Event Marketer's Toolbox
Each episode, host Chris Dunn teams up with a leading event professional to explore the tools, tactics, and trends that drive real results.
Event Marketer’s Toolbox is the definitive playbook for corporate event professionals and trade show marketers.
From first-time marketers to seasoned planners, this show delivers practical solutions to make your events memorable and impactful.
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Event Marketer's Toolbox
EMT #32 with Bob Hanson and Nick Salvatoriello - The Mars and Venus of Events: Can In-Person & Virtual Get Along?
In the latest episode of Event Marketer’s Toolbox Live, Chris Dunn sits down with Bob Hanson and Nick Sal to discuss one of the most pressing challenges in the events industry: How can in-person and virtual events work together seamlessly?
For years, event professionals have treated in-person and virtual events as competitors. But the truth is—they can be powerful partners, amplifying each other’s strengths and driving greater ROI. In this episode, Bob and Nick share how to bridge the gap between these two event formats and maximize results.
🔹 Before the Event: Pre-show Promotion
Bob, Nick, and Chris kick things off by discussing how to engage your audience before the event even begins. Pre-show promotion is crucial to boosting attendance and building excitement. Virtual channels, like webinars and case studies, offer powerful ways to connect with your audience ahead of time.
As Bob highlights, “Pre-show promotion should be seen as an extension of your event, not just a promotional campaign.” Engaging with your audience early on sets the tone for the event, builds anticipation, and extends your reach.
🔹 During the Event: Creating Real Connections
Once your event kicks off, it’s time to make the most of both formats. Nick emphasizes the importance of integrating virtual components into live events to maintain engagement. Whether it’s live streaming keynotes, sharing behind-the-scenes content, or incorporating customer story videos, there are countless ways to bring virtual-first strategies into the mix.
Nick says, “Virtual events and in-person events should be partners, not competitors. Together, they can amplify the experience.”
Hybrid events not only broaden the reach but also enhance attendee engagement, making your event accessible to a larger audience while still offering an intimate, in-person experience.
🔹 After the Event: Maximizing Post-Event Impact
The conversation doesn’t stop once the event ends. Bob and Nick stress the importance of repurposing content for post-event engagement. From post-event webinars to roadshows and follow-up emails, keeping the conversation going after the event is essential for nurturing leads and driving conversions.
As Chris points out, “Repurposing content after the event is essential. Don't just create content for one moment—make it part of your ongoing marketing strategy.”
By extending the lifecycle of your event content, you can continue building relationships, driving sales, and ultimately maximizing ROI long after the event ends.
👉🏼 Join us for more insightful discussions like this by tuning into 'Event Marketer's Toolbox,' where industry leaders share the tools, tactics, and trends driving success in the event world.
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0:00:00
(Chris Dunn)
Hello, and welcome to the Event Marketers Toolbox. I am Chris Dunn. I'm joined by a couple of friends here that I'll introduce in a hot second. I'm with Blue Hive Exhibits, and we're super happy to have Bob Hanson and Nick Salvatoriello with us here. How did I do on that, Nick? Pretty good?
0:00:17
(Nick Sal)
Amazing.
0:00:18
(Chris Dunn)
Nailed it. Nailed it. I have spent a little time in Southern Italy, so. It shows. spent a little time in Southern Italy. So, you know, I met these two guys, actually, I met Bob in a community for B2B marketers called exit five. And Bob in turn met Nick. And now we all know each other. And we're doing this whole kind of community thing. We're pulling together, we got this live show going on. So go out there and, and find your community find your people. Here on the Event Marketers Toolbox, we're building a
0:00:46
(Chris Dunn)
community of like-minded event professionals who are here to share, get the word out. You know, we're, we're really excited about today because we're really taking the first kind of deep dive into virtual events. We haven't really talked about that. So I'm a trade show guy, right? We're all about face-to-face when all we had was virtual events back during the pandemic. Like that was just a scarring moment, but it turns out that I've been thinking about it wrong.
0:01:14
(Chris Dunn)
I've been thinking about these two things as like adversaries instead of, you know, things that can work together. So anyways, real quick,
0:01:22
(Bob Hanson)
Bob, tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, hi, I'm Bob Hanson. And I guess I go by marketer, I guess, if you had to define me. When I was the head of marketing for a startup, my boss said, you know, you're wired for marketing. So along the way, I worked at a couple of startups
0:01:41
(Bob Hanson)
and then in-house, and then along the way I kind of got into events and they really worked, got my start in seminars and then discovered webinars and virtual events along the way. So I've been doing that for my entire career
0:01:56
(Bob Hanson)
and work for both startups and enterprises now as a fractional marketer. So a couple of examples are building out demand gen and content and events for a startup kind of from scratch. And then one day a week working with enterprises,
0:02:14
(Bob Hanson)
past clients are Siemens Med and Trend Micro and Fidelity, but basically helping them do some of the things we're going to talk about today, which is building out sort of their virtual events track to support the rest of their events.
0:02:30
(Chris Dunn)
Nice. Fantastic. All right, Nick, how about you? That's a that's a pretty good.
0:02:35
(Nick Sal)
He's raised the bar fairly high. I know. No, it's been great to meet Bob and you, Chris, through through Exit 5, that B2B marketer community. And yeah, I'm Nick. It's great to be here. And for the last 20 years, I've been always very interested in events and gatherings and like broadcast style media and content ever since I was like a DJ and a radio host in
0:02:55
(Nick Sal)
college all the way through to working at HubSpot and being one of the founding members of HubSpot Academy. We did live certifications as well as a lot of like virtual on demand training and a ton of webinars and really started to fall into the the webinar on the event side of sales and marketing for for B2B. And like I said, worked at HubSpot, worked at Drift, worked for a number of their channel partners. And
0:03:17
(Nick Sal)
always I was I was running towards those opportunities where if someone needs to host or MC this customer town hall, this group promotion meeting, this better together story that we're doing with this other strategic partner, I'm usually the guy who's able to jump on. Let's get everybody rallied to tell a great story,
0:03:34
(Nick Sal)
to create a great experience, and to help people communicate effectively in a large like one to many medium, which can be quite daunting. And it's a little bit of a different skill set when you're presenting one to many from stage, along with all the technical aspects, which I know Bob is very passionate and proficient at. And that's why him and I have
0:03:53
(Nick Sal)
really enjoyed sort of like dividing and conquering around talking about those pieces.
0:03:57
(Chris Dunn)
Nice, nice. You know, I was once told that I had a great face for radio as well. It's just a throw that out there. So another fun fact about three of us, we're all Boston guys.
0:04:06
(Nick Sal)
How about that?
0:04:07
(Chris Dunn)
How about those Red Sox right now? Huh? They're on a winning streak for guys.
0:04:10
(Bob Hanson)
I have my Red Sox.
0:04:12
(Chris Dunn)
There we go. Get on the bandwagon, get off the bandwagon,
0:04:14
(Speaker 14)
get back on the bandwagon.
0:04:15
(Bob Hanson)
I'm on the bandwagon.
