Learnings for future conferences - everything we learned organizing GenC

Marketing DAO
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1

Would like to credit @amartin for helping to pull this together

Regarding Speakers

  • Source more speakers
    • We sourced 26, we should’ve sourced more. The more speakers you get, the more free distribution the event receives in multiple ways. For one, each speaker shared their session out to their network which increases engagement, awareness, and even proposal submissions. Additionally, each additional speaker allows for more content to market the event.
  • Shorten the sessions
    • Each speaker session doesn’t need to be an hour. Hour long educational sessions tend to drag on and bore the audience. Plus they take away from allowing for additional speakers. I think speakers can get their points across in 20-25 minutes and we’d still see the collateral return (engagement, shares, etc.)
  • Start outreach earlier
    • We started engaging LinkedIn 1 month before the conference. We should’ve engaged earlier to build better awareness and let the business development cycle play out.
  • Focus on high-network speakers more than high-quality speakers
    • the larger the network, the more outreach and exposure we get. Much more worth our time to go after 1,000 little fish rather than 10 big fish
  • List each speaker session on Eventbrite
    • Speaker sessions are important to drive awareness to the conference. Something we struggled with early on was driving traffic to the speaker sessions. One way we solved this was by listing each speaker session as an event on eventbrite and then putting some ad spend behind it.
  • Standardized the requested bio and photo of all the speakers
  • Advertise speaker sessions on Twitter to encourage a bigger audience
  • Cross-post all of the Speaker sessions to the NEAR runner social media accounts

Regarding Sponsors

  • LinkedIn was the most successful form of outreach to Sponsors

    • We used tools like Kennected and VA’s to to do outreach at scale. We targeted people who have:

      1. spoke at a blockchain conference
      2. blockchain in their title
      3. marketing listed as a skill

      From there we continued on the business development cycle. Often scheduled calls with those who were interested

  • Leave more time pre-conference to run the business development cycle of finding sponsors

    • Because this event was planned starting 2 months before it’s launch date, there wasn’t enough time to go through a full business development cycle to find sponsors. Therefore, all sponsors outside the Near ecosystem were acquired through personal relationships or in person at conferences.

  • Software companies didn’t see the benefit of participating in a conference branded around blockchain

    • The original goal was to include marketing SaaS software companies as sponsors, so they would bring their existing client base with them, and we would be able to introduce their audience to blockchain in order that their clients may use blockchain tools in conjunction with the marketing software they already had - to create new types of campaigns.
    • Marketing software companies were hesitant and did not fully understand the benefit of being involved, or why blockchain was being included in a marketing conference that was promising to solve one of their non-blockchain-related marketing problems.
    • Given what we’ve learned from our interactions with marketing software companies, there’s a potential to build deeper relationships and work with them in the future on campaigns that help disseminate our Near-powered marketing tools into the hands of their customers.

  • It’s much easier to convince someone to sponsor an event when in meeting in person

    • NEAR|CON played an amazing role in closing a number of ecosystem projects who had been thinking about participating and needed a final nudge in person. Four members of the AlphaGrowth marketing team made it to Lisbon to build relationships within the ecosystem.

  • You can’t run an event without an ecosystem map

    • the first thing a blockchain should have is an ecosystem map. Create a list of the companies, with the description of each, and contact info of decision makers. These are your biggest fans, arguably wanting your chain to exist and succeed more than you do. Starting with an ecosystem map is crucial to having a successful event

  • Create a bullet proof crm of sponsor information

    • For one, it makes running the event go a lot smoother. It’s easiest when everyone on your team has visibility into the sponsor journey, their contact info, and where the blockers are. It also helps to record notes from previous conversations to know exactly what they’re looking for
    • For two, it makes the post-event life much easier. All of a sudden you have 25+ new friends you can reach out to after the conference.

  • Create a sponsor package early and share it often

    • No sponsors really understood what the event was and the return they would get. They didn’t understand next steps, campaign speed, etc. We should’ve been better about getting collateral for sponsor packages in line sooner rather than later.

  • Communicate that the agency proposals and introductions will not be silver bullet solutions

    • One mistake we made early that came back to bite us at the end is the level-set of expectations to each sponsor. We did not communicate well enough that the outcome of each bounty would not be a 1 size fits all solution. It would take some discovery calls, negotiating, and re-thinking to fit each various situation.
    • We should’ve create an example proposal and an example RFP. There was a lot of misaligned expectations when it came to the RFPs and proposals.

  • You need 100% commitment from sponsors or they will bail

    • Most of the sponsors that bailed were not fully invested from the beginning. It was extremely easy for them to get involved, and then they were able to walk away just as easily.

  • Have NEAR leadership be involved from the beginning to get sponsors to participate

    • It would have been significantly easier to have sponsors committed and engaged if NEAR leadership was involved from the beginning.

