Episode 18: How Do Traditional Events Fit into a Marketing Strategy? | With Kathryn Frankson

Full transcript:

David Bain  00:00

How do traditional events fit into a marketing strategy - with Kathryn Frankson.

David Bain  00:11

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Hey, it’s David. How do you actually integrate in-person traditional events into a marketing strategy? That's what we're going to be discussing today with a lady who focuses on the product, experience, content, and community of putting together the most successful business event possible.

She's the former Director of Event Marketing at Informa and the current Global Director of Marketing at Money20/20. A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Kathryn Frankson.

Kathryn Frankson  00:58

Hello! Always nice to chat with you, David.

David Bain  01:00

You as well, Kathryn. Thanks so much for coming on. Well, you can find Kathryn over at money2020.com. So Kathryn, do things like online events reduce the need to participate in face-to-face events?

Kathryn Frankson  01:16

Well, it's an interesting question. You know, it's kind of the journey that we all went on in events over the last couple of years. Obviously, we know everything paused, we had the advent of virtual that sort of went into hybrid, and a lot of those questions started to emerge. Ultimately it comes down to: What do our audiences want? What are they consuming? How do we provide value to them?

We now have fairly equal footing with a lot of different event formats. But the thing that's really interesting - especially now that we're on, I would say, more of the other side of the event recovery - is that the demand for audiences to have an in-person experience is incredibly strong. And what we've differentiated between how they want to connect, live and in-person, and what virtual means to them, what they're getting out of that space, how they're connecting and learning there, has become a little bit different.

So, in a simple answer, no. Just because of the experience that they can get when they come in person to an event, the connections, etc. What we always say, at Money20/20, is you get four months of meetings and three or four days (depending on how they structure their time) there. So, you're able to layer on these different value sets, with live and in-person, where you can tackle the networking component, you can tackle the meeting component, and certainly the content.

I always think with events there is this - we call it the secondary or the selfish benefit, that you just aren't able to get in a lot of other formats. Maybe if you're looking for the next step in your career, if you're looking to meet people that only go to certain select events, if you're sort of bolting on an event of your own which, as organizers, we go, “Okay, we get that you're doing that and able to capitalize on it”. We found that it tends to be really two different experiences and two different ecosystems that your audiences are living in when it comes to virtual and in-person at this point.

David Bain  03:17

I think you've highlighted about 10 different positive reasons why face-to-face events are good value, and worthwhile doing certainly.

But maybe for a brand that hasn't actively participated either in face-to-face events ever, or perhaps is considering them for the first time in about three years or so, where would you say that a face-to-face event tends to fit into an overarching marketing strategy in general?

Kathryn Frankson  03:45

Well, I think what's nice about events in-person at this point is that you have a lot of flexibility to build what you need to do to drive the outcomes that you're really looking for. Depending on where you're at, in the maturity of your company, depending on, ultimately, what your goals are. If you're launching a product, if you are at a point where you've reached scale and saturation in a market and you're trying to rebrand or you're trying to reroute in terms of your audience message, or if you feel like things have been a little bit flat then an event essentially (aside from a product release) gives you something to ship. It gives you that marketing arc of something to talk about, somewhere where we're going to be, somewhere to invite clients to, etc.

It could be that in-person is one really small snippet of an overall marketing campaign where you go, “Our value prop is around the event, but what we're really looking to do is get the marketing lift leading up to it with all of the promotion and all of the messaging that we can do and then, also, the follow-up - the content that we're going to create on-site at the event.” Even if it's a large event, that's perhaps still a sliver of your audience segment, and using that to amplify what you're doing in terms of overall content as a follow-up or as a campaign that drives credibility.

So it's definitely going to track back to what you really need to bed down in terms of that goal. Because, based on market conditions, where you're at in your product pipeline growth, where you're at in your revenue stage and growth, where you're at with your commitment to your team - are you trying to get your sales force and your marketing teams back live doing meetings, is that how you're building the pipeline?

It's all going to back into what you need to achieve either for the year or the quarter. But what's really great about events is that there's so much flexibility on the organizer side, at this point, to help achieve those goals. The playbooks all got thrown out the window, so this idea of taking space or designing a sponsorship - but doing it in a way that's actually going to be really collaborative, so that you can decide, “Okay, this is where I'm trying to go, this is the size and scale that I need to get there.” You often end up having a partner in that.

David Bain  06:07

Can there be significant value in just participating in someone else's events: being a speaker or being a sponsor or perhaps hosting some mini section of an event? Or is there always going to be significantly more value in actually producing your own event? And, in fact, should every large enterprise produce their own event?

Kathryn Frankson  06:34

Only if they want to be very tired. It's a huge lift to produce an event; it's a really, really massive lift. If you are at the point in your journey as a business, and you actually say, “Yeah, you know what we, by virtue of us having this annual event or producing our own conference and trade show, this is really our stake in the ground. This is going to be a competitive advantage for us. This is how we're going to differentiate; we're going to build out an events team.” That is absolutely a path. But you really have to look long and hard at that and say, “Do we have the resource to do it? Is it worth it? Does the P&L support this decision? Does it feel like what we're trying to back into, from all of the production elements, and from owning it end-to-end and having that be ours? That can be really, really powerful.

