GTM After Hours

Unleashing Creativity in your Event Marketing with Kelsey Flatau

• Mark Bliss • Season 1 • Episode 8

Share episode

Summary

In this conversation, Mark Bliss and Kelsey Flatau discuss the importance of creativity in marketing, especially in the context of creating "fresh" event marketing strategies for old-school and boring companies. They also explore how to scale creative ideas for different event sizes, the significance of staying organized during events, the need for follow-up and building connections with attendees (and your sales team), and tips for getting creative ideas approved and implemented.

Sound Bites

"We're definitely going to dive into all the events, the good, the bad, and the interesting."
"Memorable follow-up is worthless if they don't remember any of the booths."
"Don't try to shove this down my throat. I don't want to read a novel on your booth. I just want the words on your something to make you guys stand out."
"I like to reference it as my event Bible and as I mentioned earlier, read it and not ask me any questions because all the information is in there."
"I wanna over communicate so that it's ingrained in people's heads. This is where all the information lives. Everything I need is right here. Don't bother."

Takeaways

  • Creativity is crucial in marketing, even for old-school and boring companies.
  • Scaling creative ideas for different event sizes requires careful planning and execution.
  • Follow-up and building connections with attendees are essential for event success and ROI.
  • Presenting a comprehensive plan with visuals and involving the sales team can help get creative ideas approved and implemented.
  • Treating salespeople as humans and professionals, fostering trust, and staying organized are key to successful marketing efforts. Create detailed event briefs to ensure all necessary information is easily accessible to everyone involved in the event.
  • Use visual aids like decks and photos to over-communicate information and make it more memorable for the team.
  • Prioritize larger trade shows for brand awareness and regional events for feeding hungry reps.
  • Engage with social media to increase followers and promote event activities and giveaways.
  • Implement creative marketing strategies to stand out in crowded trade show environments.


Support the show

Hi and welcome to Go To Market After Hours, a safe space for marketers, AEs, CSMs, and everyone else in the B2B SaaS growth hamster wheel. So grab your comfy blanket, your emotional support animal, and your go -to beverage of choice, and join me for another exciting Go To Market conversation. So today, I'm really stoked because I get to have an awesome conversation with one of my... favorite field marketers that I've ever worked with, one of the most creative marketers you will ever come across. And we're going to get a chance to talk about pushing through really creative ideas, even when a company is maybe a little bit more old school and boring, for lack of another phrase. We're also going to talk about the different size events and how do you scale creative ideas between small, mid -size and large events. And we're going to talk about how to stay organized during all that because if a booth doesn't arrive, did you really have an event? So without any further ado, I'd like to introduce Kelsey to everybody and give you a chance to highlight, you know, what you do, what do you specialize in, what's your background? Thanks for the intro, Mark. So as Mark said, I am Kelsey. I am field marketer extraordinaire. And I have my beverage of choice. It's nothing fancy, just a Diet Coke. But Yeah, I mean, all those Diet Coke lovers out there, you totally get me. This is what keeps me going. It's actually one of my organization tactics for events to keep me going. But yeah, happy to be here and excited to talk about events. Miss doing these little conversations with Mark. We used to do these all the time back in the day via Zoom. But here we are now on a podcast and I feel like we're definitely going to dive in to all the. the events, the good, the bad, and the interesting. Instead of the ugly, we're not going to say ugly, we're going to say interesting. I mean, some of the streets we had to walk down in San Francisco, definitely the ugly. Okay, that's true. They were a little ugly. I was a little afraid for my life when we were in San Francisco last year. Definitely thought we witnessed a murder happen out on the street. But thankfully we all came back alive. Pro tip, the hotel might look nice, but pay attention to where it's located. Yes, exactly. my gosh, especially if the outside... We all think a doorman in New York City in front of a high -rise apartment, it's a luxurious amenity, but when you see a quote -unquote doorman, aka a police officer, standing in front of the hotel at all hours of the day, yeah, run. You know that you're not in a safe zone. I mean, it's safe inside. Just don't run outside. yeah, just call an Uber. That's what we did. To go less than one mile. There was no way in hell I was walking from that hotel to the event. Uber all day every day. There's my Uber endorsement. You're welcome Uber. So Kelsey, I'd love to understand a little bit more of your background for our audience that's listening. How long have you been doing events and field marketing? Sure, so I actually started, my event journey started back when I was in college. I was a campus representative for Victoria's Secret Pink. I know completely different than the cyber security world where I landed now, but that's where I got my taste of having super creative ideas with little budget that they gave us, trying to make an impact on a large... you know, audience. So in that case, it was Penn State women. But yeah, fast forward to now, it's been what? over 10 years, I went from little campus rep promoting like cute lounge clothes on campus to now running trade shows and hosted events and really trying to help cybersecurity sales teams, you know, move the needle, make some money so we can all keep our jobs and keep the world safe cyberly, one computer and one device at a time. But, of you. Well, one of the things that you, you always did well was ensuring that the events that you worked on got ROI. So, how do you go about ensuring that the event that you're working on, whether it's a low dollar event or a big budget event, how do you ensure it's successful I would say one of the key things to making sure an event is successful is follow up and making sure that the attendees of the event feel, I guess, connected to your brand, connected to the event and building those relationships I'll give you a real life example outside of events. So I'm getting married in November. and I was searching for my photography vendor and you know there's a million different photographers that I'm looking at and I'm reaching out to all of them and some of them would get back to me and then silence or some of them would get back to me and obviously the price was too