ("With so many events competing for audiences' time, will they pick ours?")

But we've entered uncharted territory.

Organizers once had to contend only with competing organizers.

Now they have to compete with every marketer.

This thought struck me when I received an email today from my neighborhood hardware store promoting an in-store educational event.

Marketers—even the one who works for my local hardware store—have learned that, if they want to seduce customers, sales pitches and discounts are no longer enough. 

They have to deliver educational content.

And their efforts are increasing the volume of events—exponentially.

You thought there was a surplus of events before?

That was nothing compared to the innumerable iterations we're going to experience at marketers' hands in the coming years.

Event marketing has become the new content marketing. 

The event-flood may not rise to the same water-level, because marketers can't outsource events to India, like they can content; but it will feel like it.

The sheer volume of events will be unprecedented.

And overwhelming.

Event Shock is here.

HAT TIP to Mark Schaefer, who coined Content Shock to describe the "tremor" felt when content supply overwhelms content demand.

Events No Easy Money

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland
 just with the idea of making money. 

— Walt Disney

Publishers find events alluring.

According to Hubspot, 26% of B2C publishers and 42% of B2B publishers say they're today's fast-growth revenue stream.

And why not? The publishing business model and the events business model seem quite similar on the surface.

But any resemblance is deceiving.

“Events are not the golden goose publishers think they are,” one publisher recently told Lucinda Southern, reporter for Digiday. "Events work when it fits into the publisher’s key interest areas, passion points and depth of knowledge.”

"Publishers are not just competing with other events companies, but any content provider or brand that claims to have a route to consumers," Southern writes. "Making money from events often requires a dedicated team and a different set of skills when selling event sponsorship packages."

Among the pitfalls:

• Events have sizable sunk costs (venue rental, speaker fees, marketing expenditures, etc.) absent in publishing.
  
• Sponsorship sales are tougher than ad sales. Salespeople need to understand event operations and must close sponsorship sales faster, often with non-advertisers. There's also more difficulty proving prospects' ROI.
  
• Events aren't a "bright and shiny" channel. They look old-school next to the latest digital "solution."

“They say events are like a sausage, wonderful to eat, but you don’t want to get involved in what goes into them,” another publisher told Southern. 

“You have to love the complexities, the highs and lows, embrace that passion. Publishing companies that dabble will not succeed.”

Can Your Brand be Amazoned?

A year-old startup is killing it by selling web cameras on Amazon for 90% less than its competitors, The New York Times reports.

So are other new companies selling things like appliances, tools, clothing and cosmetics.

The piggybacking startups are pioneers in a drive toward "better products for ludicrously low prices," the newspaper says; and pose an existential threat to "big brands."

For a fee, Amazon provides sellers turnkey distribution, marketing and sales; sellers, in turn, can concentrate on product design and manufacturing.

“As this takes off, it really makes you start to question, what is a brand in the Amazon age?” e-commerce consultant Scot Wingo told The Times. 

"In a way, Amazon is providing all this information that replaces what you’d normally get from a brand, like reputation and trust. Amazon is becoming something like the umbrella brand, the only brand that matters.”

How about your brand?

Can it be Amazoned?

Even if it's a service, for a 10-20% fee, Amazon's willing to wager it can.

Right now, Amazon restricts the business services it resells to computer and building maintenance. But how long will it be before Amazon expands into accounting, advertising, coding, consulting, event planning, executive recruiting, lobbying, public relations, tax preparation, and temporary staffing?

Not long, I'd bet.

The Five Pillars of Lead Followup

Lead gen is only half the marketing battle. Marketers must enable salespeople to follow up.

But a lot of them don't know how, perhaps because business owners have conditioned them to turn all leads over to sales, as soon as they materialize.

Those marketers need to master the five pillars of lead followup:

Website. Your website needs to be lucid and mobile. Your About page must be clear, concise and compelling, because it's the only one most prospects will read. And you need to make it easy to contact your organization—in person.

Content. You need a world-class piece of "cornerstone content," such as a white paper, e-book, or cheat sheet you can share with prospects. It must be authoritative and educational, or prospects will conclude "they have nothing to teach me." Case studies also motivate prospects, because they provide "social proof."

Sales deck.Your sales deck arms your people with a structure for pitching prospects. It should be a scaffold, not an edifice. Avoid a lot of background and blue-sky baloney; lean on images to tell your story; and don't cram the deck with copy, or treat is like a script or book: it's an aid for online and face-to-face presentations, not an encyclopedia.