But, you do not have to own and operate and scale an event, and run all of that, to achieve your business goals and to really gain value from in-person. If you want to bolt on and say - and to your point, there are so many different entrance points into an event. You could say, “You know what? We really want to be on the main stage. We're going to make a play to have a presence as a keynote.” There are moderators, which are a way to really get a new level of expertise and face time with audiences and more subtly get your message across.

You can exhibit and you can sponsor but, if we think about that, it can sometimes feel a little bit trite when actually the raw space and events allow you to build almost anything - which is going to be a lot more cost-conscious than having to run and own and operate an event of that scale and then to continue on with that.

So, no. I would say that the nice thing about the landscape is you can absolutely look at: Where would be a natural place to partner? Is there an association that we can bring in? Is there something really small and niche and boutique that we could do? Is there a major event in our space that actually is just doing all the legwork, and we can just clamp onto that and get all of the juice and benefit that we want out of it? It just gives you a lot of different options depending on time, budget, effort, resource, etc.

It's one thing to put “We should do events.” on your goal sheet for the year or as a growth sector. Then it gets very, very real once you get into the timeline and you start scoping everything out. If there is an easy way for you to say, “We have to achieve this. This is really mission critical, and this is the path of least resistance - and it's still going to get us the same results.”, then I would encourage everyone just to look at that, especially for the first year to three as you're kind of tasting what that could be.

David Bain  09:37

I loved your partnering advice there as well. I think that could be a very effective middle ground for many brands. Because, at the end of the day, speaking at our event - it's obviously not your own event so it's difficult to attract most of your clients to that kind of event, but partnering - perhaps with a brand in a similar market, but not with a competitor - that could be the best of both worlds. It could be getting the ideal audience to listen to what you've got to say and engage with your brand without actually being introduced to competitors at the same time.

Kathryn Frankson  10:09

Co-branding, co-partnering, eliminating some of that risk, making the lift a little bit easier, and having it be beneficial to both parties. “Oh, I see you're running this association event, we can actually bring this value. This is how partnership could look, and it's additive for both parties.” That can be a really nice way, especially if you're going into a new market or a new vertical, specifically.

David Bain  10:36

I'm also going to mention the PC phrase “post-COVID”. Has anything significantly changed about running events since COVID? Looking back three years ago, is there any aspect of events that you wouldn't particularly advise incorporating nowadays? Or is there anything that you're doing nowadays that didn't really exist three years ago?

Kathryn Frankson  10:59

I would say the biggest shift, hands down, is that you have to be so laser-focused on creativity that you're embedding into the event. It's perhaps a non-traditional answer, right? It isn't, “Oh, don't do content themes this way, or don't lay out your trade show this way, or don't do your AV this way.” All of those pieces are still alive and well, but what we saw is that the shift was just so fundamental with audiences, and their expectations have changed.

They've seen so much more content, the value that they're putting on time, and all of these things that that we're all talking about are realities, and the justification of budget, the justification of time, and what they're looking to get out of an event from an experience. Otherwise, there are virtual options. Every way to achieve, on paper, some of those components. Okay, we're gonna get content - there's LinkedIn, there are data-scraping websites - and yet, part of the magic of what audiences want is an experience that they cannot get anywhere else. And that creativity can't look the same as it used to.

It was maybe, “Oh, we're going to do a big keynote” or “Our stage is going to look this way” or “We'll bring top speakers.” What you have to do is you have to find a way to embed, in your business, unexpected areas of creativity - and you have to rethink what the experience is. Because taking some of those same playbooks and lifting everything - going, “I arrive and I stand in a registration queue, and I get my lanyard.” (This, of course, is in the context of a corporate conference and trade show) “I sort of know the flow, and I go to a welcome reception, and I go to the content, and then I walk the tradeshow floor.” That is not going to inspire and entice audiences to come in, and develop the scale of partnerships that you're looking to.

Also, there's a competitive landscape in every single vertical for live events, because they're exciting, they can be very profitable, etc. That's just the biggest change: you have to find a way to make creativity your competitive advantage. If anyone's just doing a SWOT analysis, or they're scoping out, you're always going to see a level of churn within live events, so you're building that new pipeline. If you're not retaining clients because they go, “Oh. I kind of know what I would expect the next year.”, and new audiences don't really have that hook to make the investment and come and book and travel and take that time, you're not going to see your NPS increase, you're not going to see the rate of growth that you want. You're probably going to see more churn, you might get into the leading/lagging indicators of “Attendance is a little bit down and then sponsorship is a little bit down.”, etc. You have to make that adjustment and find a way to make your event more inspiring and more creative, in ways that your audience isn't inherently going to expect

David Bain  14:04

Talking about audiences, many brands may be fearful that they might not be able to attract enough audience, and certainly enough of the right audience. So, how do you attract the right audience? And how do you get as you make sure that you have enough of them?

