Making User Events a Success
Can Yours Become an Industry Event?
No matter how many customers you have,
hosting a conference for the folks who pay your
bills is a great way to thank them, listen to them and
prime the sales pump for your next product.
The savviest vendors see value in these events
beyond the customer relationship. SAP, Oracle, RSA
and SalesForce.com host gatherings that are on the
calendar as industry events – where visionaries rub
elbows with practitioners and nascent trends make
headlines.
Making your user conference an industry event – the
place to see and be seen – takes a little more than
putting the CEO and CTO on the stage to talk to the
audience about company growth and feature
functionality. We’ve had relatively small clients
whose conferences became must-attend events – by
bringing in the right people, becoming known for
stimulating discussion and picking a great
location.
The key is to design an event that shows the world
the role you play in the big picture of the industry
and leaves attendees feeling like they are part of
something that’s driving a change.
Recognize customer excellence – loudly:
Create a competitive
award for customers – announce it 3-4 months
before the event, use 3rd parties as your judging
panel, tapping recognized names in the industry.
Your sales team can nominate their customers, but
the process should include official nominations and
should be open to anyone – even your competitors’
customers.
Show ’em your ecosystem: Get partners to
support the event. Give them an opportunity to
showcase their own wares and participate in the
conference agenda. You can reduce your costs by
asking them to become sponsors. They may ask you
to return the favor, but it’s likely that having access
to their prospects in an intimate setting will be
enough to convince them of the value.
Bring in a name that matters: Many of your
customers belong to professional associations that
offer training, certification and strategies for
advancing their careers. Invite an expert from their
field; they’ll appreciate hearing from someone who's
had similar experiences and made a name for
themselves. You win with this approach on multiple
fronts: You show customers their
personal success is important to you and speakers
can provide significant value at a surprisingly
affordable price. The speakers themselves will
surely remember you, and may discover new business
opportunities, as well.
Make noise – i.e. news: Holding real news
to issue daily from the conference creates
excitement and builds brand recognition for your
event.
Partnerships, deals, technology innovation, speaker
insight and survey data from the attendees about
their biggest challenges, opportunities and thoughts
on issues all feed the market’s craving for
information.
Invite influencers: Media and industry
analysts can boost your event’s standing in the
market – provided their experience is positive. It’s up
to you to manage their time on site. Match the
customers they talk to with their research agenda or
editorial mission, making sure those meetings deliver
the kind of stories and observations they need – and
put you in a favorable light. Assign a team member to
be at their beck and call, and make sure they have
time with your leadership team. Give them access to
customers, and some free reign – they’ll value it, and
ferret out stories that should benefit you as
well.
With a little extra effort, a customer or user
conference will deliver more bang for your buck.
You’ll build stronger relationships with customers,
close a few deals and at the same time, create a
brand that is synonymous with market vision and
leadership.
The Art of "Blog" Relations
When I started Spend Matters in 2004, few really
knew what to make of it. Media professionals in
procurement and supply chain read it after a while,
but few had any understanding about how to “pitch
a blogger.”
Now the value of blogs is apparent and
communicators are developing skills for pitching
bloggers to make the most of these channels. I
learned early in my career at FreeMarkets that
successful PR requires constant “feeding of the
beast.” It’s especially true for bloggers – who differ
from journalists in that they routinely crank out 2 to
4 pieces of content every day. This volume means
bloggers are constantly looking for information, and
PR practitioners who understand how to work with
them can become invaluable sources of
information.
It’s important to recognize other differences between
bloggers and journalists, and tailor your work with
them based on those variances.
When it comes to actual news, I’m probably pickier
than most journalists. The news needs to be a spot-
on fit for my audience or have significant
entertainment value. And I won’t necessarily cover it
as a reporter would. Bloggers have much more
latitude – and in fact, are expected to analyze, cast
doubt, and express opinions. Coverage may not
appear exactly as the client would like – I’ll often
take a pitch and spin it with an angle in mind, e.g.,
tying news to bigger themes I’m thinking about.
Like journalists, a good technology blogger wants to
talk with VPs or CEOs. But bloggers go deeper –
digging into products, strategy and vision, to better
understand what makes a company tick, and what
directions it might veer down the road. Bloggers will
track a company over the long-term – and often
have long memories. In this, bloggers are more like
industry analysts.
Like working with analysts, it’s essential to
understand where bloggers sit in the market before
engaging. Some are affiliated with vendors, either as
employees or investors, while others are industry
consultants. Knowing where they fit gives you a
good start on what they care about and how to
make the relationship successful.
When I was in analyst relations, pitching AMR,
Gartner and the like, I went into briefings with
specific research ideas, as well as a strong
perspective about where the market was heading. In
the blogging world, I find the best discussions and
briefings I have with vendors start in the same vein.
A high level of preparation, frequent dialogue and a
fire-hose approach to sharing information on the part
of communications professionals is invaluable to me
for comparing outside perspectives with my own.
The savviest PR people take this approach and let
the blogger decide which elements to take. And they
carefully manage client expectations about the role
and coverage from bloggers, as it’s highly unlikely the
concepts they pitch will appear in the way they’re
presented.
Jason Busch is the founder of the highly trafficked
blog: www.spendmatters.com. He is also Managing
Director and Founder of Azul Partners, a strategy and
marketing advisory firm that works with vendors and
service providers, large and small. He can be reached
at jbusch@azulpartners.com
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In Our Corner
"It’s refreshing to know that there are smart PR
professionals helping us meet our number one goal –
driving sales.”
—Tim Andreae
vp of business development
MCA Solutions
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