Playbook. Your in-house how-to sales manual should give salespeople enough guidance that they can close any deal that comes down the pike. Include talking points, target persona cheat sheets, industry data sheets, product data sheets, competitive analyses, a glossary of terms, and an inventory of current collateral.

Email. You need an outbound email drip-campaign that runs at a cadence that makes sense both to you and to prospects. Newsletters are a good place to start. Direct-marketing appeals can be sent in between your monthly newsletters. Each email should offer value and foster interest in talking to your salespeople.

Know the Best Sources of Product Info?

IBM asked 700 B2B buyers wielding $10,000 or more to name their preferred sources of product information, and sorted the answers by buyers' ages. The results are astonishing—or maybe not:

• Boomers named tradeshows 
• Gen Xers named online, third-party reviews 
• Millennials named vendors' sales reps

What's up with that?

 
Boomers will never give up on shows. They haven't forgotten "the good old days," when companies timed their product launches around the industry-leading shows. Big events were vibrant and newsworthy and "must attend." Shows were the worldwide web.

Gen Xers are inexorable skeptics. Forget about face-to-face, content, direct, social media, or other forms of marketing with this cohort. All marketing is BS. Gen Xers only trust disinterested parties' informed evaluations.

Millennials prize speed and ease. "I want to know and I want to know now." What's the easiest route? A sales spiel. As IBM puts it, Millennials want a "hassle-free, personalized channel." Enter the sales rep.

Sure, generalizations about the generations have grown tiresome; but they explain IBM's findings.

Source of chart: Better Business Bureau

Defaulting to Lies

I'm not upset that you lied to me,
I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Why do some salespeople default to lies, no matter the stakes? When there are no stakes? When nobody's erred. When all that's requested is a straightforward reply.

Do they need that much to be loved?

I think so. I think, as well, they believe everyone else just fell off a turnip truck.

If your default mode is to lie, ask yourself: 

• Am I playing to the stereotype of the salesperson as huckster?
• Do my customers tell other customers I'm an inveterate liar? 
• Is my default mode―lying―the reason my income is meager?

Events' Uneventful Downfall

Humankind's oldest, events remain, if not the cheapest, the best marketing channel.

But CMOs aren't keen on them, according to a report by The CMO Club.

While 7 of every 10 CMOs surveyed say events accelerate sales, 2 of every 3 say events aren't measurable; and 7 of 10 say events' "accountability gap" throws into question the event spend.

The accountability gap "creates challenges at budget time when the funding decisions are being made about events," according to the report. 

"While events are deemed critically important, they often lack the supporting financial data to objectively prove their value. Compared to other components of the CMO’s marketing mix that have become more sophisticated in measuring ROI, event marketers are lagging in their ability to connect the dots between activities and demonstrated results."

The accountability gap also makes choice difficult―the chief reason companies exhibit in the same events repeatedly, complaining all the while about lack of ROI.

What's a marketer to do? The report suggests you should:

Set unique goals for each event. "Not all events have the same purpose," the report says. "Some are designed to generate new leads and accelerate opportunities currently in the pipeline, while others are focused on strengthening relationships with key customers and gaining feedback to improve how marketers can better respond to their needs." Setting unique goals "will create a foundation for capturing the appropriate data to analyze the events against the stated objectives."

Create unique plans for each event. "Silos" often prevent cooperation between marketing and sales, pre-, at-, and post-event. Preparing written plans will knock down the silos and encourage both groups to capture relevant data.

Deliver an experience. This is mandatory. Quit simply checking boxes. Pick up the phone and call people before every event, be ready with a strong value proposition, and deliver it on site. If your event isn't an experience, it's a waste of time.

Feed your marketing automation and CRM systems. "Rarely are events judged on the revenue produced at that event," the report notes. "Opportunities discovered at the event take time to close and require significant post-event nurturing from marketing and follow-up from sales." Unless you import event data into your marketing automation and CRM systems, you can't track results.

Measure both activities and sales impact. Data captured at events should demonstrate ROI, not just reflect a bunch of activities. Ask your CMO to help you create C-suite-appropriate reports.

If events don't become a measurable marketing channel, they'll continue to be seen as a grievous expense, rather than an income-producing asset, the report concludes.

That could be their downfall.

