Best of LinkedIn: Strategy & Consulting CW 16/ 17

00:00:00: brought to you by Thomas Allguyer and Frennus.

00:00:02: This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on field marketing in weeks sixteen and seventeen.

00:00:07: Frenness supports clients with identifying target attendees for events, crafting outreach that cuts through the noise ,and driving qualified registrations thru strategic LinkedIn engagement.

00:00:16: You can find more info in the description.

00:00:19: So if your listening right now And work in B-to-B Marketing this deep dive is built entirely around what's actually working On The Ground.

00:00:26: today We're pulling straight from the front lines of event strategy.

00:00:30: Yeah, exactly I mean imagine dropping like a hundred grand on this towering futuristic trade show booth.

00:00:37: You've got the LED walls The espresso bar A completely packed floor

00:00:42: with dream setup.

00:00:43: right

00:00:43: you capture five hundred great conversations And then you just wait.

00:00:47: your fails team literally waits forty-five days for a scrubbed spreadsheet Just so they can follow up.

00:00:51: yeah the classic post-show CSV delay

00:00:54: maddening.

00:00:55: So today We're cutting through the fluff to look at that massive disconnect between what event marketing looks like and how it actually generates pipeline.

00:01:06: And

00:01:10: that forty-five day wait you just mentioned, I mean... That is the perfect place to start because it's absolute definition of a structural bottleneck.

00:01:17: We saw Trita Ranganathan and the folks over at Sangle Writing posting about this exact agonizing delay.

00:01:23: You have these super high intent conversations on your floor then you're stuck waiting for the organizer.

00:01:31: Clean it, de-duplicate and enrich it.

00:01:33: Route to sales.

00:01:34: by the time an SDR calls that prospect The lead is completely cold.

00:01:38: It's like relying on a post show CSV as asking someone for their number And then waiting month to send carrier pigeon.

00:01:44: I mean why are we still doing this?

00:01:46: We're doing because of legacy event infrastructure.

00:01:49: But what really fascinating Is that market is finally rejecting Like shift moving entirely into realtime intent capture.

00:01:57: Nick Bennett actually broke down recently.

00:01:59: Numbers just

00:02:01: Oh, the badge scanner numbers.

00:02:02: Yes!

00:02:03: He estimated companies are wasting around thirty thousand dollars a year just renting those clunky outdated badge scanners from event organizers Which

00:02:12: is basically monopolies for the venue?

00:02:13: Exactly.

00:02:14: but then it points out that modern teams are completely bypassing them.

00:02:18: now They're moving to universal apps like Blink which capture and enrich data with AI.

00:02:25: The absolute second.

00:02:26: you scan your business card

00:02:28: Right, but capturing the data faster is really only half of battle.

00:02:31: It's what you do in that critical like thirty minute window after conversation actually matters.

00:02:36: Conor Jeffers shared this brilliant play on there.

00:02:40: So he's running HubSpot combined with SalesMSG.

00:02:43: The moment event ends or even when prospect walks away from booth it triggers a highly personalized SMS survey

00:02:50: Notice mechanism though...it isn't an email.

00:02:53: Exactly, I mean an email set three days later just gets completely buried in a five thousand unread corporate inbox.

00:03:00: A text message taps into that immediate dopamine loop of phone buzz while the prospect is like literally still sitting leaving the venue.

00:03:10: It just

00:03:10: bypasses a corporate firewall entirely,

00:03:12: it really does.

00:03:13: and posh at your shot added another layer to this noting that HubSpot has modernized its architecture so that event data is now tightly integrated directly with deals in revenue on the company record

00:03:25: which changes The fundamental workflow of a field marketer.

00:03:28: you aren't Just capturing a lead anymore You're automating the qualification and triggering the follow-up without That post event friction.

00:03:35: But, and there is a massive danger here.

00:03:37: Jonathan Kazarian raised really important warning about what he calls tech stack bloat.

00:03:42: Oh I see this all the time Right?

00:03:43: We're seeing teams cobble together five six sometimes seven different point solutions just to run a single event in twenty-twenty-six.

00:03:51: They are drowning in tech

00:03:52: debt.

00:03:52: Marketing.

00:03:53: ops basically ends up spending more time managing APIs between registration software scanning app and CRM than they do you know actually marketing

00:04:03: And that completely defeats the purpose of automation.