Kathryn Frankson  14:21

I think there are a couple of things. One, what can really, really help is having a level of subject matter expertise in-house at your event. Because, when we think of growing audience, our minds naturally go to, “How do we increase our traffic in funnel?”, “How do we target?”, and “How do we push out more marketing?” And often, when you say, “Well, we're bringing subject matter expertise in-house.”, we know the market so well that that's going to bleed out through everything that we're doing in our product design. And, if we're building communities around the event in that strategy, the finger that we can have on the pulse with all of the supporting content, the types of speakers that we're bringing in, the types of new partnerships, etc.

So I would say, first and foremost, think about how you're setting up your resourcing and how you're setting up your team because that is a competitive advantage. We know the market so well that what we're going to put into it, what we're going to build, and then, ultimately, what we are going to amplify through our marketing is going to be so strong that that's becoming a bit of a magnet. We're saying the things that the industry either knows that they want to dig into more or that they don't even know that they need yet, and that's mind-blowing to them, and that's why they're coming to us. You can't really fake it with audiences anymore.

So, there's that. And then you really do get into your channel modeling on the marketing side. That's where you get that, certainly the creativity, but also a little bit into the math of, “Alright, we need to grow at this rate.” and you look at your data. Marketing attribution is not perfect, but you also look at: what channels are performing for us? How are we doing with our retention audiences and with our first-timers audiences? We look at our data, what do we have for sector data? Where are we growing? What do we lean into? Okay, that's probably an area that we're going to target more.

And that's really where you start to kind of get under the hood and make sure that at least what you feel like you're teeing up - in terms of your overall marketing strategy, and the volume that you're putting out there, and what you're measuring, probably every week, quite frankly - is delivering what it needs to on that promise.

A lot of that is: to do really smart marketing and to fine-tune, all the knobs is really important, but the messages that you're putting out in your paid social or in your really targeted emails, and if you're getting really robust with your email automation - it's just going to be noise if the message isn't different than any other event. Or, if what you're saying doesn't feel like it's landing with where someone is exactly in their industry and in the challenge that they're facing right now. Because, in every industry, it’s iterating so quickly. I always say, take that pause and think, where's that source of content coming from? Do we feel like we have that piece right before we start turning up the volume on our channel work?

David Bain  17:31

Now, you’re putting together a series of events for Money20/20 over the next couple of years. What kind of goals and objectives do you have? And how do you measure success?

Kathryn Frankson  17:41

We measure success in a number of different ways. The goals, ultimately, are to build world-class events that our audiences absolutely love, that fuel their business, and that change their lives in many ways. When we plan, I joke, and we use words like “love” and “passion”. Because, when you start from that point and say, “This is how strongly we feel about the impact that we want to have on the industry, on our customers, on their businesses, on the work that they're doing, etc.” it can really put you in the right frame of mind for how you achieve those goals.

But we look at, overall, in terms of business metrics: how we're producing revenue as an event, we measure volume, our margin, our yield, etc. Our NPS is one that we're laser-focused on because, for us, if you're nailing the experience for your audience - truly, truly, building an experience that is unbelievable at every turn - that should show. That should show in your results, and it should show from the feedback that they have. So that's one that, as a business and at every aspect of our company, we take very seriously because that's the voice of the customer. And if you listen to that, it can help guide you to either say, “Okay, this is something that we need to work on.” or “This is something that we're getting right, and let's make sure that we're not losing any ground in that area.”

David Bain  19:21

Let's move on from what works now to planning for the future. So, in your opinion, what's the biggest marketing trend or challenge for marketers over the coming year?

Kathryn Frankson  19:31

You know, it's interesting. I would say, on the challenge front, one, that it's a little more tactical and maybe a little bit less sexy than video and new channels. In terms of zero-party and first-party data that you have to work with, as marketers and as event organizers, I think the challenge for a lot of teams is to find a way to re-anchor into the success of email marketing and think through data strategically so that your messages are actually landing.

It's still such an important channel; digital is every bit as important. I almost feel like we've all put so much effort into making those flows correct, and the creativity that we want to put into campaigns, and the targeting, and the spend, and measuring, and making sure that we're optimizing, etc. I think taking the data that we know about our audiences - and it can still really be a challenge, to get into segmenting in a way that feels really smart.

Are you using what you know, in terms of their behavior now? Their past behavior? What you have in terms of demos, so you feel like you have your finger on the pulse enough? So, what you know about those audience segments, you can say something that's actually relevant and different - and that you can actually scale that within your team. Because turning on automation, personalization, and messaging in a way, throughout all of your data sets - no one has clean data. Some of it’s enriched, and some of it's not. You've changed your demos over the years, you've got different forms, etc. But I think getting that right - so that the audience that has already opted in and expects you to know them in a way - that we're honoring that and we're really getting that right, and that is a consistent challenge for marketers to kind of get that playbook down.

David Bain  21:24

Great advice. I’ve been your host, David Bain. You can find Kathryn Frankson over at money2020.com. Kathryn, thanks so much for being on the Strategic Marketing Show.

Kathryn Frankson  21:34

Thank you, David.

David Bain  21:36

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