Stop Counting Badges. Start Counting Conversations.

Most companies don't have an event ROI problem. They have a data structure problem around events.

Casper and Kasper unpack why event ROI is almost always calculated wrong: short-term attribution on a long-term influence channel. You scan 300 badges, follow up on all of them, convert almost none, and call it brand. Both Caspers have done it. Neither recommends it.

The fix isn't more leads. It's qualified presence. Pre-event planning around target accounts. CRM discipline that captures real conversations, not tote-bag handoffs. And a 48-hour follow-up window for the 5% who are actually in-market.

There's also a swag tip involving LED glasses, the Adobe Summit bash, and 25 people swarming a booth at midnight. That part is free.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Hi Casma.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hi Casma.

SPEAKER_03 0:07

I'm so excited for today. Yes? Because we have a topic that I've been uh teasing in a lot of episodes up to now I feel. I've been saying this so many times and uh now we actually uh we're doing the episode.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

Event RI. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Because it's um it's it's it's something that needs to be addressed. Um and something that we've been working very uh close with the past couple of months, uh re-evaluating. Um but before uh I just want to ask you because this is a topic that that has come up a few times in these uh modern uh times how do you uh create a great marketing event in space?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

A great marketing event in space?

SPEAKER_03 1:00

You plan it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

You plan it.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

I was trying to come up with something saying that you you definitely don't need uh helium balloons because they're exactly but it refers back to the joke about the the like the restaurant on the moon, right? If you haven't heard that joke, you go back to the episode. I don't even recall, but it's it's good as well. But but uh but uh honestly I think um talking about ROI events or our event ROI, um everyone talks about it and almost no one uh measures probably because it's it's hard. So either we scan badges uh put it into pipeline or we give up and call it brand. And honestly, both are super lazy because that's not the the why we go to events, yeah. Uh it's a huge investment, so obviously we need to prove something back to the business.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yeah, um I think and you've been doing way more events than than we have. Yeah. Right? I mean, as in a in a proper way of doing events, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Absolutely, and we've been doing a lot of mistakes. Like we've been doing all the mistakes that I'm sitting here being wise and you shouldn't do that. But like we did all the mistakes of over investing, under accounting, and all these things. But I think the the main learning for me is that looking at events, it's because we we calculate the ROI wrong. Okay. Because we keep when we when it comes to um uh event ROI, we measure uh short-term attribution on a long-term uh influence channel. Okay, so events are not a short, like we think we let's go pick up all the leads, let's go do all these things, and then we measure our ROI based on that, which often becomes uh batch scans, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

And then so you've had a booth at Summit uh two last year.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

Yeah, we actually at Adobe Summit we had a lot of times and we had uh at a lot of different events, and and earlier years we did exactly that. So you were just standing there scanning. And looking at all the brands around us, doing exactly the same, and then it becomes about swag. I love swag. Swag is so important, but swag is not to get badge scans, but that's what we see at the events.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

I was just about to say the only reason I had my batch scanned at Summit two weeks ago was to get some swag.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

Exactly, but because you you get a cloth or a cool tote bag, you're not interested in buying the product.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Oh, I had an air purifier.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

But you're not interested in buying the product, you probably don't even recall what they were selling you, right? No. And I think that's the challenge. And and and the impact becomes negative ROI at a higher scale because then we chase our own tails when we come back. So now we all also need to follow up on leads that are not interested and all these things. And we like honestly, when we when we followed this strategy, we came back with hundreds of leads.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

Conversions are extremely low. The conversions come from conversations.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

So like we've seen that we had to to pivot this. How do you look at this at the at a crease and and without the multimodal?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, so I mean, we're not doing we're not doing events in the same way as as you've been focusing on events, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:23

No.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Uh it's not that we don't do events, but but we we tag along when Adobe is doing an event, right? So we're having analytics and advertisers, and we've been invited to do a hands-on lab there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um we still we we still collect leads from those events, but I should say the the most valuable leads are the ones where we're actually having a conversation. Um, they also honestly don't convert very well very well. No. So our main focus on those events is actually to be top of mind for people, right? Well, what we see from a consulting perspective is that you're not gonna be replacing your existing consulting partner unless they really screw up.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

