GUEST: How to Really Maximize Events 🤝 w/Bob Vaez CEO at EventMobi | Ep. 426

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. All right, we are back for Do This, Not That podcast, and we have an amazing guest who's here. We have Bob Vias, right? So Bob is the founder and CEO of EventMobi. Now, you might know EventMobi, but if you don't, you should, because they're one of the monsters in the event world In terms of end-to-end event management stuff, they have platforms for everything from getting lead capture to printing badges to managing events.

0:44If you're in the event world, EventMobile takes care of over 30 ,000 different event planners across 90 countries. It is wild what Bob has built. I'm so excited. We're going to rip through pitfalls about all things events today. Bob, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jay. Can I just record that and put it on our website? I think you just did a killer pitch for a movie. I love it. Amazing. I'm excited because it's not easy because, you know, you all do a lot. And what we're going to crush in this episode are all sorts of pitfalls to avoid if you're an attendee at an event, an exhibitor, a potential sponsor.

1:16We're going to get into rapid fire tips on all of that. But before we do, give everybody kind of the one minute. How did Bob become Bob? How did it all happen? Oh, boy. Anyway, I was going to say I was, but sometimes some guys still am a very boring engineer. That's my background. And I used to work for a company called NVIDIA, which nobody knew up until like three years ago. I hope you have stopped. I sold all of them, man. I was actually calculating, I won't tell you. I would basically be a multimillionaire if I kept all of it. So it was everybody else that has ever worked at these tech companies.

1:53Anyways, I used to work for a tech company, but I love going to conferences. I love going to exhibitions. It was my jam from a networking point of view, from an education point of view. And this is like, if you think about it, even at the beginning of Internet Days, conferences were the place where authentic, original content were being distributed. You would see new people that you would build connection from all across the world. So I love going to conferences. And at NVIDIA, I was working on their early chipsets that they were making mobile phones. I mean, this goes back to like 2009 and I was kind of exposed to this future of phones.

2:29And that was kind of the beginning of the event. I'm like, oh, why do I have to carry a tote bag with these like printed show guides? And I don't know who else is going to this conference. I want to know ahead of time so I can plan my days. And I kind of approached it from an attendee pain point. And that was kind of the beginning. We built a platform. Event planners loved it. Sponsors loved it. We created a lot of engagement for speakers through the platform. And that was the beginning part of Eventmobile was to change attendee experience and live engagement at conferences. And then we grew out to event marketing and attendee management and stuff like that and kind of became an end-to-end solution for professional conferences, right?

3:08There's lots of different types of events. and our focus is primarily multi-day corporate conferences, training summits, sales kickoffs, user conferences, annual general meetings for trade professionals, things like that. So it's been a very interesting, what is it now, like 16 years? I actually started on my birthday when I turned 30. I'm like, no, I need to start my company. And that was kind of the beginning. That's amazing. It's an amazing story and it's a really cool background. And so from that perspective, let's talk about the attendees first. Everybody out there has either attended an event, they want to attend an in-person event, they're like, is it worth it?

3:51What will I get out of it? So from an attendee perspective, what is the number one either must do or pitfall to avoid to really get the most out of an event? Obviously, collect all the swag and then post the pictures on LinkedIn. That's like my number one tip. amazing uh i mean it's uh it's intimidating for a lot of people going to their first conference or even multiple i mean it doesn't matter how many conferences you've been like you go to this new city uh this place that did not exist somebody built this trade show you're going to this room with all these strangers and unless you're like 100 you know extrovert like there's got to be a lot of hesitation and you don't have to show up.

4:36So naturally, a lot of people kind of just try to follow the, okay, let me go in this session and back in the room, listen to the content, take notes. But I think the thing that people miss out is you go to this event and we talk about starting to put this sort of running into people and that's great. But that's kind of like, I think that's 10 years ago, like with all this stuff that's out there, most event apps have a list, You can figure out who's there. You can plan your days, reach out to people. But if you want to do that investment, that's great. But the number one thing I think people should do is when they meet someone, it's like, what are you doing for dinner?

