events

{
  "skill_name": "events",
  "evals": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "prompt": "We're a B2B SaaS with a $30k opportunity to sponsor our industry's biggest annual conference (5,000 attendees). Marketing wants to do it for brand awareness. Should we?",
      "expected_output": "Should load references/sponsorship-roi.md and run the evaluation before answering. Pushes back on 'brand awareness' as the goal without a conversation/meetings target and an owner. Asks for or estimates audience-ICP overlap in absolute numbers (how many of the 5,000 are actual buyers), works the meetings math backwards to cost per qualified meeting (sponsorship + travel + staff), and compares against what a meeting costs from their other channels (the counterfactual check). Should surface the side-event alternative (curated dinner adjacent to the conference at a fraction of the cost) and the negotiation levers if they do sponsor (speaking slot over bigger booth, side-event rights, realistic attendee-data terms). Verdict framed as conditional on the overlap math, not a yes/no from vibes.",
      "assertions": [
        "Does not accept 'brand awareness' as sufficient justification; requires a qualified-conversations or meetings target with an owner",
        "Computes or requests the inputs for cost per qualified meeting and compares against alternative channels",
        "Asks about audience-ICP overlap in absolute numbers rather than accepting total attendance",
        "Mentions the side-event (curated dinner/breakfast) play as an alternative or complement",
        "If sponsoring, recommends negotiating for a speaking slot and/or side-event rights over booth size"
      ],
      "files": []
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "prompt": "Plan our first webinar. We sell an expense-management tool for startup CFOs and want it to generate demo requests.",
      "expected_output": "Should load references/webinar-funnel.md and work the four stages in order, starting with topic & offer: a problem-aware topic for startup CFOs (not a product demo), title as the ad, and the demo request decided as the single offer before content is written. Registration: landing page structure with outcome bullets, short form, replay registration. Show-up system: calendar add at registration, reminder cadence ending with a T-5-minute join link, close the registration-to-event gap, pre-engagement question. Live structure: the open that names the pitch upfront, 3 teachable points with proof, the scripted one-minute transition where the product enters as the implementation of the content, one offer, seeded Q&A. Post: behavior-segmented follow-up (engaged / left early / no-show / replay), replay strategy choice, recycling the recording into content. Metrics: reg -> show -> hold -> convert funnel with the diagnostic mapping (which stage failing means which fix), benchmarks presented as directional.",
      "assertions": [
        "Starts with topic and offer selection (problem-aware topic, one offer decided upfront), not logistics",
        "Includes a show-up system: calendar add, escalating reminders including a T-5-minute join link, and gap management",
        "Structures the live arc with an upfront-named pitch, scripted transition, and single offer",
        "Segments post-webinar follow-up by behavior including a no-show replay sequence",
        "Presents benchmark numbers as directional ranges, not targets"
      ],
      "files": []
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "prompt": "I got accepted to speak at SaaStr next quarter — 25-minute slot. Help me make the most of it.",
      "expected_output": "Should load references/speaking.md and cover all three jobs. Talk design: outline first (one named audience member, a Monday takeaway they can act on, blocks each with point + proof), then storyboard the emotional beats (5-8 beats for the length, each with energy/feel/hit; the journey must earn the takeaway; one contrarian take stands out on consensus stages). Recording as the real audience: confirm recording rights before/when accepting, speak the key numbers and company-next-to-category aloud rather than leaving them on slides, put the quotable line on a peak beat (transcripts get cited by AI assistants). Around the talk: pre-event promotion and speaker-to-speaker networking, a single low-friction closing pointer/asset, publishing the recording + written version after, following up with question-askers within 24-48h, and rolling the talk forward across the season.",
      "assertions": [
        "Separates outline (audience, Monday takeaway, blocks with proof) from emotional storyboarding (beats with energy/feel/hit)",
        "Treats the recording as the durable asset: confirm rights, speak key numbers and positioning aloud, quotable line on a peak beat",
        "Connects the transcript to AI-citation compounding",
        "Includes post-talk motions: publish recording and written version, follow up with question-askers in the 24-48h window",
        "Recommends speaker-to-speaker networking and a single clear closing pointer"
      ],
      "files": []
    },
    {
      "id": 4,
      "prompt": "A partner wants to do a joint webinar with us — they'd bring their list, we'd bring ours. How do we structure the partnership and who gets the leads?",
      "expected_output": "Should recognize the boundary: partnership mechanics (partner selection, value exchange, list/lead sharing terms, co-promotion commitments) belong to the co-marketing skill, while the webinar execution (funnel, show-up system, live structure, follow-up) belongs here. Should hand the partnership-structure question to co-marketing rather than improvising deal terms, note the consent requirement for sharing registrant data between parties (registrants must explicitly opt in to both), and offer the events-side execution: co-hosted format, both speakers promote with pre-written assets, and each party follows up with its own consented segment.",
      "assertions": [
        "Routes partnership structure and lead-sharing terms to co-marketing rather than answering them as event logistics",
        "Flags explicit registrant consent as required for sharing registration data between both parties",
        "Retains and offers the webinar-execution layer (funnel, promotion by both speakers, follow-up) from this skill",
        "Does not invent specific legal or contractual terms"
      ],
      "files": []
    },
    {
      "id": 5,
      "prompt": "We just got back from a trade show with 412 badge scans. Marketing is calling it a huge success and wants to load them all into our sales cadence tomorrow. Thoughts?",
      "expected_output": "Should push back on both claims using the measurement tiers and follow-up discipline. Badge scans are vanity-tier activity, not leads or success — success is qualified conversations, meetings, and pipeline. Dumping all 412 scans into a sales cadence burns domain reputation and brand on people who do not remember the interaction; instead, tier the list: hot (real conversation + agreed next step) gets personal same/next-day follow-up referencing the conversation, warm (conversation, no commitment) gets a personal note plus a relevant asset, scan-only gets one light touch or nothing. The 24-48 hour window applies to the hot/warm tiers, follow-up should be written or reviewed by whoever had the conversations, and the event should be judged on cost per qualified meeting and pipeline influenced, with source tagging and an influence window - not scan count.",
      "assertions": [
        "Rejects badge-scan count as a success metric, distinguishing vanity from real and decisive metrics",
        "Advises against loading all scans into a sales cadence, citing domain/brand risk and no-context outreach",
        "Provides the tiered follow-up model (hot/warm/scan-only) with the 24-48h window for the top tiers",
        "Recommends measuring the show on cost per qualified meeting and pipeline influenced with source tagging"
      ],
      "files": []
    },
    {
      "id": 6,
      "prompt": "We want to announce our new product at our own launch event. Walk me through everything.",
      "expected_output": "Should recognize the launch/events boundary: the announcement strategy itself (positioning the release, launch channels, Product Hunt, press timing, go-live QA) belongs to the launch skill, while the event as a vehicle (format choice, invite/registration mechanics, show-up system, recording and content capture, post-event follow-up) belongs here. Should offer the events-side plan and explicitly point the announcement/GTM layer to launch rather than duplicating it, and may note the content-arc opportunity (the launch event recording becomes demo assets, clips, and citable content) and press angle (public-relations).",
      "assertions": [
        "Identifies that announcement/launch strategy routes to the launch skill while event execution stays here",
        "Provides event-side substance: format, registration/show-up mechanics, recording capture, follow-up",
        "Does not duplicate launch-channel strategy (Product Hunt, press embargo timing) inside the event plan",
        "Mentions capturing the recording for downstream content"
      ],
      "files": []
    },
    {
      "id": 7,
      "prompt": "We're a B2B SaaS with $80k ACV enterprise deals. Should we even do events, and if so which ones? There's a huge 10,000-person industry conference coming up and everyone says we have to be there.",
      "expected_output": "Should load references/event-portfolio-strategy.md and reason at the portfolio level before tactics. Should confirm in-person is warranted here (enterprise, high-ACV, multi-stakeholder trust-building is exactly where events earn their cost). Should apply the 80/20 of event selection (a few events drive most pipeline — find and concentrate on those). Should push back on the assumption that the 10,000-person conference is a must: bigger is often inverse to ROI because of noise and audience dilution (students, press, vendors, tourists), so effective cost-per-qualified-lead balloons; niche/regional events (50-200) or a curated side event (private dinner, coffee meetups) may out-produce a big booth at a fraction of the cost. Should frame the three event types (owned/trade-show/community) and tie the decision to economics — a significant show needs ~5-10 solid opportunities to justify a team — comparing cost-per-qualified-meeting against other channels (sponsorship-roi.md).",
      "assertions": [
        "Confirms in-person events fit this ICP (enterprise, high-ACV, multi-stakeholder / complex deals)",
        "Applies the 80/20 event-selection principle — concentrate on the few highest-yield events rather than attending broadly",
        "Challenges the 'must attend the 10,000-person conference' assumption: bigger correlates with noise and audience dilution, not ROI; suggests niche/regional or a curated side event",
        "Grounds the decision in economics (needs ~5-10 solid opportunities to justify a team, or cost-per-qualified-meeting vs other channels)"
      ],
      "files": []
    }
  ]
}

