So What? How to get the most out of a conference

Well, hey everyone, happy Thursday. Welcome to So What The Marketing Analytics and Insights Live Show. I am Katie, joined by Chris and John. This week, we are talking about how to get the most out of a conference. Um next week there will be no live stream because the three of us will actually be at a conference marketing props B2B in Boston.

Um today we want to take a minute uh as a lot of people are starting to return to conferences, a lot of people have switched careers, and maybe marketing conferences are new to you, or maybe just for whatever reason this is you know the your first time attending any kind of a conference. I was only new to conferences a few years ago myself. And so we just wanted to talk about how to get the most out of a conference so that when you go there, they can be overwhelming, you know, there's a lot of people, it can be hard to sort of navigate. So I mean, Chris and John are, you know, old pros at this, you know, they've been doing conferences longer than I've been alive, and then when I came on the scene. We're not there.

So anyway. It's because it's been years. I especially I wasn't able to do inbound. I had tested positive for COVID like three weeks ago. So I haven't been on a trade show floor since like 2019, I guess, which is just insane because my background, I mean, I worked at an events company years ago.

I mean, I would do 30 or 40 events a year. Um, so yeah, for me to have gone this long without being, you know, having a horrible lunch and be cattle called around for four days, it's just unheard of. What about you, Chris? Yeah. So for getting value out of conferences, the one thing that one of my martial arts let me go back for a second.

What are you looking forward to the most for next week? And then we can get into the other. What am I looking forward to the most for next week for the marketing process conference? Um listening to what other people's questions are. Because I find that as a content creator, uh, as a marketer, as a marketer marketing two marketers, I don't always have the best sense of what's on people's minds.

So being able to just sit and listen to people, listen to their questions, listen to their reactions, you know, lunch tables, breakfast table talks, etc. I always find interesting and exciting because that's where you get the really good stuff, particularly in, you know, after maybe an hour or so at the bar where people are like, okay, they've they've shaken off their nervousness and stuff like that. They're standing in your personal space, breathing on you. Um, then the really interesting questions uh start coming out. Well, I am definitely not excited for the invasion of my personal space.

Um, I should probably just get like a hula hoop and attach it to my waist, and so people can like if they can get past the hula hoop, like they they've gone too far. The alarm goes off. Exactly. You should wear one of these masks. These keep people away.

You'd be surprised. I have my own set of masks. Thank you. Um, all right. So let's get into sort of let's talk about how to get value out of a conference.

So, Chris, I apologize I interrupted you, but you had started to go down that road. One of the things that one of my martial arts teachers taught us years ago was for any kind of professional development event, conference event, seminar, whatever. Go into it with a burning question. Go into it with a question that you need an answer to so that you can ask as many people about it as possible. You know, my burning question that I want to know from people at Marketing Cross B before, and uh, you know, uh in general, is how are you currently doing?

If you are, how are you currently doing marketing mix modeling? Because I have some thoughts about this. This is something that I want to develop for trust insights and our customers uh next year. And there's a lot of different solutions, but I want to get a sense of if I ask people that question, they're like, huh? Then like, okay, wow, it's gonna be a while before like this this idea becomes mainstream.

Maybe that's something I need to write a book about to introduce the idea. Or if everybody's like, oh yeah, we've been doing that for years, and this is how we do it, like, okay, great. How can I improve on it then? But know that there's a there's a need for it um in the market. So that's that's the number one thing I do to get value out of the conference is go in with a burning question so that I have an understanding of this is if I get this question answered from peers and other experts, I will have gotten value out of the conference.

What about you, John? Yeah, you know, there's three areas usually where that will end up drawing me out to a show. You know, one is if the attendees are the profile of your customer, like that's the easy one. If a bunch of your customers are going to be at a show, you can go there. The other one that happens a lot more than you'd think is events where um it draws out enough crowd that it's just it makes it the right networking opportunity.

Like you may not even care about any of the sessions, but the fact that you can talk to a list of 15 people all over three days, that's actually gonna save you, you know, five weeks of travel throughout the rest of the year. So there's some things that you go to just because of the the networking and the audience that's there. And then if in a rare occasion you get in some industries, there's just events that you can't miss. You know, if you have anything to do with entertainment, now you're gonna go to Comic Con because that's just what you do. And you know, there's there's shows like that that are on the list.

So if it's any of those three, that's enough to get me out the door. And for us, pretty much it's always, you know, now it has become the second one. I think, and we can talk about this too. It's interesting when you look at the agendas for some of these sessions. Some of these shows now, I'm gonna go because everybody's there, but I look at the agenda, I'm like, oh my god, no, I'm not gonna spend five minutes in any of these things.

