Building An Event Strategy That Connects With Your Community

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1:13Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Dance and my guest today is Isaac Watson. He is an event strategist and entrepreneur who founded Kick-Ass Conferences in 2016. He's produced over 50 conferences and gatherings worldwide, specializing in event strategy and design for communities. And he also is the co-host of the Make It Kick-Ass podcast. So we're going to talk about events today. Isaac, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. So how did you get into events? Let's start there. How did you fall into this business? You know, I was working in communications and marketing at an art school, was doing a little bit of public programming, a little artist receptions and guest lectures and things like that.

1:58And that kind of wet my whistle. And I started volunteering for the World Domination Summit planning team. And that's kind of how I cut my teeth on conference planning. I've attended that conference three times. I was a speaker, 2014, a long time ago. I remember that. So if you're talking to a business, let's say it doesn't do events at all, and they're thinking, ah, should we add that to the mix? Are there reasons you tell people, yeah, you should be doing events? I'm sure there's some reasons people shouldn't be, but for the most part, why should people think about that as part of the marketing mix?

2:29We usually find that events work really well for any business that's trying to build a community. Events can really serve as this catalyst to give the community energy and keep it propelling forward. And I think one thing that people don't think of all the time is that if you're going to do an event, especially a conference, right? Like something big, something annual, something that you want to do on a cycle, it's kind of like adding a whole other product to your lineup and you have to treat it like that. Yeah. And it's kind of becomes a year long beast, I think, for a lot of people too. So what are most successful, I mean, you gave kind of reasons for doing it, but then obviously there are good ways to do it, bad ways to do it.

3:08What are some of the most successful kind of event marketing strategies that you've seen implemented and you've probably implemented on behalf of some of your clients? Yeah. For event marketing, we always like to think about it in three phases and it's a cycle, right? Especially for an annual thing, you have to keep repeating it. So you have to focus on your pre-event marketing where you're actually communicating everything that you're going to deliver for your event to people. Then you have to focus on your intra-event marketing. So while it's actually happening, How are you continuing to market that event, both to the people who are there, who have chosen to attend, and to the people who aren't there, who are looking from afar, right?

3:46Because you're helping sell that for the next time. And then you have to do phase three, which is often something people forget about, which is post-event marketing, recapping everything that you've done, prepping people for the next time around, and keeping that cycle rolling forward. You mentioned WDS, which is no longer around, but I mean, they did, you did, maybe if you were involved in a great job of, I mean, I think 60 % of the next year was sold out, you know, before the thing, you know, ended the year before. I mean, that's pretty fabulous way to build momentum going into the next year.

4:18So I'm about ready to stop mentioning the word COVID on my show, but darn it, coming back. How did it change the landscape of your business? I mean, you worked right through it, Right. So what is, and I don't need to hear like how you adapted. I'd really rather hear more kind of like, where are we now? Has, you know, has the landscape changed? Yeah. I think that the, the big wake up call was we can do virtual events and we can do them well. A lot of people do them terribly. And I think where we are now is in this reconciliation between kind of the economic impacts of where we stand now with inflation and layoffs and budget constraints and people not being able to attend in-person events like they used to and balancing that with everything that people hate about virtual events and the zoom fatigue that we're still carrying that trauma with us right of just being isolated and locked into our spaces and so it's really about crafting something that's intentional and focused on the attendees experience whether that's going to be a virtual or in-person affair.

5:26Yeah. I think in the very beginning, people were just happy that we could get the technology to work. And so that like 10 people could talk to, you know, one time, right. But the bar has really been raised, hasn't it? I mean, people expect engagement. They expect technology that, you know, that works and works for them. And so it's really, it's really made it harder for somebody to just go, oh, these virtual events are free. I'll just do it that way. Yeah. And I think what a lot of people haven't realized is that with the tech boom that came through all the virtual event production, costs for that have skyrocketed too.

5:58So if you want to do a really good hybrid event, for example, which a lot of people were really interested in doing last year, it turns out those are really expensive to do well. And they take a lot of effort and a lot of planning. And so a lot of people are just kind of recoiling and backing off from that concept and trying to figure out how to do something a little simpler and a little more budget friendly. Yeah, I did one, a hybrid event. And I learned from the AV company that it was twice as complicated for them to produce, rather than just turning on their cameras, go for it. It was way more complicated and consequently way more expensive and a lot more considerations, logistics.

6:37Are there some technologies, specific tools, software, things like that, that you recommend to businesses these days? You know, we don't because our focus is always on strategy first. And there are so many different tools and options out there that we want to figure out exactly what a client's needs are for their particular event before we go shopping around for a platform or even an in-person venue or a city to host something. And so we're always looking at the needs first and then finding the tools that fit within that. So talk a little more about that strategy component, because that's certainly, you know, we are a marketing agency as well.