5:16Oh, let's meet up. Are you staying after the conference? Let's go explore the city. And the best sort of relationships, long-term relationship I've had has been in sort of excursions outside the event, has been in around lunch table, the night events after sort of day one, day two. And it's been like four or five people hanging out, you know, a few hours. That's really where, you know, true networking at conferences happens. And those are the people that you probably will connect for years on. Um, so that, that, that's a very simple tip. Like just ask people what they're doing for dinner. Uh, that's actually very important because you know what?

5:59I don't think people are intentional about that aspect of when they go to an event or it's like, okay, I got this session booked and this, that, whatever. But you're absolutely right. That the networking is not just at a, at a booth, the networking, the real networking is being intentional about creating relationships. So I think that's an awesome tip. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's huge. But, you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff, you know, as an attendee, you could do in terms of planning if you have the time. But most people don't. Right. It's just people running from meeting to meeting. And then you just get on it.

6:29Your next thing is like, oh, my God, I forgot to book my plane. You're going to get on the trip, you know, plan your trip, you know, show up to the conference. And, you know, planners, you know, major conferences have a really good point. Like they do a lot of work and planning and ahead of time to make sure even people that are completely unprepared. It's like, hey, show up here for this thing. And then you have this choice right now between this and this, and you can, it's, it's not a huge deal. If you don't do your planning as an attendee, I hope no planners listening to this because they always want them to read all their emails, you know, know before you go, but you know, very few attendees actually really go through that stuff, unfortunately, but, uh, you know, follow the program at, at, at the sessions and, um, you know, follow up with people after the show.

7:09you'd be surprised. Like, you know, I get from people that just have random conversation, you know, at events. And when I get their LinkedIn invites the next day, I remember who they are. I remember the conference. But if it's like, two weeks later, I'm like, my head is in a different place. I'm not even talking about sponsors and, you know, you know, salespeople reaching out after the show. I'm just talking about like, normal conversation, people forget. So you gotta like, Follow up, like even as an engineer going to a Dev Summit, like follow up marketer going to marketing that follow up with people.

7:43A hundred percent. You know, speed to LinkedIn is so important. I'm all about that. I'll go in my hotel room that night. I'll connect with everybody I spoke with, met with. You cannot wait. So, all right, let's flip the script now. Now, okay, I'm that marketing manager out there. I got a little bit of budget. I might exhibit at a show. I might sponsor a show. I mean, for me, over the years, I've wasted so much money. I bought the lanyards with my logo on it. You know, I made sure that my logo was on some sort of, well, I would have my logo on some sort of big banner. It would be like the bronze level, the lowest, littlest thing.

8:15I'd be looking at it like, what did I spend my money on? Like, so what is the best way to use your money to really get leads and exposure, whether you're sponsoring or exhibiting? Oh, my God. Literally the million-dollar question. And all this stuff you mentioned, I actually don't think they're bad because what you're doing going to a lot of these events is creating awareness. So people don't know you either. You're going as a startup, people don't know you, you're going as a small company. Most of your time doesn't know who you are. Or you're a big company. You actually want people to like your customers to like get reminded and not go to your competitors.

8:49So all these little things actually does have an impact, but there's a priority of like impact. um so i'll go with my best step which is give away a car and scan everybody's badges great great i'm gonna get my line item get my budget for that right now yeah yeah um i mean the car can be a toy car i mean it's like all in fine prints right so all right so lots of stuff to do and i think as a sponsor it's also like you can get really lost in bronze packages there's like 12 different options and you know i literally was my brother has an ai startup and i was just he's going to the trade show and he's like what do i do and i'm looking at him like this is a lot of stuff for someone that has never been to a show so usually people get better when they go to the same trade show like year two year three you kind of get it every show has a formula there are things that matter in a show that in a different trade show actually is not that you know impactful so um i think you have to test the show but if you kind of think about the stuff that really really matters for a sponsor going to an event is actually not at the show as funny as this sounds is the promotion before the show uh that's because when people are at the show like they're going to you know thousands of different booths they're talking to so many people they're like you literally have like five seconds of their headspace and then and then it's over whereas before the event people are planning and you'd be surprised how few sponsors actually do outreach to just let people know like hey we're going to be at this show that you invest you're going to invest a week of your time and travel going we're going to talk about these new things and if this fits your you know rocky boat not come chat with us and i don't think that's spam honestly i i think you can be better at targeting the right audience so don't send it to every attendee you got to do the work i mean you're a master of email marketing jay so i don't have to bring it up on on your show you probably talked about a lot of this stuff but you know finding the right people and that email can actually be very relevant because people going to this trade show want to know where should I go?

