3 Tricks for Maximizing Event ROI with Employee Advocacy

In-person events can take a huge toll on company budget. Booking a venue, paying for travel arrangements, organizing food supplies, and inviting guest speakers are just a few of the many costs and resources associated with running an event, regardless of its size.

That’s why it comes as no surprise that over 50% of B2B companies spend more than 25% of their budget on in-person events. And this number is only expected to rise among companies that outperform their goals in 2018.

With this much time and money invested, it’s critical that the event itself drives a significant growth in the sales pipeline. After all, companies shouldn’t be spending more than they’re going to earn in terms of revenue.

So, in order to fully maximize the ROI of your next event or conference, today’s marketer cannot strictly rely on paid advertising and email campaigns as their sole promotional methods. Their marketing strategy needs to yield far more engaging and personalized interactions with buyers.

For this reason, many B2B companies have been harnessing a new, more effective marketing strategy called ‘employee advocacy’. Below are 3 powerful tricks for gaining the most out of your next conference with employee advocacy. If you’re left wanting more tips and tricks at the end of this article, consider checking out this webinar.

Trick 1: Attract the Right Audience

Once you’ve booked a venue, created an agenda, identified keynote speakers, and ultimately have all the sales and marketing resources ready to go, all you need is to attract the right crowd. This is where employee advocacy can, in many ways, become your most effective promotional strategy for driving registration and attendance.

Unlike email and social ads, employee advocacy grounds itself in authenticity and two-way engagement. Putting employees at the forefront of your conference promotion and giving them relevant and valuable content to share sets your marketing up for success.

Not only are employees the most trustworthy source your company has, they are also very well-connected. In fact, your average employee is connected to a network that is 10X larger than your company’s follower base on social media, making them a powerful voice to build awareness and drive registration of your conference.

Better yet, these connections represent an untouched and highly relevant audience segment that barely overlaps with your corporate connections. Take Dell’s research, for example; the company has shown that only 8% of its employees’ Twitter followers are also connected to the company’s official Twitter account.

Moreover, employees’ network is extremely colorful. It’s made up of industry leaders, influencers, and decision-makers who come from diverse industries and countries. Therefore, getting employees to promote your pre-conference materials enables you to attract MORE relevant audiences who fit your company’s buyer persona.

Trick 2: Create More Buzz Around the Event

During a conference, most companies put a large emphasis on the physical environment. They use freebies, flyers, and conference swag as a way to stand out and spread the word about special events, guest speakers, and learning sessions. However, what they tend to neglect is the online environment, in this case, social media.

Besides being a powerful weapon for generating leads prior to the conference, employee advocacy also helps you dominate the social media sphere by creating hype around different event elements. It’s way to make your message more visible to attendees but also to audiences who aren’t in the crowd and want to feel a part of the event, follow what is being said, and most importantly, be there next time.

If you are questioning the impact that employee advocates can have on real-time conference engagement, consider the following finding. LinkedIn discovered that when a single employee shares 3 pieces of content a day, they generate 23 million in additional reach over the course of a year. In the long-run, this ultimately adds up to 60,000 additional instances when people engage with your content.

But when it comes down to actually getting employees to share pre-made content throughout the event, what do you do? Designing a process that makes it simple for them, is pivotal. And above all, it’s extremely important that employees have an easy way to recommend images and videos, which they captured in real-time.

Below are some simple tactics to help employees gain maximum engagement:

• Create Custom Hashtag: Begin by creating a short, catchy hashtag that you can consistently use in every social post that’s shared by employees. While it may seem like a simple tactic, the payoff is huge when you consider the thousands of people you can potentially reach.
• Highlight Keynote Speakers: If you have guest speakers coming to the event, make it easy for employees to promote their session. Design multiple images including the speaker’s headshot, the topic they’ll be discussing, and the time of their session.
• Open Private Group Chat: Create a private group chat (e.g. on Facebook, WhatsApp or Slack) where employees can send any visuals that capture the atmosphere of the event and offer a behind-the-scenes look at interesting moments. Whether it’s a selfie with a customer or a short clip of a keynote speaker giving a presentation, posting visuals that appear “in the moment” makes your content seem a lot less promotional and more personal.
• Run Live Polls & Contests: Another way to generate buzz and build an emotional connection with your audience is through interactive polls and contests. For example, run a poll about “favorite guest speaker” or ask attendees to post their best conference picture with your hashtag in the caption. Next, offer exclusive seating or access to events to individuals who gain the most likes for their image.

Trick 3: Track Engagement & Lead Volume

So after your event is over, what’s next? It’s time to measure and report.

Despite how perfectly engaged your advocates appeared to be or how much content they seemed to share, you should always let the data (not your gut feeling) speak for itself! In other words, tie back the fantastic effort that employees have contributed to hard numbers and metrics.

But before digging into the numbers, you must first classify what “success” looks like in terms of employee contribution to conference ROI? This is why having well-defined goals, agreed upon from the very beginning of the event, makes all the difference.

Consider the following questions when evaluating the contribution of employee advocacy to conference ROI:

• How much did we spend on the employee advocacy program?
• How much did we spend on employee advocates to attend the conference?
• How much awareness and visibility did we drive for the event through employee advocacy? (content reach, impressions)
• How many leads (registrants or attendees) did employee advocates bring to the event and how many of these leads convert into paying customers?
• How many customer stories or visuals were captured by employee advocates? (these assets serve as a significant indicator of new opportunities for obtaining customer case studies and testimonials, which could help sales and marketing teams in the long-run)

Remember that data never lies. Instead of pointing fingers at which aspects of the advocacy program (e.g. content, individual employees) did or did not contribute to the event, use the numbers to garner real insights and keep everyone aligned on the one goal: revenue.

Takeaway

To fully maximize the ROI of your next event, focus on employee advocacy as a powerful tool for attracting the right attendees, generating more buzz, and measuring success through agreed-upon metrics.

If you’d like to learn more about what employee advocacy can do for your next event, don’t miss our webinar with NICE Systems. From setting goals to mapping your content plan, and monitoring performance, we take you step-by-step through the process of running employee advocacy before, during, and after a conference.

Originally published at www.oktopost.com on January 9, 2018.