You know how the story starts. We went about planning B2BMX like most marketers — sitting around a meeting room table launching ideas off of each other. What impressive stats would adorn our booth graphic? What could we re-skin for our one-pager? How soon could we get our hands on the pre-reg list for our ‘book a meeting’ blast? How many emails were we going to send and how many pre-meetings could we book?
We’d come to the meeting armed with our checklist and found ourselves going through the motions. And then, in some super meta-B2B marketers marketing to B2B marketers existential moment, we asked ourselves, "what if we didn’t?"
Sheepishly, we all recounted past experiences of broad pre-show blasts failing to work, of phoned-in obligatory bag inserts and 12-hour booth days ending in lead scan counts as swollen as our feet.
We’re done with the drill of sending pre-event email blasts, printing out hundreds of disposable one-sheeters, spamming your inbox with SDR emails post-event. As account-based marketers, we had to do better. We questioned our each and every move and gleefully ripped up the checklist along the way. We decided to showcase just how ‘insame’ things really have gotten out there. Here’s how we did it.
Gearing up for B2BMX
We resisted the temptation of a standard pre-event blast and took down the landing page. We asked our SDRs to focus on personal outreach to high-fit, high-intent accounts only. We sheepishly hinted to our sales team that post-event, we’d be passing fewer leads; limiting ourselves to only those who had opted in to a follow up and we’re pretty sure someone shouted ‘hallelujah.’
We let ourselves take creative liberties in a way that caused an equal dose of fear and excitement, putting together a collection of booth goods that call attention to the tired muscle memory of marketers in automatic mode.
Not interested in trading the sanctity of your inbox (and a bit of your soul) for another piece of random swag? We know, and that’s why you’ll catch our team giving away something that addresses the proverbial elephant in the exhibit hall; the temptation we have to scan, swag, and feed lists to hungry SDRs. Our technology challenges B2B marketers to take a leap of faith — away from tired tactics that don’t work and instead focuses time, budget, and efforts.
While our event team was working to get the in-person experience just right, our digital team used RollWorks to score the attendee list and identify those companies who fit our ICP. Then they got working on warming up those high-fit event attendees where they spend most of their time: online.
Our goal? Hopefully create just a little brand awareness. For a media spend of less than $300, our ad campaign reached 85% of our targeted accounts pre-show in the week leading up to Scottsdale. What’s more, as we were looking to build awareness-only, we left out a CTA and found ourselves pleasantly surprised to see click-through rates double the industry standard. These were record stats that we ourselves didn’t expect, to the point of which we hadn’t created a unique landing page just for the theme. (Don’t worry, we acted quickly and got the world a better experience overnight.)
2 Days Before Show
On the eve of this year’s B2BMX, we are honestly feeling a bit scared of how our industry will react to taking on the checklist, but more so giddy with liberation.
Armed with the freedom of no pre-event mass email blasts, no more uninvited SDR outreach, no forests killed in the name of obligatory one-sheeters, and no more go-through-the-motions checklists, our team is rallied and ready to tell a different story this year.
Are you ready to break away from the insameity with us?
About the Author
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