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S3 Ep06 Simplifying Event Management Through Innovation with Justin Givens
29 Plays2 months ago
In this episode of Dial It In, Trygve Olsen and Dave Meyer have a conversation with Justin Givens, the founder of SimpleEvents.io, about simplifying event management through integration with HubSpot. Justin shares insights on how his platform enhances efficiency, improves attendee engagement, and provides actionable insights. They discuss best practices for hosting successful events, essential tactics for virtual and in-person events, and the importance of follow-up processes. Additionally, they delve into the use of QR codes, micro steps, and audience engagement strategies to maximize the impact of events. This episode is packed with practical advice for businesses looking to optimize their event management strategies.
Contact Justin:
SimpleEvents.io
LinkedIn
…
Dial It In Podcast is where we gathered our favorite people together to share their advice on how to drive revenue, through storytelling and without the boring sales jargon. Our primary focus is marketing and sales for manufacturing and B2B service businesses, but we’ll cover topics across the entire spectrum of business. This isn’t a deep, naval-gazing show… we like to have lively chats that are fun, and full of useful insights. Brought to you by BizzyWeb.
Links:
Website: dialitinpodcast.com
BizzyWeb site: bizzyweb.com
Connect with Dave Meyer
Connect with Trygve Olsen
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Dial It In' podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with fascinating people about marketing, sales, process improvements, and tricks that they use to grow their businesses. Join me, Dave Meyer, and Trig Bielson of FizzyWeb as we bring you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations. Let's ring up another episode.
Meet Justin Givens of Simple Events
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome everybody to Dial It In. I am Dave Meyer and I'm joined with Trigvi Olson and we are super excited to have Justin Givens with us today. Justin is the founder and visionary behind simpleevents.io, a platform dedicated to simplifying event management through seamless integration with HubSpot. With extensive experience in automating and optimizing online events, Justin has helped countless businesses streamline their processes from registration to post-event analysis.
00:00:59
Speaker
His passion for innovation and customer-centric solutions drive SimpleEvents.io to deliver cutting-edge tools that maximize efficiency, enhance attendee engagement, and provide actionable insights. Justin is a recognized thought leader in the event management space, committed to transforming the way businesses host events online.
00:01:20
Speaker
I will also add that he is intensely patient with us because we are having one heck of a fun time getting the podcast set up today. I'm so excited to have you here, Justin, welcome. matt I appreciate it and thanks for the invite. This is so great for episode number 50 that we finally everything went wrong all at once.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yes, it's it's very fun. so Wow, Justin, but I got so excited i be about our sponsor. Yeah, we have a news we have we have a new sponsor for our our episode today.
Pumpkin Growers Sponsorship
00:01:51
Speaker
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00:02:12
Speaker
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00:03:02
Speaker
Oh my, that's beautiful. That's wonderful. We can squash our dreams. Oh, that's a good one. <unk> Yeah. I was just going to say, we just needed to make sure we're on the same vine today. Ooh, I like it. Exactly. This is ah a bad time of year for my son because my son's name is Linus. So everybody starts asking him about the great pumpkin and he just sort of rolls his eyes.
00:03:28
Speaker
That is bad. So Justin,
Challenges of Webinars and ROI
00:03:31
Speaker
thanks for coming. I think one of the things we wanted to talk to you about today is, you know, back in 2020, when the world fell down, everybody went digital and everybody started doing webinars. And I think the sort of universal arrangement was number one, is it's really hard to do a webinar.
00:03:48
Speaker
And number two, it's really hard to get any sort of ah ROI from it because it's really hard to capture all the details. And so you've created an amazing tool that can actually help people really realize an ah ROI from their online event management. I noticed you're wearing this shirt. Is that something you every day wear your shirt every day? Do you have just like a maximum?
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, so I have like three different simple event shirts for that reason, I just rotate them around. Okay. Perfect. perfect Yeah. We just launched a new app of of our own and i and that's one of the things that I think we're realizing, I have nearly enough black t-shirts. You need more t-shirts, okay? We do. All right. And some polos and some jackets. Yes. Yeah. And trucker hats and pens and and the whole
Understanding Simple Events
00:04:33
Speaker
thing. so but tell us what Tell us about simple events to start.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, so Simple Events is, I mean, I love the description y'all gave. it It is a tool to really simplify your event management process with HubSpot. So all we do is HubSpot with Simple Events. There's no other platform that the leads are going to come through the whole event registration process. And the idea is, yes, there's a lot of good event tools out there, but they actually require a lot of configuration, a lot of steps, a lot of sort of in and out just to get the event running.