00:04:06: Daniel Christensen argues that success isn't about buying the shiniest new AI feature, it's about standardization.

00:04:12: You have to treat unexpected changes as stress tests for your core infrastructure.

00:04:17: Yeah Vanessa Lovett nailed this reality when she pointed out most event tech consulting today is really just fixing problems suppliers never told you about during sales pitch.

00:04:26: Right!

00:04:27: You need to clarify goals first strip away the bloated features, and demand honest answers about integrations from these suppliers.

00:04:34: You essentially need tools that balance raw AI automation with human control.

00:04:39: Muhammad Yunus highlighted this dynamic perfectly when he was discussing VFARE's hosted buyer programs.

00:04:45: The AI does heavy lifting of matching & scheduling thousands meetings based on mutual interest Which

00:04:50: would take humans weeks to do manually

00:04:52: Exactly.

00:04:53: Organizers keep strict control over parameters so tech captures the intent and does the math, but it doesn't like hijack this steering wheel.

00:05:01: But you know standardizing all of this flawless outreach creates a new almost existential problem for the industry.

00:05:07: if we can automate the matchmaking And we can trigger the perfect personalized SMS follow-up Why do we even need physical events?

00:05:14: Right why are hundreds of thousands of people flying to Vegas or Paris If The Tech Can Do The Heavy Lifting?

00:05:20: This is where Volodymyr Demianenko's concept of the AI paradox comes in.

00:05:25: And I think this is the most profound shift we've seen in B to D marketing, and a decade

00:05:29: It really is!

00:05:30: Demianenko points out that mega tech conferences are absolutely exploding right now which feels super counterintuitive In this zoom-dominated AI driven world.

00:05:40: His thesis Is that AI has commoditized digital trust

00:05:43: Because literally anyone with a basic SaaS subscription can automate A sequence Of ten thousand hyper personalized emails.

00:05:49: Now The barrier to entry for sounding like a thoughtful human in an email is, well...zero.

00:05:55: Precisely!

00:06:10: The real deals aren't actually closing on those noisy, one-hundred thousand person exhibition floors.

00:06:20: No!

00:06:21: Those floors are just the matching engine...the actual DEALS ARE CLOSING AT THE PRIVATE SITE EVENTS.

00:06:26: You know?

00:06:26: The intimate dinners happening at the edges of a mega conference.

00:06:29: Ricky Courier talked about this EXACT SHIFT.

00:06:33: Broad field events are losing ground to smaller highly targeted executive experiences.

00:06:38: Yeah, Susie Sainz shared a masterclass.

00:06:40: She used an example of curating a room from scratch in Madrid, she said.

00:06:43: the biggest mistake marketers make is trying to pack a room just for the sake of registration numbers.

00:06:49: Which happens all the time?

00:06:50: Constantly!

00:06:51: You shouldn't invite people because they have their right job title.

00:06:53: you have build entire format around single specific question that the right people desperately want answer together.

00:07:00: It's an incredibly disciplined approach.

00:07:02: Elizabeth Sikroy reinforced this by arguing that a dinner for twenty priority accounts will always beat a massive conference activation, For two thousand random attendees...

00:07:12: Always!

00:07:13: But you know only if every single seat at the dinner is intentionally mapped to specific deal cycle.

00:07:19: Let me pause there and push back on this.

00:07:21: Push for intimacy first.

00:07:22: second If audiences want intimacy how do we handle Gen Z attendees who value networking but statistically suffer from massive face-to-face networking anxiety.

00:07:33: That's

00:07:33: a great point!

00:07:34: I mean, throwing a twenty five year old buyer into an intimate twenty person executive dinner might literally be their worst nightmare.

00:07:40: You're touching on experience design there which is where the best field marketers earn their paychecks.

00:07:45: Michael Hoffman shared really innovative solution for that exact social anxiety using Gather Voices Face Forward app.

00:07:52: Well how does it work?

00:07:53: It implements ninety second video introductions right during the registration flow.

00:07:58: So before the event even starts, attendees have already seen faces heard voices and identified people with shared goals.

00:08:05: it drastically lowers the cognitive load and social barrier Before anyone steps foot in a venue.

00:08:12: Oh wow that completely changes to Social Math.