7:14And that's our motto. I mean, it's strategy first. People hire us to do strategy before we'll ever take a look at their website. So talk me through a little bit of how your process then for, because I'm sure a lot of people will say, oh, we got an event, we're going to have people going to showcase this. And then they start asking, like, should we do it? What's the technology, right? So tell me a little bit about your process for getting to the heart of an effective strategy for an event. So we always like to look at three components that all work together to be able to produce something that's really great.

7:45First of all, you have to have a community behind what you're building. A group of people who is engaged, who is ready to take that next step to connect with each other through some sort of event. You also need to look at your resources, and that's everything from your team's capacity, the time, every other product or service you have on your docket, and even your budget. And then the third component is that event vision. So if you can balance your vision and kind of temper that against the community you've built and the resources you have available to you, then you can create something within that that balances it all and that works well together.

8:26So you've mentioned the word several times, community. And I think a lot of people think in terms of, oh, I had this online community that likes to get together and now they want to do an event. And a lot of events have certainly, I'm thinking social media marketing world, content marketing world. I mean, those came from those types of communities. But But I mean, community can be your customers, right? Or it can be people that you want to turn into customers, can it? It can. The first question that I would ask someone to ask themselves is, do you actually have a community or do you have an audience?

8:58An audience can turn into a community, but it does not always one to begin with. In my book, a community is a space where the people who are gathered around your product, your service, your mission, whatever that is, they have the opportunity to share with each other to give feedback to each other and support each other so you've created a space where they can then form relationships on their own and support each other in that way an audience only would be a one-way like this is my marketing i'm talking to them top-down kind of situation and that's a little bit different that's where you get into like sales events for example right it's really just about marketing your product or service as opposed to creating something that meets your audience's needs.

9:42Obviously, you help somebody develop a strategy, you help them put the event together. How do you measure success? Do you have a set process for that or is part of the strategy to put KPIs? Early on in the strategy process, we identify what our attendee goals are. So we work to deeply understand what the community's needs are, what they're hoping to get out of whatever event we're trying to design for the client. And then we carry that through into our post-event surveys and into anecdotal feedback and the more qualitative experiential stuff that we gather as we're producing it. All of that comes through the end of our process with some reporting back to the client that said, okay, obviously we've got a great net promoter score and we want to know who the most successful presenters were.

10:32We also need to know how the attendees have resonated with the event and with the other people that they met. And that's much harder to track from a data standpoint. So we have to rely on more qualitative sources for that. So this is one of those that you're going to say, well, there are lots of depends, but I think a lot of people focus when they do events on, you mentioned the presenters or the topics that are going to, the run of show from who's going to speak next, that kind of thing. how important are the other things like the food and the breaks and the entertainment and, you know, all the things that are not necessarily core topic?

11:12They are all important and they have different weights. But I was just talking to someone the other day about how a bad food experience at an in-person event can destroy the vibe, right? I went to an event a month or two ago where they ran out of coffee in the morning And it was like, you know, faux pas, right? Don't want to do that because then that's all people can think about. That doesn't mean you have to go investing$400 a head a day into catering, but you have to make sure that everything, every component that you're crafting, this whole experience is a multi-sensory thing. And that matters to the attendees and that's going to have an impact.

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12:30Sound interesting? All you have to do is license our three-step process that's going to allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale, perhaps without adding overhead. And here's the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive. Look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create, and you can have them today. Check it out at dtm.world slash certification. That's dtm.world slash certification. So I probably should have asked this earlier than now, but there are different types of events, not just types, but different goals, different purposes.

13:17So there's significant kind of categories of, I mean, a lot of times people think of product events and service events. And then some are just, we keep mentioning WDS. I'm not sure what that was. That was just like a community hug fest event. but do you kind of look at like, is that like check box number one? Like what type of, you know, event, what are the goals of this? And based on that, it's like, well, we have to go down this path. Yeah. If you can identify first who you're creating the event for and why it exists, then you can start to wrap around what the format of it is. I think that, that yes, you obviously have like sales or marketing oriented events, whether that's a product event, a launch, you know, anything where you're trying to expand your audience.

14:03But then there's, I would categorize WDS as a community oriented event. It was independently organized and it was all about bringing the people together to share in this moment. It wasn't there to sell anything in particular except ideas and inspiration, right? Much like a TEDx or a TED event or any of the other larger kind of ideas driven things. And then you have celebrations, right? Like you can have like a nonprofit will have an awards dinner to honor and celebrate their community in a different way than they would host an annual conference. Yeah. We put together half for many years, a very small, but I would call hybrid event.

