It continues to amaze me how few suppliers of products and services bother to attend educational sessions at conferences. Rather, they restrict themselves to the associated trade show. Folks, you’re making a mistake! You need to join my tribe! Peter Evans-Greenwood explains why:
“To sell to members of a tribe you must be part of the tribe. It’s not enough to be in conversation with the tribe, your identity needs to be interwoven with the tribe.” —Identity is a funny thing, Peter Evans-Greenwood
Is there a better place to join the tribe of the attendees to whom you’re selling than the conference sessions themselves?
I don’t think so.
Even if the sessions are lectures with time for Q&A at the end, you’ll get an opportunity to hear what someone—hopefully with expertise and experience—is sharing that’s relevant to your market. And audience questions may supply useful clues on pain points and selling propositions that you can address (perhaps during the session, if it’s done without a crude pitch).
And if you’re participating in interactive peer-to-peer sessions (like the sessions I facilitated at PCMA EduCon 2015) you are bound to meet and connect with potential clients. Smart suppliers and vendors know the value of building these kinds of relationships, and spend time cultivating them. Paying for a trade show booth but skipping the associated conference sessions? That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater!
Instead of marketing to the conference tribe, why not join the conference tribe?
A vendor who really listens and responds appropriately; how refreshing! Yes, the flattery doesn’t hurt. But Libby clearly made sure to address the complaints in my post about the hundreds of event profession product and service pitches I receive each year.
This is the best product pitch I’ve ever received. Fantastic work Libby!
I am not endorsing her product (though the demo on the website worked fine for me). But I’m happy to reproduce here what she emailed me today, as an example of how to do selling right.
The text of Libby’s email
Dear Adrian,
Let the flattery begin: I love everything about your site, Twitter feed, and blog! You are a savvy, delightful writer, and I regularly favorite or bookmark your penning. You are candid, transparent, and generous with your wisdom (and wit)! Please keep up this terrific work as the conference and event world, heck, the whole world needs more of Adrian Segar. Seriously, beyond the flattery, I call ’em like I see ’em, and you’re truly fabulous.
As I move forward with one of my two startups (because one onerous, crushing, passionate, entrepreneurial monster isn’t enough, right?), I have regularly tabbed your blog posts and often go back to review them depending on where we are in our startup process. One of my all-time favorite blog posts of yours was an open letter to tech companies pitching you their products … sans pricing. Wait, what?! When I read it, frankly, I was floored that a company would really do that — ask for feedback with no cost data provided??? Don’t these people know that EVERYTHING boils down to economics — purchasing, procreation, love, war?! So, now that our site is “out there” with pricing listed and with a demo that purports to show how Muster Me works, any chance you’d eyeball it and dis (or laud) our pricing?
What Muster Me does is connect a group of people by allowing them to share contact information via text message. There’s no app to download (creating friction and resistance “in the moment”) and Muster Me allows a group to simultaneously share info — and only the specific info they want to share with that group. Remember the app “Bump”? Bump’s flaw were 1) everyone had to have the app in order to participate which never happened and 2) in order for a group to get everyone’s info, you had to “bump” one person at a time (which actually sounds kind of dirty to me). Lastly, you couldn’t tailor the contact info you shared in different settings — it was one-size fits all. That’s no bueno when you’re sharing contact information with different groups and different sorts of people.
Muster Me requires that only one person — i.e. the meeting planner or event organizer — has an account, and then that person announces their assigned text number. Then, participants/attendees simply text whatever info they want to share with others to that number. Shortly thereafter, all participants receive an email neatly organizing all the individuals’ contact information. Voila — contact info shared — quickly, efficiently, neatly.
Our primary market is not large conference groups — we know 500+ “strangers” at a keynote address aren’t likely to share their contact info so readily; however, we think that, at that same large conference, during a breakout session or a narrowly focused workshop conference, folks might want to swap info in order to keep the conversation and connection going post-event. Currently, we also have a handful of event organizers that are using Muster Me (in the subscription format — still in beta) to connect their “team” of event consultants, rather than having everyone dance “The Business Card Shuffle” or pass around a piece of paper at the planning/kickoff meeting trying to capture everyone’s names and emails. (Whatever happens to that piece of paper anyway??) Right now, we’re working with reunion planners (primarily military reunion planners) and also school and family reunion planners because the size of these groups and the “trust” factor seem to be a great fit for Muster Me.
