Event Marketing, Buyer-First Practices, and Growth Hacking
What makes an event not suck? What are buyer-first practices that Navattic uncovered in 2024? Is growth hacking still a thing? Those are the 3 big topics we’re covering today on GTM News Desk. And we’re joined by Bethany Murphy, Senior Director of Events at 6sense, to share her expertise on how to curate unforgettable event experiences, the importance of a people-first approach, the nuances of proving ROI to executives, and her framework for crafting events that drive real impact.
Don't treat demos as a discovery call.
That is a massively big issue in our industry.
Field marketers, event marketers has been treated as event planners.
Whether it's brand awareness, customer retention, prospecting, make sure you
know what you want to get out of the event and set your goals in advance.
Otherwise, it's going to be really hard to succeed, right? Because you don't
know what you're trying to do.
Real talk backed up with real action. This is GTM News Desk.
I'm Nick Bennett and I'm Mark Killins. Let's see what's trending.
[Music]
Welcome to today's edition of GTM News Desk. I'm Nick Bennett and today we have
our lead story.
If you haven't been out there, Nevada released a brand new report called the B2
B Buyer First Best Practices Report.
And we're going to get into the good, the bad, the ugly, and some additional
points. But Mark, I want to toss it over to you.
What did you think about this?
Well, I first think Nevada ripped us off. I mean, people first, buyer first.
Come on, Nevada. No, but just kidding aside.
I love it. I love it. And the way they did this with Chili Piper, very smart.
I think first off, Nick, research based content today is one of the top three
types of content I'd recommend any company invested.
So kudos to them on doing a research report. I hope they do it every year.
Secondly, Nick, I mean, the thing that I found most interesting is the
disparity. There is a huge spectrum.
Some people, some companies are really leaning into this new way of matching
how they go to market to help people buy, and others are far from it.
So the grades I'd give some of these companies that range from an A+ to an F.
How about you? I think one of the biggest things is visibility. Transparency and pricing as a
huge believer of the people first mindset
and putting buyers first and people first. It's interesting that 68% of
companies are displaying their prices openly.
Now, I do remember when they released this port in back in 2023, it actually
was a lot less than that.
So I guess one thing positive in this terrible economy that we're in is more
companies are displaying their pricing.
Now, why is that important? It's unnecessary back and forth.
I can tell you as a buyer of technology, I have been on so many websites where
it just pisses you off that you go to their pricing page
and it has that stupid little money symbol with like one money symbol, two
money symbols, three money symbols, contact someone,
and you have to sit on about three calls before you even get pricing.
So transparency, huge believer of that, glad to see that it's ticking up in the
report.
I agree. I mean, there's pricing, there's some facts about gating content, that
's a session or a story for another day, I should say.
But overall, don't bait and switch buyers. That was one of my key takeaways as
well.
The whole report honed in on different ways you could design a buying
experience that is transparent.
It's helpful, it's easy, it's enjoyable. Ultimately, if your buying experience
is memorable, you're doing something right because your buying experience is a
huge reflection of the brand.
So for me, a lot of the stuff that was uncovered in this and you folks should
definitely go check it out. We'll have it in the show notes.
Only 27% of companies are offering personalized content. And I think that's
Nick because a lot of these vendors, and look, I worked at one at one point.
That was guilty of this. Claim they could do personalization, but it's really
shitty personalization. Let's be honest with each other.
This is a bunch of crap typically, right? And I hopefully AI unlocks it, Nick.
And finally, with Gen AI and LLMs and all the F and acronyms that are being
thrown around AI catches up.
But the personalized content thing, I even think Nick really 20, whatever
percent it was, I don't even buy that. What do you think?
I always wonder with these reports, how much of this has really inflated
numbers? Now, knowing Nevada and knowing that they're good people, I want to
put good faith in them that these numbers are legit.
