Pixelz’s guide to running successful B2B event marketing
Event marketing (also called face-to-face or in-person) is very much back on the menu for B2B marketers. And why not? They’re a great way to get up close and personal with leads and customers, and gain (or continue to keep) that crucial competitive advantage.
For Pixelz, events have become a core instrument in their go-to-market strategy. And Dreamdata has played a crucial role in enabling the team to measure the impact of these events in pipeline and revenue generated.
I sat down with Katrine Rasmussen, CMO at Pixelz, to lay down an 8 step formula for running killer B2B marketing events.
Contents:
Step 3 - Decide the event type or format you’re going to run
Step 7 - Measure the success of the event in pipeline generated (but be patient!)
Step 8 - Repeat success with surveys and customer journey mapping
Why do B2B event marketing?
Before digging into the guide, it’s worth considering why do event marketing in the first place?
Hosting events allows you to get more intimate engagement with target accounts on a more informal and value-add basis that cannot be replicated through any other marketing activity.
The knock on effect of this positive and intimate brand experience is a higher likelihood of closing the deal in the future.
The positive impact of ‘face time’ on closing deals was what sent Katrine and the team at Pixelz, down the path of event marketing.
“A lot of these deals are just too big and too important for us to just let go of them. And what we've found is basically that the most important things for us or for our team's ability to close these deals is face time.”
“And what better way to do that than to do that in a little bit of a more informal setting where the way to get face time is not for the sales team to go knock on the door and say, hey, can I come and show you our platform?
“So we run four relatively large events every year, about 150 attendees at each event.
This year we did LA in February, Berlin is coming up in June and then we’ll have London and New York for the fall.”
Step 1. Assess whether event marketing is for you - deal size matters
Key takeaway: Before setting off on your event marketing journey, you need to assess whether events are worth the investment. That is, whether or not there’s a potential for good ROI. Deal size should be an important factor here.
To event market or not to event market, that is the question…
Well, ROI, which we cover in more detail in Step 7 below, should be the principal deciding factor here.
Sure, as Katrine points out, events are fun and great for brand exposure. But there are other, cheaper ways you can do branding.
She highlights two factors that were paramount to trialling events in the first place:
(Potential) deal size
To gain a good ROI from events, you need to be focusing on quality as opposed to quantity. Digital marketing is much better suited to bulk. Events should be carefully curated around high-value accounts. If these aren’t
Long sales cycle
Events are, almost by definition, not a first-touch channel, and are also unlikely to close a deal. They are best suited as earlyish touches in long customer journeys. To bring leads closer to your brand and enable the sales process.
If your journeys are short, it’s unlikely that owned events are worth the investment, as you’d probably need to be running these more often.
Step 2. Identify your target accounts
Key takeaway: Find who your event guests are going to be by focusing on who your ICP and buyer persona is.
As Katrine reminds us, owned events are part and parcel of your ABM play.
When putting together your invite list, you need to have a clear picture of who your ideal (high-value) accounts are going to be.
For this, you need to work very closely with the sales team and agree firstly on what the top 10 or the top 20 accounts for the quarter are.
And secondly, whether these are good candidates for the event. Think about whether or not they’re showing intent, e.g. have they been on your site, or browsing your category on a review site?
Step 3. Decide on the event type / format
Key takeaway: Not all events are created equal. You need to select the most suitable format for your event, bearing in mind as much as possible to your audience’s likes and dislikes. Ideally, it’s a value-add - think novel info and networking - as well as fun.
For Katrine’s team at Pixelz, events are multi-session. That is, they are typically day-long and consist of a number of different activities.
These are always value-adds and fun for the audience and RARELY is Pixelz the focus. (More on this in Step 6 below)
“We put a lot of thought and effort into making sure that not only the sessions, like the keynotes, the panels, all of that is interesting and well thought out, but also that the entire experience of the day, everything from the check-in to the lunch to happy hour, especially networking .. we put a lot of effort into how people interact and network with each other throughout the day.”
Step 4. Choose the number of guests - and invite existing customers!
Key takeaway: Have enough invitees to allow for networking and discussion, as well as to offer credibility, but not too many to have an anonymous/ unruly crowd. Pixelz’s events are on the larger side with between 100 and 150 guests. These guests should compose of approx. 20% existing customers.