Can You Overpost?

Is it possible to post on social media too often?

The answer is: yes, if your content screams, "Buy from me" (a single post like that is one too many); no, otherwise.

Remember: only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of your audience ever sees your posts.

How Do You Reach C-Level Buyers?

A C-level buyer, Trisha Winter plays hard to get.

"Speaking as a B2B buyer, I don’t answer my phone anymore," she writes in Business to Community. "I don’t read cold emails—in fact, thanks to overcoming 'inbox zero' tendencies, I don’t even take the time to open/delete them anymore. I used to, but with the insane influx of new technologies geared toward marketing, too many people were trying to reach me pushing their 'life-changing' solutions. It was too much noise, and it wasn’t sustainable if I wanted to get my job done."

Winter wonders if any marketing tactic works with C-level buyers—executives who are so brutally busy, they're "forced to completely ignore the noise."

She rules out the top two contenders.

Content. Content marketing doesn't work, Winter says. Although it could be effective, most content is "fluff" no one ever sees. "Even if you create the perfect piece of content, you are still just crossing your fingers that it reaches me," she says. "For content marketing to work, it has to be combined with influencer marketing to have a hope of getting in front of the intended audience."

Trade shows. Exhibit marketing doesn't work, either, Winter says. "I do attend some trade shows, but I won’t stop by your booth unless I’ve heard of you and have identified that you meet a need or solve a problem I have," she says. "Which means trade shows don’t work for top-of-the-funnel lead generation. And let’s face it, TOFU leads are way better than BOFU leads because you can shape the deal without competitors."

So what works?

Account-Based Marketing. "If a seller is researching me, engaging with me in social media, learning about my business and personalizing their approach, there is a much greater chance they’ll get my attention," Winter says. "But remember, I don’t read emails nor answer my phone, so direct mail and social media are the only options here."

Referral Marketing. "As a buyer, there is no question that this is the most effective way to get my attention," Winter says. "If I’m approached by a former colleague or a trusted adviser (like a salesperson from a vendor I have a good relationship with), I pay attention. If they tell me there is a solution out there that could solve my problems, I’m clearing my calendar to take a meeting."

Winter recommends combing both tactics.

But what if you could combine all four?

That's the philosophy behind PLAYBOOK, a lead-gen system my business partner and I have created.

PLAYBOOK—using a combination of direct mail, email, telemarketing, and an app—allows marketers to target trade show attendees with offers compelling enough to attract them to an exhibit. It also helps them motivate salespeople to chase and close deals immediately after the event—the Achilles Heel of exhibit marketing.

We're ready to assist any marketer eager to reach those hard-to-get buyers like Trisha Winter.

Just give us a call.

Capital Mistake

You can dress up greed, but you can’t stop the stench.

― Craig D. Lounsbrough

This weekend, I "worked the booth" at the Capital Home Show on behalf of a remodeler, greeting visitors and cultivating leads.

While discussing a deal with another exhibitor, an overly dressed exhibit salesperson (the show manager, nonetheless) appeared suddenly and broke into our conversation, demanding to know why the exhibitor hadn't re-signed for next year's show.

When he said he was undecided, she proceeded to twist his arm.

I quietly left the booth, after a few minutes of the spectacle.

When I next saw the salesperson, I mentioned that she'd interrupted a deal.

"I thought you were just one of their staff," she replied, without apology.

If you sell anything—whether booths, biotech, or blockchain—putting your aims ahead of customers' is a capital mistake.

It may, in fact, be the chief reason most customers detest salespeople.

DiscoverOrg recently asked 230 customers how they feel about B2B salespeople. The answers are chilling:

• Only 18% think B2B salespeople are trustworthy
• Only 35% think they are likable

Chew on that, salespeople. Eight in 10 customers think you're dishonest; two in three, you're despicable.

Why Event Organizers May Lose Their Shirts

An old joke goes:

Two partners are arguing over their shirt-retailing business.

"Sol, how can we go on buying shirts for $4 and selling them for $2?" one asks.

"Mort, don't worry!" the other answers. "We make it up in volume."

B2B marketing has long resembled Mort's approach.

But a trendy new form of B2B marketing, account-based marketing (ABM), throws out the "volume-based" approach to lead-gen, concentrating the marketing spend instead on a finite set of prospects.

And—unless they begin to help ABM practitioners—event organizers will soon find themselves losing out to digital channels.