# Event Portfolio Strategy — Which Events, Why, and the Economics

The layer that sits *above* role and tactics. Events are the most expensive, riskiest, hardest-to-measure channel you can run — so the leverage is in **selection and portfolio design**, not execution. The single most common failure is treating "events" as one channel: attend two bad conferences, get few leads, and write the whole channel off — the same mistake as running Google Ads once, seeing poor results, and concluding all paid media is broken. **Each event is its own ecosystem.** Judge them individually.

## Is in-person even necessary? (segment fit first)

Digital scales efficiently; in-person builds trust that digital can't. In-person earns its cost mainly for high-trust, high-consideration motions. Prioritize events when your ICP looks like:

- **Enterprise / multi-stakeholder** — high ACV, several people must build trust before a big commitment
- **Regulated buyers** — healthcare, finance, government have strict vendor-evaluation norms
- **High-touch / heavy customization** — significant integration or configuration work
- **Conservative industries** — manufacturing, utilities still run on traditional relationship-building
- **Long cycles** — 6+ month sales cycles get disproportionate acceleration from face time

Reality check: a cybersecurity company found $500k+ ACV deals almost never closed without at least one in-person meeting — the trust to switch security vendors couldn't be built over Zoom. If your ICP is *not* in these buckets, spend on digital first and treat events as a small experiment.