much but then there was this one that I just connected with like she and I were going back and forth we were LOLing in our communication here I am thinking it's a professional photographer but we're already on like a chill abbreviation basis. And she just understood me and I was like, you know what, you aren't the cheapest, but I really appreciate how you're treating me as a potential customer. And I love that you're following up with me and making sure all of my questions are answered and basically showing me how you're gonna take care of me as a future potential customer of yours. And I'm also gonna throw this out there, the name. The naming convention of all of the other packages were named after Mexican foods. So fun fact, love Mexican foods. We chose the, I believe the burrito package. So creativity, it gets me. So I definitely think how a vendor or a company, you know, executes the buyer journey. So from the minute that you, come across a new vendor, come across a new product, and then how they kind of take you through to the finish line and that experience is essentially what will drive that purchasing decision. And like I said, for me, from a personal standpoint, I was looking for a photographer, I reached out to a bunch, and this was the one that just stuck out and it made the process super easy and I loved it, I felt connected to it. And in the end, I found my photographer. We follow each other on Instagram. She's great. She sends me suggestions for other things. So from a consumer perspective, I think that's very important. So coming back to Mark's question about from an event perspective in ROI, I really think it's important that we understand that the person, the minute they come to our booth, the minute that we send them an invite to a happy hour, they're embarking on a journey with us. And we got to make sure that that journey. There's no bumps in the road, there's no turbulence. They are seeing all the sights, no detours. They are having the best journey until they get to that final destination when they are signing that dotted line at the end, signing us a check. I love that. I think it all comes down to just be memorable. You know, like your follow up is worthless if they get 100 other people following up and they don't remember any of the booths. Mm -hmm. Yep. It's all just white noise. I actually was just recently at an event and a prospect came up to our booth and we, he just, you know, thought he knew everything about marketing and what he should, whatever all the vendors should be doing. And he told us, he's like, no, you guys got a good thing going on here. And he pointed out some of our swag, which was really fun. It had shark socks on them. I'm not sure how many cybersecurity customers wear shark socks. But then he sadly for the booth next to us he pointed to them. More now. That's true. Yeah. They actually did. People wore them the next day. So that was a little win for us. But then he points to the booth next to us and he goes yeah this one not so much. He goes too many words. I'm I don't it's too boring. The colors I don't like it. I'm just like OK. So something about our booth it stood out to him. I'm assuming he said there was less words on our booth. He's like. Don't try to shove this down my throat. I don't want to read a novel on your booth. I just want the quick five words on your booth and something to make you guys stand out. And I guess we hit the nail on the head for him. But sorry to the booth next to us. I forget the name of the company. But you guys got to work on your marketing, according to the customer. Okay, five you get five words, please talk to us now That's good! Okay, yeah, I like it. I would, I would maybe talk to you. Just a little, you know, I mean, I'd maybe talk to you if you were giving out shark socks. You know, it's, I actually, it's funny as I'm just thinking about this, like that was just a really like poorly executed joke. But as I'm thinking about it, you could totally make a, make a play on that. You know, it'd have to be designed in such a way, like you see like this sarcastic humor, like, you know, all black background, white text in the middle, and then like put a QR code or something on there. something so simple. I actually thought it'd be so funny. You know how all these marketing companies, or there's all the buzzwords, like the best in, or the top this, the number one this. Okay, what if you totally just played off of, we're pretty okay at, we're good, we're pretty mediocre at. Like we won't, we promise we'll try not to screw up. I actually think I would resonate more with that language because it's pretty funny. Nobody is invincible. Nobody is perfect. Like, I actually think I'd rather talk to the self -proclaimed mediocre product than the one that's the top in the industry. It just stands out to me more. I like it. Yeah, they're more humble. Be humble, people. Humbleness. Eat a piece of humble pie every once in a while. It's pretty tasty. Reminds me of that Will Ferrell clip from Elf of like world's best coffee. World's best cup of coffee. He's like, you did it! World's best cup of coffee. Yeah, see, we could totally take a play from Elf and we'll just, you know, be the world's, well, I guess I'd be going back on that. World's most okay. World's okay -est cybersecurity product. I don't know. I would buy it, but. Honestly, what I would probably do there is I'd do like a competitive takeout campaign and I would have our SME reading off of advertising from competitors and circling any of those like buzzwords or bold statements and drilling down on it. my gosh, that'd be great. Or how about we - you're the best, you're the fastest, or you're the most secure. No? Prove it. me about that. Tell me about that. Tell me fastest. Alright, I'm gonna put start my timer. Ready? Go! Let's see how fast you are. I actually did that at a company. So speed was important and we did the whole like Pepsi versus Coke taste test style where we measured people and their actual speed statistics. And that was fun. That was a really good video clip. That was early days of YouTube. So. I love it. There was actually a company I was interviewing for years ago and their whole campaign that they were going to start brainstorming for was something about speed and how they're the fastest at whatever. And me and this woman went into a spiral of creativity. This is what happens with me. You give me a little nugget and it just turns into chaos. But she's like, yeah, we want to think of things that people do fast and then we'll do spin things off of that. So we came up with, you know, like the Nathan's hot dog, hot eating competition, like doing something with that or like how fast you can, I forget, it was just all these weird things you do that are super fast and they wanted to incorporate it into a campaign and like different events they could do. And I was like, that's kind of fun. Like I've never been invited to Nathan's hot dog eating competition to go buy a product, but I think I'd be down. That's, that's. something new to do on a Wednesday night. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. I just go there and watch people eating a bunch of hot dogs. I mean, to each their own. people like some weird shit I mean there's just everyone's got their thing you know everyone's got their thing cars are fast like a NASCAR race, I don't know. Yeah, I know, I don't know what else is fast. Me on a Saturday, you know, a winery, I drink that pretty fast. That'd be fun. Come watch Kelsey drink a glass of wine really fast. Time her. Honestly, if you put that sign up at like the side of your booth at a trade show, you would have people there. I would definitely have people there, but then I would also probably not be there within the hour because I will have drank too much wine and I'll be laying in my hotel room. Because I'm recovering from drinking said wine too quickly. Yeah, there is far too much booze at events and conferences. I think there's a nice balance. At least one of the nights you should probably just be drinking Gatorades. 15 ,000 steps a day and then you're too much. yeah, I will say earlier in my career I thought that was the name of the game was to keep up with everybody. You know, because all the attendees, from what I've learned, is yes this is a conference that they're attending to learn, yes this is their bosses might have sent them here to take back some information to the office, but these people also look at this as a mini company paid vacation. where they're getting away from their families for a couple days and they are letting loose and they are drinking their faces off. And back in the early days of my career, I thought that I had to participate and play the game and stay up all night and schmooze and drink with these people. But as I've gotten older, I've gotten a little bit harder on that. And you can find me at the end of the day in my bed ordering Uber Eats, drinking my Diet Coke. and I'm happy as a clam and guess who does not feel like crap the next day? Me. So actually, that's a tip for anybody out there planning an event, running an event. Don't feel, if you're new to the industry and you see all of the influence of the social happy hours and all this stuff and you feel like you have to be part of it because that's your job, guess what? It is, but it isn't. Yes, you have to maybe make an appearance, but you don't need to stay there. You can go home. You can go lay in your bed, you can order room service because you're the one running the show and you're the one making sure that the other people who are participating are in your booth at 8 a ready to work and sell the product. So that's one of my biggest tips actually to surviving an event is just take care of yourself. You don't have to play the game and drink your face silly because I can tell you sometimes the mornings after are definitely terrible. I'm sorry. and everybody listening can tell how much time you actually spend on the road because you called the hotel room home. Yes. my god. Didn't even realize that. I refer to the airport sometimes as people need to send my mail there now because I feel like I live in the airport more than I live in my own house. So yeah, Mark, I'd say I'm on the road quite a bit, but it's it's fine. Just racking up the miles. Good, fully paid for covered honeymoon, right? Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I think my honeymoon's going to be pretty much paid for minus the airline tickets. Southwest does not fly to Australia. I would never want to fly on a Southwest airplane to Australia, but hotels definitely will be covered, which will be nice. So thank you to my decade long career of field marketing for paying for my honeymoon hotel stay. Thank you. So we talked a lot about like creativity, you know, I'd love to give some tangible takeaways to anybody listening because you know, it's one thing to have the creative idea, but I think every marketing team has a Kelsey that every marketing team has somebody who's highly creative and comes up with a great idea. But 99 % of them can't get it live. You know, it never makes it out of, you know, death by conversation in committees. You know, as you try to push things up to the executive level. And so what are some of your tips and tricks with that? How have you been able to get creative ideas out into the world instead of dying on a zoom call? I'd say a big thing that helps is a Having your whole team behind you and basically kind of formulating some sort of integrated plan where this creativity All comes full circle. So the plans already there maybe don't present just the idea but present the plan and then visuals It's really hard to just explain something to somebody when you're talking to them via a Zoom call or an email. I think it's a lot easier for them to get it past the finish line when they can actually see what it would look like. So obviously you're not going to have the full blown picture, but if you're planning on putting a bunch of really giant stickers on the sidewalk, leading to the event. Show them what you think the stickers would look like. Give them a photo of the walkway. Show them where the entrance is that all of the attendees will be going in and out of that will see your branding. You know, just really give them the full effect of what that creativity will do. And then, you know, obviously show them that you also worked on the numbers too, because I know budget is a huge thing with these people's brains. But show them everything you did to put together this super creative plan and how it's only going to help your brand. It's not gonna make it negative. It's not gonna affect it, you know, in a poor way. It's only going to elevate and make you stand out more and get that brand in people's brains the next minute they are looking for something for a, you know, whatever solution they're looking for, whatever pain point they have, you're gonna pop up because, I remember that company, they're the ones that did XYZ and yeah, I remember that. So just you have to show them and then explain to them that it's only going to help. My absolute favorite hack from a like marketing leadership perspective. I love absolutely love putting a segment of the budget aside for innovation and new ideas. And if you can do that, and if you've got like five, 10 % of your budget set aside, then you don't have that same hurdle. You're like anything in here starts with yes. Everything in the other 90 % of the budget. starts with no, and then you got to describe and sell. But everything in that innovation thing, if we've never done it before, it starts with yes, let's try it, let's test it, let's see what that impact is. Especially for smaller companies, you know, for anything in that like, I don't know, maybe up to like a series D or E round company, you're gonna be able to take some risks and learn from them. And yeah, I think if you've got that money set aside, it makes it easy. The other thing, and this is something you do incredibly well, is making