00:05:07
Speaker
And then last thing you know is when you're running that of event, their branding is everywhere. Not yours, theirs. And so when the idea came to me about two years ago, the Lord was like, hey, you should build this platform. And I was like, I don't know if I should. And he's like, no, you should. So I was like, okay, let's do it. That's where Simple Events idea came from. It was literally an idea from God and it has blown up to be a worldwide platform. Now,
00:05:37
Speaker
I just want to make something clear for all the podcasters out there. This is not a video or audio platform. It doesn't do the streaming. It sits in front of any platform you want to run. I'm sure all those HubSpotters that are listening to this podcast, they've probably dealt with the Zoom integration or they dealt with maybe go to webinar, or go to a meeting. There's always this like, well, where's the registration going to live?
00:06:00
Speaker
And that's literally the first pain point I was trying to solve when we built Simple Events. It was, I want my landing page. We already have HubSpot. Why can I not do A-B testing on my own page? But all these event platforms, you can't do that. You just like put in a title or description, go, your event's live. And that's honestly where we started with Simple Events is to solve the simplest part.
00:06:23
Speaker
ah event registration. So it doesn't have to be some crazy complex um setup. It's hey, I've got my landing page, I know HubSpot, my team knows HubSpot. So let's run to the ground. I've started coining this little phrase, run your event within five minutes and start promoting it in the next five minutes. So you don't have to do this crazy setup because you know the tool.
00:06:43
Speaker
So I want to run you through a hypothetical event that actually happened to us at Busy Web. And then I want, let's talk through what are the things somebody would need to consider. So I've come to Dave because there's a band in the playing in the UK in six weeks that I really want to go see, but my wife won't let me unless I make it a work trip. So I've decided that I'm going to go speak in the UK and I'm going to put up an event to get people to do So I can then go see the band that I really want to see. but no We can do that, right? what do What do I need to think of? Yeah. So one, the setup, how are we going to take registration? Okay. So instead of going to a third-party platform, let's keep all those contacts in your HubSpot account, right? That's the goal, is keep all your data in HubSpot.
00:07:38
Speaker
So then you can use it for lists. You can use it for retargeting. You can use every other aspect that you have once you get the contact in. You can drive them into a sales pipeline. You can drive them into reporting. The idea is think about, okay, well, we need a landing page. Let's create a landing page for this event that Trigby is going to be talking about.
00:07:54
Speaker
All right, and we want to get people registered. We can do a free event. We can do a paid event. And that is the beauty of HubSpot and Simple Events is you can use HubSpot payments. All right, now, I know HubSpot payments is not in every country for all those international listeners. So if you've got Stripe connected, as long as that data is flowing into HubSpot, you can create the automation to push people into an event registration after a paid event. So the things you want to think about when you're before you're promoting is What do we want to promote on the landing page? How are we going to get them to register? So we need our event standup process. Then we can go into actually promoting it. Okay. I want to interrupt you here because it seems like a obvious question, but why do I need to know how many people are going to show up? Well, if your space is limited, right. The other question is too, is how many people are you actually going to be speaking to so you know what kind of team to bring with you? Right. Because Dave wants to hear the band too, last time I checked.
00:08:55
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, I need to have an understanding of who's coming, whether or not I'm charging them
Post-Event Engagement Strategies
00:09:02
Speaker
or not. What else do I need? Right. Well, so think about it from a sense of what do we want these people to do after you talk?
00:09:11
Speaker
When we get their contact information, do we want to send them a follow-up? Do we want to try to sell them services? ah guy So where a lot of events fail is it usually comes from top down, hey, we need to do more events, either it be virtual or it needs to be in person. The idea always comes from, hey, we need to do more events because we need to put ourselves as thought leaders so then people come to us.
00:09:35
Speaker
And because of these third-party platforms, they take so much effort just to get the event running, there's no follow through. By the time the event is done, the entire marketing team and the sales team is like, God, that was exhausting. That was so much work to do XYZ event, even if it's a webinar, because there's all this pre-work beforehand.
00:09:56
Speaker
but then no one ever follows up. And that's one thing that simple events solves for all of our simple eventers. I like that word. Simple event users is to say, look, just because you're promoting event, you've got to use these workflows to then do the after event process. And that's what we found. So my parent company image in a box ran probably thousands of webinars and in person events for our clients. And what we saw was that most people failed to follow up. Now we would put this process in for them.
00:10:26
Speaker
But the majority of people were like, yeah, we're good. They're going to come to us afterwards. I'm sure we've all seen the Field of Dreams movie. If we build it, there will come. That doesn't happen, right? Yes, you will get the stragglers who maybe have followed your brand for 16 years and want to actually bring you on board. But when you're thinking about is, hey, let me create this follow-up process to say, hey, this is how you can book a time with Trigby. You're ready to talk. Why don't you get a one-on-one to talk about your web project so they can help you out?
00:10:58
Speaker
You can do this in a rinse and repeatable fashion and guess what? Then sales can actually start flowing from all these events instead of just doing events to do events, right? And there's there there's always another side of that, right? That now that I have all these people signed up, I got to send them somewhere and they need to know and they need to be reminded of where they're going and what they're going to get for it because I do want people to show up. So is that something that I need to worry about?