Why so?

Because, for decades, events have always been, more or less, about volume.

Set up an exhibit. Wait for a ton of traffic. Meet and mingle. Rinse and repeat.

But ABM represents different thinking.

ABM means a "shift from volume to engagement," says Cindy Zhou, an analyst with Constellation Research and author of the white paper Why B2B Sales Success Requires a Holistic Account-Based Strategy.

By "engagement," Zhou means targeting "ideal buyers" with "personalized content."

At events, she says, ABM practitioners need to attract specifically targeted accounts to their booths, and present them content designed to convert them—quickly—into customers.

Tirekickers need not apply.

"Organizations adopting an ABM approach see higher conversion rates and deal sizes and an increase in cross-sell and upsell opportunities," Zhou says.

Zhou also say that 9 out of 10 B2B marketers she's in touch with have adopted ABM.

Yet event organizers remain clueless, refusing to provide the data exhibitors need to zero in on ideal buyers.

Case in point.

I recently asked the organizer of a large manufacturing show to allow my client to target accounts on his registration list with pre-show phone calls designed to attract them to the client's booth. Not his whole list (that would have been foolish); merely a select group of attendees.

His answer was a resounding, "No!"

"If I did it for them, I'd have to do it for every exhibitor."

Duh. What's wrong with this picture?

Event organizers are sitting on a mountain of data. Exhibit marketers—9 out of 10, if Zhou's followers are representative—need a bit of it. Why not help them?

If you won't, they may abandon events in favor of digital channels, which provide more data than they need.

What, you expect to make it up in volume?

HAT TIP: Thanks to Cindy Zhou for inspiring this post and providing a free copy of her white paper.

Uncle Sam Should Damn Spam

US anti-spam law hampers marketers, says email marketing expert Chad White.

The feds agree, and are moving to reform CAN-SPAM.

The problem with the law?

It's lax.

That laxity makes "deliverability overly difficult for legitimate senders," White says, because email providers have to police inboxes.

"If a brand only clears the low bar set by CAN-SPAM, they are pretty much guaranteed to be blacklisted and blocked by inbox providers," White says.

"While on the surface, lax regulations look like an advantage to American brands, it’s really setting them up for failure."

White urges these seven reforms:

• Tighten the deadline for honoring opt-out requests. Marketers, by law, can now stall for 10. But customers want them to honor opt-outs immediately.
  
  
• Dictate how unsubscribe works. Customers struggle with marketers' inconsistent practices; as a result, one in two resorts to clicking the “Report Spam” button.
  
  
• Loosen the definition of "transactional" emails. Marketers should be allowed to send post-purchase emails (such as receipts, thank-you notes, and renewal notices) without be being flagged as spammers.
  
  
• Require CAPTCHA on signup forms. "Unprotected open email signup forms allow spammers, hackers, and other bad actors to use bots to weaponize email," White says. Only 3% of marketers use CAPTCHA on their forms today.
  
  
• Mandate authentication and encryption. Email personalization makes customers vulnerable to phishing. CAN-SPAM could protect them by mandating that senders authenticate and encrypt emails.
  
  
• Require permission. That requirement would harmonize CAN-SPAM with other countries' tougher laws, and keep US marketers out of hot water. Permission is defined as "an expressed or implied consent or existing business relationship."
  
  
• Stipulate that inactivity equals opting out. " CAN-SPAM should recognize that permission expires," White says. "CAN-SPAM should require senders to stop emailing subscribers when they haven’t opened or clicked an email in the past two years."

The More You Lie, the Less We Buy

After 10 years as a user of Kaspersky anti-virus software, I'm switching brands, due to the treatment I received by an offshore sales rep.

My credit card was stolen a few months ago, so to allow my subscription to auto-renew, I contacted Kaspersky (which doesn't permit users to change the credit card numbers it keeps on file).

The rep who finally took my call refused to stop reading from a script of "security" questions that were blatantly meant to upsell me. 

Each time I asked her what her questions had to do with security, she insisted they were for my own good.

None of them were.

After 10 minutes of this, I told her I'd switch to the leading competitor, unless she helped me update my credit card info.

She wasted another 15 minutes of my time bumbling around with this process, to no avail.

I politely thanked her for the help and hung up. Now I'm moving on to the competitor.

Walk a mile in your customers' shoes, CEOs. Try a quarter-mile, if you have no time for customers.