sure you've got an ally who's on board with it in sales. You know, if marketing is coming up with this creative idea and has this plan, it means nothing if sales isn't bought in. That's where everything just goes to die is if sales isn't bought in. So how do you foster? and grow those relationships to be able to help you succeed. I have always been a huge proponent of we're humans first. I think what I do very well and what has helped me have such great relationships with sales people is treating them like we're friends rather than co -workers. I will say I've been very fortunate in my role that I do get to travel to a lot of events, meaning I get to meet up in person. with a lot of the sales team, which a lot of other marketers don't get to do because their roles don't require them to do that. But I think for my specific role, it's helped me so much because I get to meet them on a personal level. And while we're standing in the booth, we can shoot the shit about our weekend plans. We can talk about vacations we like to go on or whatever. And I get to know them on more of a personal level outside of the uniform. And I think then bringing that back to the office, we have more of like an understanding on like, we're just here to do our jobs. Like we're not, you know, here to save the world. Like we can't make everything happen. And I think just having that same understanding and like we're on a vibe, it makes it so much easier to have your sales team allies, just because you both are on the same page and you both get it. That it's... We're just here. It's just a job. Like we your market or I'm marketing your sales. Like that doesn't mean we're on different teams because underneath that layer, we're both just Kelsey and Joe. Like if we left the company today, we would just be Kelsey and Joe still on the sidewalk. So yeah, so my biggest thing that's helped me and I think is super helpful to any marketer or field marketer or what have you is just. your humans first. Just connect on that human level and then you can kind of work past, you know, work through challenges together and just, you know, hopefully accomplish all the things you need to do at the company for future purposes. And I think as you're treating them as the humans that they are, you also do a really good job of ensuring that you're treating them like the professionals that they are. I've seen over and over again in my career, event managers kind of stick their foot in their mouth unintentionally because... They are speaking to sales about really basic things. Like here's how to deliver the pitch at the booth. Mm -hmm. And these are professionals who've been in their career a long time. Like, you're not talking to a, you know, six months out of the gate, SDR. Yeah, it's a totally different messaging, but you can simply just share with them an example of it being delivered and trust that they're going to prepare. Now, if they don't, that's a conversation with, with their manager and that's a totally different thing. But,-hmm. I think that always helps build relationships because if you trust people first, like if you inherently just trust them to do their job, the majority of the time, they're not only going to do the job and do it well, but they're going to feel more connected to you as a person because you didn't demean them in any way by assuming that they don't know their shit. Yeah, 1000%. I'm a huge proponent of staying in your swim lane. Like, I'll do my job, you do your job, but we're gonna be swimming alongside each other and we are running parallel because we are both going towards the finish line together. But 1000 % agreed mark where I'm not gonna tell you how to do your job. That's why you were hired to do that job because you are the best fit for that job. I was hired to do my job because I kick ass at my job. But Yeah, so I just, I cannot tell you how many times I would hate maybe like a salesperson trying to tell me, well Kelsey, you know, like, should we have this up on the monitor? And I'm, okay, well that's not, no, that's not what we're doing. That's a great plan, but that's not what we're gonna be doing, because that's not what the goal is here. So yeah, back to what you said about, you know, telling them what their pitch should be. Like, I'm not the salesperson. I run the event, I make sure the experience is there. I'm not the one there trying to sell the product. So the salespeople are there doing their job, I'm there doing my job, and we're all doing it together, but just not in each other's lanes. It's all about synergy. All about synergy. But, yeah. think people get kind of, how do I put it? I think they go into like, like parent mode is probably the best way I can say it where, you know, whether it's judge, you know, you're judging something that's happening or you're trying to get it done exactly the way that you want it. When really you should be just trusting and empowering, you know, like if you need, something to be built and put up. Maybe it's an accessory boot structure or something. If that's on somebody's to -do list and you've assigned them to do it, all you need to do is make sure that it's clear and they understand what the objective is and then just let them do it. But it might not be done the way you want it exactly, but you have to be okay with that. yes. So that's definitely happened in the past where, you know, we will give instructions on how we would like things to look, how we would like them to be built and presented. And that's where we trust these people with doing that. But we also just want to ensure that it is within reason. Looking how we want it to look so that's where you know like if you can't be there on site you just have the salespeople Put trust in them be like this is what you have. This is what you need. Please set it up But before you go live, can you please just send me a photo just to make sure you're not missing anything or you know the wrong signage is up I just want to make sure it's good and Then I think they do put they feel better about that because we're trusting them to put that all together like they got it and then typically you know hopefully they'll send over the photo and then we can just make sure it looks it looks usable but I mean typically it looks fine but sometimes I know in the past there's been some faux pas the wrong signage has been used where we're like by the way take that one down but then they appreciate it because they're like my gosh like That would have looked silly because we can't use that. That's the wrong happy hour we're promoting or that's the wrong time. So they appreciate it then sometimes too, where it's kind of like double checking their work. In a nice little way to put it. But yeah, back to full circle, but fully trusting people to do their jobs and then just giving them, I guess, all of the information they need to do their job. wealth. So and that's a huge thing of mine. I am big on outlining, communicating, having all the information there because my goal, I always