00:11:27
Speaker
Well, yeah, half the battle is getting them registered. The other half is getting them to attend the event, no matter if it's virtual or in person. And that's where event follow-up processes, or sorry, event reminders for event marketing and all that. So one of the ah great features of Simple Events is that we create these emails that are automatically built into your up-to-up portal. So then you literally can just go in and do a quality assurance check or what some people call QA.
00:11:55
Speaker
Fix, add, do, launch, go. And you're done. And your workflows are all built there. And so then you can set up this whole workflow of saying, hey, the event's in five days, the event's in three days, the event's in two days. It's today, don't forget. And the reason being is, as we all know, life and technology happens, right Dave? Yeah, for sure. Oh my.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah. But so you need not to just take the reservation. I don't know if any of these people in this podcast, um listeners, love Seinfeld. I love Seinfeld. There's a Seinfeld bit that says, I can take the reservation, but are you holding that reservation? Holding the reservation. Holding and actually keeping that car, right? That's the whole point out of the reservation.
00:12:41
Speaker
Right. The last thing is you want an event and you've got a hundred people signed up to come and you do no marketing beforehand about the reminders, the confirmations and all that. And you go to run that, let's say virtual event and there's five people. The the moment the sales rep or whoever's running that webinar sees that difference, it's a mental shift.
00:13:06
Speaker
You worked so hard to get registrations. Why are they not showing up? And it's probably because you didn't remind them enough because folks, we all get busy. So don't just stop and assume, hey, it's on their calendar, they're gonna come. ah Remind them because they might not be looking at their calendar at that very moment right before, but they could be in the email.
00:13:27
Speaker
or in the beauty of HubSpot with all these integrations besides simple events, you could send SMS, you could send WhatsApp notifications, you could do all these other integrations to really make that experience top-notch. I'm gonna jump and swift shift gears from the virtual event and go to something that's really unique with simple events and the way we do check-ins.
00:13:52
Speaker
So the moment someone checks in, so let's say Trigby, me and you were running this event, Trigby's my sales rep, Dave's coming. He's a prospect and Dave in HubSpot is assigned to Trigby. So Trigby's the contact owner. We've got this large event, 3,000 people, but we've been doing an account-based marketing strategy outreach to get Dave's company, all right? So we're sitting there, we're at the check-in, I'm at the check-in booth, Trigby's in the showroom meeting, mingling,
00:14:20
Speaker
And then, boom, I scan David's QR code to check him into the event. At that moment, your workflow could then send, hey, account owner, Dave, who is an account-based marketing lead that we are talking, just checked in. ah So it sends a task and then they... No, it sends an in-app notification because we all have the HubSpot app, don't we? Yeah, of course. Right. So then Trigby's like, hey, cool. um Hey, I'll be right back. Goes to the front door. Dave, how are you, man? So good to see you. I didn't know you were going to be here so soon.
00:14:54
Speaker
we can create
Engaging Virtual Event Attendees
00:14:55
Speaker
that experience. Okay, so before, let's talk about a third party platform. We checked somebody at the front desk. It never pushes any information to HubSpot. All external event platforms then have to be exported and brought in saying they attended the event instead of real time notifications. So you can create that experience and even while I'm holding my phone,
00:15:20
Speaker
One of the cool things with the in-person QR code, anybody with a cell phone on our pro plan can check in the team. So you could have a team of 15 people checking in like a large event. So I scan Dave's QR code. I don't know Dave. I'm just one of the low interns for this event, right? one And it says, Oh, cool. You just chimed in, Dave, Dave, welcome to the event. This is where you need to go. This is where you can get your badge. And the next thing you know, Dave's like, they know me.
00:15:49
Speaker
I'm creating this extra experience that nobody else can do at this moment. and That's one of the key things that I've found in event management and certainly set up is that you you just talked about it a couple of minutes ago where we were, you know how do we get people to actually show up? right so I'd love to hear some of your best practices over the thousands of events that I'm sure you guys have managed, hoped with. How do you make sure that people actually do show up? like I know that we're going to automate and we're going to send a bunch of updates, but
00:16:23
Speaker
you know are Are there some gotchas or you are you going to like do teasers, alums, or how does that work? So let's maybe talk about it in terms of our, our process. So we've got a, Dave and I do a monthly webinar that we put on our calendar and then we put on our events calendar on our website. And then we also put it in a newsletter. And then once somebody signs up, I think they get three reminders. Hey, it's going to be in a week. Hey, it's going to be tomorrow. Hey, it's in an hour. Is that enough?
00:16:53
Speaker
Or is that too boring? So but one, that's your one hour delay is too far away from the event. Okay. Think about it. How much life can happen in one hour? yeah Your spouse texts you, a coworker walks into your office and is like, Hey, come here real quick.