00:08:15: You're not walking into room of strangers you are walking into a room familiar avatars And the physical environment itself plays a huge role in lowering those defenses, too.

00:08:24: Aurora Kallela noted how hosting events and destinations like Nashville naturally lowers networking barriers just through the atmosphere.

00:08:32: Oh

00:08:32: totally!

00:08:32: The music...the culture.

00:08:34: It does half of ice breaking for you

00:08:35: Right..and Ralph Schmidt added to this emphasizing that planners need utilize showaxe To inject raw emotion into these spaces.

00:08:43: Business environments are inherently sterile If you don't manufacture moments Of awe or shared emotions People won't remember.

00:08:49: True, but let's be brutally honest for a second.

00:08:52: You can have the most seamless tech stack you can host The Most Perfectly Curated Emotionally Resonant Dinner in Nashville But if your sales team drops ball the next morning Your ROI is zero.

00:09:05: The dropped ball.

00:09:06: I had to bring up this story Joe Fontana posted because it may be physically cringe.

00:09:10: He talked about a lazy seller who single-handedly destroyed three months of meticulous event

00:09:16: ROI.

00:09:17: Oh i remember This.

00:09:18: yeah Marketing spent tens of thousands of dollars.

00:09:21: They planned this incredible targeted executive dinner that got highly qualified buyers in the room, and the seller just didn't follow up.

00:09:28: Why?

00:09:29: Because the seller claimed they quote Didn't hear enough explicit buying signals during the appetizers.

00:09:34: It is the classic misalignment between marketing and sales.

00:09:37: sellers expect a buyer to sit down And say hello my name is John I have hundred thousand dollar budget full authority and i'd like To purchase by Q three.

00:09:43: right But Fontana rightly pointed out that real enterprise buyers do not talk like that.

00:09:49: They drop implicit clues, they complain about their current vendor's API integrations...they mention a frustrating internal political battle over data silos.

00:09:58: Yeah and if your sellers aren't trained to interpret those conversational breadcrumbs in actually work post-event signals Your event budget is just subsidizing bad selling.

00:10:08: Exactly

00:10:09: Rebecca Carmody echoed this exact frustration.

00:10:13: She constantly sees booth teams at massive trade shows who are completely unbrief just leaning against the counter, scrolling on their phones

00:10:21: which is where we have to reevaluate the function of an event if We connect us To The Bigger Picture.

00:10:26: events don't close deals.

00:10:28: people Close Deals.

00:10:29: the Event Is Purely An Accelerator.

00:10:31: Jay Manash had a brilliant post noting that the booths actually win on show floor start their work sixty days before doors even open.

00:10:38: They execute rigorous pre-event outreach.

00:10:41: they don't just stand there hoping for foot traffic.

00:10:44: Right, they earn their pipeline by setting up qualified meetings weeks in advance.

00:10:49: It requires completely different operational discipline.

00:10:51: Peter Soy break it down into three mandatory phases Pre event planning during event intent capture and strict Post Event CRM Discipline.

00:11:01: If you miss one, the stool falls over.

00:11:03: Exactly!

00:11:04: Cynthia Montalvo took this a step further — she built a GTM event integration matrix.

00:11:09: instead of just throwing an event and inviting everyone—she strategically mapped specific event formats to unblock stall deals in The Mid Funnel.

00:11:18: She looked at CRM, sees where deals are bottlenecked... ...and designs the event to solve that specific friction.

00:11:24: And when you map events directly into the pipeline like that….

00:11:26: …the math becomes undeniable.

00:11:28: Shahar Azuli shared some numbers that prove this.

00:11:31: His team spent a hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars across two events.

00:11:35: Now they treated these events with extreme discipline clear KPIs pre-booked meetings on the floor an immediate round robin lead routing.

00:11:42: So reps were talking to prospects instantly, okay?

00:11:44: The result they booked ninety one qualified demos.

00:11:48: wait ninety one enterprise demos from a hundred twenty seven Thousand Dollars roughly what fourteen hundred dollars of demo yep In B-to-B enterprise sales, that customer acquisition cost is an absolute steal.

00:11:59: Exactly and based on their historical win rates Ezzolay's projecting roughly two million dollars in annual recurring revenue from the single hundred twenty seven K spend.