say this, is I want to over communicate so much that people don't ask me questions. If people don't ask me questions, I feel like I've achieved. So that's a huge thing coming from my world where it's literally if you're not organized you're not doing your job well at all. You might as well not even be doing this job. But I know I did my job if no one asks me questions because I over communicated and I give everybody the information they needed to succeed. Okay, so what are like your standard go-tos on staying organized? Like, you know, project planning, what type of decks are you using? How are you ensuring that that type of communication happens as it relates to booth set up and everything you were just discussing? Like, what do you do? Like, how do you ensure that it's always done and done well? Yeah, so I guess call me a nerd, but I love using Google Sheets. I'm a big fan of the Google Sheets. But actually, a big fan of G Suite. Just throwing it out there, not a fan of Microsoft products. I'm Team Google all the way, so. try being on any teams meeting at all. It sucks. It is miserable. bad. And my new company, I went from my previous one using all G Suite and I loved it. And now my new company uses Microsoft and I'm just like, this is just painful. But I digress. Anyways, but. in a document there. Yeah, exactly, exactly. my gosh, it's it's painful, but I love so, you know, we use these things. We call them event briefs where basically it's just an outline of every single little detail that goes into an event, you know, all the way from the date and time of the event down to like what was ordered, what was purchased, like Internet, electricity, the side of everything that you need to know in terms of. what's happening with that booth and I like to reference it as my event Bible. So pretty much anybody who has to touch on that event, I want them to have access to the Bible and as I mentioned earlier, read it and not ask me any questions because all the information is in there. And then when it comes to presenting the information before an event just to make sure everyone's on board, I always like to use like a deck. And basically, as I said, I'm very big on visuals. I like to run through the deck, use photos, like show people what the swag will be, what the booth looks like, a floor plan of where they're going. Basically, I don't wanna, you know, once again say it, but I wanna over communicate so that it's ingrained in people's heads. This is where all the information lives. Everything I need is right here. Don't bother Kelsey. But I don't know if people can ask any questions. I'm very open. As you can tell, I love the chat. So I will answer any questions. But when it comes to organizing too, I have folders for everything. And then even when it comes to budgeting to make it easier for my finance team, I like to line item it. And then I'll link the receipt. that I have stored on to each line item. So finance can go in and see exactly, you know, all the receipts, invoices, this and that. Like I just love making it so easy and linking everything so that there's one source of truth and you can go right in, click what you need. It'll take you to the budgeting tab. It'll take you to the staffing tab. It'll take you to whatever tab of information you need. So call me old school, but I'm a big fan of the tools like documents. the sheets, all that stuff. But it's honestly helped me so much be organized and then share information with other people because obviously, you know, G Suite, you can share links and everybody can pop in your documents. So it's pretty great. But not trying to promote G Suite or anything, but if anybody buys it after this podcast, I'd like a kickback. But anyways, so. But yeah, so that's, I guess you could say my little tips and tricks for being organized. And then obviously for the communication piece, creating, you know, like a Slack channel or a group chat or whatever, whoever is involved is the on -site team or the planning team, what have you. Just to have real -time updates, you know, because I know we all use Slack every day and it's super casual. So it's nice to just, hey, You know, like just a quick little jab because you know, people don't read emails. Sadly people don't read emails because I've in the past done that in emails, right? Articulated this big beautiful email and I send it and no one freaking reads it and I'm just like, okay waste of time. Slacks people read so it's better. the email is better than burning an hour and a half of people's time and walking through every item on that Google Sheet in a live meeting. That is a pet peeve of mine. I actually love putting any of the booth assignments and schedules. When you block that and you put it as a calendar event, yep. links to all of these things. You know, here's, here's an image that's attached that has where our booth is and here's arrows and how you walk in and where you go. And like all of these things that just make it super easy and clear because everybody's going to get that notification on their phone and being able to click it and have all the information there is so much better than that meeting you attended two weeks ago or this spreadsheet that you're going to have to search your drive for. Yep. yeah, big fan of calendar and blocks for people. You know, if I have shifts, I'll put all the people on shift one on the calendar invite, you know, buffer in an extra 15, 20 minutes before their actual shifts time to get them enough time to get to the booth. Like Mark said, put, you know, the location, a link to what the floor pan looks like, all the details they need to make sure that. They are set up for success. They're arriving on time. And then I'm not standing there scrambling, looking for my staff or messaging people, yelling at them like, hey, where are you? Show started 20 minutes ago, you know? But I've also found that even just doing that for shows, like, you know, shifts, but putting things on people's calendars months in advance for if you sign up for an event that's not until October, great, it's in October. But I found one time this was learning a mistake that I learned from. Forgot to put something on someone's calendar for something we signed up for months in advance and or block their calendar at least. The schedule wasn't built I just didn't put a calendar block on there for them and then all of a sudden the time comes up and I eventually go to put it on their calendar closer to the time and I realized they had already booked a bunch of other things that day and I was like hey remember you have this event and they were like it wasn't on my calendar and I'm like Shit, that was my bad. So now every time I get an event contracted, I immediately put it on the calendar, regardless of if I know who it is, if I don't. I'm still just going to put a calendar hold. If it's a rep in their territory, I'll put it on their calendar. But yeah, calendarization, calendar blocks are definitely very helpful when it comes to keeping all of your little people in line. keeping them organized and helping you do well. Well, and then you get things like you have a meeting room and the meeting room has a passcode. You could put that into the invite. And even better, you could have a 10 second video of somebody walking to it and putting in a passcode. So make it a... See, it just it makes it to where, you know, you're eliminating all of the what I would call just unnecessary questions in that slack during the show. So that way you could focus on the actual important things like we've run out of this giveaway item. It's so popular. What are we going to do? And now you can solve that problem instead of solving a problem that somebody got to the meeting room and can't figure out how to get in. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Never. I don't ever remember a time that happened. I have I have a couple of segments left that I know our listeners will be interested in the and I say our listeners there's got to be like five people listening at this point, but I want to I want to know kind of pros and cons for the different size events. So whether it's small and midsize or those gigantic industry conferences, when somebody is building out their trade show strategy. What do you recommend and what are the benefits and disadvantages of each one of those types of trade shows? Yeah, so I definitely would say that the larger events like the giant trade shows that typically as hopefully those come with more budget allocation. So that's where you have the ability to be more creative and do more of those standout things. Because to me, a trade show, the big trade shows are always for brand awareness. I understand you are there for leads, but it's kind of like if you're not there, then you don't exist. So. I think for the large trade shows, that's where you really need to put your creative hats on on how to stand out because there are hundreds of other booths there that look just like yours and you need to figure out, you know, how do we stand out above the noise? So trade shows, I'd say that's where you really got to get creative in terms of like what the optics, the visuals, like what's going to pull people in because. they're just surrounded by lights, lights and colors when they walk into these show floors. So what's gonna make them come to your booth? But as the events get smaller and they're really, there's less budget for those as we all know, you know, maybe we're going all the way down to like a little tabletop event where we're just with 20 other vendors in a ballroom at a hotel. and everyone's just given a six foot table, you can bring one banner with you, like really there's no room for creativity. That's where you have to, I guess, try to have something that pulls people in. So in my past experience, we always had at these tabletop events, like these Lego. Prizes and I know everyone's doing Lego right now but I will say we had the r2d2 which was a huge box big box sitting on the table and We had constant foot traffic because people you have to know your audience these people were obsessed with this thing and it drew them over to the booth and I would say we definitely probably had a busier booth compared to the rest of the other little tabletops and So yes, we weren't spending thousands of dollars on hiring a celebrity to come be in our booth or having this awesome wall with all these nerdy giveaways. Just things that stand out that look like they cost a lot of money. When you're in a smaller event, you have to just think, just something that will resonate with your audience. And for us, it was just buying a little Lego set and it just because it was bigger it sat on the table we knew our audience members would like that and that's what we used and it worked. We also did play into the visuals as well so like on our banners instead of just using this boring words and company logo like everyone else does we tried to use a character that we pulled in from... we get five... come come buy our shit please. No, just kidding. That might work. I don't know. But yeah, once again, it's all about visuals too. Shut that down. Yes, I think it's great marketing tactic. Everyone will listen. But yeah, so we carried over a trend or a theme from one of our larger shows into our smaller booth. And we used an element that was It stood out like no other companies were really using this element. It was like a superhero character and people literally came up and instead of asking what our company did they go, what's with the girl? And yeah, it was not exactly what we were hoping for to start off talking about the company, but it got them talking to us. And then we got into the conversation about how we can help them with any of their problems at their work, their workplace. So yeah, to me, It's all about visuals. I know my eye is always drawn to interesting things. And then you also have to play into knowing, even though us marketers, sometimes we hate it, we hate the trick-or -treaters, we hate those people that just come by for swag, but you have to know that your audience is most of the time looking for swag. So you also have to have something cool on your table that they are going to come by and take. I hate to admit it, but you do have to think about this fact. So sadly, it's the truth. or treater might actually be a buyer and you don't know until they know what you do. And they're not going to know what you do until they come up for whatever random awesome giveaway you're doing. So I don't know. When you're planning, so you're creating this event marketing strategy at the beginning of the year. How do you balance that? It sounds like you're like, here are the three industry events that we have to be at or we're gonna look like shit. And you circle those and you're like, we have to be there. How do you disperse the rest of the budget for the mid -size and smaller shows? Like how do you choose the shows and how do you decide where you're going? Yeah, so a lot of what I like to do is work with the reps because a lot of the smaller events are typically regional and I want to make sure my hungry reps are fed. So I like to work with them, find out if there's any specific regional events that they've done in the past that have been successful or some that they've heard of that they want to try and then obviously do the research from there, see if it's... worth it, if we can afford it, all that stuff. So typically that's where I start, is working with the people in those regions, what is going to help you be successful in your region. And then from there, kind of just, I guess you could say weed out the events that make sense versus the ones that don't make sense. And then if your company also has a certain ICP you're looking for, That's also then where you want to look. So obviously you want to have your big shows that you gotta go because if you don't go, you might as well not even be an existing company. Help out, go to the regional level, make sure your reps are all being fed. And then also