I know, I know, I missed last Saturday’s newsletter. But it was for a good reason, and it’s what fueled the newsletter today.
We hosted our first ever “roadshow” style event in London last week.
Advice you see on LinkedIn:
Pick a city with a good density of your ICP, rent out a space for 4-6 hours, invite your top prospects + customers, have a healthy mix of discussion + networking, and watch the $$$ come rolling in.
Reality:
The advice espoused on LinkedIn is rarely ever as easy as it seems (or the hard parts are conveniently left out).
Before I scare you off, the event went well + received lots of positive feedback.
But as an undiagnosed perfectionist, my mind immediately went into “what if…” mode afterward thinking through all of the things I could’ve done better or differently. As a result, here are the 3 biggest takeaways from my experience that you won’t see on LinkedIn as I prep for more future roadshows.
Start inviting sooner + overbook
Me, planning the event: “It’s an exclusive event for 50 of the best recruiters + recruitment executives, people will be lining up for this!”
Me, 2 weeks before the event: “…just need 35 more registrations and we’ll be golden” 😅😅😅
Biggest takeaways + learnings here:
It’s a LOT harder to get people to commit to attending a half-day in-person event than I thought it would be
Attendees have to travel to the event
You need to get on their calendars before other things do (with execs + top performers, this means weeks, if not months, in advance)
You need to illustrate the cost/benefit analysis to attending, even if it’s free
Even if it’s for a smaller group or you’re presenting it as “exclusive”, don’t overestimate conversion rates from invitation > sign up > attendance
I naively thought invitees would be lining up to attend and was anticipating a 40% invitation > attendance rate…
…and that 40% was nowhere close to the reality.
Plan for roughly a 10% invitation > registration conversion rate
THEN, if it’s a free event, plan for about 20% of the registered attendees to not show up.
Using these numbers, you can work backward from your ideal attendee number to determine how many people you should invite. Aim to send those invitations out starting 6 weeks ahead of the event to give yourself a non-stress-inducing
Voice notes are a cheat code on LinkedIn
When I sent the email out, I had about a 2% reply rate (replied back to the email with a yes/no or registered through the form). 2%. 2 out of 100. 20 out of 1000. That’s not a lot.
As luck would have it, Morgan J Ingram shared a tip in his weekly newsletter that week about using voice notes and his success with them. So I thought, let’s give it a try. 1 week later - WOW is all I can say. 40% reply rate on the voice notes. Even with more than half being "sorry, I can’t make it”, that was still a 20x improvement on emails. Don’t sleep on voice notes.
Side note: for those who’ve been reading the past few newsletters of mine, these voice notes are what I would call a “trending best practice” in that I would bet they’re going to work very well for early adopters, but once the majority starts using them, their effectiveness will fade away.
Location, location, location
Let’s be honest, no one likes sitting in a stuffy, sterile hotel or convention center conference room. For large events, yes, you only have so many venues that can support large numbers of people. But for events where you’ll have between 25-100 people, you have MANY more (and better) options.
Local bars + restaurants are perfect for these types of events. They’re designed to accommodate the number of attendees you’ll have at these types of events. They have good food + drinks, which are critical for local events like this. And they’ve got an infinitely better amount of warmth + environment than hotels/convention centers.
A little shifting of furniture + tables, some strategic placement of cameras + microphones, and you’ve got yourself a winning combination of content ready to be captured and an audience who enjoys spending time at the event.
Which leads us to the final learning…
Discussion > being spoken to for hours
Want to know what most people crave when going to events like this? ENGAGING with others.
If they wanted to be spoken at for hours to learn something, they can get that nowadays in a podcast. The magic of these types of events is allowing all attendees to engage with one another, even speakers + panelists. So maximize for this.
Before the event, we decided on a few key topics to lead panel discussions around. (side note - to come up with relevant topics, I asked registrants on the form what they want to improve for themselves/their company and what they felt they’re doing a good job of already). These were then structured in a way where we led the panelists through guided discussion for a portion of the discussion, then opened it up for larger Q&A/discussion.
But the real magic happened during the second panel discussion. After the first panel, we had breakout discussions where attendees could chat through some of the other topics that were of interest to them. During these, the previous panelists simply became other attendees, and future panelists were seen as peers.
So during the second panel, we started to see hands raised during the panel conversations as audience members stopped being “spoken to” and started joining the conversation. The result? A more engaged audience, an even more relevant panel discussion, and real relationships developed between attendees.
One final side note - I had originally mapped out the event to be 3 panel discussions and 2 breakout sessions, but after the first panel went quite longer than “planned” due to phenomenal conversation, I pivoted to 2 panel discussions and 1 breakout session. I hadn’t anticipated such strong engagement during the panels and didn’t want to cut those discussions short as tons of value was being shared + added to attendees. So my learning there was to build flexibility into the schedule. Have a few ways the day could play out so you aren’t stressing about keeping everything exactly on time to one set plan.
One LinkedIn post I bookmarked this week
Most of the most impactful things you can do as a marketer aren’t sexy. They’re fundamental, consistent, and “basic” things that are done well, consistently, and with minor iterations over time.
And that’s why I love this post from Jason Vana because it perfectly distills the why and importance of this down into one post.
One podcast episode I enjoyed this week
I didn’t. Between final planning + prep and traveling to/from the event in London, I was heads down leading up to the event and crashing hard after the event.
So, as a hat tip to my London experience, I binged most of season 3 of Ted Lasso on the flight back. The show never disappoints 💙
See you next Saturday,
Sam
First off, CONGRATS! Celebrate the win as events are difficult to put on...I mean does anyone else remember the frantic cleaning that took place at home with your mom yelling at you "WE HAVE COMPANY COMING OVER, CLEAN YOUR ROOM! (even if it's just the neighbor kid coming to jump on the trampoline)" as she scurries about? I feel like that when putting on events.😂
Second, this is why I have such a respect for event teams and field marketers. I laughed so hard at your meme "this is where we throw our heads back..." cause honestly, I'd increase those numbers just a tad personally (25-30% drop-off attendance rate). Also I absolutely loved the fact with how flexible you were with the scheduling adjusting to the audience needs...I guarantee you that will help you in dark social for your next event. Now it does become tricky once partnerships/sponsorships get involved.
Third, totally agree with your location bit. What has worked in the past for me was more centered around short dinners/meetups/happy hours to try first to just build local community and then coral into a larger commitment in terms of half day/full day slightly more structured events. But what I'd really like to explore more are events that aren't necessarily centered around panels and presentations, thinking more activity/experience type events based on industry (hack-a-thons as an example) or partnering with local charities (I just did a volleyball tournament over the weekend for the Ronald Mcdonald house, had live music, food and drink vendors) just to give choice and variety so it's not all so "bar" type focused. I'm also curious on what your audience is able to takeaway from it...what does that followup look like? So often we just see the highlight reels like you mentioned, but nothing really ever comes of it (not saying it has to be deals and all, just a lot of the time the content isn't all that great to even repurpose) besides attendees being annoyed from being hit up from SDR teams/email spam. I certainly don't have all the answers, but you have this hamster on the wheel again.