0:04:18
(Chris Dunn)
There you go. looked like we sucked, but then we actually won it. So, hey, this is a live show. Uh, we got Sarah weighing in from Asheville, North Carolina. Hey Sarah, how you doing? Um, anybody else who's out there, uh, feel free to not only drop a comment, let us know where you're at, but drop a question in there, you know, as we're going, um, we're going to be chopping it up. We're going to just be chatting and talking about kind of all these things connected to events, we're actually going to look at it like many of you event marketers do, pre-show, during show, post-show. We figured that actually makes sense based on you know
0:04:55
(Chris Dunn)
what most of our audience is doing out there and figuring out how do I get our arms around the event as a whole, right? It's not, it's not, the success certainly doesn't lie in any one of those right? It's not, it's not, the success certainly doesn't lie in any one of those segments. It's a combination of all three of them and all three need to be done well
0:05:10
(Chris Dunn)
in order to get this to play out. So before we get into the meat and potatoes of the conversation per se, let's talk about, or let's just real quick introduce our sponsors. I mentioned I work for Blue Hive. We are a custom exhibit company. We're located not only in the Boston area but also we have
0:05:29
(Chris Dunn)
another out west Las Vegas location. We handle all of our Vegas and West Coast work out there. So we're kind of in the hundred person size range. We're not too big, we're not too small. We like to say for you know a lot of brands that are out there you know we're bigger too small. We like to say for a lot of brands that are out there, we're bigger than that boutique agency down the street that maybe doesn't have the bandwidth.
0:05:50
(Chris Dunn)
And we're a lot smaller and more personal than some of the real big guys where you're just a number, right? So that's where we feel like Bluehive really fits well, where we're creative, where we have great customer service, we deliver on what we say we're creative, where, you know, we have great customer service, we deliver on what we say we're going to do. In
0:06:06
(Chris Dunn)
addition to that, we also work with a great group, an agency called Fist Bump. They're the ones who are actually producing this particular live event, and they turn it into a podcast. So these are folks that I got involved with a couple of years ago, Brandon Lee was the founder, he was great, he became a mentor. I kind of joined that group. He was helping me kind of just up-level my LinkedIn game.
0:06:30
(Chris Dunn)
And then, you know, he really started floating the idea of like, Chris, this whole idea of doing a show would be great for you guys. You'd be thought leaders in the industry. We produce a ton of really great content, be able to share it with people. So we kind of leaned into it and grateful for my organization
0:06:46
(Chris Dunn)
to agree to sign off and say, let's try this for a year. So we're at exit five. No, we're at episode 32, I believe it is. And it's going great. I'm having a ton of fun with it. So Nick, from your side, I kind of like the whole,
0:07:01
(Chris Dunn)
being that face and ambassador and hopefully-
0:07:04
(Nick Sal)
And you're a natural. I kind of like the whole, you know, being that, you know, face and ambassador and hopefully we're creating our, I got a great face for radio. So we got, we got a lot of great stuff to talk about here. And again, our topic for today and I'm, I'm like the live event guy, right? So I already kind of talked through that. But when I, when I kind of started chatting with Bob a year ago, he was sharing with me the ideas of, you know, how virtual and live events can kind of live cohesively and actually help each other. So we're gonna hop in here.
0:07:33
(Nick Sal)
We're gonna start again with kind of pre-show promotion, and I'm gonna kick this to Nick first, but Nick, talk a little bit about, you know, ways that you've seen kind of working this pre-show angle, I guess, with a lens on the digital side or on the virtual side. How have you seen that play out? Do you have any case studies, any thoughts? And then Bob, feel free to jump in when it makes sense. Yes. So thanks for
0:07:57
(Nick Sal)
that. And for everybody listening, like what we're talking about here is when we say pre-show, we mean that there's going to be an in- person event, a big conference, a big trade show, what are you going to do before that? And I think what Bob and I really passionate about is something that I read about in a book that maybe some of you folks have read the books called the art of gathering by Priya Parker. Excellent book about how to put together all sorts of high caliber gatherings of all kinds from dinner parties to ambassadors getting together and stuff like that. She's done it all. But one thing that a quote of hers that always stuck with me when I think about this aspect of what we can do pre show is the, the event experience starts for your target audience the moment they know that that event even exists. So a lot of times it's the communications that I have done or my clients have done back in the day were we're just like, come to the event, come to the event, come to the event, you know, we're gonna our booth is going to be here, are you going and you're only targeting the people who are gonna go? Because why would you target people who aren't going to go? As if we
0:08:51
(Nick Sal)
don't know for a fact that many people who can't make it to that event are, are they're going to be at the live show or not about what we're all about at that show. We probably know what that's going to be, where we're working with Blue Ivy, we're thinking about the theme and what's going to be the branding and what's going to be the big message that we're driving. What's the big CTA that we're putting in front of these people? Why don't we talk about that ahead of time, whoever is going to be involved with being on the show floor, whoever our subject matter experts are to be delivering those breakout
0:09:28
(Nick Sal)
sessions, or those keynote speeches, what have you, they're available before the event to write, they have a stake in making sure people hear about the fact they're going to be at that, that in person event, a live virtual show like this and get people fired up whether they're going to be there or not. So I think that's a big thing that Bob and I agree,
0:09:51
(Chris Dunn)
bar none is let's do a pre-show show. Yeah. Just to kind of add to that, like, I love the, the thought process and you're, you're a hundred percent right. Like there's only a certain amount of people that are going to go to that show, that, uh, that event, right. Because there's just, you know, the realities of life and there's so many, only so many spots in the room or whatever the case may be. So you have a total addressable market of however many, and we're just going to,
0:10:18
(Chris Dunn)
we're only going to talk to this many people who can actually make it, but it makes so much more sense, right? We're marketers first, we're event marketers, but we're marketers first. And let's talk to the entire addressable market. And like you said, kind of just this becomes a drip campaign. If you can't make it in person, why not, you know, let's hang out virtually. And one more bonus, let's go ahead and practice whatever the talk track is going to be, whatever that flow is going to be, that's going to be so critical to pull off with confidence at the live conference. Try that ahead of time. Yeah, excellent. We got some folks checking in
0:10:52
(Chris Dunn)
from Boston. We got Sean, we got Lana, Karen from Espohub. So we got a lot of good folks in the room here. Feel free to drop those questions in when they come up.