And they did do the work, but yeah, I mean, you never know. I could slap these
numbers on any of my reports too and say, "Yeah, this is what I've come up with
It seems a little high to me. I could see a lot lower." But I think companies
dictate or not even dictate, say what personalization means to them.
It means a lot of different things to other people. And I think it's a broad
topic, personalized content, that if you dig in, peel the onions back of what
it actually means, it can mean a lot of different things.
So I think that's one of the important takeaways too.
That's true. That's true. And I thought that's also not blame Nevada because
ultimately at the end of the day, it's the people filling it out and they might
be stretching the truth or misunderstanding a question.
But yeah, check out the report. Lots to unpack. We shared some of our big take
aways, some of the things you should and should not be doing.
But at the end of the day, the most important thing before we move on to the
second story for today, don't treat demos as a discovery call.
That is a massively big issue in our industry. And people who are treating, get
a demo on the website and then getting someone on the phone and asking them a
crap ton of crappy questions.
What a bad experience. Don't do that. Let's go to the next story.
Absolutely. Yeah, great recap.
So the second story for today, folks, I found this link, I don't know, a couple
weeks ago, it was recently published.
Andrew Chen, well-known blogger, well-known in the space that we're all
participating in.
And he has talked a lot about growth hacking in the past.
Growth hacking. I remember my days at HubSpot, we talked a lot about growth
hacking back in 2014, 15, 16, especially as we were spinning up the free CRM,
the free sales tools, the free-me emotion.
And he just wrote this article, again, it will be in the show notes, about what
's changed and what's new with growth hacking. 10 years later, right?
Basically, it's been around, I guess, about 10 years or so. Who knows if that's
truly true, but sounds about right.
And one of his big things is scarcity has replaced abundance.
So there used to be a ton of abundance when it came to optimizing channels.
Hey, there weren't many apps in an app marketplace.
People were still downloading apps. People were interested in those types of
things.
There was white space in all these social networks, right?
There was a lot more space to try, space to test.
And the whole point of growth hacking is to use a scientific-based approach to
understand your product market fit, understand a reliable, durable channel to
generate the right types of leads or right types of customers.
And the fact of the matter is, the shit just doesn't work.
That's at least what he's saying. I don't know. What do you think, Nick? Before
I give you my spicy take, growth hacking.
Yeah, I mean, what's your thing? It's interesting. I feel like growth hacking,
it's funny.
I hear people talk about growth hacking all the time.
And it's like, again, I think it's a topic that people just throw around
interchangeably that like, "Yo, what does growth hacking actually mean?"
Now, I think the story was very interesting. And I do think that people aren't
interested in trying new things, but they're also not believing, or not even
believing the data,
that there's ways to manipulate the data that makes growth hacking come across
as something that's a lot better than it actually is.
And I think it's just like, whether you call it growth hacking, whether you
call it whatever you want to call it, I just think there's ways to think about
what that, the way that people try new things or are interested in new things,
you have to focus on what matters to them versus trying to push hacks onto
people.
Well, I mean, and then quite frankly, you kind of look like a growth hacker
right now, the way you're dressed.
So I just got to call that out. Moving on to what I think you need to do is
like my tie, it's very original.
You can see these whales on it, super original tie, $20 down the street.
You have to use originality in how you go to market today, right?
Because like growth hacking is like, "Yeah, you know, great headline, great
hook, great little offer.
I'm going to convert." Like, no, no, what Andrew's saying in the article as
well, to your point,
and what we kind of learned from the Nevada buy-or-first report is the
importance of how we match the GTM motion to how people buy today.
And he's calling out the fact that we spend a ton of time on social media
within video apps, within collaboration products.
I mean, he has a sentence here, "It's partly why creators, short-form video and
shareable memes have become such an important growth driver for new startups
today,
even though sometimes the spikes are short." And they are short, right? Like,
it's the thing, a meme, right?
But like, the whole point of that is our attention spans agree or disagree.
They've gone down.
They've been fragmented more and more because of so much digital crap coming at
us.