00:17:13
Speaker
65 minutes later, they missed the email, right? So think about like, hey, we're going live in 10 minutes. Oh, get your coffee, get your notebook, go ahead and sign in. Okay, so we can think they can do something at that moment when that email comes in. The last thing you want to do is send an email an hour beforehand where they can't do anything yet.
00:17:36
Speaker
Okay, so think about your emails and your content to be action worthy. So your reminders, day three before, five days before, what we've seen work best is a three, one, zero. So zero on the day of the event, a couple hours, and then that 10 minute reminder, okay, right before it goes live. Three days before, but you're only sending it because you do the branching. If you use simple events, it does the branching for you.
00:18:03
Speaker
It branches it to say whenever they register. So if someone registers between that three and one, they would only get the one notification. So instead of blowing them up with a vertical workflow. Okay. And email confirmation. You always need a confirmation. Hey, we got you registered. We're so excited. Don't put any teaser content. The only thing you want them to do is the one call to action.
00:18:25
Speaker
which would be add this to your calendar, okay? Now, some event platforms will automatically push it into their calendar if they have like an Office 365 calendar or Google Workspace. A simple event is rolling that out here by the end of the year of 2024 whenever you listen to this podcast. But on the flip side, that's the only call to action. They don't need to try to join a calendar or a Zoom link or a GoToMeeting webinar. They don't need to know anything else. They just signed up, just give them the confirmation and let them add it to your calendar.
00:18:55
Speaker
Then three days before, tell them if you don't show, so flip the wording, if you don't show, you're not gonna get access to this, this, and this. So give people reasons to show up. Don't say everyone gets the recording. Only the people who attend actually get the recording. And what that does is say, well, I have to attend. I have to be listening so I can get X.
00:19:22
Speaker
The other thing too is you always want to have a offer for every webinar. What is the different why would I want to attend this webinar anyways? Now, they might just want to join and listen, but as we want to grow that market, so you'll have the ones who are brand loyal. Hey, I've got to listen to every monthly webinar that they do because they talk about really good stuff. The ones that are new, well, yeah, I know they're talking about it, but why should I join? So think about your content and your offer is like, hey, these are what you get out of it.
00:19:53
Speaker
Right, this is the take home. I'm gonna cover three different things, but you have to join the webinar to get it. I'm not gonna give them back to anybody else. This is the value benefit of your time. This is the translation of time to asset or time to offer, right? Then during that call, right, during the webinar, you throw up a QR code, you throw up something for them to perform that action, to get why, okay?
00:20:22
Speaker
Then what that does is train the person for the next event is I have to join. Look how awesome this resource was, right? Then you do the FOMO. For those who did not join, say, look, you missed out. Look at all this content, but you can't access it because you didn't join. Here's the next one to join live.
00:20:43
Speaker
Ooh, sneaking, I love that. So you want to give like, oh, I can't believe we talked about five different tips on why you need HubSpot CMS. Just throwing that out is like but an example. And they're going to be like, what were those five tips? Join the next one, because we're going to talk about this.
00:21:03
Speaker
right And it trains the person to say, oh my gosh, I can't miss these. So when I register, I need to actually make that a contentious effort to get into that event. right The idea too is you're providing those teasers along the way on those reminders and not just saying, hey, our event's in three days. Well, yay, I have a calendar invite for that. Ignore that email. But this is what you're gonna get if you attend.
00:21:31
Speaker
Okay, so take those emails, take those SMS messages to the next level. And honestly, if you're a B2B, ask for the mobile phone, get rid of the desk phone, ask for the mobile phone and text them. That's a great because last time I checked, this is easier in my pocket than my laptop.
00:21:55
Speaker
and essence But you really want to put more effort into the show up because you know your content's going to sell them, that it should be selling them, right? Because that's why we're doing these events in the first place to be thought leadership and to have an offer at the end of every event, right? So put more effort into pre-show with, don't forget about that post-show, okay?
00:22:20
Speaker
put the post show, keep it exclusive to those who attended. So then you start building this like, oh my gosh, I have to attend, right? Or you could have, you know, you could play some very fun games too of people who didn't attend. Hey, if you go run a post on LinkedIn tag, you know, BizWeb for example, we'll send you the PDF version, you know. Sure. To get them to do some social posts. Like I can't believe I missed it, I failed, but I'm gonna join the next one.
00:22:48
Speaker
Okay, cool, we'll send you. you know Have fun with your audience. Be human, right? And the other thing too is take that registration form and ask pertinent information. HubSpot's got a great persona property. I've seen a lot of companies not use that. So flesh out your personas, get that information in there, and then do some branching off of that. Because you know, hey, if they're a salesperson, they're gonna be thinking differently than a marketer.