Like, this is the worst, you know, bunch of vendor pitches I've ever seen in my life. Um, but yeah, it ultimately just comes down to it's a chance to get in-person FaceTime, you know, to talk to people, ask them questions and get real time feedback, not you know, trying to read an email and figure out what you think they meant by that. Come on, John, you don't want to five X your pipeline with the secrets of account based marketing. 10x, come on, 10x. Turn it up, crush it, man.

I mean, if you tell me it could be 12x, then maybe I'll you and your puny 10x. Step aside. What about you, Katie? What are you looking forward to? What do you and what do you look do to get stuff out of events?

I'm looking forward to seeing a bunch of my friends. Um, so that'll be fun. Um, you know, that aside, when I go into an event, I always I don't have a specific question in mind, but my agenda is to just sort of sit back and listen to how people are approaching their marketing in general, and you know, what are things that I maybe hadn't thought of, or you know, what are questions that people are struggling with? And so one of the things that you know we feel is happening right now is that a lot of it is back to basics. Um, because a lot of people, you know, have switched careers or you know, their teams have turned over, whatever the reason.

And so what I'm going to be looking for and listening for are those topics that people are consistently talking about having trouble communicating. And so a lot of what the sessions are about are here's how to do this thing, or here's this idea. And so to me, I find that interesting of well, why this topic? And did it resonate with the audience? And so, and is there something that we uh can do with that information?

How can we put our own spin on it, or how can we partner with whoever gave the talk to enhance it? So, those are the kinds of things that I look for when I go. So I go in with the agenda of I'm pretty much wide open, but I'm constantly data collecting, constantly thinking about, you know, what does this mean for trust Insights? What does this mean for me personally? Um, you know, what haven't I been thinking about, you know, or is there a new way to think about the same idea?

Yep. Um, you know, and I think that that's, you know, as we think about if you're going to a conference for the first time or if it's been a while or even if you go to conferences all the time, you know, Chris, this is something that you and I talk about a lot is, you know, what are speakers bringing to the table? And is it a new innovative idea? Is it a new spin on the same idea, or is it just the same idea? And maybe they want you to just sort of like think about it a little to the left so that you can maybe do something practical with it.

So in terms of setting your expectations, I think that you know, to Chris's point originally is go in with a question. And then that way you're not just looking for the latest and greatest shiny object because those are going to be everywhere. You're the vendors are going to be pushing what they call new things on you. People say they have new ideas. You may not necessarily need new ideas.

You may need new spins on current ideas. It's funny you say that because it for a lot of events that I go to that might have value. I'm specifically looking for the stuff that isn't ready for the stage. So you know one of the the worst kept secrets in the conference industry, particularly the marketing industry is that what's on stage is a year old, right? Because it's had time to become a talk to become a book to become a uh you know a thought leadership platform.

And it's not new. Um, you know, where there's sessions on account-based marketing and stuff like yeah, we've been doing that since twenty fifteen. But like a content marketing world, I was sitting down um at one of the the gatherings with uh a friend of ours and just talking about what he's working on. He's like, Yeah, behind the scenes, this is what's going on right now. He's like, I got advanced notice of this, and I'm telling you this, this is what's gonna happen in six months.

Here's how what you should be doing. He's like, We're not ready to put those on, you know, we're not gonna we're not gonna tell anybody this except our friends and our clients. And I'm like, taking notes as furious, okay. So I need to know that. Um, and talking about like the different ideas.

So we you know, we got to a long discussion about the difference between diffusers and transformers, AI technology, and and how we could see this stuff being applied. And for me, that's where I get the most value out of an event is the hallway conversations, the the stuff that's not on stage, the stuff that um isn't ready for the stage, because they you know, it it's like some of the stuff I was working on this morning for for some of our clients. It's not ready for prime time, right? It's still janky, it's still got some bugs, it's cool. And you know, if you catch me at the right time at marketing process, for example, I'd be like, yeah, you know, here's what I'm working on, you know, right now.

Um, but is it is it stage ready for a talk? No, but is there value in it? Yes, because that's what's going on right now. And I think if if folks wanted to really optimize what they can get out of a conference, do I I hate calling it networking, and we're gonna rant about this on the podcast one of these days. Um, but build those professional friendships with people so that yeah, you can grab coffee or you know, uh hotel chicken order or beers with your your professional friends and say, like, yeah, this is what what you're what are you working on?

What's what's going on behind the scenes at your place? Well, until we come up with a better name for it, let's call it networking. Um so the next question that we wanted to tackle was navigating networking at events. And so uh the first non uh clinical event that I went to was actually with you, Chris, uh, when I joined you at the old agency. It was actually marketing profs, was my first uh commercial event for lack of a better term.

Um academic, I guess is the best way to put it. And it was very overwhelming to me. And basically I just trailed behind you because I didn't know anybody. I barely had an idea of what was going on, what to expect. It was like no event I'd ever been to, and it wasn't even really the biggest, you know, event we've been to since then, but it was like sensory overload for me.