And to stand out, you got to be original. And, you know, just trying to
optimize a channel using numbers and dollars probably is not the most efficient
way to go anymore.
And he's saying, it's not so much about channels to growth hacking grow. It's
about people as a way to growth hack and grow.
And it's why I think, Nick, like the way we think about it as community-led
growth is the tip of the spare.
He's saying it without saying it in the article. The way you grow today is not
so much product-led growth in the beginning, which is your very traditional
kind of growth hacking mindset.
But no, you're going to grow through a community-led growth approach.
100%. I mean, I'm a huge believer that it's like not only the importance of
originality, but the importance of empathy, the importance of, you know, just
authenticity, I think, are also there.
And it's like, I mean, look at people like, you know, Mr. Beast, for example,
like, I mean, his videos are super original. Like, I mean, yeah, he has a lot
of money, but like, it's just, it's so interesting to me.
And I think that a lot of people today, again, because of like all the crap
that's thrown our ways, like, they want the edutainment a little bit.
Now, platforms like LinkedIn aren't really pushing that anymore. They didn't
for a short time, but I think like the video side of that is still working
really well.
Memes work really well on other channels, but ultimately, it's the community.
It's the tribe that you build for yourself as like that tip of the spare.
Well, I mean, you don't need a lot of money, though, to do this. Do you?
No, you don't need a lot of money at all. I mean, honestly, as long as you can
have, you know, your own thoughts, like, people have more to say than they
think, and people have more to say than they think. And people can actually express themselves in a lot of different ways, whether
it's through text, whether it's through memes, whether it's through video.
And lots of times there's so many AI tools out there, just tools in general
that like can help you get to that point of hitting publish.
And once you hit publish, that's the tipping point. And it's kind of becomes a
somewhat of a dopamine hit.
Once you hit publish and once you realize what all of these extra things can do
and how you can actually build community around it.
One word, though, that I hate that you use, Nick, I'm going to call it out.
And call me out as much as you want. Feel free. Look, I'm wearing an F in the
whale tie that's like pink.
What? What you should not do and listen to is like this word authenticity. Oh,
my God.
Authenticity, authenticity. The freaking A word, right? Like this word is
making me sick to my stomach because number one, like what is authenticity,
right?
It's just being yourself. Be yourself. Like, look at me right now. Am I being
myself?
I don't know. You tell me in the reviews of this, but the whole point is people
throw that word around like it's God.
And I actually don't think it's about authenticity. It's about being original,
having a story, having something to say and taking a stand, right?
Like if you don't take a stand and don't have haters, you're doing it wrong.
You need to have haters.
I'm sure there are people that hate this show or will hate this show. I mean,
this is this is a show number one.
That's cool with us, right, Nick? We don't care. Let the haters come.
Yeah, absolutely. But I don't know. I feel like does originality equal
authenticity?
Does it? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't think it does. Well, if you're
original, are you being authentic to yourself?
Well, what does authenticity really mean? That's like, is it authentic to
yourself, authentic for someone else, authentic?
So let's throw the word like, hey, you're a liar, right? You could be authentic
, but you could still lie.
That's true. Or esteem authentic, right? That's a fair point. It's just, yeah,
I like originality better than authentic, because I feel like that you can
tweak what authentic is for each social platform out there,
or how you talk to different people. But is that really who you are? I mean, I
think some people will answer that very differently, but it's important to talk
about.
And look, I brought back the tie for this whole show because I miss dressing up
. I miss wearing ties, quite frankly. That's a true story.
So you'll see a lot of different ties coming your way during the shows. But let
's move on to segment number three, Nick.
We have a very special conversation today. They're very special person. You and
I both know her very well.
She is a powerhouse when it comes to all things events. What a career in events
I had the honor of having her be part of my team when I was at Drift.
Her name is Bethany Murphy, and she's up next. All right, everyone. Story
number three today.
The amazing conversation with our very special guest, Bethany Murphy from Sixth
Sense. Bethany, how are you doing today?