00:23:15
Speaker
If they're a developer, they're gonna be thinking differently. Depending on your audience, so this is for everybody in the podcasting world, think more of what they want and what events are best for them, okay? Man, I love that. Question number two. There we go.
00:23:33
Speaker
So what it seems like a lot of this is sort of dependent on getting really good, give and get data, which is sort of an inbound philosophy type thing. Hey, if you come, I bet you're going to get this. If you just give me your contact information. So how much is too much to ask for in a form? what what's What would you recommend if somebody is setting up an ah and event? What's the sweet spot for asking for things?
00:23:59
Speaker
so Typically, do you really need their last name on the registration? No. Well, not in my case, but there's a lot of days running around. well Well, that's fine, but you're going to get his email address, so you could probably reverse engineer it anyways. Okay. Sure. so but I mean, do you type emails, Trigby?
00:24:18
Speaker
Dr. Dave, you know, like we're not writing to people's last names. we're We're more first name anyway. So drop the last name, keep it simple. Okay. And the reason, and I'll tell you why. So registration, what I typically like to do is first name, email, and a persona field.
00:24:35
Speaker
Okay, then if it's an in-person event, you can turn on our filter, or sorry, our feature called guest registration and allow it to bring in guests. So if you're doing like an in-person event, you could say I'm bringing plus two, cool. But so focusing more on getting that lead, don't make them think about everything you're asking for.
00:24:56
Speaker
and Okay, so if your event has dietary restrictions, well, you need to know that up front. Don't limit that. I would keep it to three or less. Okay, so two would be first name email, right? Then what a great way to engage your emails is in having an enrichment form.
00:25:18
Speaker
So the moment you redshirt, you're like, boom, I got your redshirt. And then three days before is like, hey, we want to make sure this is the best content that you get after the event. Tell us a little bit more about your needs or about you. Do you like Mexican food? Do you like, are you a developer, sells marketing, right?
00:25:36
Speaker
If they don't fill it out, that's okay because you can still pop up a poll in the webinar. Okay, so if we're using Zoom, for example, you could still get some additional information, but the goal is, hey, let me engage them along the way and do go back to that inbound philosophy, give and get. Hey, if you tell us a little bit more, we'll give you the past show PDF.
00:25:58
Speaker
right Something that's already done and your team doesn't have to go regenerate assets, it's more or less, hey, what do we already have that we could give away to get something today? So, you could ask these in a series of enrichment forms instead of one long form.
00:26:16
Speaker
i Baby steps, little bites, right assuming they're they're going to do it. and I suppose if you're automating, you can probably set that. If they haven't filled this out and they need it, you can ping them and remind them again. yep Or if you're using HelpSpot and the form hasn't been submitted in you know say 90 days, ask them to fill it out again after the next event registration. right Has it changed? Has your job title changed? right Don't ask job title.
00:26:42
Speaker
Don't ask your LinkedIn profile because if you think about it, anything that's gonna deter them from completing the form, what do we know off the top of our head? Name, emails, register, done, get it gone, right? Don't make the end user think or have an overwhelming. I'm gonna put a big asterisk on that because if your event is an in-person event and it requires these asterisks, put it on the form.
00:27:06
Speaker
Okay. So that's, that's the big difference there. And then don't, don't be scared to ask for post event data. Hey, how was, how was the event? Let us know. Rate it on a scale of one to five. Oh, and by the way, did you see the offer? Ask them something else to engage them. Cause no, I didn't see the offer, but you attended. Cool. Let me kick off an automated email. Okay.
00:27:32
Speaker
one of Yeah, but one of the things that drives me nuts is if I get that, you know, people always say, oh, you entered in to win a free iPad. Nobody ever wins the iPad. just If you offer something, make it publicly know. Have a social post after the winner's pick. Make the winner do the post yes that y'all can share and then you can Again, marketing teams would need content. So when the winner is picked and the winner posts it on social media, give that back to the marketing team to write an email to everybody who registered for the event, even if they attended or not, and say, look, Jane won.
00:28:11
Speaker
Show up to the next one because everyone you're entered in is, ah sorry, everyone you attend is an entry into the next quarter prize or something like that, right? Again, that's a given gift. You're giving up your time to maybe win an iPad.
00:28:25
Speaker
right Other things that typically irritates me with post-event surveys is it's not easy. If you send me something in an email, you ask me to fill out a survey, great. Don't make me go to a form. I have to add a bunch of information and then fill out my name and address and serial number again, because you already knew who I was, so and you already knew that much of the event, and now I'm going to tell you a second time and then I'm just gone.
00:28:50
Speaker
so Yeah, so one thing you can do with HubSpot, because as we know,
Feedback Collection and Improvement
00:28:55
Speaker
HubSpot can help track you and track the individual clicks, is when you're sending that survey form, you could hide fields. Hey, here's the email. We just want to know how the event was. Was it one to five? What what do you think we failed at? Happy face, sad face. Yeah, something simple, right? that The idea is you want to find the negative feedbacks, because what I will tell you in all the event processes, people who love the event, who got the most out of the event, won't fill the form out. Everyone who hated the event will fill it out and let you know. You can take that feedback and say, okay, what did we miss to mark on? How did we over promise and not deliver? How can we flip it for the next event to under promise and over deliver? Okay, so just things to think about.