And you know, as someone I was lucky to have you sort of guiding me through it because you knew so many of the people at the event already. But what advice would both of you give to someone who's may maybe doesn't have the benefit of traveling with someone who knows all the players already? Like, how do they navigate networking without it just sort of being like, here's my business card, then you come home with a pile of cards that you never look at again. So, John, this is this is really kind of your jam. So I'll turn it to you first.

Yeah, it's it pays to be strategic, you know, look at the attendee list. Like if if you're just coming in green and you don't know anybody, you know, try on social media to find somebody to pal up with who has been to the show who can tell you kind of where to go and what to do. Because for every show there's all kinds of things like, oh, you don't go to this thing this evening and whatever you do, don't go on the boat cruises. Oh my god. If you want to like lose five hours of your life you're never going to get back don't go on the boat cruise um so you know there's stuff like that but yeah try and have a plan and it's it's super tough if it's your first year at event but once you've got your feet wet and you understand what you're getting into you know the goal is that you've already got all your appointments set up and your meetings of and it doesn't have to be hard times it can just be hey here's four people that I want to meet and I've said to them hey I'm gonna be on site let's talk at some point um because yeah in a perfect world you've got all the things that you want to accomplish written down so you have a plan as you go in there because you can go in and just start going to the the mixers and on the show floor to talk to vendors and randomly talk to people and you might have some great conversations but if you at least have your pump primed with like okay here's three people that I want to get to talk to and find out what they've got going on.

And even a an easy hack with that is look at the agenda and pick one or two speakers that you'd really like to you know talk to and learn more about you know figure out what they're going to talk about. If they've got a book go ahead and buy it and bring a copy of it to get signed. And you know don't be afraid after somebody's session to go up to them and say hey I like your work like what's going on because that can at least give you some it can be a great conversation starter. And when you talk to someone at the end of the session the other five or six people that are around you, these are your tribe. These are people that are interested in the same stuff and the same speaker.

So that's another great place to you know if it's a late session in the day and you're waiting to talk to the speaker, you can ask the other folks around you, hey, where are you guys going for dinner? You know, what are you guys doing for drinks? You can find out what's happening and and get to know some folks, which is really the what you can't get, you know, you that that doesn't happen in virtual. The thing I do, particularly in an event where I don't know anybody, and maybe it's you know it's not some place where I'm known, is at the first opportunity for like a meal break or a coffee break or whatever, you look for people who are presenting um uh friendly body language, right? So then maybe they're sitting at a table by themselves, but they're looking around, looking for somebody else to join them.

And you sit on the other side of the table, don't like get right next to them, don't get in their business. Um, and just introduce yourself, say, hey, if it's at the start of the event, hey, you know, what are you looking forward to to learning at the event, you know, or who you're looking forward to see speaking if it's in the middle or to the end of it, yeah, ask them, hey, what have you learned so far that you you really liked? You know, what what have you enjoyed? And I find that that is a great way to build that sort of uh impromptu network uh of somebody like hey, these are people that you know are interested in the same things. We're all here for the same reason, right?

We're all here for you know, it's not like this person accidentally stumbled in from like the the home gardening show. I mean, maybe they did, but the we want those people to we can find people to become our tribe at an event very, very quickly. Now, I will advise, you know, be really aware, be really in tune because some people, yeah, some people just don't want you to talk to them and respect that, honor that. Say, like, oh yeah, cool. You know, it's been nice to meet you, have a great show.

Um, but if they decide to engage in conversation stuff, you may find you know some pretty cool professional friendships that way. I found a number of folks over the years that way that it's like, okay, this is this is a person I'll stay in touch with that you know has useful insights and things that you know, let's let's let's learn more together. No, I think that makes sense. Um, you know, I would add, Chris, to that if you're sitting down uh with someone you never met, uh another super easy place to start is hey, what's your name? What do you do?

What kind of marketing are you in? Tell me more about it and give the other person the opportunity to either open up to you or not. And to your point, Chris, pay attention to those cues. Um I'm awful at networking. Because I am such an introvert, there is a reason why I used to be confused for a mute in high school because I can just sit there and not say anything for hours, believe it or not.

Um, but in a public forum, I will just sort of sit back, take a back seat, and just sort of take it all in. And so I'm the person who, if you sat down at a table across from me and tried to engage me in conversation, I would struggle with it. I wouldn't necessarily open up, not because I'm trying to be rude or I don't want to talk, it's just not something that I'm good at. And so for me, I really do rely on the both of you to do the majority of the networking. Like once I sort of warm up into a situation, you know, I can open up to people, I can talk to more random people, especially if they're approaching me after a talk or something like that.