10:51Which booths should I visit? And when they see something in an email that they like, okay, that's a good one. They may actually delete your email, but they will remember that name. So when they show up, there's like, oh, that's the guy that emailed me. And they're afraid. They don't know who to talk to. So they just go to that booth. It's like, oh, I got your email. That could be literally the opener for someone. So anyways, the promotion, I think is the thing that I would argue 90 of sponsors don't do isn't that crazy like it's sad because they don't even you're it's a great piece of advice because you're wasting your money on the sponsorship total waste and only let me give you this tactic that we do and you tell me if this is stupid probably is so we're thinking about sponsoring uh an event or exhibiting an event what our team does is they look at the sponsors and they go back a few years and they see if the same companies have been sponsoring for like three plus years because our theory is that that means that those companies got a lot of value of it so they they came back year after year after year do you think that that is ridiculous or a good good plan that is ingenious oh there you go and especially with these ai tools so so easy to do a lot of this stuff right yeah like in the past it was difficult wait why don't we do that why haven't we using ai for that oh so stupid all right i got a random question before we run out of time because i'm curious about this and now we're gonna lose half the audience but i don't care one of the things that you all are involved with is actual badge making like when you go to a show you got the stupid thing around your neck you got the badge okay and i was going deep on event moby and there you have so much stuff about the size of it two-sided this whatever i'm like sitting there like oh my god this is crazy so i need you to hit me with like like what is it about a badge that makes a great badge versus a terrible badge you know you want to know the real story actually so we do so many different things out of mlb yeah but we were known as the event app company right live engagement uh all this stuff happens at the conference and we started building all these features like six seven years ago and like people still think of us as an event app company.

13:03And we're like, we simplify this sort of event app as one of the first companies in the space. We took something that was so complicated. You had to spend$30 ,000,$40 ,000 with a consulting company to build native apps. I'm talking about 10, 15 years ago to something that you could do with a couple of clicks. And you have this amazing event app for your conference for a few thousand dollars. And that's how we blew up as a bootstrap company. All our competitors are not around anymore or they sold out. And our sort of vision was event planners are so busy and they just need something really simple.

13:38And sometimes they spend a lot of time on things that don't matter. And honestly, I feel like badges are one of those things that if you talk to a very experienced conference organizer or an event planner, it doesn't matter if it's a corporate event, incentive trip, education, whatever it is. And you say, what's your biggest hassle? They're badges why why do they hit badges first of all it's so unpredictable because of physical products so you got to work with the vendor you got to like figure out the design they got to send you a sample if you have all the time and at the end of the day there's something you're going to get wrong and they're going to spend if they want to have the budget you're going to spend so much money like i know conferences they spend 20 30 40 dollars per badge like i kid you not and i'm like it's important like we do a lot of content on badges because i think badges are important it's like the first thing at the conference they put on your neck right think about a medal right that's kind of welcome to this conference here's your badge and you feel proud and you got this thing and other people look at it right the first thing they look at is like your badge and then they look at you right it's like what's your title and company it's like who are you so it is an important piece but it's like is it you can simplify it so we've been doing a lot of content and actually we redesigned our product we also worked with some amazing partners so when you need a really fancy badge, PVC plastic, whatever.

15:00I don't want to go through details of this stuff because there are people that don't know anything about it. It's a whole world out there and some great companies out there. And we're like, that's not for everybody. That's for that top tier conferences, lots of budget. And there is 100 ,000 events that have not a lot of time and not a lot of budget, and they need a good badge because it's important. And then when you go to those events, you realize they delegate the badge to a coordinator that just started they have no experience or a designer that's not even from the event industry they take something that looks good on a screen and I think it works like as a badge they like tiny fonts and you can't even read the name and there's like half of it is branding it's all these typical mistake for a name badge and that kind of says a lot about event industry because we were talking like what like a few minutes just on the badge itself.