00:29:47
Speaker
That survey might not be filled out by everyone, but you're probably going to get some good information of saying, hey, we could adjust to make this event even better. So just just the idea with your event processes is you should always be tweaking, modifying, and ah perfecting them. We can never get to perfection. That's something that's never going to happen in anybody's life. The idea is that you should always be striving forward to make an improvement from month to month in y'all's case, or whenever your events are. What can we do better? How can we make the engagement better? How can we bring more people in? And I will tell you the HubSpot Academy with Dan Tyre has driven an engagement
00:30:28
Speaker
I guess, methodology. Put it in the chat pane, right? As we all know, well, I'm sure we've all heard it. I know Tricky Beast probably said it more than all of us combined, but that thinking, hey, put in the right when you get into the Zoom, tell us where you're located from. All you're doing is getting that person to break concentration of everything else and focus on the event, okay? And I'm gonna give one tip for every virtual event you do. This is a great mindset trick.
00:30:58
Speaker
When you start your virtual event, which you want to tell anybody, and you can even do this with in-person event. It's a killer strategy. And I feel like I'm giving out the gold. So I'm going to pause. Drum roll. All right. When you get on stage, after you start talking,
00:31:17
Speaker
You wanna come out and say, or when you go live on the video, put all your pens and papers down, give me your full focus, because I'm gonna give you every single bit of these notes at the end of this presentation. Focus on what I'm talking about today, not trying to take notes, and you will learn more and you will have everything that I talk about at the end and how you can get those. At that moment, you've relaxed that user,
00:31:42
Speaker
they're gonna be more engaged with the session, they're gonna be chatting a lot more, and they're gonna want to complete that offer at the end. I like that. You actually teach at HubSpot Academy too, like I do. what what yeah What's your class? It's developer. It's the CRM customization with UI extensions. Wow. That's really hard. And quick side note, cause I, this happened to me this week cause I teach at HubSpot Academy too. I had somebody fall asleep in class first time ever. I've done a hundreds and hundreds of webinars and he was actively smart after he begets his microphone. You did not put it in the chat pane enough.
00:32:21
Speaker
i and I never had a problem. I am many things, but boring has never to the point of exhaust sleep oh ever been one of them. yeah it's but yeah how That's but always been weird. So I don't know how I would i would just probably stop and just say, Hey, Hey.
00:32:42
Speaker
We did that. Yeah. And then, you know, we put them on mute and then one of the teaching assistants was like, dude, are you okay? But yeah, but I think one of the things that I've learned from doing so many of those two is, is that I think a lot of people don't appreciate is that it's, it's genuinely a completely different presentation.
00:33:00
Speaker
doing something online. You're in the comfort of your own home. It's you and nobody else because I did that. And I've talked about that as on this pod when because I'm fairly accomplished public speaker like Dave is. When I started doing webinars, I was horrible because my whole shtick is call and response.
00:33:18
Speaker
And when I'm by myself and I'm doing call and response, it's an echo and I hear crickets. So, yeah we hope you and the other, the other thing, interesting thing that somebody told me is you can't, you can't have your screen stay static for more than 20 seconds. Cause then you're going to lose people.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah, right. Keep it moving. keep your Be animated as much as possible, even though you're not getting that feedback on the virtual side. Right. Well, this touches on a huge topic for everybody that's listening, I think, and that's what are the essential differences between delivering an in-person live conversation versus an online, and how do you maintain their focus if you are presenting on a Zoom um or some some other tool, right, to to keep people engaged. So I think one of the big things that you want to think about is your delivery, sort of what Trudy was just sort of highlighting at, because if you go in and say, I'm going to be a slide heavy talk, you're going to lose everybody. Okay, because they're just going to tune you out. And the other thing that is sort of, I guess, a COVID, post COVID world,
00:34:28
Speaker
they're gonna be distracted when it's a virtual event. So you've got to work really hard. Your slides have to be really good and say, and that engagement has to be in the chat pane with quizzes, with polls, whatever you can do to engage them, but not over-engage them. So don't run a poll every 10 seconds, right? right run, so this goes back to micro moments. So when I was talking about taking that registration form and you're like, ask for the bare minimum, then ask for enrichment data. What we want is micro steps. The goal is to get them registered, then we're going to get them to show up. But during that process, we might ask for micro information or micro steps, right? So we can enrich our HubSpot CRM.
00:35:13
Speaker
Because, so think about this, hey, they register, they come in, they're in a specific city and state. Because we have this information in HubSpot because of the IP information, we could then build a remarketing list to then attract more people in that same area to then draw them into an in-person event.