But I'm not great at initiating that conversation. And I think that for uh, you know, those folks who are going into an event that are sort of in the same boat as me, that's okay. I think a great place to you know find people to talk to are like so. One of the things that Marketing Profts is doing is the breakfast round tables, and they did that when we were in San Francisco, and those were really successful. What they do, a lot of events do this is basically during meal times, they'll have uh pre-chosen speakers or experts to sit at different tables with a specific topic in mind.

And Chris, 10 times out of 10, you cover something about analytics. And so if I was going in cold and I didn't know anybody, I would probably pop by your table, introduce myself and be like, I'm interested in analytics. I have some questions, but I don't know what they are right now. Can I grab your card and maybe follow up with you at another time? So that way I don't feel the pressure to immediately engage in conversation.

Maybe I'm more comfortable behind the scenes over email or something like that, but ask the other person, like, is that okay? And that's just another form of networking. The other piece of advice, you know, and so John's saying, don't get on the booze cruise, like it's really a waste of time, to be quite honest. And I appreciate that these events are trying to put together like the fun after hours things because a lot of times people are stuck in a city that they've never been in and don't know where to go. So the events are just trying to create a safe space for people to sort of stay contained so they can, you know, like the mother hen keep track of all their little chickens.

Just a word of caution. On those after hours events, there does tend to be a lot of alcohol flowing. And if that's not your jam, that's okay. If it is your jam, proceed with caution because you're in a strange city with strange people. That's just my mother hen PSA.

It's very valid. I mean, we have I was reading a book this past week, um uh an upcoming book on events, and uh the event organizer was writing about this and saying, Yeah, like at a at one of our events in the past, we had to eject several people from the event because of sexual harassment issues and stuff. So it is a very real problem. And it's again one of those things where I say be very cautious when how you approach people, um, particularly if you are someone who is perceived as threatening to somebody else, make sure that you are super aware of people's verbal and nonverbal cues. I mean, is the the last thing you want to do in any context, but especially in a professional context where you're not only representing yourself, you're representing your your company and brand, is to make someone feel threatened.

It's true. And you know, with that, these events are safe events. You know, marketing props is a very safe event. The coordinators, the whole team, they spend a lot of time and energy making sure that all of the attendees and the speakers are in safe environments, that they have people who they can reach out to if they suddenly don't feel safe. One of the tips that I would say for you, and events are really good at identifying these people through like shirts or whatever, is make sure you know who the event staff are so that you can ask them if you have a question or a problem or God forbid, need to report something, but it happens.

Um, but I mean even attendees can just help out as well. Um, a content marketing world this past time, uh, I was at the Rocking Hall Hall of Fame for the party, um, and there was a person uh sort of just standing tentatively at uh at the at the gate uh you know on the way out. And I said, Are you okay? And and they said, Uh, I'm not comfortable walking back to my hotel. I said, I'll go with you.

Um, and they they were very grateful to have just because they didn't know Cleveland, and they're parts of Cleveland, you know. Any city to be fair. Any city, yeah. Um, but we got the person back to their hotel safely, and and so everyone, if you have the opportunity to help out and there's someone who has need, offer to help out. You know, whether or not it turns into business, it's just being a decent human being.

Well, and I think that that's a really good pro tip. If you are someone who's comfortable doing so, if you're a bit of an extrovert, or if you're just looking for new ways to meet people at events, you can reach out to the event ahead of time and say, Hey, you know, do you have anything you need help with? I'm happy to volunteer, maybe set up a room, and then you get to know the event staff who typically work at other companies. It's it's a really good way to start to get involved, and it's an easy way to meet people because you're there, you showed up. I mean, I think Chris, a few years back when we went to marketing props, I think we were there early because of our flights, and they immediately put us to work and we were you know helping stuff bags and you know, put things out, but I didn't know anybody, and it was helpful for me to get to know people in that specific context.

Um John, you know, do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert? Yeah, no, I'm score high on the extrovert scale. I mean, not a full 20, but you know, definitely in the 10 side of thing. Yeah, and one thing with that too, and personal safety, keep your badge off when you're outside the venue. You know, when you leave the conference and you're out on the city streets, the badge is basically saying, Please rob me.

You know, you have to uh wear it just for that reason. Like, come on. So to sort of get through the contradicting point of views, follow John's advice. It's follow John's advice. The point being is inside the event space, you know, insurance reasons, liability, inside the event space, the coordinators of the event, that's where they can protect you.

Once you step outside of that space, it's sort of out of their hands. Like they'll do their best, but you know, to John's point, like you're basically walking down the street with a billboard saying, I'm not from here. This is my first and last name. This is where I'm staying, this is where I'm going. And so, you know, it's just use your common sense.

Like, if you're comfortable with those things, if if you're Chris and you're probably carrying 8,000 different hidden weapons on you, you're probably fine. But if you are myself, someone like me who probably looks like an easy target, then proceed with caution. Yeah. Scoring, scoring danger assessment. Um yeah, it I mean, these events are totally made for extroverts.

