Collaboration is key to success, says Catherine White, CMO, digital media and live events company Bisnow, who goes under the InGo Spotlight in this edit for CMW:
What is your proudest achievement in event marketing so far?
Several years ago, I worked at Bloomberg on a division focused on launching an annual summit in Asia designed to bring together global leaders across public and private sectors to reshape the world economy: Bloomberg New Economy Forum. That was a massively tall order and required navigating time zones, cultural differences, unexpected world events, and nuances of marketing in different languages. The level of collaboration required to pull it off was next level.
It’s one of my proudest achievements and one that I will use as self-motivation when I encounter an unfamiliar challenge or become uncertain that I can do something to help me push forward and get it done.
Who is your Event Marketing hero?
I have learned something from every single person I’ve worked with, so it’s impossible to name an individual. Rather, I’ll point to the heroes required to pull off a great event: my heroes are the person grabbing that speaker a cup of coffee before they take the stage, the staff member quietly straightening up the chairs and picking up trash, the team member who showed up early to help at registration without being asked, and my colleagues who make it their mission to have every event attendee have a seamless experience that leaves them excited to come back next time.
You can’t have an ego or focus on your title at events – we all have the same job: making the event as fantastic as possible. At Bisnow, we believe every single person is in charge of making that experience great and it is each individual’s responsibility to take that on, no matter what their role is.
What is the best piece of professional advice you’ve received, and who gave it?
I’ll quote my boss and Bisnow’s CEO Gregg Mayer: “There is no such thing as good or bad news, there’s just news.” Information is power and even bad news empowers you to make a decision.
In events, things rarely go according to plan – but if we are transparent with one another and lay out the challenges and potential outcomes, we’re able to optimise the result. This mantra has been quoted across our team to encourage people to share information in real time.
Maybe a venue is smaller than we expected and we’re going to have to limit the amount of tickets we sell – or we have a speaker who can no longer keynote and instead has to do some welcome remarks and then leave. These scenarios could be “bad news” and something we stress over – or we could use them to fuel a decision, like raising ticket prices and using scarcity messaging or telling attendees to come early if they want to hear from the top speaker.
With so many moving parts in events, it’s key to be transparent on what’s going on, good or bad, so everyone can make a decision and push forward.
Which InGo feature or tool has been most beneficial to your events?
Commercial real estate LOVES networking so InGo has become a fantastic tool for us to tap into our audience’s desire to connect with their community. We utilise InGo for all of our events to have attendees share on social, as well as provide assets to our speakers and sponsors.
Our own team uses InGo’s posting tool to share details on the events that are coming up, which means we’ve got great brand consistency for event after event in our portfolio of 350 events a year in more than 47 markets around the globe.
If you could describe your event marketing style in one word, what would it be?
Experiment! Marketing – and especially event marketing –I s an art and a science. Sometimes a tried-and-true strategy fails and one that you come up with on the fly is what turns an event around, so you have to have humility and be willing to try and fail over and over again.
Be ready to measure the impact so you can figure out what’s working, but when in doubt, let’s try it!
Which team achievement are you most proud of?
At Bisnow, we pull off more than 350 events a year, convening more than 90K commercial real estate leaders annually – with only four marketers focused on selling tickets to these events. Our event offerings grow every year, so I am massively proud of my team’s ability to juggle an insane amount of competing priorities, create opportunities to try something new, and to persevere when challenges and surprises inevitably arise.
What’s your top tip for someone just starting in event marketing?
A few tips:
– Get really good at measuring every single thing you do. Today’s event marketer has to use data to track conversions, traffic, and generally, what’s working. Get comfortable with data analysis. Take an Excel course if you don’t know what a VLOOKUP is or aren’t great at making a pivot table. Knowing how to analyse data is one of the greatest things you can do to help your creative ideas go further.
– Volunteer yourself. The best way to learn is to throw yourself into different aspects of an event, so if the coordination team needs help day of the event, throw your hat into the ring. If someone has a new idea for how to do something on social, raise your hand to build the assets and try it. Events require a lot of different skills and the more things you expose yourself to, the more well-rounded and respected you’ll be.
– It’s not going to be as glamorous as your friends and family think, but if you get to travel for your events, try to spend at least one hour actually seeing the place you’re in outside of the hotel ballroom or conference venue. Even if you just step out to go explore a cool restaurant for a late dinner after the event, actually exploring the city you’re in is always a great ‘reward’ post-event.