00:12:08: That proves events aren't just brand exercises.

00:12:11: they are a massive Revenue channel.

00:12:13: But you know That ROI only materializes if you're brutally honest about your metrics.

00:12:19: Sayon Banerjee warned marketers against the trap of optimizing for LinkedIn.

00:12:23: applause instead of actual pipeline.

00:12:25: Oh, we all know those posts

00:12:27: right?

00:12:28: The marketers who post photos of a line wrapped around their booth bragging About four hundred attendees but they generate literally zero close one deals

00:12:35: its vanity metrics.

00:12:36: disguised as strategy

00:12:37: precisely Hanley Tan advised that chasing unrealistic year-over-year MQL volumes will losing game anyway.

00:12:44: The goal isn't more leads, it's account value!

00:12:47: Sometimes the highest ROI of an event is re-engaging your existing customers to prevent churn, not just stuffing the top at funnel.

00:12:53: Yeah Matt Kleinrock Amanda Dyson and Fobby Rocha all advocate for this exact mindset shift.

00:12:59: Events cannot be treated as a marketing fulfillment center that just orders swag in books catering.

00:13:04: they must be integrated directly into the go-to market revenue engine

00:13:07: which sounds incredibly empowering in a boardroom.

00:13:10: but driving that kind of flawless revenue machine requires that most executives completely misunderstand.

00:13:19: Well, completely!

00:13:20: There is a massive gap between the CRM dashboard the C-suite sees and physical reality of field marketers fighting on ground.

00:13:28: I am so glad we are talking about this.

00:13:29: The Invisible Work.

00:13:30: Crystal Anderson posted about the reality of Field Marketing Leadership And it's a grind.

00:13:35: It's six AM calls across time zones Managing complex logistical spreadsheets nobody else wants to touch.

00:13:42: Solving absolute disasters.

00:13:43: forty eight hours before venue opens.

00:13:46: Ashley Nelson shared this hilarious chaotic reality check of surviving entirely on coffee, fighting for her life, untangling thousands of lanyards in a hotel hallway and tweaking table arrangements fifteen times just to get the sight lines perfect.

00:13:59: And Alex Adkins championed agency teams who absorb so much pressure!

00:14:04: They take the blame when the venue's Wi-Fi drops but they make clients shine while pipeline numbers roll in.

00:14:11: It is grueling highly stressful work...

00:14:13: ...and it takes its toll.

00:14:15: I and Morrison brought a very sobering statistic to this conversation.

00:14:19: Burnout in the events industry is running at around eighty percent.

00:14:22: Eighty

00:14:22: percent?

00:14:22: And Morrison's core point, that isn't personal failing of marketers it is systems problem.

00:14:28: you cannot train or meditate your way out of eighty percent burnout.

00:14:31: You have schedule recovery as operational infrastructure.

00:14:35: Recovery is infrastructure on every marketing VP listening.

00:14:38: what does actually mean practice though?

00:14:41: it means comp days are built into project plan from day one.

00:14:44: It means you don't expect your field marketer to run a three-day summit, fly home on a red eye and be in a pipeline review meeting at nine AM the next morning.

00:14:52: Exactly!

00:14:53: And these marketers are managing all this personal stress while dealing with insane unpredictable financial pressures.

00:15:00: Lance Newton pointed out the reality of union labor costs... So

00:15:14: you're basically constantly fighting your own budget.

00:15:17: But Alexandra Ponyakina actually flips this narrative, she argues that working with tight budgets is a superpower really?

00:15:24: Yeah when you don't have endless cash it strips away the confetti.

00:15:27: You can't rely on an open bar to cover up a bad strategy.

00:15:30: It exposes your true execution skills.

00:15:33: If you can drive pipeline with severe constraints, You prove to leadership that you know how to scale their capital wisely.

00:15:39: That's a great perspective.

00:15:41: But even with airtight budgets and perfect execution A curve ball is coming.

00:15:45: Something will break.

00:15:46: Andrew Ewing's an Ellen Comrade both stressed that event planning Is maybe twenty percent creativity And eighty percent relentless scenario Planning.

00:15:55: It is thinking ahead through every possible failure point.

00:15:58: Ewing noted that pressure testing your plants trying to actively break them in a boardroom two months out is far better than having the brake on.