Regarding Awareness Marketing

  • Event name should reflect the event function
    • Though extremely understandable, the event name and mission needs to be clear and understood by all shareholders. Would the sponsors understand it, will the speakers see it’s importance, and will the audience know how it works? We had massive misunderstandings about whether Gen C was a hackathon or a contest, this is something we definitely could’ve cleared up earlier
  • Gen C is not a conference, it’s a media brand
    • During a conference you can assume if someone comes for the day they’ll stay for more than one talk. Because GenC spans an entire month, there are unique challenges around getting attendees to return for multiple events. The main systems being put in place are email campaigns to signups that let them know 3-4 times a week about the upcoming events, what they missed, and links to be the best content of the week. These email campaigns only started working during week 2 of the conference due to being banned
  • Find the ecosystems top influencers / voices early
    • Get alignment from the c-suite (+ other loud ecosystem voice) to have them help push the narrative out. Smart to look into who are the top influencers in Near, internally and externally.
  • Event name should reflect the event function
    • Though extremely understandable, the event name and mission needs to be clear and understood by all shareholders. Would the sponsors understand it, will the speakers see it’s importance, and will the audience know how it works? We had massive misunderstandings about whether Gen C was a hackathon or a contest, this is something we definitely could’ve cleared up earlier
  • Gen C is not a conference, it’s a media brand
    • During a conference you can assume if someone comes for the day they’ll stay for more than one talk. Because GenC spans an entire month, there are unique challenges around getting attendees to return for multiple events. The main systems being put in place are email campaigns to signups that let them know 3-4 times a week about the upcoming events, what they missed, and links to be the best content of the week. These email campaigns only started working during week 2 of the conference due to being banned
  • Find the ecosystems top influencers / voices early
    • Get alignment from the c-suite (+ other loud ecosystem voice) to have them help push the narrative out. Smart to look into who are the top influencers in Near, internally and externally.

Regarding Distribution of Event

  • Run the event as a marketing effort, not a hiring effort
    • In our messaging, the hybrid event was mostly perceived to be a hiring effort which created a few barriers that blocked us from going viral on a vast number of popular marketing subreddits (Literally all the ones listed on here - https://lookingformarketing.com/).
  • Quantity over quality
    • Mods were adversarial, which resulted in many deleted posts and accounts. Start early to hit many with different accounts
  • Be specific when talking about the event or the bounties
    • Not enough specificity on the tactical marketing bounties hindered our conversion rates according to feedback from engaged leads.
  • Inbound interest might not fit available bounties
    • On Reddit most of the inbound interest came from SEO agencies/freelancers for which we only had two specified bounties that were not appealing enough based on the incentive amount.
  • With a tight deadline, you possibly can’t follow through with every suitable channel
    • The tight deadline meant that we had to abandon/disregard a number of channels that could have prove to be fruitful (Freelancer.com, FB groups, Discord, Telegram, etc.)

Regarding Video Production Content

  • Much easier to interview the sponsors if you’re an expert in that category
    • I’m not sure the best way to accomplish this but something that always stood out as we interviewed sponsors about what they’re looking for, is the fact that we didn’t know the right questions to ask. For example, when interviewing someone looking for SEO help, I don’t know what kinds of questions SEO agencies need to have answered on the interview.
    • The session were originally planned to be AMA’s so this wouldn’t be a problem but people tuned in more to the recordings than live
  • People didn’t tune in live
    • The sponsor interviews were supposed to be AMA’s where the interested agencies would ask questions about the sponsor’s RFP live. That vision turned out to be very idealistic. Most people preferred to watch on their own time and very few asked questions
    • Need to better advertise before the day of the event that an event is upcoming (we did every day for a week for a single AMA)
    • We still don’t have an engaged live audience, the viewership picks up in the evening and late night!
  • Source a list of questions to ask during sponsor sessions
    • Given the fact that there were no live questions coming in, the host always had to come up with questions on the fly. This is hard because it takes away from the host’s engagement because he is consistently thinking of the next question to ask. One thing we started doing which seemed to help immensely was to brainstorm questions pre-session.
  • Moderators should be decided in advance
    • One of the largest problems week by week was that we didn’t have a clear idea who was going to moderate each session. The first week, we only knew the morning of, but as we started going we made sure to have a schedule made before the week started. In a perfect world, the moderator schedule is made before the entire event starts, that way no sessions fall through the cracks.
  • Require each participant to share their session on social media
    • Make them share the livestream too
    • Write up what they have to share
    • Require them to use the #NearGrowth and @genCryptoConf
    • Require them to send us a link of where they shared it
    • Keep a master spreadsheet of links to all the social posts from partners
  • The “waiting” and “loading” screens in between sessions should be leveraged
    • Use a countdown for the session kickoff. but during the countdown screen, the call to action should be to “Sign Up” and get the NFT for attending this event
    • “The easiest way to get hired in blockchain” Sign up at genc.win
    • “While you wait, signup and get credit for attending this session to increase your chances of getting hired into the Near Ecosystem.”
  • Each video should be turned into long form content to be shared and distributed
    • Each session includes an incredible overview of the protocol along with pointed questions on their roadmap and vision. Content is king so following the video session, hire a content writer to transcribe the session, create a long form article and short form blog posts / tweets with the information provided, and start distribution.
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