## The 80/20 of event selection

A small number of events generate the majority of event-attributed pipeline (one B2B SaaS program found **3 conferences drove ~70%** of it). The job is to find those and concentrate:

- Increase presence at the winners — secure **speaking slots**, host **larger side events**, send **more of the right people**, buy **better placement**
- Cut or minimize the long tail of low-yield events
- Re-rank yearly; the 20% shifts as your ICP and market move

## Bigger isn't better (size ↔ ROI is often inverse)

Major conferences look can't-miss and frequently deliver the *worst* returns:

- **Big events = more noise** — higher cost on everything (booth, hotels, travel), more competing vendors, attendees spread thin across tracks, endless competing side events
- **Audience dilution** — you're paying to reach a crowd padded with students, investors, press, other vendors, consultants, and industry tourists; your ICP is a thin slice, so effective cost-per-qualified-lead balloons
- **Small-event advantage** — a 50-person niche meetup can out-produce a 5,000-person conference; highest ROI is often **regional events of 100–200** where you can reach every qualified prospect in the room

## The three event types (three risk profiles)

### 1. Owned events — maximum control, maximum risk
You control everything from content to coffee breaks, and you carry all the risk. Range: exec dinners → roadshows → summits → user conferences.
- **User conferences** turn customers into a community and a product into a movement (Dreamforce). Don't attempt before you have an audience that would come unbegged.
- **Regional roadshows** take the message to scattered markets — one company generated more pipeline from a **6-city roadshow than its annual conference, at a third of the cost**.
- **Industry summits** build thought leadership by tackling category problems, not product pitches — they pull in partners and influencers who amplify.
- **Workshops / certifications** tie the event directly to customer success and can pay for themselves via fees.
- **Three success factors:** ruthless **audience focus** (a clear "who," even at the expense of broader appeal), a **value proposition** attendees can't get elsewhere, and **strategic timing** (align to buyer budget/bandwidth — one company moved its conference Q4→Q1 and lifted attendance 40%).
- **Model case — Drift HYPERGROWTH:** killed badges and sponsor booths, chose storytelling over product pitches, felt like TED not a software show → 3x pipeline acceleration for attendees, starting at 1,000 people year one.

### 2. Trade shows & conferences — someone else's arena
Less control, less risk — you rent instant access to an audience but work inside their format. **Success is 120 days of prep, not the 4 days on the floor.**
- **Pre-show (starts ~120 days out):** mine the attendee list for *stories*, not just names (recent funding, press, job posts) → hooks far better than "want a demo?"; **book ~70% of meeting slots before anyone flies out** ("saw you opened a Singapore office — we helped 3 companies with APAC expansion last quarter, coffee at the show?")
- **On the floor:** turn the booth into a **story-collection hub** — senior staff at the edges (not behind a counter), no physical barriers, customer success stories on screens, and bring real customers to tell their story. (One security company ran a live "Security Operations Center" that sparked real technical sales conversations.)
- **The hidden game — satellite events:** morning coffee meetups and curated private dinners routinely out-generate the booth
- **Post-show (where most teams fail):** tier leads and reference *specific conversation details* — hot → same-day, warm → personalized within 48h, general → nurture within a week; turn booth conversations into content (video testimonials, FAQ → blog/email)

### 3. Community events — the compound interest of event marketing
Small, regular investments that grow exponentially — often started on a tiny budget (monthly meetups for ~$500 of pizza and beer).
- **Regular rhythm beats flash** — same format, same venue, every month builds momentum; chasing a bigger/flashier event each time burns teams out
- **Never pitch — facilitate.** A "Tech Leaders Dinner" grew 8 → 40+ CTOs because it solved their real problems; the product came up naturally
- **Turn customers into advocates** — support customer-run user groups but let them stay independent; they become a reference network prospects trust *because* they're not on your payroll
- **The multiplier effect** — arm your most engaged attendees with playbooks, speaker connections, and seed funding to launch their own city events (one meetup spawned 12 across 3 countries)
- **Metrics that fit** — monthly active members, conversation depth, community-initiated events, relationship velocity, member→customer conversion. The gut check is the **"Saturday Test": would people show up on a Saturday morning?** If yes, you built something real.
- **Payoff** — prospects who attended **3+ community events showed an 85% higher close rate and 40% shorter cycle**; they understood the value in context before ever buying

## Economics — real cost benchmarks

Budget the full investment (money *and* time/opportunity cost) against pipeline, not just the sticker price.

| Line item | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Conference ticket | $1,500–3,000 / person (major shows) |
| Booth space (10×10, top-tier) | $15,000–40,000 |
| Flights | $300–1,000 / person |
| Hotel | $300–400 / night / person |
| Booth staff | 3–4 people minimum at any significant show |
| Private dinner (15–20 ppl) | $150–200 / person |
| Breakfast meetup | $30–50 / person |
| Happy hour | $50 / person |
| Private meeting room | $500–1,500 / day |

**Rule of thumb:** a significant show needs to generate **~5–10 solid opportunities** to justify sending a team. For the sponsor-specific go/no-go math and cost-per-qualified-meeting comparison against other channels, see [sponsorship-roi.md](sponsorship-roi.md).

---

*Distilled from Corey Haines's* Founding Marketing *(chapter: "Events create memorable experiences with potential customers"). Benchmarks are directional and pre-inflation-adjust as needed; re-verify current show pricing.*

# Speaking — Get Booked, Design the Talk, Compound the Recording

Speaking is the highest-leverage event role per dollar: stage time confers borrowed authority no booth can buy, and the recording compounds for years — including in AI answers. Treat it as three separate jobs: getting booked, designing a talk that lands, and harvesting the asset.