14:42I have a community of consultants and agencies that license our methodology. They are in the pure sense customers, but we've also created a network platform where they collaborate and do a lot of things together. And so consequently, it's been pretty easy for us to bring that a core group together that wants to see each other in person, but it is, you know, it essentially is a customer event that we've built a community around. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And it's been a terrific retention tool, quite frankly, you know, because they get that. That's how we view it. We, in fact, we lose money every year on the actual event because we charge a small ticket price, but people stay because of it.

15:25Yeah. We had a client as an example, similar to that a couple of years ago, they were a design prototyping startup and they had created these tools and had this growing user base that was global that had really formed community around themselves. And they wanted to host a conference about the industry, not necessarily about their product or their tools that they were making. and bring those people together. And that was the perfect example. They were customers, yes, but they were also a community. Yeah. You know, when you're obviously, not obviously, but I spent a lot of time teaching people how to integrate all their marketing.

16:01All this stuff relates to each other. But I think that there is a tendency for people to think in events like this, totally, you know, out there thing. One off, you know, almost. How do you get people to think in terms of the event integrating with everything else they've been doing particularly when it comes to marketing. Part of that comes through the resources aspect of the strategy work that we do upfront with our clients, really looking at like what's on your upcoming calendar, what products and services are you releasing? Do you have new features? Do you have new whatever it is that you're coming out with?

16:33I think the other piece that people are often surprised at when I start engaging on strategy is I wanna know everything that there is to know about how your business works. Because if I can understand that and then I can understand everything that there is to know about your audience and your community, then I can start to craft something that fits within that, that truly integrates with everything else that's going on in the business and supports that. So how comprehensive do you take approach or does it come down to what the client wants and what their budget is, I suppose? I mean, you've talked a lot about strategy, but will, if I come to you and I say, we want to do this event, here's who they are.

17:09You know, we get the strategy down. Now, like Isaac, go get me the speakers, get me the venue, get me the food. I mean, do soup to nuts if that's what somebody wants? Soup to nuts is what we love. And so we want to start with that strategy. We want to co-create that strategy with our clients because a lot of times, I can't tell you how many times a client has come to me and they've already locked in a venue and dates and a location. And then as the process goes through, we realize that it doesn't match our needs and we have to figure out how to pivot around that. So we always want to work with the strategy first and then carry it through.

17:43Now, we also do one-off strategy. So if people can come to us and say, hey, we're thinking of an event, we need kind of the concept and the preliminary design done. And then maybe they have an in-house team that can actually execute on the event, or they have another relationship with an event planner who can actually do the implementation. Great. They'll run with our strategy and use that to their advantage. Where do you suppose the term soup to nuts came from? I'm going to have to look that up. I couldn't get past that. Look into the future. I mean, are you telling people, here's some of the trends that you need to be aware of, or here's what's coming?

18:17I'm fairly trend resistant. There's a lot of talk, especially within the industry and especially with where we are post-intra pandemic, whatever we're calling it these days, about what's next. To me, if you can lean on your strategy first, that strategy will be valid regardless of where the industry is going. It's about figuring out how you can actually implement that in the moment with the group that you're doing it for. So taking that kind of trend agnostic approach, obviously, you know, when it comes to choosing entertainment or specific activities, there are trends in what people are into these days, right?

18:56And we'll follow those. But from a core design and implementation standpoint, there is no trend that's really going to affect how we do what we do. Well, I'm going to break with you there and make my own trend. You know what I'm seeing a lot of? I'm seeing a lot of desire, at least. I don't know that necessarily everybody's putting them on. I'm seeing a lot of desire for smaller, more intimate, more personal events. Not the 3 ,000 person thing, but the 50 people who are very passionate about a certain thing. And in fact, when we start back to in-person events, you know, post-pandemic, that's going up.

19:34It's like they so desired to be in that room with people that they were really passionate, you know, kind of on fire group because, you know, they went against the odds and did so that, you know, a lot of people weren't willing to do. And I think a lot of people are pretty hungry for that. Yeah, I would agree wholeheartedly that these shared or intimate experiences are more highly valued these days, especially because people have a lot more scrutiny around how and where they will spend their time. Yeah, I think that kind of knee jerk, oh, we have to be at these five conferences and we have to send our whole team.

20:07I think those days are probably over because I think people realized, wait, nobody died. We didn't send people. We're still here, right? So I think now you're absolutely right. people are saying, if I'm going to invest that, it's going to be worth it. Yeah. Which quite frankly, ups the game certainly or raises the bar for people putting on events, doesn't it? Yeah, it certainly does. All right, Isaac, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You want to invite people where they could connect with you and find out maybe a little more about kick-ass conferences there.

20:37I said, ask three times in my show. And you didn't even have to bleep it. So we have our podcast called Make It Kick-Ass, which is all about building great experiences for communities. We have a new season coming out in September and have a lot of great guests on board for that. You can also visit our website at kickassconf.com. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the show and hopefully we'll run into you out there on the road someday. Sounds good. Thanks, John. Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics.

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