Joe Davy
Joe Davy is the CEO and co-founder of Banzai, an event marketing automation tool. Banzai’s technology empowers marketing leaders by driving high quality leads to field marketing events.
New marketing-tech companies are popping up left and right, vying to help you capture, convert and close new leads. The 2018 Martech 5000 Technology Landscape Supergraphic grew 27 percent in the last year, to 6,829 solutions. Think about your marketing channels for a minute: advertising, social, video, email, SEO, retargeting – your team probably uses dozens of tools.
The new tools are great, but a negative trend is also developing – marketers are becoming disconnected from their leads. According to Hubspot, 52 percent of marketers believe they are the best source of leads for their sales team, but sales reps surveyed rank marketing dead last in terms of lead quality.
How can your team avoid this trap of sinking lead quality? Simple – remember that leads are people, not records in a CRM or lines on a spreadsheet. Focus on creating real, human connections with leads. Events are a tremendously powerful tool for that.
Here are a few best practices I have learned for producing successful events that connect you with your prospects at a more human level.
Finally, one bonus tip – remember that your event ROI is driven by the number of leads you generate, and that means registrations and attendance. Think about your strategy for driving registrations up front and do events where you can drive the attendees. Otherwise your efforts will be wasted on an empty room.
If you do them right, events can be one of the most rewarding ways to get to know your prospects and customers on a personal level and provide the best ROI for the business.