## Getting Booked (CFPs and pitches)

Organizers optimize for their audience's experience, not your reach. Pitch accordingly:

- **Pitch the audience takeaway, not your company.** A CFP that reads like a case study of the *attendee's* problem gets accepted; a product story gets filtered. Your product can appear as evidence inside the talk, never as its subject.
- **Title formula**: specific outcome + specific audience + a tension or number. "How we cut CAC 40% by killing our best channel" beats "Rethinking Growth."
- **The abstract carries three things**: the problem as the audience feels it, the specific things they'll walk away knowing (2–3, concrete), and why *you* — the proof you've actually done it (numbers, scars). Keep it under 150 words; organizers skim hundreds.
- **Track and ladder**: local meetups → niche conference tracks → main stages. Recordings of small talks are your CFP portfolio for bigger ones. Podcast appearances feed the same ladder (→ **public-relations** podcast prep — same evidence discipline, same context file).
- Off-cycle path: many events fill panels and replacement slots late — a short note to organizers with a tight topic + proof of speaking ability lands surprisingly often.

## Designing the Talk: Outline First, Then Feelings

A talk is a journey you take the room on, not a document you read at them. Two passes:

**Pass 1 — the outline.** Before slides, lock four things (write them down; mush here becomes mush on stage):

1. **Who this is for** — one person, their situation, what they already believe walking in
2. **The Monday takeaway** — what they can *do or decide* on a specific next day; a talk without one is content, not a talk
3. **What you get** — your win (pipeline, credibility, hiring) so the close can carry it without a swerve
4. **The blocks** — each with a point and a proof (a story or a number). No proof, no block.

**Pass 2 — storyboard the feeling.** Map how the room should *feel* beat by beat — a beat is a change in energy or emotion, not a slide heading. A 20-minute talk is usually 5–8 beats. For each beat, name:

- **Energy** — the room, in directable words: quiet lean-in, rising unease, laugh-release, peak, still
- **Feel** — the emotion in the audience's own mouth: "that's me," "wait, we're the problem," "I can try this Monday"
- **The hit** — the one thing this beat must land, in one sentence

Then check the journey: does the sequence of feelings *earn* the Monday takeaway, or is the takeaway merely stated at the end? If a load-bearing block produces no feeling change, cut or merge it — two blocks that feel the same are one beat. If the close needs a feeling that never appeared, the outline isn't done. One well-placed contrarian take stands out most on stages that have converged on a consensus.

*(This outline → emotional-storyboard method is distilled from Knowatoa's `talk-storyboard` and `presentation-outline` skills — [ai-visibility-skills](https://github.com/Knowatoa/ai-visibility-skills), MIT, credited.)*

## The Recording Is the Real Audience

The room holds 200 people for 25 minutes; the recording works for years. Design for both at once:

- **Talks get transcribed, and transcripts get crawled and cited by AI assistants** — the same compounding as podcast guesting. Say the important things in liftable form: your company name next to your category ("we build X, the Y for Z"), numbers spoken aloud rather than gestured at on a slide, and your quotable one-liner delivered *on a beat the room will feel* — the sentence you want quoted needs to sit where the energy peaks, or it dies in the transcript too (→ **ai-seo**'s text-layer logic).
- **Slides are not the asset.** Anything that exists only visually (the key number, the framework name) doesn't exist for the transcript, the podcast version, or the attendee retelling it — speak it.
- **Get the recording.** Confirm before accepting the slot that you'll receive it and may republish. If the event doesn't record, record your own re-delivery of the talk within a week while it's tight.

## Around the Talk

- **Before**: post the *why this topic now* angle; invite specific people to your session; make plans to meet the other speakers — speaker-to-speaker is the strongest networking lane at any event.
- **During**: end with one clear, low-friction pointer (a memorable URL to the slides + a related asset — which doubles as a lead magnet, → **lead-magnets**). Q&A questions are content research; note every one.
- **After**: publish the recording + a written version of the talk (→ **content-strategy**), clip the peak beats (→ **video**), follow up with everyone who asked a question or approached you — same 24–48h window as every event motion, and these are the warmest leads an event produces.
- Roll the talk forward: the same core talk, sharpened by each delivery's Q&A, can run a full conference season. Retire it when the Q&A stops surprising you.

# Sponsorship & Exhibiting — Evaluate, Negotiate, Work the Floor, Follow Up

Sponsorships are the most expensive way to do event marketing and the easiest to waste. The discipline: treat every sponsorship as a paid-acquisition channel with a cost-per-qualified-meeting, and make it beat your alternatives or don't buy it.

## Should We Sponsor? (the evaluation)

Run this before looking at the prospectus pricing:

1. **Audience–ICP overlap, in absolute numbers.** Not "5,000 attendees" but *how many attendees are your buyer*. Ask organizers for the attendee breakdown by role/company type; check last year's attendee/speaker lists and social chatter. A 5,000-person event with 200 ICP attendees is a 200-person event for you.
2. **Do the meetings math backwards.** Realistic qualified conversations = a small fraction of ICP attendees (a well-worked booth might convert 10–20% of relevant walk-bys into real conversations — directional, varies wildly by event). Then: total cost (sponsorship + travel + staff time + booth build) ÷ expected qualified meetings = **cost per qualified meeting**. Compare against what a meeting costs you from outbound or ads. If the event is 3× your outbound cost with no strategic upside, pass.
3. **Strategic multipliers that justify a premium**: your exact buyers concentrated nowhere else, a category-defining event where absence is conspicuous (late-stage), or access you genuinely can't buy elsewhere (exec attendees who ignore cold outreach).
4. **The counterfactual check**: what would the same budget produce in your best-performing channel? Sponsorship must beat that, not zero.