0:11:07
(Bob Hanson)
Bob, what do you want to add? Yeah, I think sometimes the, especially for event professionals, we get so busy trying to focus on just the event itself. But I think that's, I don't know what year that is, 1999. But I would say equal value of the event is the marketing that you're able to do around it, right? The fact that when you're there, socially, you're promoting the fact
0:11:32
(Bob Hanson)
that you're there. And then you're able to, I would say for a lot of big events, one of the things that I've done when I'm on the vendor side is, okay, well, let's try and capture the energy around this event, both before, during, and after. So we're going to tell the market why we're so excited about being there, and we're going to pump up that energy as well. So two specific ways of doing that that are relatively easy is you take something that you'll be sharing at the event,
0:12:02
(Bob Hanson)
like maybe you're launching a new product or there's a new study that's out, just to use those two examples, and give a preview of that, whether that's a video, whether that's a live stream, whether that's a webinar. And then I always think, you know, everybody wants to create short-form content, but the easiest way to create short-form content is to have longer-form content like this and then take the best bits out of it. So that gives you sort of a cadence and a thought that okay we're gonna promote the event around a full lifecycle and
0:12:33
(Bob Hanson)
then before the event we're also gonna give ammunition to let's say sales people are trying to invite prospects and customers to interact with you there versus the competition because let's face it typically at a bigger show all
0:12:44
(Speaker 15)
your competitors are there so you're fighting for attention so don't make the with you there versus the competition? Because let's face it, typically at a bigger show,
0:12:45
(Bob Hanson)
all your competitors are there. So you're fighting for attention. So don't make the mistake of just thinking, well, we'll just put up on LinkedIn that we're going to be there and at this booth. Well, that's sort of table stakes.
0:12:56
(Bob Hanson)
But beyond that, you know, what are all the exciting things that you're doing? And then even are there ways that, let's say there's a keynote at the event, or there's some certain themes that are happening, you know, tie in with those, or mention the fact that for hand-selected folks,
0:13:15
(Bob Hanson)
or you have limited spots at your dinner, your outing related to the event. So there's all sorts of cool things you can do, and you can be selective. But I think to your point, kind of starting with, okay, how are we gonna engage folks before the event,
0:13:31
(Bob Hanson)
and then carry that to engage them during the event.
0:13:35
(Nick Sal)
I'm glad you brought up sales too in your response, Bob, because I feel like that's often like a target audience in your pre-show marketing and messaging that often gets overlooked, like the sales team. how many times for those of us who have put on in person conferences and stuff, sales team is scrambling, you know, Oh, sorry, I can't even make it now because I didn't stay in the loop about the logistics and the travel and now I'm booked. So sometimes
0:13:56
(Nick Sal)
sales, they're not they're not helping invite, they don't really know what they're going to do when they get there. They're scrambling. So why not, when you're doing some of these drip campaigns that Bob's been talking about, make sure you point one of those at your reps to like, do you have some automated sequences and auto tasks for those reps to go? You've got 10 key accounts that we know are going, what are you going to do to make sure that they're going to miniature campaign and a little drip campaign for the sales reps, and especially have an enablement deck. I know you guys probably do this all the time and your clients, but like we should do a presentation to the sales team, and we got to
0:14:32
(Nick Sal)
pitch them on why they got to bring their best to promote this to the live conference, and why they need to be getting on brand on theme on message with us and doing their part. They can, they sometimes will be the biggest influencers is whether somebody is going to actually show up. And if we do this right, they'll come to that booth feeling like it's call number two
0:14:51
(Nick Sal)
it's meeting number two. They already saw us in the virtual event. They already heard from that rep. That rep has been chatting with them already. Why do we have to wait until the live conference additive messages and stuff like that to break through. Let's get them now with that message. I mean, talk about so what, what are we gonna do about that at the booth?
0:15:08
(Bob Hanson)
Yeah. Yeah, and I think Chris, you had a good point that in most of the markets that I've worked in, the majority of your target market is not actually at even like the one big conference of the year, right? So you can think about how do we let, I mean, in the United States, especially, you know, we have an event-driven culture. So leverage that and say, okay, how am I speaking to the folks
0:15:29
(Bob Hanson)
that aren't able to make it, right? And then before, during, and after the event. But that's a great strategy of, you know, engaging those folks as well and leveraging that big investment that you make and then in sort of easy ways. Yeah, absolutely.
0:15:46
(Chris Dunn)
Hey, thanks very much, Sarah Hamlin, weighing in from Hamlin Creative. Event content is branded content for the entire company. Right, put a little quotation around that. You know, and we're gonna hit this later, but, and I don't wanna spill the beans,
0:16:01
(Chris Dunn)
but when we think about what we're doing post-show or on event, we're going to talk about this, but we're going to create content that you can use post-show and then you can use it again to promote your next show. So there's this circle of life here that exists. And everything that you do as part of this giant investment
0:16:24
(Chris Dunn)
becomes this circle of life moment, which is great.
0:16:29
(Nick Sal)
Bob's a master at that. I hope he talks about that later.
0:16:31
(Chris Dunn)
Oh my God. What a great talking point. So let's pivot. We're here where we're kind of, we'll put a pin in the pre-show that all leads up to the event, right?
0:16:44
(Chris Dunn)
In my world, world it's a it's a it's typically a trade show we do corporate events as well but the word events is so broad and just by and large what I'm seeing just to take a pause on you know not even not even just you know trade show related but the word events I think again can mean so many things And what I'm seeing and reading and within my industry is that over the next several years, events are, people are doubling down on this idea, because
0:17:14
(Chris Dunn)
there's a lot of forces pushing on this. There's the, all the automation that just makes opening up your inbox, and listen, you know, looking at your phone, just ring off the hook. You know, that's an awful experience. We don't want that. Uh, all of the AI generated stuff, which in some cases, AI is, is fantastic. It's a wonderful for research and so forth, but people, lazy salespeople are just pushing out a bunch of junk with it, so we're getting
0:17:37
(Chris Dunn)
bombarded with all this stuff. We don't know if they're people are real. Is this a robot calling me? Is this a, you know, is this just an automated, you know, outreach that doesn't even have a human flavor to it? So I think the in-person piece is going to be super important. So again, kind of circling back to that theme of like, why, why do these two things need to be adversaries? Let's use them working together. So as I'm kind of, you know, quote, unquote, the trade show guy or the the in-person guy, you know, so we're on site, we're, we're, we're helping our clients and ourselves, we actually do a few shows ourselves, you know,
0:18:16
(Chris Dunn)
create a memorable experience on site. We, it used to be that, you know, 20 years ago, you could show up with a kick-ass booth, and that was your activation. Your booth was the wow factor. Wow, this is great! You got these big lights and all this graphics and moving, you know, imagery and so forth. Those are table stakes now. Like, you have to have a well-designed, well-thought-out, functional booth. But if you don't create some sort of activation or engagement that speaks to people within that space, then you're probably going to have people just walk on by, right? So No. 1, we've just discussed, and there's certainly, there's more things that we can kind of dive into. But on that preshow promotion, we're giving them not only the, the, the
0:18:59
(Chris Dunn)
information that we're going to be there, but the why, right? Why do you want to show up? Why do you care? And then when you get into that space, you know, our goal is to really kind of work as many senses as possible. Can we do, you know, obviously sight and sound, but can we do touch? Can we do olfactory, you know, create, you know, baking cookies in the background or that popcorn smell or something or some sort of, there's these wonderful aroma, you know, technology pieces that you can add all these things in. Because what we do know is that the more senses that are engaged in that space, the more memorable our experience will be, right. So when, when that attendee who's
0:19:37
(Chris Dunn)
going to 50 different exhibits during the day, we want them at the end of the day to remember us above everyone else, right, to be top of mind. But you guys have both kind of seen and experienced using this hybrid scenario, right? So how do we tie virtual into an actual on-site live experience? Kind of, Bob, I'll start with you. I started with Nick before. I'll start with you on this one what's what's on cover you know some some examples of things that you either seen or done or executed.
