Advertising Week: Was the Juice Worth the Squeeze?

January 16, 2020
Blog

Imagine this scenario, it’s early October and your CEO is in town after Advertising Week. He walks by your desk with a few burning questions in advance of next week’s board meeting.First: Productive Advertising Week for the team? Your answer: Of course, huge success! We saw Bob and Mary from X agency, our team was quite busy around town with our clients. Our sponsorship at that venue was worth every penny. Second: Great, so how did we justify the $30k investment? How many new deals came in from our events, and what metrics do we have to support this success?Your answer: Good questions. I’ll try to put together a spreadsheet for you, but I’m telling you it was a killer week. Really proud of the squad.Survey Says … X! Now you might be in a fiscal pickle.Advertising Week happens to be one small, yet important microcosm of the way the media industry operates; with financial prudence playing second fiddle to awareness objectives. Remember there’s CES, Cannes, DMexco, and many other events that your company may need to invest in throughout the year. Your company is sending teams to go into battle, however is that really enough to justify the funding you’ve asked for. In summary, was the juice worth the squeeze? To explore how you can win at industry events and conferences, think about these concepts:

  • “Success Happens when Opportunity meets Preparation”:

The great NFL Head Coach Jimmy Johnson once coined this phrase, and it could not be more true. Let’s say Advertising Week starts next week, square one: has your team added the events and activities into your CRM tool? Have you identified WHO will be at these events, and the game plan for each participant in those interactions? After all, you’ve flown in 4 of your Sales Reps from LA and Chicago, that can be quite costly to a company trying to conserve budget.

  • Proactivity > Reactivity

Proactive preparation and sharing your approach before the big event will only serve to your advantage. Send your CEO or superior an activity summary and an activity detail report for Advertising Week. If you want to go for all-star status, tie that activity to potential revenue impact with opportunities in the pipeline.

  • Assign an Event Revenue Goal

What is 10x your event cost? In our Advertising Week scenario above, that would be $300,000; a suggested target ratio for success. Assign your initiative a specific budget, enter it into the CRM and assign all procured deals to this initiative. Track ROI by deal, and be the winner internally when you need to pitch taking 3 more team members to CES next year.

  • Ditch the Zero, get with the Hero

Post Advertising Week output should not be a zero. Guide the team to lead generation, and productive next steps. Get those new business cards/ LinkedIn adds at the events, and commit to tracking KPIs 3-6 months after the conference. Let’s use our CRM or Marketing Automation tools to track continued success, and make our teams the ultimate hero in ROI.If you have trouble getting the answers to these questions or would like to talk in more detail about automating this data and using it to power your decisions, please feel free to contact us.