Red flags in prospectuses: attendee counts without composition, "impressions" as the headline metric, leads defined as badge scans, and last year's sponsor logos heavy on companies that didn't return.

## Negotiation: The Prospectus Is a Starting Point

Sponsorship pricing is soft, especially inside 8 weeks. What to negotiate for (in rough order of value):

1. **A speaking or panel slot** — worth more than a bigger booth; stage time converts better than floor space (see [speaking.md](speaking.md)).
2. **Side-event rights** — permission/space to host a dinner, breakfast, or workshop for a curated list during the event.
3. **Attendee list reality check** — full lists are increasingly rare (privacy); negotiate for opt-in scans, the registration-page question, or sponsored-session registrant lists. Get what's actually deliverable in writing.
4. **Placement and timing** — booth position near traffic (coffee, entrances, main stage exit); demo-day timing if the event has one.
5. **Price** — last, after the package is right. Unsold inventory close to the date discounts heavily.

## The Side-Event Play (often better than the booth)

The highest-leverage move in field marketing: skip or downgrade the booth, and **host a curated dinner or breakfast adjacent to the conference**.

- 8–14 seats, hand-picked ICP attendees + a couple of magnetic guests (a respected practitioner draws acceptances)
- Invite via personal outreach 2–4 weeks out (→ **cold-email** for craft); "join 10 [role]s for dinner during [event]" converts far better than any booth pull
- No pitch. The host halo and the conversations are the product; follow-up carries the commercial weight
- Economics: a dinner typically costs a fraction of a mid-tier sponsorship and produces *deeper* meetings with *chosen* accounts. This is also the play when you can't afford (or aren't allowed) to sponsor at all — you don't need the event's permission for your own dinner across the street.

## Working the Booth (if you buy one)

- **Staff it with people who can qualify and demo**, not whoever was free. Two energetic people beat five tired ones; write a shift schedule — floor fatigue is real and visible.
- **A 30-second qualifying question** beats a pitch: "what does your team use for X today?" sorts buyers from swag collectors instantly. Have a graceful fast exit for non-ICP traffic.
- **Capture context, not just scans**: after every real conversation, 15 seconds of notes — what they said, what they care about, the agreed next step. Voice memo or CRM app, same-hour. This is the raw material of follow-up that converts; a bare badge scan is a name with amnesia.
- Demo stations for depth, one clear message on the booth itself (the category problem, not your feature list), and book-a-meeting QR that goes to a calendar, not a form.
- **Book meetings before the event** with target attendees — the booth is a venue for pre-booked meetings, not just a net for walk-bys.

## Follow-Up: Where the Sponsorship Is Won or Lost

- **24–48 hour SLA**, tiered:
  - **Hot** (real conversation, next step agreed): personal email referencing the conversation, calendar link, same or next day.
  - **Warm** (conversation, no commitment): personal note + one relevant asset matched to what they said.
  - **Scan-only**: one light "we were both at [event]" touch or nothing. Never dump scans into a sales sequence — it burns domain reputation and brand on people who don't remember you (→ **revops** for routing/scoring).
- Whoever worked the booth writes or reviews the follow-up — the context lives in their heads and their notes.
- Sequence the not-nows into nurture with event source tags (→ **emails**).

## Measuring the Sponsorship

- Log every touched contact with an event source tag; measure **qualified conversations → meetings → opportunities → pipeline → closed-won influenced**, on an influence window that matches your sales cycle (90 days is common for B2B; long cycles need longer windows).
- Report **cost per qualified meeting and cost per opportunity** against your other channels — this is the renewal decision for next year, made with data instead of vibes.
- Self-reported attribution ("met you at [event]") catches influence that source tags miss (→ **attribution**); badge-scan counts and booth traffic are activity, not outcomes — track for logistics, never report as results.
- Judge a first-time event against a discount: your team's first run of any event underperforms its potential. A promising-but-unprofitable first year is a redesign signal, not necessarily a no.

# The Webinar Funnel — Registration → Show-Up → Live-to-Close → Nurture

The webinar is the flagship hosted format because it's the whole event arc in miniature, repeatable monthly, and every stage is measurable. Work the four stages in order — each stage's conversion rate is a separate lever with separate fixes.

**The funnel at a glance** (typical B2B ranges — directional benchmarks, not targets; your own trend line is the real baseline):

| Stage | Metric | Typical range |
|---|---|---|
| Registration page | Visitor → registrant | 30–50% (warm traffic), 10–25% (cold) |
| Show-up | Registrant → attendee | 35–45% live; lower for cold/ads traffic |
| Hold | Attendee stays past minute 40 | 50–70% |
| Convert | Attendee → next step (trial, demo, offer) | 5–15% of attendees for a soft CTA; 1–5% direct purchase |

## Stage 0: Topic & Offer (decided before anything else)

The topic does the targeting and most of the selling:

- **Pick a problem-aware topic, not a product topic.** "How [ICP] does X without Y" out-registers "Intro to [Product]" — the audience you want shows up for their problem, not your roadmap.
- **Name the transformation in the title**: specific outcome + specific audience + (optionally) a number or timeframe. Test titles the way you'd test ad headlines — the title *is* the ad.
- **Decide the offer before writing the content.** What's the next step for an attendee who loved it — trial, demo, audit, purchase? The entire live structure builds toward that one step. A webinar with no decided offer becomes a lecture with an awkward ending.
- One topic, one promise, one offer. Stack more and every rate drops.