0:20:10
(Bob Hanson)
Right yeah it can be fairly simple but if you use like a medium like you know think of a linkedin live you do live from the trade show floor it doesn't have to be. I'm a massive video setup. I certainly would. Whatever video you're thinking of doing at your next show, I would probably just double that and get all sorts of video there. But think about, OK, so if we're live from the trade show floor again, also communicating with folks because at night, what are they doing or when they're on their phones? They might be on LinkedIn. So we're communicating with those folks there. But so you can do kind of a live from the trade show floor. And then you can do those asynchronous videos too. Sort of someone that I used to work with, Jeff Coveney of NAC.
0:20:56
(Bob Hanson)
He does these great, like every day he does a recap video of what was the big takeaways from day one. And basically, you know, his company, whatever company he's working for at the time, stands out within their peers, because both in terms of folks that are there or folks that aren't there,
0:21:16
(Bob Hanson)
they become the ones to say, well, here's the story that day from the show. So I would say those are two ways of doing it. And then the other thing is is as I would just repeat, you know Eventually, you know on the merger of like, you know radio and TV is sort of YouTube And so the more video that you can get in all forms, you know the more that you can use but it's great to have
0:21:39
(Bob Hanson)
Both either a simple live stream say here's something that's happening, and we grabbed somebody who's doing a breakout session that you might not have seen, or if you're not at the show, you didn't see it, here's what they talked about, or here are the big takeaways from the show in sort of a video format that you share,
0:21:57
(Bob Hanson)
recognizing that also you're marketing to folks in their phones, right? While they're even maybe, okay, which booth are they in? No, they're right over there, but I saw that on my phone, right? So as I used to say, with the webinar world,
0:22:12
(Bob Hanson)
I'm like, they're like, well, when people are watching live webinars, they have another screen going, I'm like, well, do you wanna be on the second screen or the first screen? Or do you want your competitors to be? So I think these are all opportunities and you can have fun with it, right? It can be different for each show or each company can do it a different way.
0:22:28
(Speaker 4)
All right.
0:22:29
(Chris Dunn)
We've got a question, Nick, before you jump in, just from Lana. How often would you do these video snippets and live streams? That's a great question, right? So it's not necessarily trying to do everything and become all things to all people, right? You got to maybe kind of pick and choose so that you can do each piece well, right? If you've hired a team, or if you got you've got your own video person, you know, on on site,
0:22:53
(Chris Dunn)
they can only do so much.
0:22:55
(Nick Sal)
Well, now you're asking the big questions, Lana. So thank you. On here is what a lot of times, right? Give us the exact formula. No, I know where you're coming from. But I think Bob's on to it, right? The intersection between digital and in person is through the camera. And you know, my best case studies as I was getting started with this type of stuff is anytime you can have a photographer or videographer with
0:23:20
(Nick Sal)
the lights on capturing anything about the intent about themselves. It's like a moth to flame. Anytime you've ever done headshots, there's a line around the corner. Customer stories booked up solid for the entire week. Everybody wants to be captured,
0:23:35
(Nick Sal)
profiled in a flattering way, right? So a lot of other people interested, I'd say this is an always on all day. As much as we can be capturing people, we could have a full schedule of 15 minute, I've seen this and done this 15 minute increments and stuff like that throughout the day, we're going to stack it, stack
0:23:50
(Nick Sal)
it up. And this is all getting chances to interact with your target audience, right. So under the guise of, and by and I like what Bob is saying about takeaways, I've done that, to be sure you must do that, as a minimum, say, here are our takeaways. But what I'd like to do this year with with my clients, and what I think you folks should do is get the attendees to get their takeaways, what was your takeaway on the street, you know, get those people featured in the content alongside us. And then also how often a tweak on how often do this is you could
0:24:20
(Nick Sal)
actually have a little miniature trade show within your trade show at your booth, you say at two o'clock, we're going to be interviewing somebody. Did we have to announce that? Do we have to have it be a two? No, but there's like stuff going on here at our little corner of the universe. We've got a schedule, there's stuff to see at one, we'll be
0:24:34
(Nick Sal)
interviewing this person, and two will be having thing is just you're just trying to draw attention. Video bring video and cameras bring lights, people are gathering around that people just tell me you walk by a place you see somebody with a microphone in their hand and lights beaming on them, you're stopping and wondering what the heck is going on, period. So to me, that is, let's start there. And then just invent stuff as for reasons why you want to constantly be capturing the
0:25:01
(Nick Sal)
thought leaders, the target audience and getting them talk about why they're so smart and why they're attending these different things and why this, this conference is so important to them. And like Bob said, then you can remix that atomize that into practically infinity. But the last point I'll make here is I really want to push people is like create moments for those multiple individuals to interact with each other under your auspices at your booth, they are in they're building something, they're solving a puzzle, they're having a trivia
0:25:28
(Nick Sal)
challenge. And that's the MC and me wants so badly for you to do that. So I can go Oh my gosh, here we go. Lana is now weigh in who can write the blog post fastest or who can solve this equation that who can match all the blocks or whatever it might be that's relevant to your brand or like what the theme is of the of the event itself, like get that going. And all we're trying
0:25:49
(Nick Sal)
to do is just capture eyeballs, we're trying to have those people have a great time, see that we're capable of producing that, that unity, that interest, and so on, to get other people to notice it. And even if they don't, we were filming and we're going to show off that we had a big production value thing that we're doing in our event. That's just my two cents, Bob. I don't know about
0:26:07
(Speaker 14)
you.
0:26:08
(Chris Dunn)
I mean, you're, so we've talked about this.
0:26:09
(Bob Hanson)
I think, you know, I think the, um, the broader point there is you can make, you know, B2B interesting because like to Chris's main point here, we're all like passionate about event marketing generally, right? So that might only appeal to a few thousand people in the country, right? But to those people, they're gonna be, well, this is the podcast for me or this, you know, so that the content.
0:26:32
(Bob Hanson)
So I would extend that to how you strategize on your live streams and video and that kind of thing. But I would generally start with just, my take on that question would be, if you're doing like a live stream or a live from, I would probably just start with one per day max,
0:26:49
(Bob Hanson)
or the first time you go to a show, just do one.
0:26:52
(Nick Sal)
You know, do it well, and you can always add later.