No.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

As in as in big time screw up, right? Yeah, yeah. You can make mistakes and but it's it doesn't mean that you're gonna be replaced, right? And then the other big reason for changing your implementation partner or considering changing your or adding an implementation partner is when you are buying a new license for Adobe. Yeah. Right. And in those two scenarios is when we want to be top of mind. Exactly. Because when people are going to an event, they're not there to replace their implementation partner or not just implementation, but but consulting partner, right? Um and there really needs to be a really good reason if if they want to do that, right? So main purpose for us is making sure that they are aware of who are crees and understand that we are a specialist consultancy only doing Adobe. Yeah, and hopefully when it's relevant, they will reach out.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Yeah, exactly. And that that's also what we see. Uh it's not about counting scans, it's about qualifying presence. Uh and I mean, like if they're not there to look for a new partner, but some are in the situation where they are looking for a new partner. Yeah. So it becomes a split role where we need to be top of mind, but we also need to make sure that those conversations that actually has quality and has uh not quality, that's the wrong term, but has like follow-ups, next steps that we use our time doing that, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Um are you familiar with the day one list concept? Day one list? Day one list. No. So it it might be one of the big BCG or McKinsey or or I can't remember whether it was LinkedIn who who came up with the concept. But yeah, the idea is that you if somebody asks you about a service, you can think of maybe three for that specific service. And even if I add two or three more to your list, then I think it's 80-85% of people will still pick one of the services or vendors that they had on their own list. Yeah. Right? So our focus is being on the day one list. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um and then at the same time, there's also this concept that only 5% of your total target group is in the market for your service right now. Yes. And I think if you go to an event and you get 300 leads, and the majority of them is uh looking for swag, you know, it's you're gonna be lucky if you're gonna be hitting those five percent.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

Exactly. And that that that calls for like cool handouts and all these things that we're not counting. Yeah, but I think that there's a enough reason that we need to be top of mind. I fully agree with that. But when we talk about ROI, it's about those five percent. Yeah, it's about how do we get a conversation with those five percent. And I think like the first thing rule for us is that events are uh pipeline attribution. Like we need to just attribute the conversation and the things that we did on this event. The ROI lies in the follow-up. So out of those that we have conversations with, and we do like we know we're gonna have a lot of conversations that are not relevant now, but that's top of mind. But the 5% that's in the market for that, the follow-up is crucial within 48 hours that we follow up, that we have these conversations, yeah, because that's where we both can attribute it back to the event conversation, and we know all sales efforts, all marketing efforts, like there will be touches upon every deal, everything we do from event ROI from multiple sites and multiple attributions. So just getting that conversation marked in and having the ability to follow up on what's relevant, not following up on everyone, because we all die after events with the like follow-ups that no one needs, right? Yeah, so it's a conversation, and staring, picking up the phone. Hey, we had this company, where are you at? Like instead of thinking that marketing is the one too many, because in these cases it's the 5% that needs that that attention in. So that that's what we see. The pre uh sorry, post-event follow-ups is where the RI is, not in the event. Um and to be honest, I think this opens the next level of this. Um, you could say where the adults step in, which is expectation handling. Yeah, how do we do upper management? Uh ensure that expectations are set around this, because they would they will want to see what we have of data that that backs this.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah. And and oftentimes the KPI being reported is the number of leads come coming in, right? The number of scans, the number of batches being scanned. It is. Right. Which is which just generates a horrible conversion rate further down the funnel, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:58

For me, that's the KPI for how much I'm gonna chase my tail when I come back.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:02

I want as high as a number as possible, but I know it's the conversations. So we started measuring differently. Started measuring the conversations, setting goals around the conversations that we need. If we have a booth, then obviously we want to want to do this thing. But I'm not interested in getting a lot of scans for handing out tote bags or cool stickers.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

No.

