In this week’s podcast, Andy & Brian take a look at the state of industry conferences and discuss the results of a recent survey on conferences.

Brian Beck: Andy Hoar, welcome to Friday 15 with MasterB2B. Welcome to another week. I’m Brian Beck. I’m here with Andy Hoar again as we do every Friday to keep this fascinating news of the week and topic of the week. So Andy, welcome.

Andy Hoar: Yeah, it’s good to be here. Where are you calling in from there?

Brian Beck: I am calling in from sunny San Diego, unlike the rest of the country here in mid-January. It’s actually warm. I’m here for a conference. The solar show, all these solar manufacturers and distributors here in San Diego talking about all kinds of different things, including of course, eCommerce. And it goes to our topic today, Andy, because we’re talking about trade shows. We’re talking about industry events in which ones to go to. So I’m excited about this topic, Andy, because you and I, you know, we’ve been involved in this for a long time, industry events, going to them, speaking at them, hosting them, you started one. And now we’ve started one too. So we’re going to talk today about what in-person events are on your calendar in 2024. So Andy, I mean, we get asked this question all the time. Where should I go? You know, I’ve got, you know, I’m a practitioner and B2B e-commerce or an executive, a CMO, a CDO, a VP of e-commerce director. What events should I go to this year? And we wanted to get ahead of this at the beginning of 2024 so we can give you some thoughts about what’s coming and what we think is worth, you know, you hitting, depending on your goals. Andy, you got some data. Let’s talk about it.

Andy Hoar: Yes. It was a great study that was done by Bizzabo, which is a company that manufactures software to do both online and offline events. They came about during the pandemic, but they’ve sort of been, you know, navigating this over the last couple of years. And it’s become pretty clear that in-person is back. You can see in the data here, 52.1% of people in the survey said they’re growing their in-person events. So, and we’ve seen this, you know, NRF just took place a couple of days ago, you know, in 2022, there were 10,000 people in NRF right after the pandemic. Today, 2024, 40,000. So clearly, people are coming back. And I think the reason why is because we’re living in a, not only do they want to return post-pandemic, but the pandemic was over a couple of years ago. I think the new reason people are going to these in-person conferences is is uncertainty about the economy and thinking about AI.

Brian Beck: Yeah. That’s fascinating. You see, I think you think about it from the reverse, right? If the economy actually was uncertain, wouldn’t there be, you know, less attendance because budgets are getting cut? But yeah, I was pretty shocked to see those numbers out of NRF, Sucharita, your former colleague at Forrester posted something. I think just yesterday about that. And it was fascinating to see their back to where they were and beyond, I think. So, I, you know, I, I agree with you, but I think it’s also that, we’re still dealing with some of the post-pandemic, you know, heck, I was, I was on Zoom and just people are still on Zoom. People are still remote. People are still working hybrid. They want to be back in person. And I’m hearing this, Andy, from all kinds of different conference people that organized conferences as well as the practitioners that I want to get out from behind my computer out of my home office and get out and network and learn peer to peer. Andy, we’re seeing it in our own events. I mean, my goodness, we’ll talk about it. But oversubscribed, we have waiting lists on most of our events already in the first half of the year. It’s incredible. And I think, and so I think we’re seeing it across the board.

Andy Hoar: I think that some, yeah, there’s some truth to that in that. It’s certainly the case that people felt caged up in the last couple of years and now the doors open and they’re flying out. But I’ve also just seen in the years I’ve been associated with this when there are movements, when there are maybe existential threats, you know, it happened with Amazon maybe 10 years ago, people run scared a little bit and this is not a bad thing. They just want to know what other people know so they don’t get blindsided in a conference and events are a good way to go.

Brian Beck: It’s the peer to peer networking and sharing. So here’s another statisticWhy do they go to learn a network, right? To your point, this is an interesting statistic here from Bizzabo, want to speak to this Andy?

Andy Hoar: Yeah, 77% of attendees agree or strongly agrees. In other words, they agree that in person B2B conference is one ofthe best networking opportunities and we’ve seen this ourselves. I mean, it’s really, you know, say what you owe about Zoom is a lot you can do with it. We’re on it right now, but we can’t do as effectively as networking. And so that’s not surprising is that number, but the other reason people go is to learn, right? And you know, this depends on what level of maturity you’re at, but this is pretty clear that you’re going to go learn at least one thing, maybe only one thing, but you’re going to learn at least one thing new that could be consequential to your business.

Brian Beck: You know, it’s people, people connection, connections, In my years, my almost 20 years, Andy as a VP of e-commerce. The best way for me to learn and just to make decisions, one of the key things I would do is pick up the phone or go to a conference and call or talk to peers, peers that I had met at conferences that, you know, hey, have you used a solution? Have you taken this approach? How is hiring going? These are the questions that, you know, that are best answered by peers. And then, and then on the other side, right? We talked to, we talked to solution providers all the time, marketers at solution providers. And what do they say about these events, Andy?