The more you lie, the less we buy.

Picky

"It turns out that copy really matters," a CEO recently confessed on LinkedIn.

Until he was forced by circumstance to roll up his sleeves and execute, Adam Schoenfeld had been only strategy-minded.

"I didn't get it before," Schoenfeld says. "Now I've come to believe that the best marketing teams nail the details. They get the big picture for sure. But their magic is in the details!"

Duh.

Why don't more executives realize execution matters? Particularly in copywriting.

The late, great marketer Herschell Gordon Lewis said, "The picking of nits is what copywriting that sells is all about."

Lewis was right, of course: nit-picking's the activity distinguishing copy that sells from copy that fails.

To wit, the following example.

The copywriter here indeed fails—big time. Perhaps he's too self-absorbed to "walk in prospects' shoes" (in this case, members of the military). Or maybe he's green. Or maybe he's just lazy, content to copy and paste from an internal brief. In any event, he isn't picky.

Association Members are entitled to specially negotiated Group Discounts not available to the general public. We continue to leverage the vast purchasing power of hundreds of thousands of Association Members to negotiate exclusive Group Discounts. You’ll save big on select Apple and Dell computers, hotel stays, car rentals, active-lifestyle apparel, outdoor products, and more. Association Members also save with FREE access to “concierge-style” travel services.

What's wrong with this copy?

Association Members are entitled...

"Entitled" is a politically-loaded word, particularly among right-leaning folks. (How many members of the military do you know who lean left?)

Members receive would remove the connotation.

...to specially negotiated Group Discounts...

"Specially negotiated" is redundant. "Group Discounts" is shop talk.

Members receive savings not available to the general public would work better.

We continue to leverage the vast purchasing power of hundreds of thousands of Association Members...

More shop talk, plus a self-centered standpoint—and an awfully vague claim.

More than 370,000 members take advantage of these savings every year would work better.

You’ll save big on select Apple and Dell computers, hotel stays, car rentals, active-lifestyle apparel, outdoor products, and more...

Even more shop talk, plus erratic name-dropping. Consumers don't know what "hotel stays," "active-lifestyle apparel," or "outdoor products" are. And why aren't brands named for any of those product categories, as they are for computers? Are those offerings crap?

You’ll save big on computers, hotel rooms, rental cars, clothing, outdoor and sports goods, and more... would work better.

    

Association Members also save with FREE access to “concierge-style” travel services...

Shop talk. And what does "concierge-style" mean, anyway?

Members can also use our free travel service would work better.

Now, our perhaps-lazy copywriter would string together the revised sentences and call it quits.

Members receive savings not available to the general public. More than 370,000 of them take advantage of these savings every year. Members save big on computers, hotel rooms, rental cars, clothing, outdoor and sports goods, and more. Members can also use our free travel service.

But why settle for pedestrian copy? Why not tighten it and—more importantly—put to work the indisputable power of the word "you?"

Membership lets you take full advantage of deep, member-only discounts on purchases of things like clothing, computers, outdoor and sports goods, hotel rooms, rental cars, and more. You also get to use our concierge service to plan trips. It’s like having your own personal travel agent.

Stay picky, my friend. Execution matters.

Is Your Event Profit Proof?

What's the "inconvenient truth" about selling online?

You'll go broke, says blogger Steven Dennis.

"Only a handful of venture capital-funded “pure-plays” have (or will ever) make money," Dennis says.

The rest (including Amazon) operate at below-average margins for the retail industry, amassing huge financial losses year upon year.

Of themselves, free shipping and liberal return policies guarantee these companies will remain "profit proof," Dennis says.

Worse yet: the cost to acquire a customer. When it comes to customer acquisition, web retailers suffer "diseconomies of scale," Dennis says.

"Many online brands attract their first tranche of customers relatively inexpensively, through word of mouth or other low cost strategies," he says.

But then, marketing costs start to escalate.

"As brands seeking growth need to reach a broader audience, they typically start to pay more and more to Facebook, Google and others to grab the customer’s attention and force their way into the customer’s consideration set," he says.

"Early on customers were acquired for next to nothing; now acquisition costs can easily exceed more than $100 per customer."

The higher the acquisition costs, the lower the gross margin on the resulting incremental sales, a dynamic that eventually lands the business in hardship.

Whenever I plan an attendee acquisition campaign for an event producer, I budget the marketing efforts using, give or take a few bucks, the same amount of money Dennis mentions—$100 per attendee.

