In our latest edition of B2B Inbound Marketing Stories, we spoke with Kelvin Newman, founder of BrightonSEO, the UK's largest SEO conference and MD of Rough Agenda, one of the new breed of B2B events companies shaking up the conference scene. In the interview, Kelvin reveals the secret sauce behind selling out his event in just 60 seconds and shares some pointers on how larger, traditional events businesses can incorporate a start up mentality to steer them to revenue success.

Watch the full interview, or pick up the key highlights below...

We are very pleased to announce that BrightBull has officially formed a joint venture with leading European inbound marketing agency Increnta. Increnta is a platinum HubSpot partner and Oracle Gold Partner with clients in 14 countries, specifically in the areas of Publishing, Training and Education, Financial Services, SaaS, Services, Healthcare and Tourism with a portfolio of 300+ clients.

So you think your events business is great at lead generation because you’re handing a tonne of names over to sales each week? You couldn’t be more wrong. Lead generation for events is officially broken in the vast majority of events businesses. Why? For starters, because a click-through is not a lead, yet most companies treat them as such. Find out why your lead generation process may be broken and what to do to fix it.

You’d have to have been hiding under a rock the last few years not to be aware of the growing number of online event communities springing up. But there’s a huge difference between being aware and actually putting that nagging sense of “should do” into action and sprinting ahead of all the others (without getting disqualified of course!) If you’ve so far lacked the motivation to fully commit to building your online event community, here’s your incentive.

Your team of marketers may already be creating valuable, insightful and market-leading content by the buckletload, and driving additional views to your website, as well as increasing your social media followings; but have you thought about content that will bring in additional revenue? Here is how to monetise B2B content from your online community - you could be sitting on some very easy wins. 

Do you sometimes find yourself on autopilot when creating email marketing for events? Do you churn out the same old communications for every campaign (dates for diary, discount reminder, agenda announcement...yawn)? If you're nodding along and feeling a touch guilty, don't worry, you are not alone. This is a very common state of affairs in events businesses. You're busy. Like really busy. And email is the thing you do most of, so it's not surprising that a few shortcuts and a lack of thinking creep in. But, never fear, help is at hand.

One of the trickiest thing your marketing team must do, in order to better understand and target your audience, is profile your customers and prospects, before they go to sales.

So much of event marketing comes down to the people doing it. It's a huge job, requiring serious intellect, commercial acumen and a diverse set of skills. In fact, event marketing is so unique, those that click with it as a job often remain in the industry their whole careers, addicted to the pace and variety of the work.

Building a great event marketing team takes more than just an assembly of talented marketers. You need the right blend of skills and attitudes to create a winning dynamic. Understanding where you are now, where you want to be and how to get there is useful for any marketing leader, but it'll be especially useful for those attending our Accelerator Labs workshops as it'll provide valuable background context for the exercises within each workshop, providing insight on how you'll implement all the great ideas, latest strategies and proven techniques you'll learn. 

Whether events are all or just part of what your organisation offers, performing a marketing MOT on the business as a whole is a good way to get a real feel for where you are at the moment and therefore how far you'll need to come to become a future proof, digitally savvy marketing team. It can also help you identify the strengths you can capitalise on, as well as areas where you can make some quick wins in terms of improvements.

Performing a B2B marketing MOT on your business in advance of undertaking any new marketing initiative will give you a proper 360 view of the current state of play. This in turn will put you in the best possible position to make an effective plan to move your organisation forward. Organisations that attend our accelerator labs find this excercise particularly valuable before they actually attend the workshops.

Do you think your events company is digitally smart? Have you kept up with the evolution of digital? Or do you just want to find out what "getting" digital means? Whatever your reason for reading, you’ve made the right move. Events companies can’t afford to fall behind the curve with digital. After all, the events we produce are supposed to show our delegates what the latest and future trends look like in their industry, it’s only natural that they expect our event marketing to follow that pattern.

We love Stephen Covey’s book “7 habits of highly effective people” and often get asked if there’s an equivalent “7 habits” for event folk. So, here they are, our 7 top healthy habits for the digitally savvy events company:

Recently I received a request from B2B Marketing to fill in a survey and it was titled "Does marketing own the customer journey?" It was a provocative header (I'm a marketing geek if you didn't notice) that made me take action, fill in the survey and then write this post.