SPEAKER_03 10:21

I want people to have it, that's great. Yeah, but the conversation that we can actually follow up on, where we can show more, where we can share knowledge around these things, we want to track those. So having early, and this is is a no-no for for many, and it has been for me early on on as well. But having a pipeline stage that's quality uh opportunity identified. So we had this conversation, there might be something. Everything in this uh stage from an event needs to be followed up within 80-48 hours when we come back. We need to pick up the phone, we need to have these conversations. And if there's nothing there, that's okay. But that's where we're gonna get the ROI because honestly, we don't need more than a couple deals from an event, and then this more than justifies the cost of this. Yeah, so having the adult conversation with our management saying, hey, dear board, this is what you can expect. These you can see here, like top funnel things are the conversations that we have that we find relevant, where there's an interesting thing. Measure us on how we get these into become actual meetings, and then we can start talking about ROI, we can start talking about pipeline because most deals in B2B happens on a nine to twelve month scale. Yeah, so like in many cases, again, with the short-term measuring of a long-term attribution, we want it within the same year because when we close the year, it might be attributed back, but like we like it often events. Often, in my experience, comes down to like we should events this year should attribute next year, but often it doesn't. Most we speak to it doesn't do that, right? Um, and we've been we've been changing things. So, like, how can we get the data around this? Like uh track QR scans, all these things that actually creates interest for for many things have have been able that we can link the conversations that we have to these QR scans, to all these things, but not at scale, not for getting a cloth or a tote back, but but but with interest, we can we can we can track people's efforts in this. Because what we see, I actually wrote down three things here. Like events are pipeline acceleration channels, relationship uh density plays, and high cost, high impact touch points. And that's what I like all the leads that we get that really is this is like also customers bringing relevant conversations to the booth, having relevant conversations with a with a timeline, having someone who sees a tool that they want to implement. Um it's not a lead-jet machine, which is treated like in in most cases.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah. So uh how are you practically handling this, right? When when like when you have a booth, as an example, at Summit where you scan badges. So are you asking people to take notes on where there's the the good conversation so that you can you can mark them in your CRM? Or yeah, we did all this, but it didn't work. So you you did all of this and it the the scan the badges and taking notes and it didn't work.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

It's like honestly, it's the same like we do at Data Foundations in marketing. We can easily solve this with a spreadsheet, we can easily set it up, but it doesn't work because it's not complete, it's not validated, we don't have like the strategy needs for us need to pivot, and we did this. Um, so we have three things that we do to ensure our eye. It doesn't ensure the RI, but it ensures that we can measure the RI and we can focus our efforts around it. Um pre-event planning, yeah, very, very strict um structure around uh what are the target accounts that we want to talk to.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:59

Um we need to align sales and marketing on meetings so everyone understands that we back the same cases and we have the same follow-up because there's nothing worse than chasing meetings ahead of an event. Yeah, but being aware of who we need to talk to and being able to kind of show them that we're there and kind of have the topics in mind makes the conversations way easier. Yeah, it's not like hey, you saw this, but it's more like that we actually, as you say, top of mind when we have the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:27

So it's not top of mind for when the deal occurs, but it's top of mind for when we have these conversations, which makes it very easy to qualify or dequalify, to be honest. So you so you try and book meetings up front? Yeah, we tried, but again, we are chasing our tails. So we actually we're moving we we reach out, but we are trying way more to do a strategic marketing effort around it. Okay, so when we know who are going and what brands and who are interesting, who we actually can bring something to the table, yeah, then we can expose them to things in our marketing setup that makes this. We can connect with them and we can have the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

So, how does that how does that look in in reality? I mean, because uh we've been trying to book meetings up front as well, and even if we get some books in uh or some some meetings booked, typically there's uh more interesting stuff happening on the day, and then you get cancelled and other things are being prioritized, right?