0:26:55
(Speaker 6)
It's like-
0:26:55
(Chris Dunn)
But you're capturing all that content. Right. And then, you know, and then you're able to, as both of you guys are saying, is to repurpose that. So one thing that we've talked about on the show in the past, with kind of with regards to capturing that content, and, and Team Hamlin certainly has banged the drum on this, is like, the most expensive video that you make is the first one. And then everything else after that, the dollar-cost averaging goes down dramatically, right? So if you're bringing in a team, then, you know, let's, let's, let's make the maximum out of that. But one other thing, so as, as
0:27:28
(Chris Dunn)
marketers who are managing budgets, you've got your event budget, you get your trade show budget, but then there's other buckets that live within the corporation, right, that you can potentially tap into, like, Hey, guys, we're going to go ahead and create all this content from this event. We can use it in so many different ways. Can it be a sales training? Can it be something that shows up, obviously, on social? Can it be something that turns into a blog article that lives on the website? So are there ways to maybe tap into those other budgets that
0:27:58
(Chris Dunn)
are surrounding just the event budget that you can leverage to, hey, I can get i can get double you know the um the the crew now i can get two camera guys instead of just one um you know to kind of leverage that so look around within your you know greater org and ask those questions let all those different groups sales and and the folks in charge of you know social and and ads and so forth let them all know what you're doing
0:28:25
(Chris Dunn)
and see if they've got available budget to kind of bolster yours so you can do an even better job.
0:28:30
(Nick Sal)
Such a great point.
0:28:32
(Bob Hanson)
Yeah, no, I would spin that around because most companies that I work with don't think of like sort of the cost of creating content or time. But if you have like a demo that you've spent a lot of time on, or a video, or if you have presentations like product
0:28:47
(Bob Hanson)
theaters, or breakout sessions that you're doing, that you spent a lot of time and effort to create this great presentation, well, don't just leave it for one time at the event. For example, some of the best virtual events that I've done with companies are, okay,
0:29:05
(Bob Hanson)
they did four or five presentations at a in-person conference, we take the best one. And within that month, we'd leverage the fact that it was at the event, the most popular one. And then we do, you know, a virtual event on it. Sometimes we'll get more people to see,
0:29:18
(Bob Hanson)
even within that, you know, within 30 days, we get more viewers or people to attend based on the virtual content than we did at the event, which is pretty exciting, but you've already sunk cost in terms of creating that content. And I would say that's part of the repurposing that Nick alluded to, that we have 101 ways of doing that.
0:29:40
(Bob Hanson)
But that's an easy way of, if you already have this great content, well, don't just show it once at the show Yeah, you know because a lot of times at the shows you'll see these cool videos that people have done Well, you could make that part of your your virtual event It doesn't have to be the whole thing, but it can be or customer
0:29:57
(Bob Hanson)
You know presentations or case studies that are done there. You can also then Chris one, one thing I've seen, we've done it directly, is when you have an AV crew at your event recording something, then if it's more of a presentation format, like let's say you get three customers on a panel, panel sessions are awesome, both in person as well as virtually. And so you could take that video and just run that as a virtual event, that same video. And then, you know, hopefully you can get all the panels there and they do a Q and A, but sometimes it's, you take the panel
0:30:34
(Bob Hanson)
and you just leverage that video as a virtual event. So those, I would start to think about ways that you can repurpose and leverage the content that you're already creating in an event in other media.
0:30:46
(Nick Sal)
I really like the point if I may, Chris, like what you had brought up. And I think it all ties together. What Bob just finished saying is it's so important to get into like whatever quarterly cadence your marketing colleagues are having, our sales colleagues, because you can pick up those opportunities. Product marketing wants more customer stories. Sales needs more referenceable accounts or whatever. And then you can raise your hand saying, if I could get a film crew at the event, I can get you I'll I pledged an SLA of five customer stories I'll come back with, you know,
0:31:13
(Nick Sal)
I'll get three or four committed referenceable accounts from our target accounts that will be there or something like that. Oh, okay, well, what's that that going to take? Well, I need some budget, some of your budget there. And also another point that I I've just learned over the years from past sponsorships, I've been a part of with companies is, if you're really smart, get other companies to underwrite what you're doing. So if maybe the product marketing team isn't going to kick in budget internally, is there somebody else a strategic partner,
0:31:37
(Nick Sal)
something that integrates with what you do, or whatever, who to pay for the photo booth or underwrite the MC or the panel discussion you're going to do. I've paid for that, I've been paid for that. There's a trade show we tried to get in on, we were too late to get a good booth, but somebody else got it and we got in with their photo booth. So we sponsored the photo booth
0:31:56
(Nick Sal)
and I can meet all the prospects that were coming their way through that.
0:31:59
(Chris Dunn)
So there's a lot of ways to team up and rent, rent out your space or rent somebody else's piece. Right. Yeah, it's a good way to leverage that and extend and get help, you know, covering those costs. So get some great, great folks weighing in. So so Lana agrees content is king repurpose, you know, everything, every opportunity. You know,
0:32:18
(Speaker 10)
Sarah's
0:32:19
(Bob Hanson)
repurposing is queen. Yeah.
0:32:23
(Chris Dunn)
Nice. There you go. Sarah mentioned, you know, the stage is literally set like it, like it should be captured. So, so very true on that.
0:32:30
(Nick Sal)
One thing I. This is fantastic.
0:32:32
(Chris Dunn)
I, I just wanted to say before we go, so this is a really good segue and I'll screw it up by putting this piece in the middle. But the idea of, you know, you've created the content during the show, let's say it's a three or four day event, you've got opportunities every day, every night to promote that. Using the idea of using geofencing for anybody who's in
0:32:53
(Chris Dunn)
that three mile radius around the convention center and just make sure if you're going to do a little bit of a paid spend, you can hyper target everybody who's likely at the event. Again, they're going on their phones at lunch breaks, you know, after they're relaxing in their hotel room,
0:33:08
(Chris Dunn)
they're probably on Facebook or Instagram or, you know, or LinkedIn or whatever. So, so make sure you're showing up in those places. And again, you've just, your hard costs are sunk into the creation of the content that you're using anyways.
0:33:20
(Bob Hanson)
So why not get as much traction from it as possible? And Chris, you can do that. You know how there's usually that dead time between setup and actual people at your booth. So you can use that time to create that little video as part of your ad that you're talking about. Yeah, and that's not very it doesn't have to be very complicated. You can plan it ahead of time. But that's that's a great use of sort of time and being able to present something, oh, wait, they're here at the show already
0:33:46
(Bob Hanson)
and I'm seeing that. So that's a great idea.
0:33:50
(Speaker 6)
Yep.
0:33:50
(Chris Dunn)
And Lana mentioned that she's interviewed, you know, attendees and I've actually seen, you know, and we've kind of hit on that a little bit. I've seen clients of ours have had their customers come in and do the presentations as well, right? So you're involving everybody who's, you know, whether it's a, whether it's, it's
0:34:09
(Chris Dunn)
a customer or an attendee, like you involve them in the process and make them feel like they're at home, you know, in your space and you know, you're, you're racking up the points
0:34:18
(Nick Sal)
big time. Yeah. I'm getting fired up about that. Chris, like just work with like Bluehive or something, create like a real cozy little nook or something like that, you know, between two ferns style or something where people like make it even get Zach Galifianakis to come and
0:34:29
(Speaker 10)
join us.