My strong view and answer to this question is:

Absolutely! Marketing definitely owns the customer journey. If they don't, they're just not doing their job.

I took part in a panel discussion at Event Tech Live with Anthony Dunn of i2i Events Group, Neil Robertson-Ravo of Top Right Group, Ade Allenby of Reed Exhibitions; and Tamar Beck from Gleanin. It was a great session (probably the best one I've participated so far) that sparked lots of interesting views. It was mostly focused on how you engage an event audience online and offline, and what kind of tools you need to do it. 

This list has been reviewed on 1 April 2017

This is our definitive list of hashtags every events industry professional must follow without fault.

Twitter is not only a tool that you will use to broadcast and say a lot of things about yourself, your company or your event. It is a tool to simply stay informed about your industry and getting interesting tips and content that you can literally use to do your job better.

This is the list I personally follow on twitter and since a lot of you asked me about this, here it is.

B2B marketers tend to dream big, but can sometimes be held back due to time constraints and lack of financial resource. This can mean that necessary changes aren’t made to websites, new landing pages can take ages to implement, and the smallest design update can end up being expensively outsourced.

If this set-up sounds familiar, take a look at our top free content creation tools, and see if you can’t solve your creative challenges without seeking help from outside.

I regularly reiterate the benefits a marketing automation platform can offer a business, and the assistance it can provide in terms of achieving and sustaining your inbound marketing goals. But what about marketing automation for SMEs? Your budget may not allow for the kind of outlays associated with the top five (HubSpot, Eloqua, Pardot, Act-On, and Marketo), and even if it does it may feel like a risky spend for your first venture into marketing automation software. So why not research one of these platforms, for a lower cost for the specific functionality you require?

“Lazy exhibiting” is a term I first encountered when speaking with a senior event professional – and it really resonated due to experiences I had personally, and those I had heard about from peers and clients.

Admittedly this is a RANT, I never do this so this will be the first time.

This is a video I recorded at a show I attended earlier this year. I was so annoyed that I felt compelled to use it as constructive feedback to many exhibitors and to share the frustration many event organisers have at situations like this.

Getting someone's attention and agreement to meet you or speak to you on the phone is a very difficult and challenging part of our busy day to day business lives.

But it is even more difficult and frustrating finding an actual suitable time for both of you to engage and not losing their attention in the email back and forth that usually ensues.

I speak to a lot of people in a given week and managing the diaries can easily get out of hand.

So I did my research and here are the five top meeting schedule tools that could really make a difference to your business. They made a difference to mine.

How to attract an event audience, and how to keep them

Is there really a secret recipe for event success?

And then a secret sauce to keep them coming again and again?

Not really, it is not rocket science.

This was the opening line from Ashley Friedlein from econsultancy at the recent PPA Breakfast connect event.

I couldn’t agree with Ashley more - there is no silver bullet for achieving event success. So if there is none, what is the magic that some successful events like the Festival of Marketing enjoy?

Everyone knows the formula for event success and the most common mistakes to avoid.

The way you will attract an audience is through the “promise of the experience” and the experience you deliver. This is what Ashley thinks is the secret sauce. Successful events like the Festival of Marketing have the following elements:

In a recent survey, Adestra explored the attitudes of marketers towards emerging technologies, and their feelings towards adopting (or ignoring) it. They predicted that the research would unearth two distinct personas – the technophobes and the technophiles – and were surprised to discover that there were actually three separate camps. So which category do you as a marketing professional fall into, and what, if anything, should you do about it?  

Most event companies we’ve engaged with have at least an understanding that something in the industry needs to change, even if they’re not sure quite what shape this change will take. They’re all scratching their heads as to how they can achieve greater levels of awareness for their events, drive delegate attendance, and increase ticket sales – and do so in a sustainable way.

The beauty of the online community is that it checks all the boxes. It is the only clear solution. Any conference organisation that isn't thinking about developing a community, generating good engaging content, pulling rather than pushing and recognising that there needs to be a different approach, is missing a huge opportunity.