Event Marketing Q&A with Christopher Penn and Eventible

Hi, my name is Christopher Penn. I'm a co-founder and chief data scientist at Trust Insights. Uh Trust Insights, we are, I guess the best way to describe us would be like a data-driven management consulting firm. We provide analytics and data expertise to client clients, to companies, customers that uh help them get more value out of the data they have uh and help patch up holes and gaps in their people, their processes and and their technology platforms that make it difficult for them to get data and turn it into something valuable. Um so that's that's the company.

My role as chief data scientist is a lot of the coding, a lot of the analysis, a lot of the uh mechanical pieces of getting that information into usable formats and helping clients make decisions with their data, make better decisions with their data. It's really challenging when you see somebody that has good data laying around and they're not doing anything with it. It's kind of like it's kind of like going into a a restaurant and seeing uh a fully stocked pantry and nobody's cooking. It's like, oh well, why not? You've got all this great stuff.

Uh so our goal is really to to help people start cooking with that with that data. I I think this is actually backwards, right? Um my experience in analytics and data driven marketing and PR modern email marketing is what gave me the experience in the marketing industry. It's really funny. In in marketing, I have no formal background in marketing.

I've never other than the courses I've taught, I've never taken a course in marketing. Everything has been self-taught. And I got into this because uh I worked at a technology startup, a financial services fintech startup, way, way, way back in the early 2000s. And I was the director of IT. I was the chief technology officer.

And it was funny, something happened over that decade that really set my my career path where uh technology became marketing technology. And you know, we've heard all heard the famous stat that the CMO spends more than the CIO, which came true in 2016 and has been true ever since. But you know, update the web server, became update the website, fix you know, the send mail application became send this e-week's email newsletter. And that really has propelled uh my marketing career. And then as technology and analytics became more and more important, uh I started focusing more on uh analytics, data science, machine learning, and AI, and that's kind of how w we got where we are today.

The biggest objective I have as a speaker, uh well, there's two pieces because it's it's front-facing and back facing. Uh front-facing, my biggest objective as a speaker is to provide value to the audience, right? To to teach something, to share something, to help educate, hopefully get people to take some action of their own. Uh because as a speaker, if there's no audience, there's no point, right? Uh and if the audience doesn't find what you have to say valuable, they will you know downrate you on on speaker valuations.

Events will not i invite you to their business, to their their their conferences and things. So my front-facing objective is to provide as much value to the audience as I can. Um the back facing objective is of course to promote uh trust insights, the business uh and things to help uh us bring in new clients, new customers, but that's a side effect of creating value. Because again, if you don't create value for the audience, they have no reason to listen to you. Just because you're up on stage doesn't mean that you're right.

Uh it doesn't mean that you are uh going to say anything useful. And it's funny, um, you know, uh Michael Port, who's a very famous uh speaker trainer, once said really I thought really, really insightfully that the audience is just as afraid as you are when you're on stage. The audience is afraid that you're gonna waste their time, that you're gonna talk down to them, that you're gonna uh insult them outright. And as a speaker, we want to make sure that we don't do those things, we do the opposite of those. We want the audience to feel like this is knowledge they didn't have before, uh, or that they could do this thing that you're talking about on stage, and it's so important that we provide that experience to the audiences so that they feel like they got their money's worth and then something.

Do digital events give you the same level of feedback? No. Nope, they are different. When you're speaking in front of a crowd of people in person, you're speaking to a lot of people, right? You walk on stage and say, hey, everybody, all right, you know, let's uh you know, give yourselves a round of applause, all that, all the fun stuff that you do on stage.

When you're doing something virtual, kind of like this right now, you're not sitting in a room with a hundred other people watching this video. You are you sitting at your laptop, your phone, your tablet. And then one of the things we have to remember as speakers is that when we're doing virtual events, we're really having a conversation. You and I are in a conversation, and we have to change how we speak so that we really are having a chat, as opposed to being on stage and you know addressing the masses. And I think that's really important.

I think it's something that we don't think a lot about. Even just the language we use. I will say, like you and I, right? Because you are listening to this. It's not you guys, right?

Which is kind of a sexist term anyway. Uh it's not you folks, because I'm assuming you're watching this by yourself. Um, especially in virtual events where people are wearing headphones. Right? You're at your desk, um, you got your headphones or your earbuds or whatever.

It's kind of like podcasting. The person listening, you have put these things in your ears, right? You are literally sticking me inside your head. And so I think it's a much more intimate and should be a more conversational interaction, and so speakers need to keep that in mind. Events digitally in general, I've spoken at many, and they've there have been many good ones, uh, but they're not the same.

They're they are simply not the same. Now, I think in terms of the pros and cons, virtual events let you get really good, you know, up front row seat experience, right? Uh you can see and hear clearly, there's no person next to you typing in, you know, having 18-text conversations and stuff. Um, and you can, if you want to pay your fullest attention and get 100% of the information. You don't have to squint like the screen's not way far away and stuff.

You're right there in the front row. The downside is networking is a lot harder. Um building an emotional connection is a lot harder. Um, and having that sense of being in a different place is really difficult. Because when you're sitting at your desk or your phone or your tablet, it's really easy to answer that email that just came in, respond to that message, or tab to a different uh window.

