Organizing events (part 2)
Events are a great way to monetize a B2B audience.
In this article, we’ll explore how to make your events great.
Part 1 of this two-part series focused on the bigger picture, revenue, sponsorships, and getting attendees. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out first.
Where to organize your events
Host your events wherever your target audience is.
If everyone in your industry is traveling to a big conference, consider hosting a dinner there.
Otherwise, host your events where your target audience lives.
Use your audience data
As a B2B media company, you should have data on what your subscribers do for work and where they live (on a per-person level).
Ad: If you don’t, check out Megahit. It can get you that data.
1. Identify all subscribers who you’d like to have at your events
Find all subscribers who meet your quality standards for joining your events.
For CJ Gustafson of Mostly metrics, a newsletter for CFOs, that would mean building a list of all subscribers who are CFOs at companies of a certain minimum size.
(Read more on what your quality standards should be in part 1.)
2. Find the most common cities that they live in
Look at your shortlist of subscribers from the first step. See which cities they live in.
There will be hotspots. Host your events there.
Examples
Many of CJ’s tech CFOs live in New York City or San Francisco. He runs his events in these two cities.
Ahrif Sarumi, who is Head of Events at Matt McGarry’s company GrowLetter, found that their biggest locations are New York City and Austin, Texas.
Thus, they ran their first social event in New York City. (The event happened the evening before the AMO Summit, so they also had people join who were in town for that conference.) Then they ran their big Newsletter Marketing Summit in Austin, Texas.
Ryan Sager said that they host Dine & Deliver, a dinner series for the media industry, in New York City half of the time. Their other dinners take place in “major media hubs like Chicago, D.C., Los Angeles, and Austin.”
Alexis Grant from They Got Acquired has also been looking at her audience data to decide where to host dinners:
Avoid cities that aren’t industry hotspots
CJ hosted an event in Boston. He reported that it was 5x as much effort as hosting an event in NYC or San Francisco. There weren’t enough people in Boston who met his eligibility criteria, so it was hard to get attendees.
CJ also looked into Toronto but found that there were only 300 CFOs in Toronto who met his criteria. He said it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to get 30 of them to an event.
Ahrif added that hosting an event for 10 people takes the same amount of effort as hosting one for 50. You want to maximize the return on your time, so you should avoid cities that aren’t hotspots for your industry.
When to organize your events
A great time is the evening before a large conference. Most people arrive the day before and would rather meet new people than spend the evening alone in a hotel room.
When you don’t host the event around a conference, host it on a weekday evening, not on weekends.
I have personally tried to run a B2B event on a weekend. I got many responses that people would love to join on a weekday but that their weekends are reserved for their families.
How to pick a venue
What makes a good venue?
CJ said it’s important that a location isn’t too crowded. You need to have the ability to walk around and talk to other people. Nobody wants to sit down and then be stuck talking to the same people for the whole evening.
Ahrif said he always picks a location that is convenient. The AMO Summit took place at the Times Center. Thus, for his event the day before, he picked a location nearby.
He also wanted a space that was private and would give them full autonomy to be creative and make the space their own. Thus, he picked a restaurant with a private, secluded area upstairs that they could use for the event.
Ahrif said another important factor is how photos are going to look. Pictures are important marketing material for future events. When he arrived at the location an hour early, he saw that the place was dimly lit. To make pictures look better, he asked the staff to turn up the lights.
He also moved all tables out of the way so that people could stand, chat, and walk around.
Of course, another factor is price. Ahrif said that every location will have a food and beverage minimum that you will have to consume. It usually depends on the number of people you bring, the size of the room, and the time and day of the event. You can often negotiate it down.
Here’s a picture from Ahrif and Matt McGarry’s NYC event:
How to find a good venue?
Google Maps can be a great starting point to build a shortlist of venues. Search for bars and restaurants in the area in which you’d like to host the event.
If you live nearby, go check it out in person.
Otherwise, ask locals whether the venue is good. You can ask friends. You can ask in online communities. Or you can do what Ahrif did.
How Ahrif checked if his dinner venue was good
When Ahrif was organizing the VIP dinner for the Newsletter Marketing Summit, he vetted the dinner venue in a really smart way.
The dinner took place in Austin, Texas. Ahrif is not from there. He found a venue online that looked good, but he wanted to make sure it was good.
When he was booking their hotel, he asked the hotel employees: “We are thinking about going with this venue for our VIP dinner. Is it good?” When he was booking their conference venue, he asked the employees the same question.