There's no doubt about that. You know, I mean, it's just all social hour. And I be mindful of that with speakers too. That's another thing. There's a lot of folks that you I see this with keynotes where people just presume that because they're a keynote and they love to talk, that they want to now go out and spend three hours hitting the bars with everybody.

Like that is not the case. There's many a speaker that will leave and go to their hotel room to so that no one can talk to them for another three hours. Um, yeah, because that's um, again, just because somebody's up on stage and is telling a story, that doesn't mean that stories are their thing. That's true. And they don't want to hear about your family, that's for damn sure.

Um, I you know, and I think this is sort of the other side of it. So, you know, I can only give myself as an example. Um, you know, I do get on stage, I do talk to people, I do talk on these shows, you know, as part of the job. Um, you know, if you're excited to see someone that you've been like following or haven't met before, definitely probably don't just walk up to them and start talking to them because they may or may not know who you are. This happened to me um a couple of years back at a show.

I mean, you know, it wasn't like an unsafe thing, but some uh a gentleman approached me, he said, Oh my god, you're Katie, I can't wait to see your talk. And as someone who's super introverted, I was like, How the hell do you know who I am? Where did you get my information? What are you doing here? Like it it caught me off guard because it's not a situation I'm used to.

And so definitely, you know, there's time and place to make yourself known to people that you want to meet. And this was sort of John, what you were talking about earlier is you know, you can make your short list, you can reach out to people ahead of you know the conference and the event, you find them on social media, follow them, you know, and that way you're not just like surprise, here I am. I wanted to meet you forever. It gets a little not everyone's okay with that kind of approach. I'm personally not okay with it.

The dividing line, and this is a line I find very helpful uh between introvert and extrovert is whether being around people recharges you. Like if you if you recharge them the the the fun of being around people, you are an extrovert. Even if you're not necessarily loud, if you just enjoy being in the crowd, you are an extrovert. If on the other hand, it takes energy from you and it doesn't refill you, you're an introvert. You're like, because there to John's point, there are people who, yeah, they can be in a crowd, they can get on stage and stuff, but at the end of the day, they're like, I have got to get 20 minutes of silence and darkness and just hide because I your your your social battery is you is at zero, it's flashing red.

So I think we have two introvert, no, two extroverts and an introvert. I'm an ambivert. It depends on the day. Well, no, you just said there's an inviting line. You don't then get to make up a different rule, Chris.

No, it's good. Now because Chris, I would say, do you actually feel drained? I think by the end of the day, you're tired. It depends on the event in the crowd and why I'm there, right? So marketing events, typically, yes, because I'm sharing a lot, but I'm not necessarily getting a lot back.

When I go to like a data science or an AI event, I'm the other way around. I'm like, by the end of the day, I'm like, I've got all these ideas, and there's all these people I want to talk to, and there's all stuff that I need to know that I've, you know, that the whole reason I'm there is to say, okay, can somebody look at my code and tell me what I'm doing wrong here? You know, um, one of my favorite examples was at IBM Think back in 2016. I was I I showed up at the the data science expert station. I brought up my laptop and and uh I sat with one of IBM's uh PhDs in data science, and I said, tell me what I'm doing wrong here.

And the guy goes, Oh, like pretty much everything. Like that's that's the wrong model to use. You're you're not even using the right classification technique. So where'd you learn this? And make sure you never pay them any more money.

I'm like, thank you. That's that's you know, that's so from for me, part of the purpose of an event. We can even talk about the five Ps when it comes to events, but part of the purpose for me is getting knowledge out of the event that I can then go and use. And the more of that that I get, the more excited I am for the event, and the more fun it is for me. If it's like, and now we're gonna talk about how to get more followers on Twitter, it's like Katie's not buying it.

Nope. Well, neither am I. That's the thing. It's like an event like that where it's if it's all how to get more followers on Twitter and you know why you should be doing email marketing. Like, okay, probably the at least the event content's not going to be super helpful to me.

There might be like one or two little things, but to kind of what you were saying earlier, John, it's not worth spending 45 minutes for like one little thing in a session. I'd rather talk to people in the halls. Right, but that still makes you an extrovert. Just because the you don't find the content fun. Like, I feel like you've sort of veered off the definitions, but regardless, um, you know, having that bit of self-awareness about sort of the time and space that you need when you go into event is going to help you not get exhausted.

Um, and so the last topic we wanted to cover is after actions. So it's all it's great, it's good. Go to an event, do the networking, get what you can out of the, you know, uh sessions, talk to people, go to the dinners, whatever it is, but then you go home, and then what? And I think that that's the piece of the puzzle that's often missed is the so what after an event. So like you have this pile of notes that you've taken from every session.

