"Events & Their Impact on Growing a Business:" The IMPACT Show Ep.15 [Show Notes]

No matter how advanced video chats get, in-person interaction cannot be matched. 

That's why live events are on top of the content marketing mountain. 

In this week's episode of The IMPACT Show, Bob and Nick discussed the latest INBOUND 2017 announcements, Facebook's release of Watch and four publishers who have jumped on board, and our big topic of the week, events and how they can have an impact on growing your business (including of course, some valuable lessons from #IMLive17.)

Just in case you missed us live (or if you want to relive the magic), you’ll find the episode’s show notes below as well as the recording.

Enjoy and make sure to share with your peers! 

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Have feedback or questions? We’d love to hear it. Comment on this blog or email us at show@impactplus.com

Digital Marketing News

Where each week, Bob and Nick share one thing from the world of digital marketing that caught their eye and found interesting to share.

INBOUND17 Updates

INBOUND is adding a second Spotlight stage and have announced the first 5 sessions from “inspiring business leaders:”

• Bozoma Saint John: Chief Brand Officer at Uber and former Head of Global Consumer Marketing at Apple Music

• Stewart Butterfield: CEO and co-founder of Slack and co-founder of Flickr
• Rand Fishkin: Wizard of Moz (aka Moz's founder and former CEO)
• Andrew McAfee: Principal Research Scientist at MIT and author of Machine | Platform | Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future
• Jeff Rosenblum: Author, documentary filmmaker, ad agency founder, and the co-writer and director of The Naked Brand. 

Author, Elizabeth Gilbert had to cancel her talk at INBOUND for personal reasons and they're working to secure a replacement, which they'll be announcing soon.

IMPACT will be there the entire week, and four of our team members are speaking:

• Bob: “Your employees need to see their future at (you company here)” - His 6th time speaking at INBOUND
• Nick: “HubSpot Reboot: 5 Secrets Successful Marketers Wish They Had Known the First Time Around”
• Liz Murphy: “How to Create a Content Style Guide for Your Business”
  
  • Which we also have an article about here!
• Carina Duffy: “10 Things We've Learned from Doing Over a Hundred Website Throwdowns”
  • Next Website Throwdown is Wednesday, August 30th
    • Don't forget to submit your website -- Deadline is Next Friday!
    • Guest: Chris Savage, CEO and Co-Founder, Wistia

Facebook Watch: New Platform For Shows On Facebook

• Watch is a platform for all creators and publishers to find an audience, build a community of passionate fans, and earn money for their work. 
• Here’s the official announcement from Facebook:
  • “We’ll be introducing Watch to a limited group of people in the US and plan to bring the experience to more people soon. Similarly, we’ll be opening up Shows to a limited group of creators and plan to roll out to all soon.”
• Publishers that have gotten on board:
  • Mashable
  • The Atlantic
  • Fort Worth Star
  • Quartz
• What we can take away
  • Syndication for content that already exists >> enhance it with audience interaction and the social graph
  • Facebook was willing to pay some publishers for quality content, HOW ABOUT YOU???  If you don’t value that content, will others?
  • Barrier to entry is very low. Every platform has something to offer as a value add, if they are creative, like Facebook did.
• Read more from Poynter

Main Topic: “Events & The Impact on Growing a Business”

Before we dig in, start thinking about how the things we’re talking apply to your company. If you have any challenges or questions that you want us to address, leave a comment or send us an email to show@impactplus.com. We’ll get to as many as we can either at the end of the show or during next week’s episode.

• Business is human and nothing replaces that human-to-human element.
• Benefits of in-person events for businesses:
  • A great way to warm up leads or sales advance someone closer to a sale
  • Prove your expertise and credibility
  • Build strong relationships
  • Connect with your market
  • Possibly even create a new revenue channel
  • Makes your team feel more connected to the company/audience
  • Also, provides development opportunities for your company
• The biggest challenge: finding “an attractive draw’ that would get people to disrupt what they would normally be doing (work, normal after work life, etc.), register, and attend your event.
  • What are some good draws?
    • Free food & drinks
    • Good entertainment or experience
    • Something that they would WANT to learn about (not just want you to want to teach them)
    • Speakers that would resonate with your target audience
    • Their friends are already going
    • Another tip here… consider it “invite-only”
  • Be creative and come up with something awesome
• Examples:
  • IMPACT Live
  • Sprout Social - A dinner with like-minded people as well as some speakers who spoke for about 15 minutes.
  • HUG Events (Great for any SaaS company)
  • Entrepreneur Meetup
  • Home contractor: Home Tour
  • Piggyback another event….
  • Find something relevant (like a Dave ramsey event coming to town) and plan a post-event dinner to debrief what prospects heard.
  • Minor League Baseball Game
• You can plan an event that’s large like IMPACT Live (which was a giant investment on our part) or something simpler like a meetup or dinner.
• Test your ideas before going all in:
  • Create a list of 5-10 people that represent your audience and ask them if your ideas are interesting to them and don’t stop until you get a lot of yes’s
  • “Remarkable offer”
  • This is inbound-y… creating something attractive that naturally attracts them
• Create 2 budgets: one that outlines the costs from the event (and possible revenue), and the second that includes what you would need to consider the event a success ($ post event).
• Pro tips for your first event:
  • Create a “level 10” experience…
  • Pitch… but keep the pitch short, clear, and concise
  • Expect to lose money at first
  • Invest in photography and videography… great tech/lighting if you can afford it
  • Consider tag-teaming the event to split the work/costs, lessen the risk, and gain a larger reach
  • Collect information before and get feedback after
• Promoting your event…. Should be easy if you created something truly remarkable.
  • Create that hit-list of who should go…
  • Start warm first, then broaden your reach
  • Send personal invitations (snail mail, hand-written would be awesome, personalized emails)
  • Share on social channels that matter
    • An example is In-Mail
  • Don’t be afraid to scrap it and start over if it’s not working… you can always try again

Next Steps:

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Join Us Next Week! Topic: Creating an Online Community Using Social Groups

We'll be back again next Thursday, August 24th at 1:00 PM ET. Want to get reminded? Drop us your name and email address below and we’ll make sure you’re notified before the broadcast every Thursday!