00:35:32
Speaker
in So take the data and expand the data how you can to make your event even more tailored, okay? Then when you're presenting on virtual, you really wanna say, okay, reduce the amount of text on the screen, speak more so you're animated and you're in front of them. And then two, don't just keep clicking, right? It's just click, click, click. you're Then it's just like a blur, right? So it it goes back to the value. so
00:36:04
Speaker
almost building that trust along the way. And one of the things I do in virtual events is like, why are you listening to Justin? Why is Justin even in front of you today? Well, because of X, Y, and Z. And you can actually do a little storytelling. Do y'all know a lot about the hero's journey by chance? Yes. Yeah. Love the hero's journey. And I feel like a lot of marketers and even salespeople don't embrace that hero's journey.
00:36:30
Speaker
When we come at people saying, you need me, you need me, we're yelling at them almost with the megaphone on the side of the road, right? When you do the hero's journey, just for everybody else, because Trigby and Dave know about it, but when you do it, you're the hero that the person who is struggling is coming to you for help. That's who we want to attract. But you have to set up the hero's journey by storytelling.
00:36:58
Speaker
but So when you go into your virtual events or even in-person events, give them a piece of who you are. Every training, every live event that I do, virtual or in-person, I say this is where Justin started.
00:37:13
Speaker
I was building a deck with my dad back in the 90s. I got my fingers on the computer. And what I'm doing is building this relationship of like Justin is a human. Justin's had a journey in this field. Justin's not a fly by night guy who just learned with chat GPT, right? You want to differentiate yourself and your business of saying, look, we have been doing this because we even failed.
00:37:37
Speaker
back years and this is how we evolve. When you open up yourself, you then reduce the barriers of people like, hey, I was the same way. I need you. Then you're the hero in their journey, right? So you always want to run your slides as the hero throughout other storytelling. So when I do topics, when I do webinars when I do anything like that. The goal is, here's the topic, this is why you want to do it. And then here's the heaver's journey in a micro format that we actually solve somebody with. Next topic, here's somebody else. And a lot of people are like, well isn't that just a testimony? Yes, but the testimony he ties right back to that event or that topic that you just talked about.
00:38:23
Speaker
where a lot of people fail in speaking is this here, here, here, here and there's no testimonies, there's no journeys or all the testimonies are grouped together and they're disconnected from the actual topic. So that's what I've seen personally work really well on that side.
00:38:40
Speaker
So adjusting it into a narrative, making sure that you're engaging them in a story, and keep coming back to that story without just dumping data on their lap. So tactically, yeah super super tactically for you, do you recommend like screen sharing and then turning off screen sharing like it so that people can view and interact with you, like having Q and&A sections where you just turn it off? That's kind of lame and boring to have that itty bitty little square of your face on a Zoom call.
00:39:09
Speaker
Yeah, and and always open up the Q and&A. One, you're gonna get inside their head, and and this is this this goes back to the full circle. Every time somebody asks a question, can we turn that into a blog post, a social post, a whole webinar, that question that comes into your event is gold. It is their words,
00:39:37
Speaker
Take it, use it, answer it, of course, but you're giving them a platform to ask and make it anonymous. Zoom can tell us who it is on the backend, but the idea is that other people back upvote it. Yes, that's me, that's me. And now you're getting an idea of, hey, maybe there's a gap in how we're speaking that we could adjust for the future.
00:39:57
Speaker
right? Or there's a whole new topic that we could actually start from for next month, right? Always provide the put it in the chat pane experience, but you're not sort of beating them over the head constantly.
00:40:12
Speaker
Sure. I like doing a poll at the beginning and that's it. And then I have Q and A open the whole time. So then all those questions are there and then I can answer those questions if I want to live. So then they know it's not a recording and I'm not just a robot here doing it.
00:40:29
Speaker
or two at the end, depending on those questions, if they're in scope or not. Okay. For sure. It kind of sounds like you want to have someone helping you, especially on these live, ah like digital events, because posting polls and stuff and doing all the tactical stuff on the on one end is probably kind of tough for one person that's also delivering and presenting content.
00:40:52
Speaker
Depends on the the person, because I usually do it all myself. I can tell you like stories, because I'm i'm a smart guy. And when I started doing webinars, Dave's like, okay, come into my office, it's great. Then here's, he's got like 14 screens, and you know, a picture of his boat. He's like, do this, this, ah this, and then this, this, this, and this, this, this. Like, you're good, right? Like, what? Okay. In the command center, go. And and then I'm surrounded by everything, like, uh,
00:41:24
Speaker
he Yeah, my first couple of weeks here were alert. Yeah. So, and that goes back to, are you easily distracted when you're running these events virtually? Also think about how you can engage an in-person audience. I love QR codes.