Having provided all this background — and hopefully you’ve read this far, as I know you are BUSY BUSY — your thoughts on the site/product/pricing would be really appreciated. At long last, here’s the link
[A paragraph here offering me more information about how I can check out the product.]
Thank you so much for your consideration of this request, and if I don’t hear back from you, rest assured that I’ll still be hanging on every Tweet and blog post!
All the best and all flattery aside,
Libby
Libby O’Malley
Yes, Libby O’Malley knows how to sell me stuff right!
If you’re an event app developer, how should you market event apps to someone like me?
Like my friend Traci, I receive a constant stream of messages from developers about their new event apps. Naturally, as a frequent commentator on the event industry, I am anxious to throw myself into the tiniest details of these innovative products that are sure to revolutionize every event professional’s life. Clearly, they are tools that will:
Drive sponsors to frantically push bundles of thousand dollar bills under planners’ door-stoops before dawn.
Guarantee events where gleaming unicorns gambol playfully and attendees glide above the hotel carpet transfixed with delight and wonder.
Effortlessly create timeless experiences where the A/V works flawlessly, participants’ only complaint is that the Wi-Fi is too fast, and no one ever requests a gluten-free meal.
How can you be certain to bring your app jewels effectively to my rapt attention? Here are 5 simple tips that will ensure your app’s beauty, uniqueness, and—let’s just say it—sheer virility will make my heart go pit-a-pat.
5 tips on how to market event apps to me
Please make sure to couch your request in anonymous terms. I do not want to believe for a moment that you are interested in my opinions because you know something about me. Mail merge my name from a list of people who write about the event industry. This shows a unique understanding of the personal touch that is so important when doing business these days.
Demand I set aside 30 – 60 minutes of my worthless time so you can demo your app’s staggering genius. You’ll make my empty day so much brighter!
Forcefully suggest that I review your app in loving detail on my blog. Yes, you noticed that I’m starved of ideas for posts; help me out here and I’ll be so grateful!
Point out how splendid it will be for me to spend hours testing every nook and cranny of your masterpiece. I can then enjoy the privilege of reporting back on how to improve it. (Though surely I’m unlikely to find anything to suggest.) I will be so happy knowing there’s a small chance I might make your app slightly better!
Do not think for a moment of suggesting any recompense for my minor labors on your behalf, like a free trial of a non-free service or <shudder> payment. It is an honor that you even asked me to contribute; recognition is all I need!
How to market event apps to me? That’s it! Piece of cake!
I’m so committed to your apps that, to assist you to the best of my ability, I’ve discovered how to increase the hours in every day to 48 and entirely forego sleep. So keep those phone calls, emails, and social directives rolling in so I can joyously and promptly respond to your oh-so-reasonable requests! All I’m asking is for you to enrich my life a smidgen.
I like this idea! Walking potential attendees through the flow of the event helps to clarify and demystify conference process. (Especially if people haven’t attended an event format like Conferences That Work before.) Want to try to market your conference with an annotated schedule? Here’s an example of what you can do, written for the October 2013 1st Annual Vermont Leadership Network Conference.
Want to better understand what will be happening at the 1st Annual Vermont Leadership Network Conference? Here’s an annotated schedule!
[Note: Some details are omitted here! For more information, visit About Peer Conferences.]
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Registration will be open between noon and 2 p.m.
At 2 pm, after a brief welcome and an explanation of conference ground rules, we’ll start with The Three Questions. The Three Questions provides a structured, safe way for you to learn about other participants early in the conference. During The Three Questions, you’ll:
discover topics of interest to explore;
get a sense of the depth of interest in these topics; and
find out who has experience and expertise that you want to connect with and explore further.
We’ll include frequent breaks and refreshments during the roundtable, ending around 4:30 p.m.