Want 500 attendees? Plan to spend at least $50,000.

Some event producers balk—How can it cost so much?

But after more than three decades in the event-promotion business, working on events large and small and in a variety of industries and professions, I've found it a real-world rule-of-thumb.

And most producers who spend that kind of money on marketing can, in fact, run a successful event and go home with a tidy profit.

The "diseconomies of scale" only enter the picture when registration fees are low ; or when producers discount and give away registrations; or—the worst case—when admission to the event is free.

Of course, attendees are a necessary evil: without any, exhibitors have been known to complain. But they need not have "negative value" when registration fees are low (or nonexistent).

Attendees can be little ambling profit centers.

How?

Sell attendees livestreaming.

Events are cornucopias of content. When you capture that content on video, you can sell it to attendees for post-event consumption. None of them can be in two places at once, so none can possibly imbibe all the content you offer. What's more, every attendee loves to share good content with colleagues "back at the ranch." Why deny them that pleasure?

And why make your event "profit proof," when it can be enormously the opposite?  "Back-of-the-room" sales of livestreaming come cheaply, because attendees are already in your "store." The gross margin on the incremental sales you make will come at an extremely low rate—almost for free, if you already videotape content for projection purposes, as most producers do.

Want more food for thought? Check out my posts "Conference Planners: There's No Sin in Syndication" and "Just be Willing to Believe."

NOTE: CEIR reports that average attendee-acquisition costs currently range from $14 to $20 per person. But I don't believe the figures are reliable. My own past research, done in the 2000s, showed acquisition costs to range from $68 to $80 per person. CEIR's report, nonetheless, can help any producer get a grip on event-industry spending trends, and is worth studying.

Online's Goal is Offline

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

― Woody Allen

B2B marketers―smart ones―know online must lead to offline.

Because unless prospects experience your brand, there's little likelihood of large sales.

Digital alone doesn't cut it.

Digital's too delible.

As GE's CMO, Linda Boff, told Chief Content Officer this month, "Experiencing a brand versus just seeing something in the media is more and more important. It's more indelible. We think a lot about that. How do we bring the brand to life? And how are we going to show up?"

How will you show up?

You've got an online plan.

What's your offline plan?

Mind the Gap, B2B Marketers

Nurturing leads is as important as nabbing them.

But a lot of B2B marketers, under the gun to generate leads, forget this. They ignore the "Content Consumption Gap," and blitz leads with premature follow-up calls.

NetLine examined 7 million long-form content downloads and concluded it takes 38 hours for a lead to read whatever he requests (C-level leads take 48 hours).

Dubbing the timespan the "Content Consumption Gap," NetLine urges marketers to practice patience and wait at least two days before following up a lead.
"Don't smother content-sourced leads," says NetLine's David Fortino. "Suggest that your sales team wait 48 hours before contacting, to ensure that the prospect is well informed enough to have an educated discussion."

Instead of dialing, Fortino recommends sending leads "a light-touch email:"

Thanks for checking out our white paper. I’ll check in with you in a few days to see what you thought. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions.

Stuck inside of Mobile with the Email Blues Again

B2B marketers, why—when your email has a snowball's chance in hell of getting attention—do so many of you reduce the chance?

I see it every day: emails designed for desktop email clients, instead of mobile ones.

Seven in 10 prospects immediately delete mobile-unfriendly emails.

So stop sending them:

• Use a 300 pixel-wide template. Mobile screens are small and many smartphones don't automatically resize big emails.
  
  
• Use images sparingly. Mobile devices load slowly. The overall file size of your email should not exceed 70k.
  
  
• The top 250 pixels are prime real estate. Don't waste them on some gargantuan masthead. State your offer here in plain-text words.
  
  
• Use a clear call-to-action button near the top. Also include a text call-to-action linked to the same landing page (visible when images are disabled).
  
  
• Include a one-line pre-header to state your offer. Include as well the URL for the mobile-friendly version of your email you host on line.
  
  
• Avoid weird fonts, big fonts, reverse type, and red type. That stuff doesn't render and can trigger spam filters.
  
  
• Code short (basic HTML with tables).
  
  
• Write short (Anglo-Saxon words, and few of them).

Four in ten B2B marketers say designing mobile-friendly emails will automatically lift results.

So shake those email blues. Design for mobile.