 Hi everyone, I am Tina. I'm part of the SiteGround team and First of all, I'd like you to thank you for staying this late for this talk I'm incredibly excited and honored to be on that stage today to have my first ever public presentation So thank you, and if I'm too nervous bear with me I come from Sofia Bulgaria oops I come from Sofia Bulgaria in case you were wondering where my funny accent is coming from and As Constantine said today, I'm going to talk to you about how you can How you can make the most for your brand by attending and sponsoring conferences How many of you have actually sponsored or actually promoted a brand at a conference? Okay decent amount, but not all of you I guess I see I guess I don't see a full house of hands because actually very few of you have sponsored an event And I'd like to tell you a story Four years ago when I first attempted WordCamp as a sponsor We've already been in business for seven years and we had thousands of WordPress customers Yet, however, when people came to our booth, they were like SiteGround. I don't know you guys Even though we've been in the business for such a long time and it was a successful and growing one people didn't know us and They didn't know our brand and as a result when actually they had to compare they would choose our competitors because They knew their brands and their brands were known for something This was directly affecting our bottom line and we actually realized that even though we did have a successful business We did not have a successful brand Putting this into the context of the highly digital world that we operate and live in we had even bigger even bigger problem with the global distributed teams and business partners and clients carried across countries and continents and sales coming online from invisible clients the power of personal relationships was ever more important and Business has always been and will continue to be personal and We realized that the more digital we get the more personal we have to be We were neither known nor we were personal with our community and We had to do something about it and the most obvious thing that we could do was start going to conferences and The reason for this is simple Conferences allow you to meet people face-to-face That human interaction allows you to bond on a personal level and build real offline relationships Thanks to these relationships your potential clients are more willing to buy from you and your potential Partners are more willing to work with you You become essentially part of the community and get invaluable feedback from this community And that ultimately helps you create and get a competitive advantage As a result your brand gets stronger and your business grows Ever since we decided to go to conferences. I've attended a little over 20 word camps around the world and a bunch of Maybe about 30 other conferences representing site ground Today my I'm also responsible for site ground event strategy And I've been involved with a little over 200 events around the world where we've either sponsored attended spoke at or spoke at conferences, however have one serious problem They are expensive They only bring results in the long term and are very very difficult to measure Which is why you have to be extra cautious about your conference budget and invest strategically From that point onwards, I would like you I would like to take you through our process that has helped us achieve Maximum brand results while maintaining a relatively healthy conference budget Just one second Right so this process consists of five steps and is based on my personal experience as a sponsor at conferences But it is a hundred percent valid and applicable if you only want to attend Being at a conference as a visitor Brings you great well provides for great opportunities to improve your brand if you do it right And I believe that the next five steps will help you elevate your personal or business brand and help your business grow So the first step is to identify the events that you want to go to naturally There have been nearly 23,000 conferences in 2015 alone Unless you have a crazy big budget events budget, you can't be everywhere Even if you did by the way Mindlessly spending money on conferences just to have your logo out there is not a strategy that will give you that ultimate created brand experience You want to be where you can connect and most importantly where you can interact with your target group With a limited budget though, you have to be strategic and narrow down your focus to the target audience That will have the biggest impact over on your business Our target users are small and mid-sized businesses freelance designers and developers and agencies and big enterprises that build websites or use a CMS to do it This is too broad of a target So we narrow down our focus to the CMS our clients were using the most and This is how we ended up going to WordCamps I'll give you three Sources where you can look for events and the first one is conference directories Lani art and meetup.com are my two favorite sources I guess you're familiar with both of them and they're great because they are very exhaustive extensive You can browse them By country by topic by interest lots of things so you can definitely start there the second one are Community websites just like WordCamp central No matter what your target is They have that target group. They have a website or a place to Together a network online and these places usually have a list of conferences as well. So Just like our WordCamp central every community has like has something like that like that. So look for those places and the third Place where you can identify events is your competitors There's no need to reinvent the wheel Just find out where they go and see if it makes sense for you to be there If they are already at a particular conference chances are that your target audience is also there So each year I go through that Identification process and short list a number of events that we would like to go to this. However, it does not mean that we will the second step is to evaluate all of those events or research them and The most important question you should ask yourselves at that point is how relevant is that event for my needs and What extent does it allow for human interaction? Because this is ultimately what you want You're looking for the personal connection with your ideal clients and partners and that connection is what is going to create a connected brand experience. I Still remember the first conference that we sponsored and attended We had really high hopes for creating good connections and networking with people the conference was at a university campus and It has 15 tracks and they only had 10 minute breaks between the sessions And some of the tracks were actually across the street scattered between the different buildings of the venue The 10 minutes were barely enough for people to find their track room and most of the conversations I had were between 26 and 30 seconds and I was generally giving directions to people. I don't know why they kept asking me So as you can tell at that point We were it was literally impossible to form a meaningful conversation not to mention start a relationship And I had miserably failed at researching and evaluating that conference in the end of the day It was both time and money lost for us so