15:50I mean, there's like so many things happen in this event. And we wanted to simplify this thing that is very important, but really you can do it in a very low cost and really fast. And we built a whole new design system that you bring your background, you design your thing, it automatically pulls a lot of cool stuff, customizes it, personalizes the badge, but without doing a lot of work, just a couple of clicks. And then the print process, We're like, what's the biggest problem with these badges? Well, they got these printers that need to have like ethernet connection, cables and power. I was like, forget that.

16:23Let's make it simple, like name limbo that goes on a nice badge. So we built a truly wireless badge printer. You can take this thing with you and give people their badges on a bus or on a lawn or in a yacht without worrying about a lot of these details. So that's simplification of the hardware, the printing process. You print, it shows up on your door in a couple of weeks. and we have like print partners that do that, but you don't have to go to a print house, send proof, get that stuff back. And honestly, I feel like in a, in a world of AI and automation and all these things, like that's what people need.

16:54It's just like, I need a badge. Give me a good template. Like somebody that QCs might work because I do this once a year. Like a lot of event planners, it's not like they think about the badge, like every day. It's not like they're badge designers, but they have to do the badge as part of their job. So we kind of help them create the right badge, really fast, really low cost. And it's, and it really, it blew up. It's like, it's kind of crazy. That number one selling product, like in terms of growth, we still, you know, registration and event app is, you know, core of our business, but, you know, the badge growth has been quite, quite rapid.

17:28And, you know, in the world of event tech and, you know, as a software company, a lot of people that work in software companies know it's like, you have different products, you have different features in a product that competes with your competitors. And sometimes you're better than somebody else. So badge is great, because I think we beat almost every competitor. So they're using some other part of the competitor, but then we go in and we have to integrate with them. And then our conversation next is, why don't you use us for the rest of the event? So it's a great business strategy as sort of a land and expand.

17:57Well, I love that. And it's also a good business lesson for everybody out there. You don't need to make something that is brand new. You can look at pieces of an industry, like badge seems like such a a relic but it's so critical and you add new new spins to a new technology and you can really have a fantastic business so i love that event moby is using that as like a trojan horse into to all the other services that you have and doing a great job obviously and so listen everybody we're going to put all bob's information event moby's information in the show notes you got to follow him on LinkedIn.

18:30It's Bob and then V-A-E-Z. Eventmobi is event and then M-O-B-I. Okay. You got to check them out. Bob, any parting words for the world out there about events and what they should be doing or not doing or whatever? Go to an event, go to a local event if you don't have the budget. Honestly, in the word of AI, the only thing authentic and original these days from people to content is at events. So we thought at the beginning of AI is like, oh, oh, is everything going to be automated events? Like, do people are going to go to events because there's so much content and all that stuff? I think as human beings, we need to connect with other human beings.

19:05We need to have trust and relationship. And a lot of that stuff happens at events and conferences. So go support your local event or your favorite event in your industry. Join an association. Have fun meeting new people. I think it's the best part of life and business life, honestly. I used to love it 15 years ago as an employee, going to conferences that we like. My boss hated me. because I wanted to go to all the conferences. And I think you should do that. Go be the pain in your boss of ads. Like it's just, you know, they need to send you to a conference. And if you have an opportunity as part of your marketing team or business team, run an event, start small, like invite your local customers to a dinner.

19:46Like it's not that hard to just build that trust one-on-one. Like we got to, there's so much digital stuff that we crave that, you know, in-person. sort of relationship and interaction. And you'd be surprised, you know, how amazing, lovely things happens when people meet. Listen, if I had to start all over again in today's world, I would want to be in the in-person event industry. There's nothing more AI proof, not that AI is not going to be a part of it, but human-to-human connection is everything. I think what EventMobile is doing is really important. I think what you're doing is important. And I appreciate you being on the show.

20:23Thanks, Jay. Really appreciate it. You did it. You made it to the end. But wait, the party is not over. Listen, I want to keep hanging out. Subscribe to this podcast. And if it wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, give it a five-star review. Why not? But you know what? I want to do even more with you. Go to gurumediahub.com and we can partner there. You could find out about all of our free events, all of our stuff. And if you're epically bored, go to jschwedelson.com and we could stay connected. you could find my newsletter and everything else I got going on. Thanks for being here and hope you subscribe.