CHILI PIPER PRODUCT UPDATES
See all updates here
In case you missed it, last month we launched our all-in-one Demand Conversion Platform! You can now qualify, route, and schedule meetings from any inbound or outbound channel. Route CRM records to the right rep for fast follow-up. Schedule more sales meetings and increase show rates. All with one platform.
Moving forward our product updates will showcase everything new on our Demand Conversion Platform and products:
See all July updates here
ADD TO CALENDAR
July 31: Yes chef! 🧑🍳 Join 6 marketers for the first AI recipe showdown. There will be fun prizes for attendees from our friends at Sendoso!
September: We’ll be at Drive, INBOUND, and Dreamforce! Will I see you there? Let me know, I’d love to take you for a coffee (or an espresso martini?)
HOT TAKES
Last week I hosted our first marketing leaders dinner in Toronto and one of the attendees was eager to ask me about our event strategy: “I could never get budget to do something like this” she said.
And she's not alone, around 67% of B2B marketers are hesitant to invest in field marketing because they think they can’t measure its success.
The reality is, hosting a casual event like a dinner isn’t as pricey or as time-consuming as you might think (especially when you’re splitting the hosting prep and cost with a partner or two!)
Dreamdata has gotten a reputation for their out of the box approach to tradeshows and events, so we asked Laura Erdem to share a bit about how their event strategy came together in this post:
Field marketing can be done on a budget, and it can be tied to pipeline and revenue. You can make the most out of trade shows. I know this because we’ve done it at Dreamdata.
How a single billboard put Dreamdata in front of their ICP in perpetuity
The team at Dreamdata is about attribution (obviously), but quite often, we run with ideas that we know aren’t directly attributable. It doesn’t matter because they’re so absolutely damn fun to work on and everyone remembers them.
Last year, we bought the smallest billboard in Times Square during a conference and made an enormous social media blast out of it ending with:
🔥 Over 1M organic views by our target audience on LinkedIn
🔥 Around 10,000 hours of videos watched on LinkedIn
🔥 Over 100 people saw the billboard during a conference keynote
The campaign is still bringing in customers long after the billboard has been down.
Finding the right field marketing balance
Remember how people buy? Even software: Through memories about you as a brand. Technology and features often come second.
So memorable moments convert, especially if done with intent and precision.
When planning conference attendance, you have two ways to go:
Repeatable, scalable, documented, and... boring
Stand out
Or try to go for a balance of both.
Each company plans conference attendance in one way or another. Some invest heavy budgets into partnerships with the event organizers, build booths, run giveaways, and present speaker engagements. At Dreamdata, we do not have that experience yet, but we’ve been able to pull off significant ROI from our presence during conferences.
I’ll walk you through our thought process for arranging unforgettable, unscalable experiences and leave you with a list that you can use to stimulate your creative mind.
Besides the standard checklist of pre-/during, and after-event planning, we always do something fun to make events more effective:
Should we wear matching clothes?
Should we rent a bus with our logos on it and drive around the entrance?
Should we stick our stickers on people’s backs?
Should we bring crazy Danish licorice for people to taste?
Most of the time, it’s a YES!
Why?
It keeps the team motivated to create memories
Our audience remembers us as a brand that’s fun to collaborate with
All that comes back tenfold in impressions, memories, and willingness to collaborate with us.
8 steps to take to create out-of-the-ordinary B2B event experiences
Conference season is upon us. Let’s see what you can do to make your event strategy out of the ordinary.
1. Get your entire team brainstorming
Gather a couple of people with creative minds or pick up a chat topic when catching up (tap people beyond your marketing team!) People love to help, especially when they’re asked for ideas. You don’t know where it might take you.
Tell them where you’re going. Ask if they were to pull off something fun, what would they do? Share some of your ideas first — it’s easier to build on top of ideas versus start from a blank page!
2. Research the event location
Investigate the area where the event is happening. Are you in the city? Outside of the city? Are all the people going to enter through a specific place? Where do they all live, or are they dropped off by a taxi?
Knowing the area will help you plan those moments and be prepared to capture them. We usually pull up Google Maps to see how the area looks and what the weather will be.
To start with, don’t think about the budget and execution.
3. Put together your plan
Define a budget and plan how many people you’ll need. Events take a lot of energy from attendance alone.
Your team goes to conferences with an already-set agenda, so asking them to do something else has to be well-defined, booked, and easy to execute.
You will get busy, and things will go wrong, but as long as people have an event plan, you’ll be alright.
SPICY INDUSTRY UPDATES
- How growth/optimization folks should work with DG
- Why marketers should be watching Love Island if they want to be more creative
- Life as a marketer, according to t swift
- Is Tuesday still the best day to send emails? Not if everyone else is!
P.S. Are you noticing a drop in website traffic and conversions this month? Don’t panic! July (especially that first week with July 4th) is often a summer lull for many of us. Somehow I forget every year and refresh our dashboards in a panic.
Crissy has some great advice here on how to productively address this with your leadership team.
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