B2B marketers have plenty of events to choose from throughout the year. Everywhere you look, it seems there is a new one popping up and someone is trying to convince you to attend or your organization to sponsor it. But not all events are created equal. Especially when it comes to the quality of content and the value of sponsorship. Some just reign supreme over others.
What makes an event worth attending? Lots of things including excellent content, top-notch speakers, a conference-friendly venue and high-quality attendees and sponsors. Good food, warm weather and cool activities are just icing on the event cake.
As we ease into 2018, take a look at why the first event you attend and sponsor of 2018 needs to be the B2B Marketing Exchange (#B2BMX). It’s never too late to be a part of something that will add value to your personal education and build pipeline for your organization.
Here are three reasons why marketers need to attend B2BMX:
Content — The best content is something that you learn from, that is relevant to your growth as a marketing professional and your organization. This year’s event offers some of the best marketers in the industry, including Rebecca Lieb, Ardath Albee, Jeff Marcoux, Matt Heinz and Brian Solis … the list goes on. There also analysts from SirusDecisions and practitioners from Facebook, Rockwell Automation, Fuze, Zift, Oracle and more to share best practices and insights into how they do what they do to drive revenue and build pipeline.
The speaker lineup delivers a combination of teachers and doers. This is important because a good mix offers different perspectives, ideas and opportunities to learn. The presenters for B2BMX may include a few favorites you already know and love, but also delivers a few new faces and names you might not be familiar with … yet.
This Forbes article on selecting event speakers highlights a few rules that all event organizers should consider. Will the speakers stay post-session and engage with attendees? They do at B2BMX. Will you hear content you won’t get elsewhere? Yes. These things matter a lot to attendees and sponsors. Event attendees want engagement with presenters aside from hearing a new presentation or idea. Teach us and get involved — that’s why we attend events in person versus reading about them online or watching a webinar.
Sponsors — The value of quality sponsors of an event cannot be understated. As attendees want to mix and mingle with experts in the field and learn how to maximize technology or new skills, the right sponsors meet that need.
Sponsors supporting B2BMX range from leading martech vendors such as Terminus, Uberflip, LookbookHQ and 6Sense, to analysts from SiriusDecsions and consultants and agencies like Quarry, DemandGen International and The Pedowitz Group.
Sponsoring B2BMX offers the opportunity to be fully immersed with your target audience for three days. You can have breakfast, lunch and dinner and then some with prospects, advocates, employees or partners.
Sponsors demand value from their event investment and ROI is essential. B2BMX is unique in that it allows key sponsors to invite their top prospects or customers to the event free of charge. Why? No, they don’t need your “list.” Your key prospects are the target audience for other sponsors, peers of attendees and they want their sponsors to be happy. A live event is all about personal interaction and inviting VIPs is a marketing and sales ABM dream come true.
Experience — The number of events for marketing and sales professionals in martech can be overwhelming. Of course, you can’t attend every event, so how do you choose which ones are worth your limited time and tight budget? Evaluate the experiences you will have at the event.
Just as we won’t even open a generic email without personalization, why would you attend a generic event? Many events have grown from mid-size events into uber events, taking over whole cities. They are so over-sold that you cannot get into sessions you need, no matter how fast you sprint from one side of the conference hall to the other. That’s not a personalized experience, nor is it a great learning or networking environment.
The experiences attendees and sponsors have at B2BMX are personal. Last year, the event held a fun run and yoga to get attendees moving in the mornings. There were breakfast sessions, expert one-on-one hours and multiple tracks to let attendees choose the most relevant content for their needs. Live music, outside lunches and activities in sunny Scottsdale in February help facilitate mixing and mingling — it works beautifully.
There was also a charitable component to the event where a percentage of ticket sales were donated to the Pajama Program. K9s for Warriors delivered a session that highlighted the quality of their marketing (Killer Content Award winner for the Cause Marketing category) and left the audience inspired and emotional about a heartwarming organization that is saving lives of our veterans and homeless canines. It was truly inspiring.
My call to action is not subtle. The first event of 2018 for any B2B marketing and sales professional needs to be B2BMX. If you haven’t signed up, do it today. Take your pick of tracks from ABM in Action Live!, Demand Gen Summit, Content2Conversion, Channel Marketing, Digital Strategy or Sales Impact Summit. There is also an invitation-only CMO Exchange to make sure your CMO is as engaged as the rest of the team.
Lastly, sponsors, it is not too late for you. You work hard to create compelling content for your programs in Demand Gen Report or ABM in Action and you clamor for coverage in the publications, too. Don’t miss the chance to sit next to your ideal customer at lunch or show them how to increase pipeline via your ABM solution at your booth. This event is a sponsor’s dream.
Don’t miss it because there won’t be another B2BMX until 2019 and your pipeline can’t wait that long.