invest in research and It will save you time and money in the long term. I Have a checklist of three things of three elements that I always go through whenever I evaluate a conference The first one is pretty obvious is the conference website But you have no idea how much the conference website can tell you about the relevance of a conference Some conferences don't even have a website or have such a limited information on them That it's hard to tell who the conference is for or what it's all about The general rule of thumb is the more you can tell about the conference from the website only the better The second element that helps me evaluate the conference is the conference size Is it a huge convention with? 300 exhibitors we've been at such conferences or is it a small intimate community event like the smaller word camps that we have As businesses we are naturally attracted by the bigger conferences because you know, they give us bigger reach But they are not always the right ones the bigger the event the smaller the chance to meet the right people and Generally the shorter the conversations I'm not saying that big events are Wrong and small ones are right, but you have to take into account the size of the conference and be aware of what you want to achieve Either can be right and you have to just make a decision based on your goals and The third element that helps me identify conferences is the conference reputation and the feel of the conference Or in other words who goes to the event and why do they go there? What really helps me get the good feeling about the event are blog post recaps and social media coverage as well so generally the more positive reviews you can find about that conference from previous attendees the better because you want to be where people like being and The other thing is pictures. I spend ridiculously long time reviewing pictures from previous years But they really helped me get a fairly good understanding of how people interact and whether there are enough networking opportunities So now that you've researched and evaluated the conference the next third step is to Define your ideal exposure optimize its cost because we are working for a budget here and Negotiate it with the conference organizers The key thing to remember here is that you do not negotiate a sponsorship package or a list of perks But your own bigger vision on your brand exposure at the event Why is that important? when the organizers understand what your business goals are and What you want to achieve at that conference and how you imagine you can achieve that they're way more willing to cooperate and They're way more willing to accept your crazy ideas that you may have for the event Your success as a sponsor of a conference pretty much depends on well Not to a hundred percent extent, but to a bigger extent depends on how well the organizers will present you So the better your communication and relationship with the organizers the better results you can expect The fourth and probably most important step is the preparation Generally how successfully you will execute on your Negotiated exposure pretty much depends on that fourth step and When you are at that stage, there are three things you have to think about There your marketing materials your staff and your agenda Your marketing materials are very important and you have to make sure that whatever you give away at the conference People remember you with the right thing with the things that are important for your brand and I know that people get scared when they hear about marketing materials and copy But even if you only attend the conference a single business card or a t-shirt can make a difference And you don't have to be a sponsor to actually have a business card or a t-shirt And most important of all your marketing materials have to address Address your business objectives that you have for your event for the event while preserving your overall brand identity and Like I said, there's no you don't have to be a sponsor to to have good marketing materials. I have Favorite all-time favorite business card. I think that it's really smart and creative as you can see it's the business card of a yoga studio and It's literally impossible to not remember this brand because it's just a nice business card Like I mentioned t-shirts are also a great way to make a difference at a conference without even sponsoring it I remember what I really liked what the guys from codable did at word camp Europe this year If you're not familiar with codable they are a premium marketplace for outsourcing WordPress work and They had a lot of their members attending word camp Europe this year and what they did was they organized a dinner for all of them the day before the conference started and they gave gave away them t-shirts and because they were quite a lot of people and the t-shirts were pink and They were walking around the conference throughout all the time What happened was that they were pretty much walking brand ambassadors for codable and codable didn't even sponsor if I'm not mistaken they didn't write and Another very important thing to remember Regarding your marketing materials is that in case you go to many conferences with different target groups Staying consistent with your brand identity and is really crucial But we learned that the hard way Last year we had created two different set of expo walls The first one was for WordPress conferences and the second one was for designer and developer conferences that we used to go So as a result People that happened to go to both word camps and designer conferences. They got confused. They were like mmm I didn't recognize you guys Okay, in the end of the day what happened was that our brand was suffering while we were actually spending conference money so Defining your brand values and marketing message and staying consistent is really key for your marketing materials The second thing you should think about during that fourth preparation step is your employees Your employees are your best brand ambassadors So you have to make sure that they can represent your brand values as good as they can present your products or services Three or four years ago in 2012 when we started when we first started going to conferences It was mostly me who would attend them and some people from our highest management team This model, however, does not really scale well over the long term and we had to involve more people in the team that would go to conferences But we had a problem They were not as experienced conference goers as we were and very often actually in a hundred percent of the cases They were not involved with the Preparation process of for the conference and as a result they were not very clear about what we were hoping to achieve at that conference so what we did was We organized the workshop and we gathered everyone that I wanted to go to conferences the next year and We made sure three things happen. We made sure that first they understand our brand values second they understand our business goals and third they were clear how we were going to achieve those goals a key thing here is that If your employees do not believe in your product or service and if they don't enjoy what they do at the company No training or workshop or briefing will actually help you achieve good results at conferences. I Deeply believe that employees that love their