I'm doing well. Thanks. How are you guys? We're fired up. Right, Nick?
Fired up. Fired up. It's a big day. It's episode one.
It's a big day. It's a big day. I'll say this much. We brought you on Bethany
because event season is coming up.
Let me ask you this question. This is off the script question. Bethany's like,
"Oh shit. He's already asking you a question I'm not even prepared for."
What are the event seasons in B2B in your mind? When are these seasons of
events?
It's a good question because I used to think fall and spring, right? Like April
, May, June, September, October.
And now I'm like, there's B2B events in July and August. It's all year now. So
obviously still pretty heavy spring and fall, but man, I don't know.
They're creeping into all months. It's painful. It's too many events in my
opinion. I don't know. I get talked about it.
You agree. You hate these too many events? Just a lot. It's a lot of events. I
preferred when it was kind of like, again, I had three months and then I had a
couple months to prepare for the next season.
I thought it was just constant. That's how it was for me. It was always spring
and fall. It was like, "All right, cool. You could take the winter and you
could take the summer, cool down a little bit, rethink things."
But yeah, this way too many events out there. Everyone just wants to make money
to be honest with you.
Well, that's not a bad thing, Nick. It's not a bad thing, but it's like, "How
many events is too many?"
"How many events are you going to this year?" I mean, I don't go into as many
anymore because I got three rascals consuming my life, which is great, you know
, every day is an event.
But let's get to the questions. So Bethany, I think we're going into a big
event season. September, I mean, September, you got like Dreamforce, Saster, In
bound, Mekon, blah, blah, blah, like 2,000 events in B2B, which is way too many
as we all know.
How do you make an event not suck today?
Not sure I've ever been asked that specific question before. But you know what?
What I do think is after COVID, attendees need compelling reasons to go to
events, right? More than ever before.
And for me, like, events not sucking, like, it really has to do with the attend
ee journey and the attendee experience and making sure that attendees are
leaving, feeling energized, feeling part of the brand, right? And that's hard
to do.
It just can't be like, I mean, again, there's so many events, right? And as an
events person, I get invited to attend a ton of events.
For me, it's like, if I just get invited to a dinner, like, I'm probably not
going to go, right? Like, there has to be something more.
And I think us as event professionals, like, really need to think about that
experience and make it impactful. Otherwise, people aren't going to come.
I love that before Nick asks you the next question. I want to double-click on
the dinners thing, because I hate the dinners, too. I'm sick of the dinners.
The dinners are driving me effing insane. Like, we had a segment just earlier
before you came on about being original.
Guess what? A dinner is not original, because you fucking do it every day. You
eat dinner every day. Seriously, can we come up with nothing better about the
thing? Like...
I agree. I agree.
Nick, what do you think? Before you ask the next question, dinners?
You love them? I know you like to break bread, so like, I don't know. What do
you think? You like the dinners?
No, the issue with dinners are you're stuck next to, like, one person or you're
stuck, like, across from someone, but you can't really talk to anyone else.
And it's like, but I think the reason people do dinners is because that's the
way it's always been done, which goes back to the originality piece that we
talked about earlier.
It's like, oh, well, you know, if it works, why fix it? If it's not broken, why
fix it? Like, oh, dinners work. Like, cool. We're just going to do 20 dinners.
I mean, I know lots of companies that still do dinners, and they say it's one
of their highest converting channels, but it's because they don't expand their
mind to the experiences that people want today.
Because why try something new? I mean, let's be honest, everyone is so burnt
out and tech these days because everyone's afraid they're going to lose their
job tomorrow that it's like, oh, I'm not going to try anything crazy.
Like, why risk, you know, burning myself out or getting fired for trying
something that doesn't work? I'm just going to do what works.
I'm going to do the status quo, and I think that's one of the biggest things
that we're fighting against today, too.
That is not how you win championships. If you have any, so like everyone who
has that mindset, change your mindset. We can move on.
