Seattle Marketing Strategy: Persuasion -- Making event marketing work

In Six ways to persuade people and grow your business, a review of Robert Cialdini's seminal marketing book, we discussed six influential concepts. Here are some strategies I've used to make event marketing and business networking work.

The event

Cardiac Science wants to prospect risk managers attending an upcoming industry conference. We decided to host an event all our own. Our brand awareness is relatively low. Why should they come? After a day-long conference, why would you go?

•       For free food and drink? Maybe.

•       For subject matter that sounds vital for your job? Perhaps.

•       For networking? That might do it for me. You? 

Free food and drink

No such thing as a free lunch? Well, no, there isn't. We can serve you appetizers and drinks for a few hours and charge you nothing monetarily. But what kind of boor comes, swills free beer, and leaves unwilling to entertain a little conversation with one of our sales reps? Reciprocity, in a food-for-conversation trade, works. Cialdini lovingly posts reciprocity as chief among the concepts of persuasion. 

Subject matter

Relevant subject, interesting speaker. These fall in the social proof camp: can you see yourself getting something out of the event? If yes, attend. If no, don't. 

Who else is going?

Far and away my favorite and, really, the reason I'm writing this article. This is social proof at its best and you can leverage it in so many ways. First, let the prospect know who else is coming. Using variable printing, we're listing on the invite the names of each of the other invitees from the prospect's company.

Once you get the logic down (email me for a sample), it's easy for the moderately EXCEL-proficient user to prepare a matrix suitable for the mail-merge process. 

Think about it: if on the junior VP's invitation he sees that the CEO, CFO, VP of this and that, and he was invited, might junior be intrigued? "Hey, I'm invited to an event with the CEO," he tells his wife. Perhaps at work he'll ask around, "Is Jeff going to this thing?" It gets people in the office talking about it, always a good thing. Second, let the prospect know about six relevant companies that are also invited. That's relevant because the prospect

(a) might want to network - who knows? - maybe a job change is afoot;

(b) might have an opportunity to win some new business; or,

(c) doesn't want the competitor having information he doesn't.(I'm sure there are other reasons.) In our Cardiac Science example, we're letting the guys from Kraft know that General Mills and Kellogg (competitors, potential employers, respected companies), Publix and Kroger supermarkets (retailers), and Sysco and ARAMARK (distributors) will be there. The Kraft guys really should make an effort to be there. 

Scarcity

We can use fancy stationery and graphics and plaster "exclusive event" all over the invitation - but that's insufficient to communicate scarcity. We're including a self-addressed stamped envelope and an RSVP (akin to a wedding invitation). We're asking them to call or mail their RSVP along with their dietary restrictions (will we have enough suitable food if they don't reply?), and we will follow up with an outbound call to each prospect. The room will only hold so many people; we want to make sure the bar is properly stocked, etc. 

The RSVP serves a secondary purpose. On it, we give three options:

•       Yes, I will attend.

•       Yes, I'd like to attend but can't. Please call me with a synopsis of the program.

•       Yes, I'd like to learn more but prefer you join me and my colleagues at [company name, variably printed]. Please call me to arrange an on-campus visit. We also leave room for the respondent to add the names of other interested parties. 

Postscript

About that low brand awareness: We deliberately left our company name off the outer envelope. We used fancy papers, and affixed a live stamp. Could be a wedding invitation for all you know. Better open it up. Then, stand back, and let the reciprocity, social proof, and scarcity perform their magic. Thank you, Mr. Cialdini.