After an hour break, we’ll hold peer session sign-up during dinner. In peer session sign-up we’ll visually document our wishes and suggestions for the upcoming conference sessions. Then, we’ll determine which of the suggested peer session topics are popular and schedule the chosen sessions into a conference program. This is a short process that will be held during the dinner and subsequent socializing, with a small group subsequently using the resulting information to create Friday’s program. The result will be a Friday conference schedule that optimally matches desired topics with the resources of the group.
Friday, October 18
We’ll have time for four sets of (usually) one-hour concurrent sessions on Friday, with breaks between each and lunch served between sessions 3 and 4.
What might these sessions look like? They are typically informal: often facilitated discussions, presentations, panels, workshops, walks, etc. As an example, five years ago the class of ’08 used this conference format for a reunion—here are the topics that were chosen (8 sessions in concurrent pairs):
Fun and team camaraderie in the workplace • Fundraising • The political process – running for office • The systematic development of informed consent • Am I doing what I want to be doing? • Technology – social networking & other applications • Getting Things Done • Appreciative Inquiry
Closing sessions
At 2:40 pm we’ll end with two facilitated closing sessions, a personal introspective and a group spective.
The personal introspective will give you a structured opportunity to think about what you have experienced at the conference, how your experiences may impact your life in the future, and what changes you may want to make as a result. After reflection, you’ll then have an opportunity to share your answers in small groups.
After a break, a group spective will start at 3:50 pm. The group spective will provide facilitated time for participants as a group to evaluate the conference. We’ll also suggest and begin to develop future initiatives for Vermont Leadership and the Snelling Center. We’ll use a variety of techniques to do this.
The conference will end at 5 p.m. All are welcome to stay and socialize with their classmates and new friends at a reception hosted by the Snelling Center immediately following the conference.
As you can see, participation on Thursday will make a big difference to your conference experience and your influence on its form and content. Please attend the whole event if at all possible!
Outline of the conference schedule
To summarize, here’s the outline of the conference schedule for Thursday and Friday.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
12:00 PM – 02:00 PM
Registration
02:00 PM – 02:10 PM
Welcome
02:10 PM – 03:10 PM
The Three Questions
03:10 PM – 03:30 PM
Break
03:30 PM – 04:30 PM
The Three Questions continued
05:30 PM – 07:00 PM
Dinner and peer session sign-up
07:00 PM –
Informal chat, socializing, music, etc.
Friday, October 18
08:30 AM – 08:40 AM
Morning news
08:40 AM – 09:40 AM
Peer session 1
09:40 AM – 09:50 AM
Break
09:50 AM – 10:50 AM
Peer session 2
10:50 AM – 11:05 AM
Break
11:05 AM – 12:05 AM
Peer session 3
12:15 PM – 01:30 PM
Lunch
01:30 PM – 02:30 PM
Peer session 4
02:30 PM – 02:40 PM
Break
02:40 PM – 03:40 PM
Personal introspective
03:40 PM – 03:50 PM
Break
03:50 PM – 05:00 PM
Group spective
05:00 PM –
Optional: class reunions, etc.
Notice that I’ve added a regular schedule at the end of the annotation, so attendees can still easily see when all sessions take place.
I like this way of marketing your conference with an annotated schedule. Familiarizing people with something different in advance is a great way of reducing the common resistance to trying something new. Thanks for the suggestion, Judy!
Last month Twitter quietly rolled out some very useful free analytics tools. I say quietly, because I’ve seen very little discussion of them online. Perhaps that’s because they have not been made available to everyone yet. Whatever the reason, they have been eye-opening for me, so I’m sharing my initial impressions here.
Here’s how to access Twitter’s new tools. You’ll find them on the Analytics menu on the Twitter Ads page, as shown in the above screenshot. This page requires you to turn off any ad-blocker you have running in order to load—fair enough!
If you see an Analytics menu (at the time of writing not everyone does) you’re in luck. There are two options: Timeline Activity and Followers. Pick the former and you’ll see something like the graphic above.
Timeline activity
The Timeline shows statistics about your last thirty days of tweets. What is most interesting to me is the number of clicks on any link included in a tweet. Traditionally, social media mavens tend to focus on how many times tweets are retweeted and mentioned, and obviously that’s important. But I had no idea how popular some of my tweets were in terms of people clicking on embedded links. Much of my content is narrowly niche-focused, so I generally don’t see a lot of retweets. But conferencesthatwork.com receives over two million page views a year, and those hits come from somewhere. What these Twitter analytics show me is that many people are clicking on my links, even if most of the time the associated tweets are not being subsequently retweeted. And, most important, I can now see which tweets were popular. This is valuable information!