SPEAKER_03 15:21

So I'm at this year, we did an event together, yeah, which were a big success because we changed the approach. Yeah. Previous years we've been inviting all our customers, and it has worked sometimes, but but like being a Nordic uh brand uh that is crucial to the setup, but but small, like we're never gonna compete against Adobe global team inviting our customers to an event or like all the massive brands that are there, even team events, because in in this day and age, like most teams are scattered across the world or in the US across states. So when they get together at an event, the evenings is a chance to get together and talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Yeah, so so what we did this year are just getting people together and making sure that they they could come, but it was not only customers, it were not only these uh leads, it was not only a conversation, but it was people who are interested in in the topics that we were about doing, and it's so much more interesting, and there's so much more to follow up afterwards because the conversations easily flow in the yeah. Uh so like the pre-event planning is super important to us. Now we went into the second, which is structured tracking. That's super important to us. Uh, consistent campaign tracking, so we actually know what works when we when we influence uh these things, and then CRM discipline, which I think is the main challenge because uh events often become marketing, but we are like every day track all your conversations that's relevant. Yeah, you have a thousand conversations, you don't, but the conversations that you have, there are a lot that's not relevant. Yeah, that's great. Connect with them on LinkedIn, like say hi, but be friendly, have the conversation. Don't think that it's it's ROI, or it's like take the conversations that actually has a relevant follow-up and get them into CRM. So we actually have a list that we know that we can follow up. That's crucial to sales teams and for marketing efforts to go into sales teams that we actually know this. Um, most teams like this, like and we did previously as well, but that's something that we really focused on for the event. Yeah. So when every day, like tomorrow, I don't recall what it what conversations I had yesterday. No, because it's such uh insane. Yeah, yeah, there's so many things happening, right? Yeah, yeah. Uh, and then the last thing is the post-event workflows, as I said, like that we have immediate follow-up sequences and personal follow-up sequences. These are conversations, these are like who do we get recommended to talk to, who uh did we talk to that we need to follow up, yeah. Uh, and clear ownership. Who owns the conversation and these things? Yeah. So now we're setting up uh goals for um now we're setting up goals for the conversations, we're setting goals up for the follow-ups and and how we move it, move it into pipeline, which has been a game changer for us. Okay. Are we still doing all the event things with with cool swag, with with uh noise, and with all yes, of course we are running clubs, whatever we get around it. But to be honest, in many cases when we start looking at that, and I'm absolutely not arguing against being a sponsor at an event because we are like tomorrow. We are going to to London to be a sponsor at an event. Yeah, I still see this working, but like when it comes to ROI and we have the ROI data, we can start to measure this up. Is it worth the cost of what we think we can generate from these things? Not from lead scans, but from these conversations from what we bring forward. And it's so much easier for me, to be honest, to to justify the events and to show the impact for both sales and marketing in this.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah, um, because I don't I was just about to say, I feel like conversations are easier in an informal surrounding than when you're uh standing in a booth, right? We've been doing a few events where we've been sponsoring for Adobe events, right? Uh huh. Um and there's been no one. Uh it's it's been local events, right? So it's not like a summit or anything like that, right? But for the local events, nobody is is coming over to a booth to unless they're recommended. Hey, we have this problem, or you should go talk to them, right? Um but but like the event we had in in Vegas, uh, I think it's probably the the best conversations that we've had with uh customers and and prospects in in a long time, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:46

We've never had so many relevant conversations coming back from an event that than we did at Adobe Subitition.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

Because we stopped selling. Yeah. To be honest.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

No one is interesting in interested in that. We're there to solve problems, we're there to talk about what can be done. Yeah. And to be honest, I don't think most companies have an RI problem around events. We have a data structure problem around it. And I know I'm talking about data structure always, but we do. And we did as well, because we were not able to to quantify uh qualify the right conversations from the rest, which means that we spent all our time following up on everyone, yeah, and we spend less time following up on those who actually had a conversation that that that made sense and value to them.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Yeah. So so, in other words, you've you've skipped all the uh scan badges and and getting 300 leads and trying to follow up on those, and focusing on conversations that's not about selling, taking note of those conversations and then following up on those post-event.

SPEAKER_03 20:55

Yeah. Yeah. People are not there to get sold to, right? No. They come to a booth because they're curious, yeah. They probably have something that resonates with them in a problem, or like, and to be honest, our our main conversations right now is marketing scrutiny because it most don't have the data foundation to do that. So when we ask them, like, before it's been like data governance, let's talk about data governance. No one wants to talk about data governance because it's like, yeah, it's so easy to de-prioritize. Yeah. When we talk about like how many spreadsheets do you use to track your marketing efforts? That's something that everyone does. Like, does it work? No. Do you have a challenge with marketing scrutiny right now? Yes, everyone does.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

Because we need to justify the justifying modern marketing is harder than ever because we are so used to optimizing in in channels and silos. Um, so that's a that's a good conversation, and to be honest, on us, it's it's a much more interesting conversation than having to pitch. Yeah, okay, give me the pitch on what Acutix does, and it's like the elevator pitch, and it's but it's great, but it's not. It's not the value, it's not like as marketers, that's not what we want, that's not what we're looking for. We have a problem that we're looking to solve, or we want to know what problem we should be aware of solving tomorrow. When we want AI, when we want all these things, what are the things that that others make others succeed in this?

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Um so what what are you changing for uh you're going you mentioned you're going to London tomorrow. Yeah. So what are you what are you doing for the event in London?