The number of guests will depend on the event format, but a good rule of thumb is to have enough invitees to allow for networking and discussion, and deliver credibility, but not too many to have an anonymous or unruly crowd. As this will lead to disinterest and guests failing to really engage with the event - not to mention it will be waaay more expensive!
Pixelz’s events have between 100 and 150 guests. Of which approximately 20% are existing customers.
Step 5. Invite guests - be creative!
Key takeaway: Spend time considering how you’ll invite your high-value/ target accounts. You don’t want to put in all that prep time and then have them decline the invite. Instead of sending out a cold invite, perhaps flatter them with an invite as keynote speaker.
It’s crucial to get your target accounts in through the door.
You should already have listed accounts that have shown some intent (Step 2 above).
Also, make sure it’s your high-value target accounts who you reach out to first. There’s no point inviting the rest of the guests to event if your main audience is absent (think back to Step 1).
“what we'll do is we'll have someone from the marketing team reach out and say, hey, we have an event coming up… you have such an interesting profile and you have all this great experience. Are you interested in doing a keynote or being on a panel or something else?
And if you're not, then you're very welcome as a regular attendee. So that's just a, usually it's a little bit of an easier way in to build that relationship and to get that face time than actually have the sales team reach out and do that.”
Step 6. Host the event and keep your product out of it
Key takeaway: Throw a fun, value-adding event, that creates a positive brand experience for guests. Caution, this also means not making the event about your product!
As we covered in Step 3, you want your guests to feel like they’ve gained something by turning up to the event. Think information and network.
You also want them to leave with a positive impression of your brand. This requires finding a careful balance between making your brand known and over-stuffing guests with your product.
Events are very unlikely to be a conversion to closed-won touchpoint in the B2B customer journey. So much like you don’t want to stuff hard-conversion CTAs on all your digital marketing, you don’t want to make the event entirely about your product.
In fact, less is more here.
For Katrine and the team at Pixelz, this approach has more often than not generated increased curiosity and resulted in getting post-event demo requests.
“So very, very little about, it's not about Pixelz. We might not even have a demonstration. So we actually do, it's interesting, but it also works for us because often we'll get people reaching out to us and say, hey, can we see a demo of pixels? Because we're not showing them that. So after that event, they might be interested in seeing a demo.”
Step 7. Measure the success of the event in pipeline generated (but be patient!)
Key takeaway: Don’t lose sight of the ball, events are still about generating business value. Which means you need to track and measure them as you do all your other marketing efforts. This will mean having the right tool to do it.
Wait a minute… haven’t we just said the event shouldn’t be about ‘hard’ conversions, and should instead focus on value-adding and positive brand exposure?
Yes.
But this doesn’t mean pipeline and revenue should isn’t still the main objective. In fact, these should be at the heart of every. single. marketing effort - including brand!
How do you measure the impact of B2B marketing events?
So how exactly do you measure their impact in pipeline and revenue? Good question.
Marketing events aren’t like your standard digital marketing campaign. There’s an element of manual input that needs to be done. e.g. adding attendee lists to your CRM.
But that’s not nearly enough to have an accurate picture of how these events are impacting revenue.
Answering this question requires adding the event touches and the costs of the event to the wider buying journey and connecting all that to revenue.
This requires a more specialised go-to-market attribution solution.
Katrine uses Dreamdata.
Step 8. Repeat success with surveys and customer journey mapping
Key takeaway: Apart from proving a good ROI, you want to repeat (or improve) any success you have achieved with your events. There are two things you need to do here: survey your guests and examine the customer journeys of won deals.
Once you’ve seen a positive result from your event, i.e. more and faster pipeline, you need to assess what you did well and what you can do better moving forward.
There are two great things Katrine does for this:
Sends out surveys to all attendees to identify their biggest takeaways from the event.
Reviews the customer journey maps of success cases on Dreamdata to see where the event fell in the wider journey.
NOTE: When analysing the customer journey, don’t your digital marketing activities and how these relate to your event and the wider buying journey. Think first-touch and any re-targeting you’ve run after the event.
Step 9 [bonus]. Hire a great team
Key takeaway: Once you have proof you’re on the right track with event marketing, make sure you get the right team around you. Like any specialisation you want to best people running your show… literally.
Katrine emphasises the importance of having capable “experience” marketers around her to run the events in a way that ensures the best possible experience and ultimately results.