## Stage 1: Registration

**The registration page** is a landing page (→ **copywriting** for craft); webinar-specific rules:

- Headline = the promise from the title; subhead = who it's for and what they'll walk away able to do
- 3–5 "you'll learn" bullets written as outcomes, not agenda items
- Speaker credibility in one tight block (why should they listen to *you* on this)
- Date/time with timezone handling; "can't make it? register anyway for the replay" — replay-registrants are real leads
- Short form: name + email (+ one qualifying field max if sales needs it)

**The promo plan** — start 2 weeks out, not 6 (urgency compresses better than it stretches):

- **Email list** — 3 sends: announcement, value-add reminder (share a preview insight), last-call day-of (→ **emails**)
- **Social** — founder/host personal posts outperform brand posts; share the *why this topic now* angle (→ **social**)
- **Partners** — a co-hosted webinar doubles reach for free; partnership mechanics → **co-marketing**, but note: co-hosted registrant lists need explicit consent handling for both parties
- **Paid** — only after the topic is proven organically; retargeting warm traffic to a reg page works, cold-to-webinar ads are an expensive way to buy no-shows (→ **ads**)
- **Speakers' own audiences** — for panels/summits, every speaker promotes; make it effortless (pre-written posts, custom links)

## Stage 2: Show-Up (the hardest metric)

Registrants are cheap; attendance is the funnel's leakiest joint. The show-up system:

- **Calendar add at registration** — the single highest-leverage fix. A registrant with a calendar entry is a different species from one with a confirmation email.
- **Reminder cadence**: confirmation (immediately, with calendar links) → value reminder T-1 day (tease a specific insight, not "don't forget!") → T-1 hour → **T-5 minutes with the join link** (this last one moves attendance more than the rest combined). SMS reminders where consented lift show-up meaningfully (→ **sms**).
- **Close the gap between registration and event.** Show-up decays with distance: someone who registered 6 weeks out has forgotten you existed. If promoting long-range, add a mid-window touchpoint (a related asset, a poll shaping the content).
- **Pre-engagement**: ask a question at registration ("what's your biggest challenge with X?") — you get content input, segmentation data, and a micro-commitment that lifts attendance.
- Time slot: mid-week, late morning or early afternoon in your audience's dominant timezone; avoid Mondays/Fridays. Test against your own data.

## Stage 3: Live-to-Close (sell without being salesy)

The arc that converts without feeling like a pitch:

1. **Open (0–5 min)** — restate the promise, preview the payoff, tell them the offer is coming ("at the end I'll show how we do this — first, the practice you can use regardless"). Naming the pitch upfront *removes* the salesy feeling; the ambush is what people hate.
2. **Content (5–35 min)** — teach the real thing. The #1 conversion lever is genuine value: an attendee who learned something trusts the product behind it. Structure as 3 teachable points, each with a proof (story, number, live example). Use attendee questions/polls to keep hold rate up.
3. **The transition (1 min, scripted)** — the hardest 60 seconds; write it word for word. The honest bridge: "everything I showed you can be done manually — here's what it looks like when [product] does it for you." The product enters as the *implementation* of the content, not a topic change.
4. **Offer (5–8 min)** — one offer, concretely: what they get, what it costs (or what the next step is), why now (a real reason — expiring bonus, cohort start, limited seats; never fake scarcity, → **offers** for legitimate urgency design).
5. **Q&A (10+ min)** — conversion happens here; questions are objections in disguise. Seed 2–3 starter questions for cold starts, answer the objection behind the question, and re-state the offer + link once mid-Q&A and once at close.

Hold-rate mechanics throughout: deliver on a specific promise made in minute 1 at minute ~35 (announced), use pattern breaks every ~7 minutes (poll, story, screen change), and never front-load housekeeping.

## Stage 4: Post-Webinar (half the revenue is here)

Segment by behavior, then sequence (→ **emails** for craft):

| Segment | Play |
|---|---|
| **Attended, engaged** (stayed for offer, asked questions) | Personal follow-up within 24h referencing their question; direct next step |
| **Attended, left early** | Replay + timestamp to what they missed; softer CTA |
| **No-show** | "Sorry we missed you" + replay with a deadline. No-shows are warm — they raised their hand once; a 2–3 email replay sequence recovers a meaningful fraction |
| **Replay-registrants** | Same as no-shows, minus the apology |

- **Replay strategy**: time-limited replay (72h–1 week) preserves urgency for the offer; evergreen replay converts the offer to a standing CTA and becomes a lead magnet (→ **lead-magnets**). Pick per goal — limited for launches/offers, evergreen for education-led capture.
- **Cart/offer close**: if the offer had a deadline, run a real close sequence (deadline reminder → objection email → final hours). All urgency claims must be true.
- **Recycle the asset**: transcript → recap post (→ **content-strategy**), clips (→ **video**), quotable stats for AI-citable content (→ **ai-seo**). A monthly webinar run this way is a content engine with a lead-gen side effect.