if you really have a specific industry, start looking into those industry specific events because that's where your audience is. So it's just, it's a... nice balance and a sprinkle of different types of strategies to really just make sure you're getting air cover everywhere. And then also the channel partner play. I know recently, you know, I've been given, I've been tasked with building out my company's event plan for the second half of the year. And from what I'm hearing from a lot of the reps is they want to put more money towards the channel partners because they help them. you know, bring in deals and doing events with them. So I personally am a big fan on, you know, listening as to what works and trying to maximize on that. Because, you know, the more help the merrier. And if someone else is going to help bring the audience and it's not as much of a heavy lift on our end to have to do it, I'm all for it. So and then my final type of event that I it's my personal favorite to plan is when we get to host it ourselves. and pick a fun activity, but that to me is only really done when we have an existing set of prospects or pipeline that we're really trying to usher along through the sales cycle. And that's where you really get to be more specific on the planning and cater to that audience. And just, it's not like a giant trade show where you're like, we have to be here. This is more like, we need to do this because this is gonna close the deal. So yeah, there's just a variety of different types of events that I think are super important based on your end goal for each of them. And it's as long as you have the budget, do them all. If you don't have the budget, just prioritize what makes the most sense for your company at that stage. If you're brand new to the game and no one knows you, you should probably be at all the big shows and. call it a day because you need to be there. People need to understand who you are before you start moving into more of those account specific, regionalized specific events because no one knows who you are. You need to establish that first. Yeah, so that's a lot of science, I guess you could say that goes into event planning, which you really wouldn't think there is, but it's definitely, definitely a science. you mean you don't just do like a pop -up booth and give away a Lego set? That's not it? No, not quite. I wish it was that easy. know, it's always interesting to me. I think people often miss all of the components that events and field marketing integrate into all the other areas of marketing. Like if you have a giant line of people at your booth at the time when your analyst meeting is booked for at your booth, you look a lot better to the analyst, don't you? And do. know, in the same way where if you're if you're running digital ads or you're running an ABM program, if you if you leverage the likely event list to go after that and now you're seeing all the intent data before you ever meet somebody face to face at the booth, that's going to make a difference. And then I think also when you're talking about doing like these local road shows, why can't that also? tie into the bigger event. So if you see a concentration, so out of your your hot leads list, here's what's in your pipeline. If three or four of those leads are from a particular region of the country, immediately do a roadshow, like spin one up the next month. So that way you get additional FaceTime with the people you just met at this giant brand show. Yep, all the touch points matter. So yeah, exactly. There are so many components that go into events that aren't just logistics. And it's so important that they all flow together to make one giant circle of life. No. But yeah, I recently was at an event. I don't know if I'm allowed to say the name. Well, I can say it. We was at the Gartner event. Obviously we all know when you go to a Gartner event, it's all about the analysts. It's all about the reports that come out and where your company ranks and all of all that jazz. Well, Gartner had recently come out with a new report. We were mentioned in it all about, you know, how the importance of the product, you know, the new this and that that our product fell right into what, you know, this new hot trend that security companies need to look at. So we basically just did our whole presentation kind of around this report. We promoted downloading the report in the booth. We promoted this report on these ads. And our follow -up now to our attendees in the booth was, thanks for meeting us. If you want to learn, here's the report. So I know that sounds silly. I don't want to use this report as this driving indicator. But it basically led gave us different avenues for AirCover to just keep engaging with these people and show them how important this new, you know, our product is and in this space. So yeah, it's very important. There's so many components than just setting up a table and, you know, giving out free swag. Well, and I'll also say it gives you something to talk about on social. And if your company does not see an increase in followers with every show you're doing, you're doing it wrong. Like every single time you do a show, if you even have a tabletop and you meet 20 people, if your follower count doesn't go up, you're doing something wrong. Exactly, and for social, I don't know if it's just me, but I think it's pretty much everybody I'd say, but I only look at social media things that draw my eye. So I think when you're, especially like if you're doing on social, like if you're at an event, take interesting photos of people or of your booth or whatever interesting activities you're doing, that will automatically boost your engagement numbers, because what I've noticed is, photos of people or activities real life photos always boost engagement on social media whereas you know like boring ads I get it we all have to have those like here yeah here's our new blog with this boring picture of a guy with a computer like cool but if you're at an event and you know you have your team and you're doing something fun in the booth you're giving away a cool prize like the human element is just so much more relevant to humans when they're scrolling through social media and they're more likely to stop and kind of look at that. okay. And you know, like it or engage with it. So I think events provide that another aid to the social media component of, you know, photos or promoting things at your event on social media. So like we said, different components going into the events. So social plays a huge role. in events for leading up to the event and then after the during the event after the event just to kind of keep it going keep keep that event alive. And pro tip for anybody listening, you can always do better when taking a photo than just a selfie with your staff in front of your booth. Okay, so Kelsey, this has been an amazing conversation and I wanted to make sure we did something fun at the end of this. And so we're going to play a game. I know you're