SPEAKER_03 22:27

The event uh we are uh well we say like when we have a booth, we want to be on on stage. Because so uh I have a presentation on stage which is absolutely not about acutex, but which is about how our customers are solving the data structure for AI for everything that they want to do marketing to prove the value. Because 80%, we did this episode, 80% of CEOs doesn't trust um marketing to do objective commercial thinking. So showing the frameworks that our customers are using to solve this, not like teach you, t shoe, ts you, come get it, you need to sign up. No, yeah, here it is. Yeah, we're gonna give you it on stage and show you that. Then we have the booth, we're gonna like we've been doing a lot of swag, and I've a lot of good swag. So we have a lot of good swag uh that we're gonna bring um so so people get that, but to have the conversations. They can have the swag, they can do all these things. Yeah, but as soon as we have the conversations, it's gonna be registered. Yeah, so we're gonna note it down and we're gonna talk about the follow-up. Like, how can we what can we how can we get you on with this? Yeah, and in many cases it's having a strategic marketing conversation. The next step is like let's qualify this technically, let's look at the nitty-gritty, what it takes to do these things as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

So, have you stopped scanning badges?

SPEAKER_03 23:43

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

So that's that's not a focus anymore.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

No, no, it's it's distortion, yeah. It takes up all our time. We're not the biggest team in the world. So, like, I want us to follow up on the things that that makes sense. Yeah, we'll scan the badges, that makes sense, but not in an event lead scanner that will go into a spreadsheet that will no no no, we'll get it directly into CRM. So now we did all the pre-event uh warm-up and all these things. Now we're gonna register all the conversations that we can follow up on that makes sense and where there's a mutual consent that this is what's what's gonna happen. And as I mentioned, we just did this in in Las Vegas. Now, lead list had never been more relevant and longer than it is today.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Yeah, the amount of scan leads, I guess it's it's shorter, but it's uh uh way higher quality of leads, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:33

It's way shorter, it has an actual conversation around everything that's going on. Yeah, that has a next step that now needs to many of them are actually already meetings, yeah, but but that the rest needs to be meetings, and then we're building a pipeline. Yeah, nice. So um, so I like that, and I like that approach, and that's how I would like to be approached myself. Yeah, and I'm only saying it because we've been doing the other thing for way too long.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah, I mean, so uh I love good I love swag in general, right? So I'm I'm I'm I'm the one who buys an extra suitcase for the swag. Um and I only have my my badge scanned in order to get this way, right? Uh the crazy thing is, like, was it last year? I actually approached the booth because I was interested in their service and they didn't want it to talk to me. Right. So um, which which I find mind-blowing because I was standing and I was asking questions that was really really relevant, and it was not to fake an interest to get the swag or anything like that. They know your needs better than you do. Right. So um, and and eventually I just I just I just gave up because I I couldn't get I couldn't get a conversation started that I actually needed, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:52

Yeah, that's absolutely insane. Um and an investment that we've been doing over the past uh few years uh has been uh glowing glasses. So we have LED glasses, and what we see like it's great, you can hand out a thousand at the booth because people like swag that people want to bring back to their kids is good swag. Like I can just like that that will create a tension.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Yeah, uh that's a that's a that's a fantastic tip. Swag that people want to bring home for the children. I've never thought of that, but uh that's what I do as well. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

That's what you do.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

There was a baseball in Vegas, you could get uh laser, you know, put your name on for a laser, and I I brought one for each of my boys with their name on, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

I had a picture taken with the Premier League trophy for my son.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