0:34:29
(Nick Sal)
It feel special. And and to Lana's point, it's almost like which which is going to work better every time. This is why you want to have a digital capture or streaming component always, because they're either going to say, tell me what your problems are, or tell the audience at home who's listening, what your problems are, what the trends are like that. They're going to give a better, more forthcoming like answer there.
0:34:53
(Nick Sal)
Right. When they know they're presenting.
0:34:54
(Chris Dunn)
It's not going to come off as a salesy pitch.
0:34:56
(Speaker 13)
That's it.
0:34:57
(Nick Sal)
Right. That's pivot.
0:35:00
(Chris Dunn)
After the event. So we kind of, we hit the before. We hit the during. We can't just pat ourselves on the back and say we had a great show. We actually got to go follow up and sell some stuff. The company just dropped a quarter million dollars and we better make the ROI happen.
0:35:14
(Nick Sal)
But we're all so exhausted. We just pulled it off.
0:35:18
(Chris Dunn)
Sorry, the last night of the show, I went out and stayed out way too late at the bar. Now I'm completely in and unfunctional. So, but we gotta go home. We gotta go back to work. We gotta make the investment worthwhile. Nick, to you back on that end.
0:35:36
(Chris Dunn)
So after the event, we've done all the things, right? We promoted before the show, we've shown up, we've brought the crew in. At the very least, we've had somebody who owned the, the, the, the, the capture, even on an iPhone is better than nothing. Get your little DJR camera or whatever. You know, make sure and do that capture. Now we're, now we're post event. How does, how do virtual events, how does this digital aspect lend itself to helping us with the follow through? Yeah.
0:36:05
(Nick Sal)
Well, I was like joking, commiserating that this is the force you have to fight.
0:36:08
(Speaker 12)
Right.
0:36:08
(Nick Sal)
You're like, I think I just did my job, the event, the live conference is over. I'm exhausted. I'm hung over. Like what? There's more to be done. Like can't somebody else take over?
0:36:17
(Nick Sal)
But I've often said everything we just did there was to create the title wave. And now we are surfing at the top. We are at the top of the wave. We have to now surf it. Like everything we were doing is for this moment that Chris has just brought us to, which is we just knew where everybody was. They all just got the same message. They were in the same place. What do we do with that? And there are some standard things that I'm sure people who are listening would do. Yes, have drip campaigns and emails and so on. But I think there's some finesse that I've been studying and learning and trying in the last couple of years, which is, once again, you hear me talk about it, bring the attendees into it.
0:36:51
(Nick Sal)
So anybody you had met there or so on, yes, we are going to do our own show about recaps and we're going to do a a show in a couple of days or whatever. Do you want to chime in on a recap, or we're doing a recap post, and we met you, we thought you're what you were thinking was so interesting. Can we incorporate that? Can we make you famous? Can we build that into the video or the live webinar recap? We're going to do
0:37:18
(Nick Sal)
do you want to be on it with us, perhaps if you felt that would be appropriate, but try to bring in not just yourselves to do some sort of a recap thing, which I think is table stakes these days, but make sure you can bring in the actual attendees that you met as well as a nurturing strategy. Anytime I can co-create with somebody instead of trying to sell them is better.
0:37:36
(Chris Dunn)
Yeah, I love that. And I think that, you know, when you're as an exhib exhibitor we're on site we're having all these conversations there's there's certain ones that are going to stand out right because they're and maybe it's not that that what they said was a unique thought specifically but it summed up everything that you're hearing you know i talked to an awful lot of cmo's in your industry or whatever and by and large 60 of them across the board said kind of what you said, but you
0:38:05
(Chris Dunn)
said it better, right? Here's where we're having a problem. Here's where the pain points are. How can you guys, you know, help us through that? So I love the idea of bringing that, that customer or that, hopefully future customer, or that attendee back into and give them the voice. And that talk about making them feel special. But also, again, I think the ripple effect on that is that other potential clients look at them and go, they're just like us. Like, they're not trying to sell us stuff.
0:38:31
(Chris Dunn)
They're solving problems. I have those same problems.
0:38:34
(Nick Sal)
Yes, and I'll pile on a couple more thoughts that came to mind as you were saying that, Chris, before we tag Bob in here. But many of us have tried things, tactics and plays at these in-person conferences, such as there's gonna be a giveaway, or there's some sort of conference specific special discount or whatever.
0:38:51
(Nick Sal)
Oftentimes, it's like we're going to announce that at the end of this conference, which is when everybody's completely exhausted. Most people have flown home early and so on. Like, what does that do for us? Really? I think to talk about how we can make more of an experience out of what happens post and more of like an event
0:39:07
(Nick Sal)
about what happens post is to give away that announce the giveaway winners afterwards on an event itself. So now they're at their boot rewind their back of the booth, we're going to announce this a week after today on live in front of everybody, or we'll recognize you, you'll receive the benefit, or you'll get the thing or you get to talk or whatever the benefit is.
0:39:27
(Nick Sal)
And then also, that's a good excuse to tell people this is your last chance if you're at the trade show or we're offering this around the trade show to anybody, whether you're at the booth or not, if you're qualified, there's three days left to get and this is also a reason why we're telling you all it's so special. We're extending the discount. We normally never do this, but we're extending the discount to everybody. And we want to talk about that. And you want to pitch that a little bit on an event, like just all good excuse to have there be some timely gathering to recognize the winners to what make a final pitch for this great offer and open it up to everybody else who who saw you at the pre event, and they couldn't make it and they saw your live thing where they're there and they felt like they were included. Now you can even include them in the giveaway opportunity, the discount opportunity.
0:40:07
(Chris Dunn)
But that's, I wrap a show around that for sure. That's awesome. I love that. Bob, any, you want to, you want to kind of add to that or anything?
0:40:19
(Bob Hanson)
I would help put on the show. I just have the idea for the show. I don't know how I don't actually do the hard work. I just have other people. No, no. I would say, I think you, as much as I would say, there's, there's much more buildup to the show. And then you have to remember, there's kind of a half-life of interest after the show. So to know, this week, well, but next Thursday, that's when you're like, let's say a Virtual event is right. Okay, you give people a couple days to get back into the office and get back to work You're not gonna do it the Monday morning afterwards where they're just their hairs on fire for sure So so that would be the contextual like the example that I used with you, Chris, earlier was,
0:41:07
(Bob Hanson)
okay, so let's say you get a thousand names from the event, a hundred of them, you're like, okay, well, we're already engaged with those folks, prospects or customers, so those we give to sales. These 900 other folks, I don't know. So let's do like a mid funnel, some sort of virtual event
0:41:22
(Bob Hanson)
the week after and bring our like best speakers and best presentations that are already, we already just road tested them at the event. And then the other thing you can do is, and that event I would do exclusively for folks that were at the show, I wouldn't invite anybody else.