00:41:42
Speaker
Okay, so as you're running through slide decks, okay, don't just wait till the end of a QR code because people might leave early to go to another event if it's a big event like inbound, for example, okay? So think about your offers and how you could micro offer and say, hey, scan this code, or even if you've got a good text messaging platform, text 22278 and say slide one, and it would send them, hey, cool, tell me your name, your email, and we'll kick it over to you.
00:42:11
Speaker
right You could have that kind of simple automation there. um On the flip side, think about what you could offer during ongoing the presentation to engage that audience. okay So when you talk about, hey, here's three, five tips of what you should do in X.
00:42:29
Speaker
okay say two slides later after you go through the whole hero's journey and you give them the testimony of how you solve those problems, here's actually 15 other tips that we couldn't even talk about because of timing. So add this scarcity effect, download it now because this is the only time you're going to get it.
00:42:48
Speaker
scan that QR code, go. Micro event, then you're getting it during your event as well. QR codes are awesome for in virtual ah sorry for virtual events as well because everybody has their phone, they're probably on a network anyways doing something during your talk. But you could say, hey, pull up your phone, scan this QR code, you can download this content, do it quickly because I'm about to move. Add that urgency And what you'll see is everybody's phone come up if it's in person. Virtually, if you have cameras on, you'll see it as well, but you get the idea. You want to engage them, but again, this is during the event. Don't forget to engage them after the event, right? Send them the notes, send them the details, make sure that they attended in order to get that content. What do you think about, you know,
00:43:37
Speaker
share share this and we'll give you some sort of a spiff, right? So trying to enhance the virality of it. Do you have any tips on how to how to make people help you promote their own event? So you're going to get a lot of people not, right? Because it's like, well, I know what they're doing here, right? But you're going to get the few to do it, right? Tag us, tag me. Here's my tag on LinkedIn. Here's my tag on Twitter, TikTok, whatever you're on.
00:44:06
Speaker
What I would tell you, it depends 100% Dave on your audience. Is your audience really interactive because you're only promoting these events on LinkedIn? Well then yeah, ask them to promote it on LinkedIn, right? Think about contextually where the audience is and who
Platform Engagement Tips
00:44:22
Speaker
you're marketing to. So if it's a B2C, 100%, right? You need that viral. But in the B2B world, are you really going to get it?
00:44:31
Speaker
out of everybody, probably not. But what's the get or the give that you could give back to them for doing it, right? so And one of the great things you can do is if your sales team is really good, you could say, hey, we're going to offer up free 30-minute assessments on X. And the reason why you want to offer that if they post They are taking time to post. They want to give up even more of their time to talk to you. And at that moment, the cell's wall, the the defensive wall, is removed. Now they will actually talk a lot more because they're like, i've got okay, this is everything that's going wrong.
00:45:14
Speaker
And the salesperson should just sit there and listen. And then at the end, okay, would you like to get that fixed right now? So cool. Here's the contract. and Justin, thank you for all the time today and thanks for helping us understand a little bit more about online events. If somebody's interested in in taking Simple Events out for a test drive, where can they where can they find it online? So you can access Simple Events at simpleevents.io or you can find it in the HubSpot Marketplace. We are the number two event.
00:45:45
Speaker
platform in the marketplace under marketing tab events. After that, we have a free version. You can run unlimited events. There is some limitations on how many people you can check in, but you don't get access to the wonderful automation. Our pro plan is a month to month. There's no contracts. It's at this current moment of this recording, it's only $50 a month. Give it a spin because it will create Oh gosh, three, six, nine assets in less than five minutes for you to go launch and deploy in your HubSpot portal. It stayed like 10 hours right there. Wow. And it's not a simple workflow. It is a complex three different workflows, one for registered attended and no shows, three different marketing lists for the same style, two emails, and then a HubSpot form as well that you can customize and change. So there's no integration steps. Again, our goal is.
00:46:37
Speaker
If you go back into the WordPress days, five minute install, it's five minutes to getting your vet up and ready to start promoting it. Wow. Thank you, Justin. Yeah. Dave, ah classy and inspirational final thoughts.
00:46:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think my my key takeaway with Justin and you know thank you for sharing. It's clear why you guys are doing the events management space and why you're the number two, you should be the number one, you are in our hearts. But the biggest thing for me is the you can't just create an event and you know if you build it, they won't come. And if you do build it and don't follow up,
00:47:20
Speaker
they're ghosts and they're never coming back unless you engage them. I've got a handful of notes here that I'm going to take and that we're going to do differently in our presentations and our events. Thank you, Justin. It was amazing. All right. Well, thanks, Justin. Thanks, Dave. Thanks to the Pumpkin Growers Association of America. This has been another episode of Dial It In, produced by Andy Wachowski and Nicole Fairclough. With apologies to Tony Kornheiser,
00:47:48
Speaker
We will try and do better the next time.