You're so excited about all the things you've learned, you're you know, super stoked about all the cool people that you've just met. But then what? What do you do? So, you know, Chris, what are some what's some advice that you could give to someone of how to make the most out of what they learned or who they met at an event, like one, two, three weeks post event. Um in the first couple days, ideally, if you could do this if you if you're traveling, do it on the way home is write down not just what happened, but your thoughts, because that stuff goes away really fast.

Um, at Content Marketing World, I were on my drive home, because I had a 10-hour drive back, I recorded like three and a half hours of my just my thoughts and notes from the event as I was driving back. And I look back on it and I'm like, oh yeah, that's right, that did happen. Um, and I find that super helpful. There's an app that we recommend. Uh it's called Otter.

If you go to trust insights.ai slash otter, O T T E R. Uh, it's an AI-based app where you just record voice record into it and then it transcribes it. And I find that super helpful right after an event. Just stream of consciousness, get everything out of your brain. Because part of the the excitement of a in-person event is getting you out of your day to day.

It gets you out of your office, out of your chair, and your brain's going to think different. The moment you sit back down in that chair, you know, everything reattaches. So that's number one. Number two is at the very least, it if you've met at least one person that you would consider now a professional friend, meaning that there's you know professional interests that overlap. Uh, work out mentally yourself a schedule for staying in touch with them.

Maybe you drop them a line once a month on LinkedIn, maybe you you know tweet at them, maybe to shoot them an email once a month, but build a habit of staying in touch because again, at these events, you may walk away with three or four hundred people you've met at a time, and you're not going to remember them all. So pick the ideally at least one person that, like, yeah, this was somebody who um we seemed to be mutually valuable to each other in in a professional context. Let's stay in touch. You know, for example, uh, a number of years ago, we met our friend Jeff Coyle over at Market News, and he's somebody I try and stay in touch with as you know on a regular and frequent basis. Not you know, for to take his money or to give him our money, but just like, okay, you you know a lot of stuff, you see a lot of stuff in the industry, so do I.

Let's keep trading notes. So those would be my two things. Write down stuff before it goes away, because it goes away fast, and pick one person to stay in touch with at least one person to stay in touch with, and set up a cadence for yourself, whether or not the person reciprocates, set up a cadence for yourself to stay in touch. What about you, John? Yeah, the big so what is really never until 10 months later, you know, you're looking at the next event that's coming back, and you're like, Are you actually gonna go and give up your time and money to do it?

And that's when you're gonna look back and say, Oh, yeah, actually, I've met five people, or maybe you don't even you don't even think about it. You're like, hey, this is my chance to go hang out with my friends, and then so I've managed to clone here. This is perfect. We have dual John. Uh yeah, when so is someone in a sales role, how much how should you look at whether the event helped from a sales perspective?

Yeah, well, that's attribution model, right? I mean, you should know which leads came in from the show and which ones you followed up with, and keep good records of that. That's a an interesting point. Like in HubSpot, I do have uh source code that I'll throw in there for everybody that I know that's going to a show. So even if you know they came in from uh some other thing, I can still look at the show and be like, oh yeah, okay, you know, we had these seven people that came from other places, but they all think that this is the right show for them to be going to, and they go to the show, so you will know that okay, yeah, just because we didn't close any deals, you know, specifically from that, we do know that you know it there's an 80% chance that the people there are the people like that would buy from us and that we should be there.

So, and I you really crushed it though. The big thing is like you have to do it. In fact, even more often than on the ride home, I even sit down at night, like before I cash out for the day. You know, make a note on the business cards that you've got, or just put it all on your into a Google Doc so you've got it. But take notes on like this session was good, this session was bad.

Here's the people I met, here's a couple things. Because yeah, it's amazing. You won't realize how you'll, you know, and that's so funny too. I don't even know if business cards are a thing, like they were before the pandemic. I don't know if they're gonna be a thing after the pandemic.

But you can have a stack of 20 business cards, and the day you get back home, like half of them you're gonna be like, where did I meet this person? What did I ask? Like, you won't even know. So as soon as you get the card, if you even just put a few words like interested in this or does you know this podcast or whatever, that kind of stuff will serve you well in the long run. And then yeah, you know, sending email is kind of a total mess.

You know, every all the exhibitors spam for the next two weeks, so it's hell. But don't be afraid to link up to people on LinkedIn, you know, just say, Hey, met you at the show, it was great to meet you, let's connect here on LinkedIn. So now you've got that, and you know, later on you can follow up, or and again, tag it for next year or say, hey, you're going back this year. LinkedIn is definitely the way to go for that because it does allow you to stay in touch in a way that's gonna be less noisy than the inbox and stuff. Um, particularly if you um, you know, don't avoid doing it in the mobile app if you can.