Yes, these analytics has been available for some time via other mechanisms. All the URL shortening services provide similar statistics for individual shortened links. But in practice, you’d need to use a) a unique short URL for every tweet and b) only one shortening service. a) is cumbersome, and b) is impractical because some services that auto-generate tweets from posts, like LinkedIn and Google Plus, insist on using their own link shorteners, requiring manual amalgamation of clicks over multiple services.
The timeline of mentions, follows and unfollows at the top of the page provides a nice overview that can be helpful for noticing interest peaks, but I prefer to monitor this information using the excellent Birdbrain IOS app.
Followers
The Followers option displays a graph of follower growth plus some demographics on interests, location, and gender.
This is interesting but less useful to me, though you may find it valuable. It would be great to be able to drill down further into the location demographics so I could see my followers in, say, the Netherlands, and then be able to reach out to them when I was visiting.
Conclusion
For me the gold here is the clicks per tweet statistics. Although I don’t write blog posts based on what I think will be popular, this information gives me a much better picture than I’ve had before of how interesting specific tweets are to others. Over time it should help me understand better how my tweet content and timing affect what people read, allowing me to reach more people with better-marketed content. For free, what’s not to like about that?
Are these new tools of interest to you? How would you use them?
“Here’s the problem with self-publishing: no one cares about your book. That’s it in a nutshell. There are somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published every year in the US alone, depending on which stats you believe. Many of those – perhaps as many as half or even more – are self-published. On average, they sell less than 250 copies each. Your book won’t stand out. Hilary Clinton’s will. Yours won’t.
So self-publishing is an exercise in futility and obscurity. Of course, there are the stories of the writers who self-publish and magic happens and they sell millions of books, but those are the rare exceptions. How rare? Well, on the order of 1 or 2 per million.” —Nick Morgan, Should You Self-Publish Your Book?
Nick paints a realistic picture of the work required to become a “successful” self-published author—if you’re defining success purely in terms of book sales. But I think there are other perspectives to consider.
My experience of self-publishing my first book
My first book, about participant-driven and participation-rich conferences, was published three years ago. I have only sold a few thousand copies (though sales per year continue to rise). The money I’ve made from selling books translates into a few cents an hour for the four part-time years I took to write the book. Not successful by Nick’s terms, right?
But. During those three years, I’ve moved from complete obscurity to becoming a fairly well-known authority in the field of innovative event design. My blog had 2.25 million page views in 2012. I’m routinely presenting at industry conferences. And a typical consulting gig brings income equivalent to selling five hundred books.
If you are writing non-fiction for a niche market and you have something important to say, your book can provide wonderful exposure and authority that may (no guarantees!) translate into significant income.
Why I didn’t use a traditional publisher
I considered going the traditional publishing route and I’m glad I didn’t for several reasons:
Traditional publishing typically adds another year before your book is published.
I had complete control over the look and content of my book. I hired the same professionals—editor, proofreader, book designer, cover designer, copywriter—that major publishers use (they are often freelancers these days) and worked with them directly without the publisher as an intermediary.
You’re very unlikely to make significant money from book sales. But you receive significantly more money on each copy of the book.
I have been able to build relationships with many of my book buyers. Although the paperback version of my book is available everywhere, I sell the ebook myself. Most of my sales come directly from my website, perhaps because I offer 30 minutes of free consulting to anyone who buys the book from me. This allows me to connect one-to-one with my readers, which translates into additional consulting/facilitation/presenting work while building up a list of people who are likely to be interested in my next book, which is due to be published later this year.
I hope my experience and thoughts are helpful and perhaps encouraging for some who have been considering self-publishing.
Product/service developers and marketers—listen up!
Google “Generation X’ and you’ll get over 300 million results.
I think this way of thinking about people is nonsense. And so does Clay Shirky.