company Create customers that love it too So investing in your employer branding can tremendously improve your business results as and business brand as well I am part of the SiteGround team and I've been with SiteGround for ten years now And you probably by that time can tell that I'm incredibly passionate about our company And I really love being part of that team and one of the many reasons I love going to conferences is because my colleagues are fun and We actually have a lot of fun at conferences as well So enough about staff I wanted to talk to you a little bit about preparing your agenda You really have no excuse for not preparing well for a conference and having an agenda Do your homework Research who are the key people at the conference who are the speakers who are the other sponsors? Who you want to talk to how you are going to meet those people and basically how you're going to achieve the opportunities you have with those key people You probably don't want to go as far as I did once I had researched and Pretty much investigated every single person that I wanted to meet in such a detail that when I eventually met them It felt super awkward because I knew the answers of the questions. I was asking them But that was the smaller problem actually the bigger problem was that I was so focused on my agenda That I actually missed on some big opportunities and I did not have fun and This is my other tip when it's action time when you have to attend the conference No matter how well you've prepared no matter how strict of an agenda you have Just be there be present and have fun So the conference assuming that you survived the conference somehow and it's over now now what Your job is really not done When you get home, in fact, it just started you've presumably created new Relationships and your final fifth step is to follow up on those relationships and measure the outcome And that's the big question with conferences. How do you measure the results? How do you justify that? budget Well, I don't really have a single and straightforward answer. I know one thing for sure and it is that It's not just about the number of new signups you generated or and it's also about the number of meaningful Conversation you started and the number of strong relationships you've built at first When we started going to conferences I would only look at the number of sales that will get in right after the conference And if there weren't any I was ready to cross that event off our list for next year At the end of 2012 when I looked back I was ready to give up on conferences Completely, but then slowly and steadily results started to come Some partners started responding to our multiple follow-ups that we've sent them and Sales started to increase and most important of all the community started talking about us and they and started trusting us They started to use our services and they started providing feedback and it was getting better and better And this is the most important lesson that we learned successful and a successful brand and Relationship building actually requires long-term commitment and involvement Right, so I talked quite a lot and I covered quite a bit But if there's one thing that I hope you remember from this talk, let it be this Conferences are very expensive and yes, they are very difficult to measure But it's possible to have good results and improve your brand If one prepare well, um, sorry Select smart prepare well and optimize again You can have amazing results with conferences if you prepare select and optimize Thank you. Are there any questions? Yes We have Internal system that so essentially when we go to a conference We come up with interesting games to generate leads first of all, so we are able to actually follow up on them and second we create some kind of a coupon code or Landing page and we are able to track, you know, how many sales came in from that page, but the thing is that actually There there are sales and we are able to track those the question is how we track the the the ones that we don't actually have their email addresses or they haven't even touched that landing page and it's a tricky question But we make sure to but we use like we've built a tool internal tool that helps me track those But you can never track all of the all of them One sign that Told me that conferences are doing well was that we actually not see increase in sales But we increase in we saw an increase in the number of new affiliates that we got the affiliates are the people who recommend our services and we pay them commission for that and it was Interesting because they were not motivated by the commission But they were motivated by the fact that they had heard about us They've used our service and they were willing to promote us. So that also kind of helps me It's not just about sales like I said Yes, yeah, so you mentioned that you figure out your annual budget for sponsoring conferences And then kind of can you go into a little bit more of how you allocate funds since sponsorship isn't the same Isn't valued the same conference to conference it can be more expensive for one conference and less expensive for another. Yeah It really depends on what our we always start with the goals that we have So for example when we first started going to word camps, obviously our goal was to get more well known with the WordPress community and actually it's The word camps are not very expensive conferences, but there are some that are really really expensive And if it's crazy expensive and the expected value that we will get is very marginal or I can't really predict it I will probably drop that conference until I until I'm sure that we really have to be there I've had a case where we would sponsor a conference because There will be one single person Who is very important who would be a very important business partner or an affiliate or you know He was very influential, so we would invest in that conference and we would know that over the long term if he got kind of if we get if we got that partnership worked out, we will have we would have a good return, but to answer your question, I always start with the goals and If that particular conference has a lower chance to Meet those goals based on you know the research that I had that I do Then we drop it. I have a question. Hi great talk Well done What is the conference that you got the most of you think so far in the WordPress community and like I'm looking for an Example of what worked out really well and why as a conference of organizer That's a difficult one because every word camp is To me personally every word camp is an amazing experience Like Konstantin said I'm also organizing word camps and volunteering at word camps and But by for us for me being able to be at a word camp representing site ground is a true You know gift I Don't know. I would say word camp Europe Because it's amazingly well organized. I wonder why No, the thing is that like I said in the talk The more people enjoy the conferences they go to The better results we have because if people are happy attending the conference We are sponsored our way. It's it's way easier for us to engage them and this is ultimately what we want to achieve at conferences Maria word camp Europe is very special for me personally, so I would say word camp Europe Any other questions? No, I guess we can call it a talk. Thank you very much