Yeah, so let's go into the second question. So what is the most egregious
mistake event marketers make today?
I really think that it comes down to event marketers not determining goals and
KPIs at the onset of planning, right? Like, this is essential, especially in
this economy.
We need to be able to prove the ROI of our events. And if we don't know what we
're trying to achieve, this is really hard, right?
And, you know, I say this all the time, like, every event is different, and
your goals for each event and each type of event should also be different.
Whether it's brand awareness, customer retention, prospecting, make sure you
know what you want to get out of the event and set your goals in advance.
Otherwise, it's going to be really hard to succeed, right? Because you don't
know what you're trying to do.
It goes back to the larger conversation of like, I feel like oftentimes, and I
don't know about the, I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but it's
happened to me and it's happened more.
I'm going to throw a shot out to the enterprise sales reps that are out there.
But field marketers, event marketers has been treated as event planners.
And I'm going to speak for me personally. Like, I've been treated as an event
planner in the past because a sales rep says, oh, you're not in market.
I've been planning, go plan me this happy hour, go plan me this. But like, the
issue is there's so many silos in a lot of these companies and it's like sales
not talking to marketing, not talking to customer success, not talking to
product. And I'm a huge believer of that there should be cross-functional KPIs and maybe
to the point of even like revenue facing marketers should be compensated
similar to salespeople.
I tried to champion this years ago and people thought I was crazy that like,
like, we're, yes, so you're saying that field marketer or event marketer should
be given accelerators should be given kickers just like a salesperson because
you hosted an event.
And what one, you have the wrong mindset if that's the case because events are
a huge driver of channel and a lot of companies and it's like, you have to, you
need to have your seat at the table because you're doing just as much as a lot
of these salespeople in driving source and influence pipeline.
So, thousand percent.
So, a thought and a question to follow onto this, Bethany.
The thought is, I'm going to throw a new term out for everyone. Everyone loves
a new acronym for marketing. Let's just keep throwing new acronyms out. Nick
and I are guilty of this. Let's just keep doing it.
IE.
A.
IE.
Any guesses what that could mean, Bethany?
Yeah.
Tell me.
Ideal. Go ahead, Nick. No, I don't know. I was trying to think. I did think
ideal is the first one, but then I kind of ideal, ideal event attendee.
Cloves. Ideal event audience.
Ideal event audience.
I was going to say audience.
You win, you win. So, the goals and defining the ideal event audience. So, now
to the question, how specific should the KPIs be, Bethany?
I think it's really adamant that again, every event is different and you're not
trying to accomplish the same thing with each type of event.
Right. And so, for our user conference is a good example. Right. It's 95%
customers. So, we know exactly who we want there. Right.
For other events, it's more difficult. Right. We sponsor a third party event.
We don't know exactly who's going to be there.
We think it's our ICP, but we're not 100% sure. We can use six cents, which we
do to try to target the right people.
But what I would say is like, I think it's super important. Again, like, I don
't care if I get a thousand people there if they're all the wrong people.
Right. I'd rather have three people that are the right people. And so, I think
that's really important. It's like not the butts in the seats.
It's like the right butts in those seats.
A.K.A. ideal event audience. So, you're welcome everyone for that acronym.
Let's move on to question number three.
People are going to be mad at you for coming up with another acronym because
there's already enough of them.
They're going to be like, why is Mark creating another acronym that people are
going to be confused by?
I don't care. Send me mail. P.O. Box 913 to report Massachusetts 01950. I don't
care.
Send the hate mail. Next question. What is the most common misconception that
our lovely executives have about events?
I'm an executive. I got a tie on. So, bring me the heat, Bethany. What do I get
wrong?
Why am I stupid when it comes to events?
Look, I mean, again, events are a huge line item in the overall marketing
budgets, right?
And that's a fact that's not a misconception. But what I think what could be a
misconception from a lot of executives is the lack of value that you can get
from an event, right?