Uh, if you can do it on a desktop, do it there because you can then customize the note that goes along with the invitation. It's a little harder to do that in mobile app, but you can say, like, hey, you know, great meeting at MPB2B, and then that way that person who also met 300 people is like, oh yeah, okay. Well, at least I know at least I know why you're talking to me. Um, one thing I do with the business cards is I will again fire up a voice record and read the name out, and then like you know, audio type out my notes that way again. So just just so that I can I can spend you know a little more time and not have to like write in two point font like who this person was.

Um at inbound and at content marketing world, I did not see a ton of people trading business cards, um, but I did see a lot of people exchanging data on phones, like you know, let's let's connect on LinkedIn and stuff. So uh if your LinkedIn profile is not up to date, now would be the time to do it before you go to the event, so that uh you know it it reflects who you want to be seen as. I think that's a really good piece of advice too, you know, especially if you're just sort of getting into the industry or if you're looking to make a move in the industry, make sure that your LinkedIn profile and your Twitter bio that you have a presence on social media, even if it's a small presence, but that your bio is up to date, um, it's a handle that you're comfortable using, whatever the thing is, because that really is the new business card. Um, you know, what's your handle on Twitter? You know, where can I find you on LinkedIn?

And if someone shows up to look for you and you're either not there or things are you know out of date or just not complete, you've missed the opportunity to hold on to that connection that you worked really hard to make in the first place. So that is a really good piece of advice. Um a million years ago, I used to work with uh a man who when I traveled with him, he would do that exact thing. And I always, you know, was just amazed by his ability to he would take the business card and immediately start scribbling notes on it. And then when we got back to the office, you know, a few days later, he would spend, you know, a few days updating all of his contacts and making sure that every little note that he took about that person was in his computer, in his contacts, make sure that there was you know a full story for each one, and then he would take the time to write those personal notes and emails to follow up with some.

Oh, John, it was so great talking with you about you know the podcast that you've been running for 15 years, and I'm really excited to learn more from you. And so he would go into details of the conversation that they had to show that he was listening. And he was just really great at making and keeping those connections because he took the time uh to give that personal touch. Now, the flip side of that, he was also the person who would spend the time to fill out all of these surveys after an event to give them feedback on what he felt they could do better. Um, and a big part of that was you know, can you make the person first name bigger?

Because a lot of times, like the company is the biggest thing or you know, whatever it is, but it's hard to read someone's first name. And for depending on what the person is wearing, it's a they may be showing the badge in a different place. And so you're kind of squinting, staring at someone's you know, chest or someone's leg or something. You're like, what is going on? And you're like, I'm just trying to read your name.

I just want to know what your name is. And so, you know, if that's the case, if you get a badge and it and you feel like your name is too small, then just get one of those hello, my name is and write it really big. So that way you feel like people can just approach you. Exactly. A couple other things that make it easy to network at events and then uh do stuff afterwards.

Number one, make sure you carry a lot of cables, right? So this is one of my favorites is USB cable with the three different uh things. Everybody at some point, you know, in their trade show life was like, Oh crap, I didn't charge my phone. Does anyone have the a cable for X? And you can be the person who says, Hey, you know, I'm Chris, and here's my cable, give it back to me.

Uh you're done. Uh portable power strips. Uh you know, you will be the best friend at uh at the at the table if uh if you have a power strip that can spread the you know, the one outlet that's in the room in the breakout room. Uh the other thing that uh at the event and after that we've started doing recently, actually at Katie's suggestion, which has been a lot of fun, is recording a lot of media at events even if it's just your own thoughts you know just recording short reels or videos or whatever uh you might want to invest in like a a little handheld stabilizer for your phone or if you have one of the newer phones has the automatic stabilization record create and create content if you're comfortable doing so because it does a couple things one helps you remember stuff two it's content that you can then go remarket with right you can if you go to the Trust Insights YouTube channel you can see some of the the travel stuff that we've talked about in the past and three if you get a chance particularly if you talk to other people um you then can network with them and have a reason for reaching out with it to them say like hey we met at marketing props and the interview the five minute interview that we shot I uh I'm just about to post it on YouTube. I figured I'd tag you and see if uh maybe you want to do a follow-up maybe on a webinar or something like that.

To do that at a very least you need a uh a decent camera your mobile phone is probably good enough. You may want to invest in some you know uh wireless microphones and things I'll be bringing these along to with me to marketing process a couple of folks that I want to see if I can grab 10 minutes with them uh just to get their thoughts but it's kind of like the the marathon tip that I uh you you still do. One of the things I do every year is I stand on uh the six mile mark at the Boston Marathon now I just shoot video instead of photos uh because the videos are 4K videos which is great and then every runner that goes by that has gray hair I take a still frame find their bib number look them up on LinkedIn and say here's a photo I shot of you at mile six type A personalities who run marathons and have gray hair tend to be executives at companies. So it's been a great way to to build a network um by doing somebody else a favor. So all these things are things you can do at the event and then follow up after the event and and keep those connections strong.