Who's a big Arsenal fan? He was like, uh, should I bring this back to North London? He was like, Yes, please. But that's that's the case. Yeah. Um, but with these glasses, we we brought them and we handed it out at the booth and we scanned a lot of people. So after a few years, what what we changed is that we printed actually a QR on the side. So if you're interested, where do these glasses come from? Well, then you'll go and then you can find more. But what we're seeing is that we started instead of handing them out during daytime, we brought them to the bash or to the son of event. Yeah, because then people will talk about them and they will come up to you, and they it creates attention in a completely different way, and they will still bring them back to their kids because they they want to do that. Um so what happened this year at Summit, which was the third or fourth fourth year that actually it was the third year because uh we found these glasses. Uh someone brought them for my 40th birthday, yeah. And we were just like, this is genius, because everyone was like, Wow, yeah. Um, but at the bash, we had a lot of of these things, and they um people started coming up to us. And what changed this year was like, hey, you're the uh cutex guys, they know because they blew glasses, like they know that the glasses is connected to us. Yeah, but what we haven't tried before is like people hoarding up around us. Like at some point we had 20-25 people standing around, like just give us the glasses, which was like insane. But because this is like again when we talk events and long term, yeah, this is the long-term effort that starts working. People want them not only because they want lighting glasses, but they actually wanted the conversations. So, what we had is like people, a lot of people coming up and saying, like, this is genius, this is, and it was not about the the glasses because we've had them, but but it's the setting that we brought them to life in. And we actually had more badge scan, what badge scans at that event that we had anywhere. Like pictures because people like we have this, but we need to talk about this, like this is actually um, and then at some point, obviously, we need to say, hey, why should we give you this because they went so fast, yeah? But but uh like we booked a lot of meetings that night from from from that effort, so just flipping it, I think sometimes, and then it's about the follow-up again, right? Because event RI is from setting the strategy as we talked about and doing the proper follow-up. Uh, and now we have something to talk about. Uh, did we hand out glasses that were only people who wanted glasses? Yes, of course we did. Yeah, but we but we suddenly have a few fixed points in our data, in our conversations, in the CRM and in how we track and engage, where we're both top of mind and we can measure this ROI. Yeah, so I recommend everyone like just trying to evaluate this. And I'm not I didn't wake up one morning. It's like it's we wasted a lot of time and money doing a lot of these things uh to get where we're at, and seen a lot of pressure on like how should what should we do it? Yeah, because I was one second away from investing in a booth like this year again, but decided to like oh let's let's stick with the strategy, let's try it. Um and then it becomes a conversation about like how expensive is it to get on stage and have a booth. Yeah, then I will start segmenting events because I know if we have a booth, we need to to bring like why we have a booth to the stage and talking about what you can get from thinking things a bit differently, yeah. And that's the problem with most events. That that's a different episode, but like it's too expensive, simply too expensive to go and and somebody has to fund uh fund the event, right? Yeah, man. I think that's fair, but it's too expensive not because of the price, but because of the switch or the the trait of having the booth. Yeah, the ROI is simply not good enough, and then we can talk about as brands, we need to do all these things, but I think as event uh planners and and setup, you have a responsibility in this. Like it's not only that you have an event that attracts a lot of people, that's the influencer thing, yeah, but you actually need to do something for the brands because many brands are not happy with the return they see from from the booth, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

So uh so with that of wrap-up. Yeah, sorry, sorry.

SPEAKER_03 30:53

It's a passionate topic. I love this topic.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Uh what would be if you were to summarize in um in three three bullet points?

SPEAKER_03 31:01

Yeah, have the dull conversation with with uh with where you need to justify this and say, hey, what are the expectations? This is a long-term investment, yeah, both over years, but also what we do here, and then the three steps. Make sure that that that you uh plan correctly, that we can actually uh engage the right people beforehand, not pre-booking meetings. If you can do that, great. By all means do that. Yeah, we are in B2B, we are having a hard time, like they're not there to have that meeting. So we can so what are you doing instead? Just exposing our brand and saying we are here and what we're doing. So connecting on LinkedIn from a sales point of view, from a marketing point of view, knowing which brands we want to engage with, and then exposing them to they've seen acute when we come up with the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:47

On events, that we make sure that we track all the data, so we get the right people in, and that we get the follow-ups and the knowledge that we need in our CRM and our marketing automation. And then lastly, follow up. That we follow up these things within 48 hours is the magic window for us. Obviously, something is gonna go slower, but that's that's our aim. Get them on the phone to different like these conversations that we're following up, it's not bad scans. So those three things have been a game changer for us. Game changer. I'd love to hear anyone out there like what you're doing, and if you see like think other things working, because I think this is a conversation that we should have.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Yeah. Last last question. When you follow up, do you pass it over to sales, or is it the person who's been having the conversation who actually uh follows up with the um like um sales have the conversations there?

SPEAKER_03 32:36

Okay so if there's someone outside sales, we we will follow it up like from sales. But I think it's it's super important when it's conversations that it's the person who had the conversations, a conversation that follows up. This is not a sales motion, this is just clarifying if we can help each other achieve what we are trying to do. Yeah, but at some point we need to take it out of marketing's hands and give it into sales hands. So, my interest is getting sales into the conversation as fast as possible. And this is an entirely different episode as well. But like, how do we sell? Yeah, like we're not pitching, we're not trying to get you to buy something, like yeah, challenge your sales and and and looking into like what what can we solve? What are the challenges that we see and how how can we support this? Cool.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Thanks, Caspar.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Um and then uh and and best of luck um in London for your uh next event. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 33:27

I I'm planning the space event, we should do that together.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Yeah, yeah, I'll bring the helium.