“One of the weakest notions in the entire pop culture canon is that of innate generational difference, the idea that today’s thirty-somethings are members of a class of people called Generation X, while twenty-somethings are part of Generation Y, and that both differ innately from each other and from the baby boomers. The conceptual appeal of these labels is enormous, but the idea’s explanatory value is almost worthless, a kind of astrology for decades instead of months.” —Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
Shirky goes on to say that those who like to dramatize these generational differences are making a fundamental attribution error; mistaking new behavior for some kind of change in human nature rather than a change in opportunity. Much of the “difference” between “generations” is in fact caused by a change in that generation’s environment or circumstances.
Stop the Generation XYZ baloney!
Rather than start with supposed generational differences, dig deeper into the causes for changes in behavior. Instead of marketing driven by statistical analyses of differences in behavior, concentrate on understanding why behaviors have changed. (Or haven’t.)
Then develop your products, services, and marketing around your understanding of relevant human behavior and the changing environment.
Remember, people don’t change that fast. But their environment and circumstances can.
That’s what you should focus on.
P.S. If you haven’t already, read Switch by the Heath brothers for a great practical approach to changing people’s behavior.
Here’s an important lesson I learned about marketing while running a solar business thirty years ago, forgot, and learned again after publishing my first book in 2009. With the rise of online, this lesson has never been more important than it is today.
Succeeding in business in a commodity market
In 1979 I was an owner of Solar Alternative, a Vermont solar manufacturing company. It was the height of the first “energy crisis,” and solar was, forgive me, hot. We manufactured solar hot water systems, which we retailed, wholesaled, and installed all over New England. Solar hot water was a fairly easy business to enter in those days. Our small company, which employed about a dozen people, had plenty of competition, some of it providing equipment of questionable quality.
Apart from the solar collectors, which we manufactured using a few hand tools and our big investment, a ten-foot sheet metal brake, all the other solar hot water system components could be purchased from any well-stocked plumbing wholesaler. We developed a reputation for supplying reliable systems that could withstand the severe New England winters but so did many of our competitors.
Our company needed a way to successfully differentiate itself from significant competition.
We noticed that our customers were unwilling to pay for information about correctly selecting and installing solar hot water systems. There are many ways that these systems can fail or provide sub-optimum energy output, and we had learned how to avoid them. Our potential customers were willing to shell out big bucks for the systems themselves, but they did not want to pay separately for our hard-won knowledge.
So, we gave away our expertise.
The one differentiator between Solar Alternative and our abundant competitors became our unique willingness to provide free, unlimited advice to the wholesalers and end-users who investigated and/or purchased our products.
We were happy to freely share our valuable content—how to build and install high-quality, reliable solar hot water systems—with anyone who asked. Our company gave away our content for free. We made money from the mark-up on our products when our prospects trusted our expertise and decided to purchase.
The brutal economics of writing a book
Writing my first book cannot be described as a carefully thought-out business decision. I was mission-driven to share what I had learned about participant-driven events since I began organizing them in 1992. It took four years of part-time work before Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love was published. Despite brisk sales for a niche book, my compensation for writing it was a few cents per hour.
This isn’t news, of course. Very few of the million book titles published globally each year ever make an author much money directly. So, was my decision to write a book one of the poorer financial choices of my life?
Well, no. (The worst was shorting Google’s IPO; it seemed like a good idea at the time.) Though the book provides a tiny income, the fact that I wrote it has led to numerous speaking, consulting, and conference design engagements, any one of which pays far more handsomely than selling a hundred books. Though the book isn’t free, its content sells for about one cent for every hundred words, a pretty minuscule amount. I make money from the apparent expertise and exposure that the book implies/conveys (your choice).
Content is Marketing; Profits Come From Somewhere Else
Get the connection between these two stories? For whatever reason, people are generally reluctant to pay much or anything for commodity or packaged information. But that doesn’t mean they don’t value good content. Often, they use the existence of high-quality information to cement their trust in the person or organization that provides it. From this perspective, content—whether it be advice on solar hot water systems, a fresh way of thinking about conferences, or accurate, timely, and useful information on any topic—is effective marketing for whatever you sell that makes money for you. I think this has never been truer than in today’s online world, where it’s never been easier to find pertinent content.