Whereas it yes, you can do that at a real life event, but it's harder because you're you're in a different space mentally and physically. You're you're in a you've traveled somewhere, you've mentally delineated your regular life from this thing that you're going to. And it's a lot harder with the virtual events to create that feeling because it requires the person in the audience to make that distinction to say, yes, I am going to block off this time as though I were not in the office. Um I I think there's there's upsides and downsides, and as as speakers, we have to remember what those upsides and downsides are and address them appropriately. With reviews, you know, I don't know.

Because everybody goes to an event for a different reason. Some people go for professional development, they are there to learn the thing. Like I want to learn the thing. There's this person is speaking, and they're the expert in this thing, and I want to go to this event and I want to learn this thing. Um sometimes it's not even the speakers, sometimes it's just the event itself.

I went to uh the R Studio conference uh to learn specifically. I need to level up my game in certain parts of the coding that I do, and I didn't really care who was speaking, right? Um, as long as the content was good, as long as I got the knowledge that I was after. Some people go to events for networking, right? They want to make connections.

Um people go to events because it's their version of spring break, right? Um and so reviews can be tough because you have some very, very different objectives for people attending an event, and the event that educates me really well is maybe not the event that it has good networking, right? And maybe not uh doesn't have great parties as a person seeking education. I don't care about the parties, right? I never get invited to the parties anyway.

Um but for the person who's going because they want that that different experience, they're like, Yeah, the content's okay, right? They may not even gone to any of the sessions, or you know, they they just spent all the time on the on the expo floor, and that's fine. You know, everyone's reasons for attending the events are valid, but reviews have to be taken through that lens of what was the intent of your attending this event, and then did you did you fulfill that intent? Um was it was the event satisfying that intent for you? And I would challenge, you know, anybody who's making reviews to to be clear like this is why I went to this event, and yes, I got what I came for, as opposed to this was a good event or a bad event.

Well, I it doesn't really help me because you may be going for a different reason than I am. And I want to know that if you went to the event for the reason you intended, and the reason you intended was aligned with mine, that's a review that's helpful. Right. Would I rely on event speak reviews for other speakers? Yes, because that's a very narrow use case.

Like speakers can say, yes, this event did a good job with the logistics. It was it ran on time. It was respectful of people's time. It helped speakers understand what was going on. On the speaker side, you know, 90% of an event is logistics, right?

Making sure that you've got the right crowd, that you've got uh a receptive crowd, that the event has done a good job of promoting your talk, and vice versa. Um if you're if you've been paid to do so. And that, you know, uh as little hassle is there as possible from getting from the airport or whatever, and virtual events, you know, same thing. Here's the zoom link or the whatever link, here's how this is going to h operate. One of the best events I did was actually not an event at all.

It was uh a LinkedIn live with LinkedIn itself, and their operations team was flawless. They had a team of five people in the background managing this live thing. It was so enviable. It's like, wow, they they've got this down to a science. Okay, this is gonna happen here, this is gonna happen here.

You're gonna bring up this mic, you're gonna do this, that, and you know, for the speakers, it just kind of showed up and talked. Um, but when you look at the fine the finished product, it's like flawless. Like it like it was a fully produced thing. So reviews from other speakers would be very helpful to understand. Yes, this is an event that really has its stuff together.

My uh my pandemic cocktail, to the extent that it is one, is seltzer. Good old soda water, right? Because uh I have a I have a a homemade uh seltzer machine. That is a five-pound tank of CO2 with a uh a dual valve gauge distributor here and a little attachment that you attach any used soda bottle to, and you can carbonate your own water. And when you do that, it saves you enormous amounts of money.

Uh I think the cost per per two-liter bottle of soda for me is something like two to three cents, right? It's basically just the water and then the CO2. Uh back on the road, once everyone is fully vaccinated and events are running fully vaccinated, and by the way, I I really, really, really hope that events do one of two things. Either you require vaccination to attend, because we all want to reduce risk, uh, or you offer a price tag that is like astonishingly higher if you're not vaccinated to deal with the insurance costs that will come from uh knowingly admitting somebody who's a risk um to the event. But back on the road, once things do open back up, uh gin and tonic, typically typically uh what I enjoy.

Is it helpful to know what events are coming up? Uh it depends. You know, it depends on the event, uh, whether the events that in that community would also have access to things like our our speaking kits and such so that we know uh like yeah, this event can meet our fee, or this event can't meet our fee, um, and logistics and stuff like that. Because again, a lot goes into events um to make them successful, and certainly I want to play my part in it, but I also want to make sure that uh an event is a good match, right? If an event uh is topically not aligned with something I can speak credibly about, probably not a good choice.

Uh if an event can't meet the budget uh that we're looking for, probably need to know that up front. So I think any system that's recommending events to speakers, and any vice versa, any any system that's recommending speakers to events needs to find those basic alignments so that no one's time gets wasted and so that everybody gets what they're looking for, right? You you get invited to events that can afford you, get invited to events that have the right audience, you have get invited to events that you have to hang out with people that you can really learn something from. Um I think all those are important considerations uh when it comes to to recommending anything together, making sure that you've got all the dimensions uh for your recommendation engine, and they all make good sense to the the part uh all the participants involved in them. Uh thanks for watching.

I hope that uh I hope to see you at an event uh soon. Want help solving your company's data analytics and digital marketing problems? Visit TrustInsights.ai today and let us know how we can help you.