For that venue, everyone either said that they had been there and that it is great, or that they hadn’t been there but had only heard good things about it.
Thus, Ahrif could confidently pick that location.
How to make your events good
Most important: the other participants
I’ve already mentioned it in part 1, but it’s worth repeating. The most important thing is to get great attendees. CJ kept emphasizing this to me over and over.
Great people want to talk to great people, not to average people. Set a high bar for who can and cannot attend. This will make or break your event.
The CFOs attending CJ’s events want to talk to people at similar levels, not to random finance bros.
Be clear about the purpose of each event
Ahrif recommended being very clear and intentional about what both you and the participants will get out of the event.
He said every event should have a purpose. Be intentional about it before you start planning anything else. Once you know the purpose of the event, everything else will come together easily.
Arrive early to prepare the location
Be there early to make sure things are perfect. As mentioned above, for their NYC event, Ahrif changed the lighting and removed tables from the room when he arrived at the location.
Limit the number of sponsors
Ryan told me: “We never want people to feel like they’re experiencing a sales pitch.”
Nobody wants to feel like they’re being sold to.
Therefore, CJ only gets 3–4 sponsors in a room with 25 CFOs.
The secret is charging these 3–4 sponsors a premium for being the only vendors.
Visual guest list
This was the coolest thing ever when attending Ahrif and Matt McGarry’s NYC event!
A few days before the event, they sent out a beautiful PDF with every attendee’s name, photo, title, and company.
When you clicked on someone’s name, you would even get to their LinkedIn profile.
This is brilliant on so many levels!
First, one challenge with free events is that people register but don’t show up. I’ve personally run events with 30 % show-up rates.
Ahrif knew that this was going to be a challenge. He created this visual guest list to solve it. In the end, 80 % of people showed up.
Why did it work?
Before the event, I could see who else was going. This hyped me up.
Matt McGarry is a very prominent figure in the newsletter world. Thus, he got top people from the industry to sign up.
When you see a PDF with such amazing names, you don’t want to miss out! You will make sure you attend.
Ahrif calls it “proving the ROI before the attendees even step through the door.”
Second, the visual guest list showed a level of care that I haven’t seen from many other events. Just from the visual guest list, you could tell that the event was going to be great.
Thus, most people actually showed up.
Plan for what could go wrong
There’s nothing worse than running out of food or drinks in the middle of an event, or it starting to rain when you’ve planned an outdoor event with no roof nearby.
Ahrif shared that even though he spends months planning for each event, not everything will go according to plan.
However, he said it’s all about how you deal with that. If you run out of food or drinks and don’t have a backup plan, you will be stressed out and your attendees will have a bad experience.
Ahrif believes that the day of the event should be the least stressful day for you. You should be able to enjoy it just like your attendees.
Thus, he creates backup plans for everything that could go wrong.
He imagines the event being a bad experience. What would that look like? For example, they might run out of food or water.
Then he asks himself: “How do I create the opposite experience of that?”
He makes a plan: “Okay, first of all, we will make sure we’ll have enough food. But if we still run out of food, we’re going to get more food by doing X.”
That way, even Ahrif can enjoy the event. There’s nothing he hasn’t planned for.
Care about the event
When I was talking to Ahrif, I was incredibly impressed by how much he cared about making each event an incredible experience for attendees.
It showed during their NYC event that I attended!
I believe that caring is the secret to being great at anything.
Great media events to attend
Matt McGarry and Ahrif Sarumi
Audience Camp, an immersive outdoor retreat for media founders and creators.
Newsletter Marketing Summit, a conference for publishers, creators, and marketers.
Ryan Sager, Jesse Watkins, and Dan Oshinsky
Dine & Deliver, a dinner series for the newsletter industry.
The Newsletter Conference, a conference for newsletters. (I’ve been there. It’s great!)
Jacob Donnelly and A Media Operator
AMO Summit, a conference for the media industry. (Great one! I’ve been there.)
Ad: Use audience data to plan great events
Over the last two years, I’ve built Megahit, a data tool for B2B media companies.
Megahit finds your subscribers’ names, job titles, companies, locations, LinkedIn profiles, and more. All from their email addresses. (It even works for Gmails!)
Then it helps you organize great events:
- It helps you find the geographical areas in which you have the most subscribers.
- It helps you find the right audience members to invite to your events.
- It helps you find potential sponsors among your audience.
Check out Megahit! I’d love to give you a demo.
(This content is meant for the US market. If you process EU data, comply with the GDPR.)