0:41:39
(Bob Hanson)
But within 30 days of the event, I would then take that same concept and ideally do something like a panel session with the best three presentations. And the next point, well, it could be one of them
0:41:50
(Bob Hanson)
could be a customer presentation. Another could be like an external thought leader, analyst, KOL, whatever, whoever the talking heads are in your industry, right? And then the other one might be like a product or service leader or your CEO, whatever.
0:42:06
(Bob Hanson)
So if you follow those couple steps, that's good, but recognize that, well, you know, if you're just sending that post-show email, like we visited our booth, are you interested in our product? And you're sending that for the next six weeks, that's probably not the best strategy.
0:42:22
(Speaker 7)
Yeah.
0:42:23
(Chris Dunn)
And I love, I love creating kind of that, you know, it's another touch point, another step in that drip campaign, kind of a ABM play, where we're reaching out to the folks who were there, so they're special,
0:42:36
(Chris Dunn)
and then we're taking that same content that we've already gotten basically and road tested, and then now we roll it out to the rest of the potential, you know, audience. And mentioned this earlier, right? The content that we've created at that show, we're going to use that to promote the next show, right? So there's, there's the kind of the tie-in that becomes that loop, I would say, you know, we work with a lot of different
0:42:59
(Chris Dunn)
exhibitors. Most of them have programs, right? They do a half dozen, a dozen shows a year, maybe more. So there's always something on the horizon and how do we take and leverage what we've just, you know, kind of captured and use that to kind of not only push interest and make the sales and generate revenue from that event,
0:43:18
(Chris Dunn)
but then promote the next thing.
0:43:21
(Bob Hanson)
Well, especially as in that kind of case, I imagine the shows aren't going to be in the same city.
0:43:25
(Speaker 11)
Right?
0:43:26
(Speaker 10)
Right.
0:43:26
(Bob Hanson)
So you can leverage the geography.
0:43:29
(Chris Dunn)
You were talking about slightly different audiences moving around, different geography.
0:43:32
(Bob Hanson)
We missed you in Atlanta, but I realize you're up in Seattle. We're going to be in Portland, Oregon in a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
0:43:39
(Speaker 7)
Yeah.
0:43:40
(Nick Sal)
Yeah, and I think this is something that like Bob and I have really bonded over as we've gotten to know each other and collaborated on some projects this year is that it's not well, I think what with him and I believe is that it's not just one show. It's a year long show. It's following the journey of this team of people at this organization as they go talk about it here on the internet and then they go to Chicago and they're talking to people in Chicago about it. Now they're back on the internet, and then they go to Chicago, and they're talking to people in Chicago about it. Now they're back on the internet talking about how Chicago went. And now we're going to Texas, and we're following
0:44:09
(Nick Sal)
them to Texas. Like, it's just a journey. And, and we're building a follow up. Yeah, like, why, why shouldn't we be thinking about the person we met in Chicago wanting to follow us to Texas mentally, at least, you know, following our drip of content, and how we took that same message and spun it a little bit or evolved it a little bit or weaved in the takeaways from the people in Austin and stuff like that. It's all one big machine. Hopefully, you feel that way.
0:44:35
(Chris Dunn)
ISKRA, the flywheel is creating the flywheel. Hey, before we, you know, fully wrap up, I was just looking at our at our notes here. One other thing that I wanted to mention, we kind of alluded to, like, you know, what is an event? Well, it's, it can be so many things. We've kind of been focusing on an in-person, you know, corporate event or a trade show, per se. But roadshow strategy, one other thing that's, you know, kind of dangling out there, is going out there and
0:44:59
(Bob Hanson)
You're speaking my language.
0:45:01
(Chris Dunn)
Michael events. I speak in my language. That's how it got started. That's right, okay. Got started in marketing. All right, so Bob, take it from there. Talk to us a little bit about that.
0:45:07
(Bob Hanson)
Okay, so an example, but leveraging off of your big, like one of your big conferences per year, a lot of times you'll do a dinner event where your CEO speaks or you bring in an outside speaker. So just imagine that, okay, so we got people flying into this one location, we did this dinner event.
0:45:25
(Bob Hanson)
Well, A, that could be then be a virtual event. Obviously you wanna promote the fact that there was this exclusive dinner event for 25 people on social and digital and everything,
0:45:35
(Speaker 9)
that's good.
0:45:36
(Bob Hanson)
But you can take that, if that works for you, you get a return on investment on that, you can take that on the road into different cities, whether it's paired with other conferences that are happening or separate. So in terms of these experiences, like what you were saying, Chris, it's like, well, the
0:45:55
(Bob Hanson)
in-person experience, because of all this AI and digital and social stuff, we're actually seeking more in-person experiences. So that's an opportunity that I see a lot of marketers talking about, but the ones that are actually executing on it are doing very well with those. And you could do six, eight of those a year,
0:46:14
(Bob Hanson)
strategic cities, if like, the UK is a big market, do once a year in London, that kind of thing. But again, I would, where content is king and repurposing is queen, that sort of intimate experience that you create, take that out as a roadshow
0:46:32
(Bob Hanson)
and also do that virtually if you can.
0:46:35
(Nick Sal)
Yeah, I think Bob nailed really the core of how to merge with an in-person roadshow. My just two cents, again, the MC in me is like, how can we make this feel like it's some sort of a competition? There's some sort of a, something that's building here.
0:46:53
(Nick Sal)
As we go from each city and we meet different people and we get them on panels, we get them to interact and win challenges, demo and try stuff out, show off, be a case study or whatever. How can we start to aggregate that so that we can build anticipation that as we get to the final city, or something like that, we're going to bring everybody back and virtually to talk
0:47:13
(Nick Sal)
about at the bare minimum, right? Let's say there's no contest at all, there's no final trophy at all. But there's simply the aggregate of all the takeaways from each city, you get a representative from maybe each geo or something comes into a panel at the end. But I what I'd like to encourage people to do, and why I started my own business here this year is just to take creative swings, the type of swings that I couldn't get the permission slip for at other companies. And they're just a little bit too too stayed
0:47:36
(Nick Sal)
into static. Let's let's make this into an award show. And we can recognize the people, the best people from Austin, the best people from Chicago, like we're talking about selling software and stuff like here, right guys, like a lot of these things, you can get these people to, to interact with and around your product around your company, your brand long after you've left that city. And that's all I'm saying is just bring them back at the end, builds my anticipation that at the end of
0:47:58
(Nick Sal)
all this roadshow, there's going to be a big wrap up, there's going to be a big reveal, a big recap, a big giveaway or something. Why not? It's it's leaving interest and opportunity on the table. Yeah, no, love that. And then you get the love the the idea of the cross pollination of, you know, of all the cities and kind of creating that aggregates like we learned a different little golden nugget in every one of those stops. So here we are on the last stop in New York, you know, or Boston, of course.