Andy Hoar: So it’s got to work for both sides of the equation because a lot of the funding for these comes from those folks. And, you know, these people were a bit biased because these are event marketers who responded to this particular part of the survey, but they say in-person events are the most impactful marketing channel of all the channels that they’ve seen. 80 plus percent are saying this. And I think we’ve seen this too. We have. You know, it requires a multitude of different approaches. But the nice thing about an in-person event is it’s a good way to hit people at the top of the funnel. If you’re a vendor and also the bottom of the funnel, you can close deals, you can also get to know people and start a conversation. It’s uniquely qualified to do that.

Brian Beck: Why do you think about a lot of these, you know, the, what, what, when you’re a solution provider also, you know, a lot of it is about solutioning for the customer. The best way to do that is to develop a rapport and understand and really listen in a one-to-one type of way. And events provide that opportunity. So I’m not, I’m not surprised that the marketers said that 80.4 percent said that it’s the most impactful marketing channel for their organization.

Andy Hoar: I think we live in the world, a microwave world now where you can just put in there and heat it up and it comes out warm and instant gratification society, Amazon can deliver anything to you within a couple of hours. I do think that oftentimes the software companies put unrealistic expectations on an in person event. And they treat it like it’s an online campaign where you can send an email out, people click on it, they sign up, they buy it and we’re done in the same day. Maybe at the bottom of the funnel, you can do stuff like that. You can finally close that deal. But a lot of this is really top of the funnel stuff. And in B2B, these are long sale cycles. That’s right. So they make 12 to 18 months. But we often say this, if you don’t meet these people, if they don’t see you, eye to eye, they’re going to see this thing as risky. So there really isn’t an alternative in that regard. And it’s really necessary that you start a conversation with somebody in person because there’s a lot of risk associated with that.

Brian Beck: And that’s at the end of the day, our B2B community. We know this from our practitioners is, they are folks who are conservative. And the one element, which is, you know, it’s not tangible, but it is, is trust, right? And trust is established by meeting and talking to people. And that’s, I think, a lot of this driving this from, frankly, from both sides, people buy from people they trust, right? So if you’re looking for a solution, you want to meet and stare people in the eye. And this is really true about B2B, more so than B2C, consumer.

Andy Hoar: For sure. And especially if it’s a six figure, seven figure decision, that’s going to be material to their business in the long term, you know, B2B, you get fired if make a bad decision like that.

Brian Beck: That’s right and we’ve been talking about why people are going, why people are, you know, companies are sponsoring, but what are the events? So here, here we have a list of a few, and for our podcast listeners, maybe we describe these.

Andy Hoar: So these are what I would call kind of the significant six, which are six event producers, let’s say, in some cases, they have multiple events. So B2B Online let’s just highlight them first. So B2B Online has a big event coming up on May 6th. We’re going to be there. It’s in Chicago. They also have an event in the fall. There’s the only ones in the space that do two B2B commerce events a year. And the one in the fall is in November. So again, we’ll be at that one as well. The organization that runs B2B Online, WBR, also has another event, which is more intimate called B2B Connect, which is a big event. You have been to this before. I’ve heard good things about it. The small group where you get everybody togethe over the course of a day. That’s in June.

Brian Beck: I like that format myself, the smaller event like that. Yeah, go ahead. What else?

Andy Hoar: And then, you know, just not in a particular order, Shoptalk is another one, which is a B2C e-commerce event. But it’s going to be so large and the format has become so successful around, you know, connecting people with other people that we feel incumbent, being incumbent upon us to mention it. This is in Las Vegas in March 17th to the 20th. And a lot of people compare what we do actually to what Shoptalk does. In terms of the interactivity, there’s great content there, but also just a level of interaction that you get that’s built into the DNA of the event.

Brian Beck: I talked to folks and we do see people B2B companies going to Shoptalk for that reason that there is a lot of one to one, a lot of the solution providers are there. And that, actually, that piece of that one to one connection, I think they’ve executed well where, they’re getting people in individual meetings based on certain criteria and qualification and in some ways, similar to what we’re doing with our roundtables and other things. Andy, we’ve seen ourselves as demand for in person. I mean, it’s unbelievable from both sides, you know, the vendors of the solution providers and the practitioners. So we’re doing our second year of our Mindshare Summit this year at the University of Chicago and our regional round tables. And my goodness, we’re, you know, as I mentioned, we’re oversubscribed on these. The demand is incredible. And the Mindshare Summit itself, I think, we’re almost half full.

Andy Hoar: It’s a unique format. The round tables are quite unique in that nobody’s gone out to where the practitioners are. They always make you come to them. All these other events are in specific cities, pretty consistently in those cities and you have to fly their drive there. We decided, hey, why don’t we go to them? So we’re going to LA, which nobody goes to for B2B, but we’re oversubscribed for that one. Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Minneapolis, Denver. You know, these are all cities that don’t often have folks know up and say, let’s get together. So again, we just started marketing some of these. Some of the early ones were totally ove subscribed. There are two other events though. I wanted to highlight here. So Envision, we understand they just announced that they’re going to be moving their event from almost like the Q2 time frame to the fall. So it looks like that’s in September in Chicago. And then our friends at MDM are doing their distribution-focused event in Denver, September 11th through the 13th. We’ve been there before. It’s very heavily focused on distribution, but it’s a really good group of people and it’s called MDM SHIFT.