I think the other thing that we haven't talked about, you know, we could talk about conferences, you know, forever in terms of pro tips, is if you're sitting in a session or if you're having a conversation with someone and they say something that really resonates with you, you know, don't be shy about you know, sharing that quote on social media, but also make sure that you're giving them credit. You know, so you know, just had a great conversation with Chris Penn. Here are some of the tips that he gave me, and then tag him in it. And so that's a really great way, again, to sort of show I was paying attention, I was listening. What you said was meaningful to me, and now I want to share it with other people because chances are that person also has an audience that you may feel that you can start to connect with and you can build that community.

Yep. The last caution, particularly for events where you're going with a team of people from your company, is make sure you spread out. You know, make sure that you're not all in the same sessions, you're not all hanging out with the same people. Use the opportunity to build those professional friendships with other people, particularly people that you might that might not be in your ideal audience. So, like the three of us are going to marketing problems.

John, obviously, in his role at the company, um, really is charged with looking for decision makers and folks who um could engage trust insights for for business. Katie, as a senior executive, is going, you know, ideally is going to get a chance to chat with other senior executives, other CEOs, other people who she might be able to talk to in a non-sales capacity to say, like, yeah, I just want to notice, you know, I'm gonna try and find more nerds. Uh uh, you know uh you know folks like uh, you know, Jeff and Andy Crestedina and folks, and you know, just sit down and say, Okay, well, what are you guys working on um again not in a sales capacity just in uh I want to hear what you're working on I'll tell you what I'm working on and maybe there's some cool stuff that we can collaborate on particularly uh if you are a creator um you're a content creator uh you want to be looking at people that you can create new content with uh that might not be the your usual crowd you know part of the joy of events is it's not necessarily the usual crowd that you hang out with every day so use that opportunity to branch out the thing I'm not looking forward to the most is all the spammy emails I'm gonna get post event um all the lists that I'm magically suddenly going to appear on that I didn't sign up for and so I think sort of the flip side of that is if you are looking to network or make a meaningful connection or whatever the case may be then definitely proceed with caution with just adding people to your mailing list you know reaching out to them unsolicited because you will immediately get thrown into the trash like I'm probably just gonna spend four days deleting emails and not even reading them personally. I recorded a YouTube video the other day um because they always get that email hey can we have do we have time for a quick call right uh you get all those emails from all the vendors and I just have a a pre recorded five minute video of me pretending to be on a quick call with it I just say my lines and you know like here's here's your quick call bye. But see I won't even get to the point of reading the email to see that that's what they want.

Oh I don't even bother opening it. So yeah just proceed with caution people are going to throw you into spam if you don't sort of approach them the right way. John, anything you're not looking forward to? Uh not like it. Well, it's just a hassle, right?

That's the is the both the blessing and a curse. It's the fact that, you know, we can't do these virtual events because the office always sucks you in. And so this is your chance to finally leave the office. So you're gonna get to go do cool stuff by going somewhere. But yeah, so now this means you're gonna have to deal with airplanes and trains and automobiles and you know, maybe bad food and a bunch of craziness.

So it's a hassle, but it's definitely worth doing. Um one thing post business card world. Uh, if you use a pop socket, I have one with my virtual card on there. So that way I don't have to carry cards around. I can just say, here, throw your camera at this, and I get my business card, and I don't have to carry any paper around, which is cool.

So that's a something to try if you're in fact, you know, I'll put a link up for that because to get the QR code to work, there's some stuff you have to go through, but it's definitely worth doing. Well, and I think that that's a really good, especially for sort of this modern day and age. If you have the opportunity to turn your contact information into a QR code, that's not a terrible idea. People will have their phones with them, they will be attached to them, give them something to scan, or you know, have your contact information in such a way that you can say, here, just take a picture of it. It's a smart way.

I should make a YouTube video with all my contact information in the description. Say, like, hey, you met me at this event. That's what I just posted the video. You could also just have like a still image of you. I could contact.

I'm gonna do a YouTube video. All right. I don't like it. Great idea. I'm glad I gave it to you.

All right. Well, as we said, next week there is no live stream because the three of us will be live in person at Marketing prof B2B in Boston. Uh, very excited. We will all have an opportunity to debut our Trust Insights swag. Um, if the gentleman care to do so, I'll be wearing it so that I don't have to make decisions about what I'm wearing.

Um, any other parting thoughts for people who are attending conferences and how they can get the most out of a conference. Three weeks before the event, make sure you get your booster if you're eligible for it, and please wear a mask. Yeah, and two drink limit on site. Uh all right, I think that's it for this week. Thanks.

Everyone, we'll talk to you next week. Thanks for watching today. Be sure to subscribe to our show wherever you're watching it. For more resources and to learn more, check out the Trust Insights Podcast at TrustInsights.ai slash TI podcast. At our weekly email newsletter at TrustInsights.ai slash newsletter.

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