0:48:25
(Nick Sal)
You're always, you know, Boston should be the final destination. Boston. And that's where you, you know, that's where you wrap it all up and put a bow on it. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Fantastic. Well, guys, we are already at 48 minute mark here on the toolbox. We try to keep it something, you know, shy of an hour. So I'm going to start the wrap-up process here, but this has been a fantastic conversation for you folks who are maybe hearing this after the fact. We're going to be on all of your favorite podcast platforms, so Spotify and Apple and all that stuff.
0:48:59
(Nick Sal)
You can also catch us in video, three really handsome gentlemen. You know, you can see us here on LinkedIn or on YouTube as well. So lots of ways to kind of rewatch this. A lot of writer-downer moments, as it were, in here. So guys, I'm going to throw this out to both of you, one or two kind of key takeaways, whether we've already talked about it before and you want to recap it or something that
0:49:24
(Nick Sal)
we maybe didn't get to. But Nick, on your end, kind of leave us with one or two nuggets that people kind of put into action right away. Yeah. And great question, of course. And I've been thinking about this for several months, like what is my ethos as a person who's really a showman at heart, loves to rally that whole team, get everybody together, bring forces together across different cities and geos and stuff like that. That's my bag, what I love about these types of virtual events and shows that they
0:49:51
(Nick Sal)
make that possible. My charge to all of you, my key takeaway is if you want high performance, put on a performance. Get your, get your best presenters and communicators to stretch themselves, give them a little structure, a little enablement, a little empowerment to go for it. And you have to entertain if you want people to engage. Yes, you have to tell them the stats and the facts and the features and the benefits, but they're not going to listen to that if you don't give them a little bit of showmanship. There's some
0:50:16
(Nick Sal)
lights, there's some sounds and music we've been talking about at this whole hour. But make sure that you are putting on a performance, that's how you get high performance. You got to entertain people if you want to engage.
0:50:26
(Chris Dunn)
Jim Collison, Leading Innovation and Innovation Advisor, College of Business, Inc.: Nice. That's a, that's a great takeaway. And I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with that or the thought of it. So either you ask your, your leadership or someone within the org who's comfortable with it to stretch a little bit, or you bring in, maybe you bring in somebody from the outside to either coach you up or to do that, right?
0:50:45
(Speaker 6)
So it's something.
0:50:46
(Speaker 8)
Something to do that.
0:50:47
(Speaker 7)
It's a thought.
0:50:48
(Chris Dunn)
Something, okay. All right, Bob, how about you? What's your little, your golden nugget takeaway here for us?
0:50:56
(Bob Hanson)
Well, I'm happy that we didn't talk about AI much, which is good.
0:51:00
(Speaker 4)
Good for us. Yeah.
0:51:02
(Chris Dunn)
Okay, everybody else is talking about it. We're not talking about it. Right.
0:51:05
(Bob Hanson)
But I think the opportunity, and if you are a, where we kind of started the conversation was, if you're primary thinking of one media or one type of event, I would say, think of it more, you know,
0:51:21
(Bob Hanson)
as a wheel or one strategy and introduce each of these, whether it's like the next time you're doing an event, how do we incorporate in-person event, how do we incorporate virtual, and how do we incorporate video with that? And then on the flip side, when I
0:51:36
(Bob Hanson)
work with folks that are more just focused on, OK, we're in our virtual event silo, I'm like, OK, well, we just created this great video. Well, how are we repurposing that? I know there's going to be a show next week. Can we show this great customer story there? So think about how all these things can work together. And I would say folks that are spending a lot of time and effort to make the in-person experience
0:52:01
(Bob Hanson)
great, well, especially when Nick's talking about capture that energy, the insights, everything you get from there and try and take that into the video as well as digital event world. So if you start to think of these things as holistically versus sort of siloed, I think those organizations, teams, individuals are going to be, um, you know, more successful moving forward.
0:52:26
(Chris Dunn)
Amen. Nice, nice. You know, and I love this, the statement. I hadn't heard I've heard content as King. I hadn't had the, uh, the adjunct piece of, uh, of, of repurposing is, is queen. Um, and just one thing that I know we struggle with a little bit, we have these great mailers that we push out their physical pieces, their actual little tiny exhibit crates and we've been doing them for years so they're not new to us but for
0:52:51
(Chris Dunn)
someone who has not seen them, they are new to them. So as a marketer I think we get bored with our own activations or our campaigns fairly often we always want to be changing stuff up, but for those who haven't seen it, like it's new to them, right? So when we're repurposing, like, don't be afraid because we're constantly pushing it out, finding new audiences, finding different places that people just, or we, we also remember that it takes what, like 20 touch points now to get somebody to actually understand what we're saying or who we are. So, you know, that's, that's got to be part of that. And again, you know, if repurposing is queen, don't be afraid to, you know, take that content and use it in as many different ways as possible.
0:53:32
(Chris Dunn)
Jim Collison, Los Angeles, LA, RD Fantastic. for you. So Nick, how do people find you? Bob, how do people find you?
0:53:45
(Nick Sal)
Yes, I'm available on LinkedIn. I've been pushing myself to make sure I'm posting once a week. So you'll hopefully see me out there. Sometimes I try to do funny stuff, serious stuff on the road, like, you know, autobiographical stuff, but just trying to eat my own dog food sort of the front end content centric focus around events and show the way. So follow me on LinkedIn and hopefully you like what I put out.
0:54:09
(Bob Hanson)
Awesome. I would say LinkedIn as well. And then just to kind of close the loop there where we all met through Exit 5. Coming up, there's the big Exit 5 drive conference in Vermont.
0:54:21
(Bob Hanson)
So I'll be up there in September in the flesh, in real life, the virtual guide.
0:54:27
(Chris Dunn)
Yeah, IRL. All right. And we're doing an IRL get together here for all of you. Boston people will put something together. Well, hopefully we'll see you at the Red Sox
0:54:36
(Nick Sal)
parade, Chris. You're optimistic. There we go. Duck votes, baby. Bring them on. One final plug you just reminded me, Bob, was I'm speaking at inbound in September in San Francisco. So if anyone's in San Francisco who's going to inbound you want to meet up I'll also be there speaking.
0:54:50
(Speaker 7)
There you go.
0:54:51
(Chris Dunn)
All right. You're going back to your HubSpot roots.
0:54:53
(Nick Sal)
Have to.
0:54:54
(Speaker 5)
Love it over there.
0:54:55
(Speaker 6)
Awesome.
0:54:56
(Chris Dunn)
Guys, this has been tremendous. I really appreciate your time and all of the you know you guys brought your A game. We had some great stuff to talk about. We're just scratching the surface guys. So there's a lot more out there. If you get more questions, feel free to reach out to any and all of us. We'd, we'd love to help and answer more questions and so forth. So from the, from the toolbox, from the event marketers toolbox, thank you very much. Have a great rest of your day, rest of your week, rest of the weekend and enjoy. And we'll see you guys around. Keep on,
0:55:28
(Nick Sal)
and happy eventing everybody. Cheers. Take care. Cheers. Thank you.
0:55:30
(Speaker 5)
Bye. Bye.
0:55:30
(Speaker 4)
You too.