## Metrics That Diagnose

- **Low registration** → topic/title/promise problem (or traffic quality). Fix the offer of the webinar itself before touching promo volume.
- **Low show-up** (<30%) → reminder system or reg-to-event gap; check calendar-add rate first.
- **Low hold** → content front-loading or promise mismatch; find the drop-off timestamp.
- **High hold, low conversion** → transition or offer problem; the audience liked the class but wasn't shown a reason to act.
- Cost per qualified attendee and per opportunity — comparable against your other channels, and the number that decides the program's future.

---

*Skill category identified via 2026-07 competitive research (webinar-marketing in alirezarezvani/claude-skills, MIT — idea credited; content authored from scratch to this repo's standard). Benchmarks are directional industry ranges — treat your own trend line as the baseline.*

---
name: events
description: "When the user wants to plan, run, sponsor, speak at, or get pipeline from events — webinars, conferences, trade shows, meetups, dinners, workshops, virtual summits, or user conferences. Also use when the user mentions 'event marketing,' 'field marketing,' 'run a webinar,' 'webinar funnel,' 'show-up rate,' 'should we sponsor,' 'sponsor a conference,' 'trade show booth,' 'booth strategy,' 'event ROI,' 'badge scans,' 'event follow-up,' 'speaking slot,' 'CFP,' 'conference talk,' 'host a dinner,' 'user conference,' or 'virtual summit.' Covers all four roles: hosting, sponsoring/exhibiting, speaking, and attending. For product launch moments, see launch. For the partnership side of joint webinars, see co-marketing. For ongoing community programs, see community-marketing. For podcast appearances, see public-relations. For the email sequences themselves, see emails."
metadata:
  version: 1.0.0
---

# Event Marketing

You are an expert in event-driven marketing — using webinars, conferences, dinners, and talks to create pipeline, authority, and compounding content. Your job is to make events produce measurable business outcomes, not just attendance.

## Before Starting

**Check for product marketing context first:**
If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Then establish, in one batch:

1. **Which role?** Hosting your own event, sponsoring/exhibiting at someone else's, speaking, or attending?
2. **What outcome?** Pipeline/meetings, authority/brand, community, or content production? (Pick a primary — events that try to do everything measure nothing.)
3. **Who must be in the room?** The ICP segment, and roughly how many of them exist at this event.
4. **Budget and team** — money, and who can actually work the event.

## Pick Your Role

| You are… | Core motion | Depth |
|---|---|---|
| **Hosting** | Own the audience end to end — webinar, workshop, dinner, meetup, summit, user conference | This file + [webinar-funnel.md](references/webinar-funnel.md) for the flagship format |
| **Sponsoring / exhibiting** | Buy access to someone else's audience — evaluate, negotiate, work the floor, follow up | [sponsorship-roi.md](references/sponsorship-roi.md) |
| **Speaking** | Trade expertise for stage time — get booked, design the talk, compound the recording | [speaking.md](references/speaking.md) |
| **Attending** | No booth, no stage — engineer meetings anyway | Section below |

Mixed roles are normal (sponsor + speak, attend + host a dinner). Plan each role's motion separately; they share the follow-up system.

## Which Events to Invest In (Portfolio First)

Before roles and tactics: events are the most expensive, riskiest, hardest-to-measure channel — the leverage is in **selection**, not execution. Never write off "events" from one bad conference; each event is its own ecosystem (judging all events on one conference is like judging all paid media on a single Google Ads test). Full framework, the three event types, and cost benchmarks in [event-portfolio-strategy.md](references/event-portfolio-strategy.md).

- **Is in-person even necessary?** It earns its cost mainly for high-trust, high-ACV motions: enterprise/multi-stakeholder deals, regulated buyers (health/finance/gov), heavy customization, conservative industries, and 6+ month cycles. If your ICP isn't there, spend on digital first.
- **The 80/20 of selection.** A handful of events generate most event pipeline. Find them, double down (speaking slots, side events, more people, better placement), and cut the tail.
- **Bigger isn't better.** Mega-conferences mean more noise, higher cost, and audience dilution (students, press, vendors, tourists). Niche/regional events (50–200 attendees) often deliver more qualified leads per dollar.
- **Three types, three risk profiles:** **Owned** (max control/max risk — roadshows, summits, user conferences), **Trade shows** (someone else's arena — 120 days of prep beats the 4 days on the floor), **Community** (compound interest — small regular gatherings that spawn more, measured by the "Saturday Test").

## The Universal Arc: 20% Event, 80% Before-and-After

The event itself is the smallest part of event marketing. Every format follows the same arc, and most failures are arc failures, not event failures:

**Before (where pipeline is actually made)**
- Build the target list: who's attending that matches your ICP? (Attendee lists, speaker lists, "who's going" posts, past-year attendees.)
- **Book meetings before you arrive.** A meeting booked two weeks out is worth ten hopeful hallway collisions. Outreach angle: specific, low-friction, time-boxed ("15 min at the coffee bar Tuesday").
- Announce your presence where your audience already is (email list, social, communities) with a reason to find you — not "we'll be at booth 402" but what they get.

**During**
- Optimize for *qualified conversations*, not raw contacts. One real conversation with an ICP buyer beats fifty badge scans.
- Capture context, not just contact: after each conversation, record what they said, what they care about, and the agreed next step. The follow-up writes itself from this; without it, follow-up is generic and dies.
- Create content while there (see Content Arc below) — the event is a recording studio you already paid for.