And so, going back to what Nick said about, you know, we're not event planners,
we're event marketers.
It's on us to prove the ROI and the business value that comes from events.
And that's sometimes lost on the executive team, right? So, my team and I spend
a lot of time post-event pulling together all the metrics,
making a nice little deck that kind of ties in a bow, all of our KPIs, status
against those KPIs, attendee feedback, data from onsite activities, right?
The more data, the better. Again, it's on us to prove that the spend is
worthwhile.
And it's not for every event, right? I mean, it's not.
I like it. I like it. We got one more question that Nick's going to tee up.
And then for everyone who's listening, head to the TAC Network, TACNEP.com, for
the exclusive part of this conversation with Bethany,
where we get very, very tactable, she's going to give you her exact playbook on
how she does 60 cents events a year.
It's like 600, right, Bethany, at this point. Totally, totally.
All right, Nick, to give the last question, let's get the show on the road.
Absolutely. All right. So, you know, we're huge believers of a people-first
mindset.
So what does a people-first event strategy look like?
This is kind of similar to what I talked about before, but it's prioritizing
the attendee experience, right?
Like, it has to be something that people want. From the content, from the
experience, it's all about the attendees, and you have to make it that way,
right?
So we're very focused, and my team and I spend a lot of time figuring out what
the journey of the attendees are.
From the second they step into the event through to the last session, right?
We want them to know they're at a six-sense event. We want them to feel the
love from our six-sense employees, right?
And we do this in a variety of ways. I mean, I think it's creating amazing
experiences, right?
But it's having those touch points. Every account that attends Breakthrough has
to have a meeting with their six-sense team on-site, right?
That helps with relationship building, helps us understand challenges of
accounts, and really, like, from an RRI perspective, gets us, like, in the
forefront of having conversations about upsell, right?
Which is also amazing. But it's all about that experience and making that, you
know, stand out and making people want to come back here over here, because,
like, Mark started, you know, talking about at the beginning, there's so many
events to choose from.
And just doing, like, an okay event these days, like, it's not going to get
people there. And it's certainly not going to get people to come back year
after year.
Mm. Treating events like a product. We'll dive into that in the exclusive
content that's coming up next for TAC Network subscribers.
I think that's a good point, Bethany. Treating it like a product, right? That's
good.
I also think you said stuff around, like, internal marketing. Like, how do you
market the event both to executives?
And that's a lot of the data side and telling that story with data, but then
marketing it to the rest of the company to make sure they know what's going on.
And I got to give Kudos a sixth sense. I mean, sixth sense, you guys, it's
really Kudos to you. So thank you. Great job.
You guys have some of the best events ever, and you get so much love about your
events. You just did an event in London, I believe.
And I saw LinkedIn blowing up about how great it was. So just huge Kudos to you
. Nick, you could learn some stuff from Bethany. I know you run our events.
I mean, Nick, I mean, you know, she could mentor you.
I'm always looking for mentorship, honestly. I feel like I feel like, you know,
I've been out of the true, like, event game for a little bit.
Not long, maybe a little year or so. But yeah, I mean, it's, I agree. I've been
to lots of sixth sense events personally.
Breakthrough is one of my favorite. And it, you know, who knows? I'm going to
try to maybe get there this year. So we'll see.
Yes, Vegas. We could do this live at Breakthrough. We could do this. We're
going to have a podcast booth there.
Come sponsor it. Love to have you. We'll give you $1 Bethany. $1.
Shameless plot. Sorry. I sell sponsors. You know, I got to make some money.
Fine, fair, fair enough. It is about the money. Remember, we said that the
beginning. All right, everyone. That concludes this show.
See you on the next one.
Thanks for joining us on this episode of GTM Newsdesk presented by the TAC
Network.
To hear our full conversation with our guests today, head to the link in the
show notes to subscribe to the TAC Network.
Until next time, I'm Mark Killens and I'm Nick Bennett. Keep it people-ferrest,
everybody.