Brian Beck: And so, you know, as an e-commerce B2B, e-commerce professional, you have a variety of different, options here. Obviously, we’re going to encourage you to come to our events, but we got some really good options depending on what you’re focused on. Some larger, some smaller, but then Andy, we also have all these industry events. Industry specific trade shows, Grainger’s got a show. Affiliated Distributors has their marketing e-commerce summit. I’m going to that. You’ve got these other things. So how should a practitioner think about Andy?

Andy Hoar: You’ve got also got a list on Brian’s LinkedIn account because this came from my pocket at MDM. And you can see that 30 events between now and the middle part of June? And this doesn’t even include vendor events. So, commercetools, for example, is doing an event in mid-April in Miami, which we actually may be at. And vendor events are just like the old Imagine show for Magento. Those are great if you’re using the platform. They’re really user conferences. It’s where you can go get tips and tricks to be more effective and network with people who are struggling or succeeding with the same platform. So, yeah, there are a lot of opportunities here, but in terms of how to think about it, you know, I think our general approach is pick a couple of big ones that are out of the city you live in, go to those. And then if you happen to have one in the city you’re in, definitely go there. Again, that’s why we did our regional roundtables. If you live in Chicago, it’s golden for you because there are regional events, there are national events, there are international events. But if you’re in other cities like Dallas, etc, there aren’t that many events like these ones that we haven’t seen. So, we’re hoping to fill a void.

Brian Beck: From my perspective, you need to get to one of the big e-commerce events. You know, we like B2B Online, ourselves. It’s it’s important to get the pulse of the industry at a bigger e-commerce events. So, if you have two or three to choose from, you know, look at one is smaller, one of the general ones. And then I think, you know, look, industry events like the ones we have here on the screen for those of you who can see it, you know, in the ISA, I’m going to the Industrial Supply Association. If you’re an industrial equipment manufacturer, if you’re an AD member or thinking about it, you know, joining that organization, I think those are really good events because they’re very focused on your peers. And that’s really where you make some of the best connections and learn and learn things specifically for your business.

Andy Hoar: They all talk about digital too. Every one of you has some component of digital. They didn’t grow up that way, but they’ve become that. And I just want to weep with one quick thought on this about how to think about it. On LinkedIn Ben Rudnick, posted a pretty interesting quote. And I think it’s captures the essence of how people should think about it. He said, the smaller niche B2B events are awesome. The intimacy facilitates deeper connections and a high signal to noise ratio. Yet, see you at ShoptalkI’m going to go to these smaller ones because I get more out of them, but I should and will also go to one or two of the larger ones. And I think that’s the proper balance.

Brian Beck: So we asked our community on LinkedIn, Andy, you know, how many events are they going to go to in 2024 B2B e-commerce and trade shows. And we offered a few different options, just one event, two or three events, four or five or more than five events. And more than half of folks had two to three. So I think that kind of fits into, to me, that’s a, that’s a great number. It gets you to one of the bigger shows and then also allows you to be focused, maybe go to one industry event, one roundtable or something like that, where it’s very specific to your needs. And, the good news about a lot of these conferences, like our roun tables are free for practitioners to go to for the most part. So if you’ve got a roundtable in your market, you ought to go to it. There’s no cost to you when it’s local. So, I mean, why not, right? And you’re going to make some great local connections. Let’s talk a little bit about what we have coming up. So our Summit, we talked a little bit about, it’s on June 4th, it’s the University of Chicago’s Gleacher Center. We have limited sponsored seats available. We’re almost half full on this event. So if you’re interested, it’s still four, five months away. If you’re interested in this, make sure you go to our website and you’ll see it. And sign up because this is going to be a fantastic event. We’re going to have about 130 people. This is not a conference, it’s a Summit. Think like a mini Shoptalk in some ways. These are intimate groupings of people. We break up in small groups. It’s going to be a fantastic day. It’s a one day long event. People coming in the night before may stay the whole next day. We have an event that night and then they can, people can head out next morning. So it’s going to be a really good group. If you go to our website, just click on the events button, you’ll see at the top, you’ll see our upcoming events, you know, Los Angeles, you mentioned round tables. These are 20 to 25 executives from the market. And we already have waiting lists on I think four or five of these Andy. So significant waiting list.

Andy Hoar: Yes. Quite a number of people. 30 people. That’s crazy.

Brian Beck: Folks, you know, suggest you check these out. We, you know, email Andy or I or send us a note on LinkedIn or whatever, but, you know, if you want to join, we’ll definitely get you on that waiting list.