**After (where pipeline is won or lost)**
- **The 24–48 hour window.** Follow up while the conversation is still warm, referencing what was actually discussed. Every day of delay roughly halves response rates (directional, not a law — but the decay is real and fast).
- Tier the follow-up: hot conversations get a personal note + concrete next step; warm get a relevant asset tied to their stated problem; scans-with-no-conversation get one light touch or nothing — don't burn your domain on people who don't remember you.
- Route to systems: CRM with event source tagging (→ **revops**), nurture for the not-nows (→ **emails**).

## Hosting: Choose the Format for the Job

| Format | Best for | Effort | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Webinar** | Lead gen + education at scale | Low-mid | The flagship repeatable format — full funnel in [webinar-funnel.md](references/webinar-funnel.md) |
| **Workshop** | Product-qualified leads, activation | Mid | Hands-on beats presentation for conversion; smaller and deeper than a webinar |
| **Dinner / small gathering** | Exec relationships, ABM accounts | Mid | 8–14 seats, no pitch, curated guest mix — the highest meetings-per-dollar format in B2B |
| **Meetup series** | Local community, recurring presence | Mid | Consistency beats production value; hand hosting duties to community members over time (→ **community-marketing**) |
| **Virtual summit** | List building via partner audiences | High | Multi-speaker = built-in distribution; every speaker promotes (→ **co-marketing** for the partner mechanics) |
| **User conference** | Retention, expansion, category authority | Very high | Don't attempt before you have a community that would attend without being begged |

Two hosting rules that outrank format choice:

- **The topic is the targeting.** "State of [category] 2026" attracts your ICP; "All about [your product]" attracts existing customers only. Pick topics your buyer would attend even if they'd never buy.
- **Recurring beats one-off.** A monthly webinar or quarterly dinner compounds — audiences, promotion muscle, and content libraries build. A single big event evaporates.

## Attending (No Booth, No Stage)

The zero-budget motion, and often the best ROI in the building:

1. **Target list first** — 15–30 named people you want to meet, built from the attendee/speaker list and social chatter.
2. **Pre-book** — outreach 1–3 weeks ahead; the ask is 15 minutes, anchored to a specific time and place.
3. **The side-event play** — host a dinner or breakfast adjacent to the conference for 8–12 target accounts. You get host status without sponsor pricing; often out-generates a booth at a tenth of the cost (see [sponsorship-roi.md](references/sponsorship-roi.md)).
4. **Work sessions strategically** — go where your targets are speaking, ask a real question, follow up on it.
5. Same 24–48h follow-up discipline as every other role.

## The Content Arc: Every Event Is a Content Engine

Events produce your highest-proof content — capture it deliberately:

- **Record everything you're allowed to record.** Talks, webinars, panels. The recording is the durable asset; the live audience is just its first viewer.
- **Transcripts compound in AI answers.** Published recordings and show notes get crawled and cited by AI assistants — the same logic as podcast guesting (→ **public-relations** podcast prep) and the YouTube text layer (→ **ai-seo**). Say the quotable lines cleanly: your company name next to your category, numbers out loud.
- Slice the recording: clips (→ **video**), a recap post per session (→ **content-strategy**), pull-quotes for social (→ **social**), proof points for sales (→ **sales-enablement**).
- Photograph/collect social proof: testimonials captured at the event are the most natural you'll ever get.

## Measurement: Pipeline, Not Applause

| Metric tier | Examples | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| **Vanity** | Registrations, badge scans, foot traffic, impressions | Track, never optimize for, never report as success |
| **Real** | Qualified conversations, meetings booked, opportunities created, pipeline influenced | The actual scoreboard |
| **Decisive** | Cost per qualified meeting, cost per opportunity, closed-won influenced | What decides whether you do it again |

- Compare cost-per-qualified-meeting against your other channels (ads, outbound) — that's the go/no-go math, worked through in [sponsorship-roi.md](references/sponsorship-roi.md).
- Events are multi-touch by nature: use source tagging + self-reported attribution ("heard us at X") and influence windows, and never claim last-click credit for a deal the event merely touched (→ **attribution**).
- Judge a recurring event program on a 2–3 event trend, not one instance — the first run of anything underperforms its steady state.

## Common Mistakes

- **Sponsoring for "brand awareness" with no conversation target.** If nobody owns a meetings number, the booth is décor.
- **The follow-up gap.** Leads captured, then first touch two weeks later from a generic sequence. The event was fine; the follow-up killed it.
- **Optimizing show-up rate after picking a topic nobody wants.** Reminder cadence can't save weak demand — fix topic and promise first.
- **One-off thinking.** Budget for the third instance before running the first.
- **Doing the event, skipping the recording.** Full production effort, zero durable assets.
- **Counting badge scans as leads.** A scan is a person who walked slowly. Qualify before it enters the pipeline.
- **Writing off "events" after one bad conference.** Each event is its own ecosystem — judge them individually, not as a single channel.
- **Chasing the biggest conferences.** Size correlates with noise and audience dilution, not ROI — niche and regional events often win on cost-per-qualified-meeting.

## Related Skills

- **launch** — the event is a launch moment (announcement, Product Hunt, go-live)
- **co-marketing** — joint webinars and partner summits: partnership mechanics live there, event execution here
- **community-marketing** — ongoing community programs; events can seed or serve one
- **public-relations** — podcast guesting and press at events
- **lead-magnets** — gated replays and event content as magnets
- **emails** / **sms** — the reminder and follow-up sequences themselves
- **cold-email** — pre-event meeting-booking outreach
- **revops** — routing, scoring, and source-tagging event leads
- **attribution** — measuring multi-touch event influence honestly