a big fan of horror movies and so I'm going to give you the name of a horror movie or franchise and then you're going to tell me the marketing activity or a memory or something that's happened that that horror movie reminds you of. We're gonna call it Marketing is Scary. And so I'll play along with you. But the first one I'll give you is one of my absolute favorites, and that's The Haunting of Hill House. Oof, good one to start with. One of my absolute favorites too. Let's see, a marketing memory that Haunting of Hill House reminds me of. I guess you could say, you know, just at a previous company, you know in Haunting of Hill House how in the background there's always a ghost. There's always a ghost you can see just lurking in the background and it's kind of like, huh. Just constantly feeling like we're being, judged or watched and not, I guess, performing to the best of our abilities on the marketing team. So, you know, like just we're just living out our lives, doing the thing. But then there's always someone in the background who's just looking at us like, you idiots, I'm here and you're not doing it right. there's always a ghost lurking behind. you're always being watched and judged. I've been at companies where here we are living our lives as marketers thinking we're doing a great job, we are surviving this haunted house, but in the background someone's always lurking and watching us and judging us and knowing that our doomsday is coming. Just laughing behind our backs. That's my memory. what is it? The red room, right? Where it changes and it adapts to whatever that person needs at the time. I kind of think about that is like the booth space. Whatever you intended it to be before all the staff comes in is never what it really is. And the worst thing I've ever seen people do is like take chairs and stuff out of the booth or be like, No food or drink in the booth at all. It's like you are you are shooting yourself in the foot You need to make like real -life adult parameters around these things like obviously don't you know have your open bag of chips sitting right front and center in front of the logo, but you know like Just allow adults to cut it because somebody's gonna move a chair over somebody's gonna gonna move the the TV sometime that they're going to move where the handouts are and And just kind of let them because like the flow is something that needs to be judged in real time. And so I always think about like, like when I think that red room is it's like, this is what it's being for this person and it changes based on the person. I think it's kind of that way with, with staff. And so, you know, the biggest horror story I've seen was when somebody removed the chairs because people were sitting in them, not realizing that a couple of people had knee or leg injuries. And there was a reason they needed the chairs. Yeah, yeah. Fun fact, when I was just at Gartner, the booth next to us stole our chair. And when I confronted the girl about stealing our chairs, she didn't give it back to me. These chairs are coveted. People just want their chairs. I don't blame her, but it was just a little rude. Little rude. Paid for the chair. She stole my chair. I asked for it back. And she said, well, it looks like you guys already have a chair. Like, yeah, that's ours too. Super cool. But, ooh, I have one. I have a marketing is scary movie for you. Sinister. Have you seen Sinister? when I think sinister, I think of all those different variations of the families that die along the way, the different types of deaths. I just, I always, and I always, I now am envisioning like at every startup company, I feel like the marketing regime always changes, like every year. And it's always a completely different death. of the team because it changes every so often and the team gets changed out all the time I feel like so that's where my brain goes is each time they watch the video of the family that dies and it's the family pool party and they all drown in the pool or the family barbecue and they all roast in the car that to me is an old marketing team dying and then they bring in a new one. See, I just I think of the I think of the tree in the backyard and yeah, yeah, literally, literally hanging out. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think like for me, it's like survival and like, how do you how do you be the one family that survives? Like, how do you get through this? So yeah, yeah, it's absolutely terrifying. OK, OK, we we we we got to go. We got to go last one and. I have to give you a classic, The Exorcist. exorcist. You know. what is demonic possession remind you of marketing? Basically when they are exercising the demons out of these people, every time the person goes, that's just my reaction to when things don't go my way in the marketing world. the like, the like, the like spewage coming out of her mouth in the emphasis. Yeah, pretty much just whenever the demons are just coming out, it's just, that's how I feel sometimes when things just aren't going according to plan. That's how I want to react. See, I think about it in terms of like, you have this really great idea, right? And then it gets changed and possessed by a much worse idea. Yeah, yeah. That's what I think about. Some demon took over what was a really great and effective idea, and now it's the lamest, most terrible thing in the world. Genius, that's actually a really a really good way to put it. my god Awesome. Well, this was a ton of fun. Any parting words of wisdom for our audience? You know, what's what's the tip that you would give? You know, rookie brand new post Victoria's Secret, Kelsey. I would say surprise you're not gonna end up in fashion like you wanted to when you were in college. You're gonna be in cyber, woo! But no, honestly it's been quite a ride, it's been really fun and I honestly feel like my creative flower has blossomed since I got into field marketing, especially further down. my career path because it's just given me more, I guess, ammo. Like just doing so many different types of events, meeting so many different types of people, getting to collaborate with people and how their brains work and work with mine. Like I know Mark, you and I in the past, we've just like spiraled into creative ideas over a glass of wine on a Zoom call. And those have been some of... my favorite marketing memories with past teammates is just that. It's just the collaboration, the building off of just these little nuggets of ideas, because that's where the big beautiful ideas come from. So I guess I would tell younger Kelsey, it's only going to get better. Your creative juices are only going to get tastier. And your ideas are only going to get crazier and bigger and more successful. So. Yeah, that's, you're welcome young college Kelsey working at Victoria's Secret. and everybody else early in their careers listening to this podcast. So thank you again, Kelsey. This was a blast. We will have you back sometime. All right, thanks Mark. Thanks to all the listeners.