00:16:05: you live, in front of a thousand customers.

00:16:08: Absolutely!

00:16:09: Emily Dilbeck added this noting that knowing when to pivot isn't incredibly underrated skill.

00:16:15: sometimes you have to abandon an original concept.

00:16:18: we spent weeks because reality has shifted

00:16:21: and their realities getting vastly more complex.

00:16:24: McGillamig's pointed out that after recent political incidents, security protocols are changing overnight.

00:16:29: The division of responsibility between event planners private security and venues is rapidly shifting.

00:16:35: you just have to be deeply adaptable

00:16:37: but You also have To Be forward thinking because if you Are putting this much blood sweat capital And emotional energy into an Event?

00:16:44: You need the impact to last longer than a three-day conference.

00:16:47: This Is where we look at content longevity and brand memorability.

00:16:51: Manpreet Waddan and Amanda McNeill had fantastic insights here.

00:16:55: They explained that with modern AI tools, your event content shouldn't just peak on the day of a keynote.

00:17:00: Right, you don't just record the session and dump a forty-five minute video on YouTube.

00:17:04: You use AI to slice that keynote into fifteen short form clips!

00:17:26: Megan Martin, Liza Lethoris and Aashish R all pointed out that relying solely on social media leaves massive visibility on the table.

00:17:34: Yeah a deliberate traditional media mix is crucial.

00:17:37: local TV industry press community platforms specialized podcasts These channels are highly effective for driving The right people into the room in specific regions.

00:17:47: But

00:17:47: here's the thing that really stood out to me.

00:17:49: across all these sources we've talked a lot about AI.

00:17:52: Mani Puri noted that budgets for AI in events are undeniably increasing.

00:17:56: Lorenzo Dunney's reported the industry has finally moved past the shiny object novelty phase and into the pragmatic integration of tools like co-pilot for logistics, but despite all this technology….

00:18:08: The human element is still the ultimate differentiator!

00:18:14: Tiffany Frey-Nadler had the absolute best take on this.

00:18:17: She hilariously pointed out that AI can draft a twenty page venue RFP in four seconds, it's great at that.

00:18:24: but AI cannot read a room when the post lunch food coma hits and the speaker is losing the crowd.

00:18:29: So true!

00:18:30: AI cannot use a roll of production tape and safety pin to perform emergency wardrobe surgery on panic CEO three minutes before they walk on stage.

00:18:39: AI provides The What But Humans Deliver The How.

00:18:43: That human touch, that intuition is what creates memorability.

00:18:47: Ari Kurczyk shared a fantastic micro-example of this.

00:18:50: at events she refuses to hand out standard business cards.

00:18:54: instead She creates a customized vertically folded mini brochure that deliberately matches the specific branding and vibe Of the exact event she's attending.

00:19:02: Wow!

00:19:02: This such small intentional choice but it sparks immediate conversation because It proves you actually care about The context in your room.

00:19:09: Michael Kuralak hit the nail on her head regarding his mindset.

00:19:12: He saw a company bragging online about how they set up their entire modular booth in just thirty minutes, and he reminded the industry Setup speed is just a feature for The Marketer Brand impact.

00:19:24: Is the goal yeah?

00:19:25: A Booth isn't judged by the attendees on How fast it went out.

00:19:29: It's judged On how it performs the friction that removes And the human experience it creates.

00:19:34: it all comes back to how you make the audience feel and what you leave them with long after the lights go down.

00:19:41: So, What does this all mean for YOU listening right now?

00:19:44: We want to leave you one final provocative thought to mull over before your next event strategy meeting!

00:19:51: Fabricio Goodoy brought up an incredible concept of brand gravity.

00:19:54: Oh I love that concept.

00:19:55: In B-to-B we spend ALL our time measuring immediate ROI, NQLs, badge scans & pipeline velocity.

00:20:02: But Godoy argues the ultimate question you should ask your team before your next event isn't just, what do we want people to do.

00:20:08: It's What Do We Want People To Believe About Us That They Didn't Believe Before They Walked In?

00:20:12: Because at the end of day if your events strategy is about scanning a badge... ...to trigger a delayed CSV file You are entirely missing The Magic.

00:20:22: You've got to close the gap between this shiny event floor and reality of human relationships you're

00:20:47: trying.