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hello and welcome to WP product talk the place where every week we interview an
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experienced WordPress product owner on strategies tips experiences failures and successes of running successful and
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thriving WordPress product businesses I'm Amber Heinz CEO of equalized digital
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and I'm Katie Keith co-founder and CEO at Barn 2 plugins
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and today we're going to be talking about the ROI or return on investment of
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sponsoring events and this is a great topic because now in-person events are finally a thing
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again lots of Wordpress product owners are wondering whether it would be worth sponsoring a word camp and what the
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impact would be on their business but they have no idea how to find out
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so here we have today to talk with us a special guest Travis totes from rocket
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genius and Rocket Genius of course is the makers of gravity forums Travis would you like to introduce yourself
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yeah definitely hey y'all I'm Travis tots uh I am the director of Brandon marketing and Rocket genius uh or
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gravity forums as as most of you uh know us all as um located in Virginia Beach uh recently
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moved from Minneapolis Minnesota so enjoying the continually warm weather uh down here and hopefully won't freeze
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through the winter like I've been used to in the past so yeah thanks for having meal yeah we're glad to have you here
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so um if you are watching live then feel free to add your questions and comments
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while you're watching um we really like having things that we can answer live um and the first thing we always start
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with is why is this topic so important for WordPress WordPress product owners
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so Amber do you want to go first sure um I mean I think as you mentioned
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a lot of people aren't really sure about when you should start sponsoring events how to start sponsoring events I do
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think that sponsorship is a part of marketing that can really help you build
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a personal connection with people because you get to talk with them face to face meet them maybe meet people
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who've never heard of your product or learn meet people face to face who've been using it for many years
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um and that really helps building those connections it can also help you grow your email list but I do think you know
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product owners maybe have confusion about how to get the most out of sponsorships
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Travis what do you think do you yeah it's tough I mean I think we've always looked at events and and
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saw them as an opportunity to kind of tackle uh
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expanding brand awareness brand Impressions um as really the clear win for us right
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it's hard to measure and I'm sure we'll kind of get through the this uh in various points of today's conversation
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but it is hard to measure sponsorship and event Roi um you know there are a couple key
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metrics that we can look at but for us it's definitely about brand Impressions how do we think about you know our brand
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being on the center stage with a lot of other great brands in the WordPress space
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um and that's a clear win for us you know when it comes to how people see us um in the WordPress space
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interesting I think it's an important topic to talk about because everyone knows that sponsoring a word Camp is
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good for the community but at between two and a half thousand and five thousand for a small booth at a flagship
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word Camp it's hard for small theme and plugging companies to justify if you
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just view it as a charity donation you just simply wouldn't have that funds unless there was some kind of Roi but
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the community doesn't really talk openly about what the ROI is from sponsoring
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word camps it is largely seen as a giving back the community type thing and that's why we need to talk about it here
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on WP product talk so to get starting to go into a bit more
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detail on that let's move on to story time where we talk about some personal experience with sponsoring events and
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the lessons that we learned along the way Travis do you want to get us started with some more of your personal stories
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of sponsorships yeah the event space has been kind of part of my career in the in the
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WordPress industry to be honest I mean I've been in the WordPress industry for nearly 15 years I think
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um which has really been the majority of my career um starting off and and tackling kind of
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smaller WordPress website builds for you know friends and clients to kind of uh
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doing support and theme builds to doing agency work and and of course now into uh into running and helping to lead a
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team at Rocket genius and gravity forms um and throughout that lifespan of
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various iterations in the WordPress space um events have always I've always seen
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events as a uh key part of that uh that World
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um you know and initially it was um so much of attending events and meeting people and creating connections
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and and um kind of what people used to call the hallway track right the the outside of
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the of the talks and you know learning things but actually doing the relationship
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building and um and Community side of it and that's really you know where I think
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a lot of people that are in the product space as well as you know Services uh to
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be honest get a lot of those relationships and build a lot of those relationships and or continue to build
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on existing relationships um and I think you really do see that in our space
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um and and I think the tech space in general but um it's it's really been a part of
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my my career in in the WordPress industry um and it's been fun to see it kind of
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continue to grow on itself and and go from Services into product space and and
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continue to see kind of similar experiences so yeah it's it's fun it's been a key uh key part for us and for
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certainly for me I'm curious Travis do you
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press events events or only sponsor WordPress event yeah I that's a great question since
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I've been at Rocket genius it's only been WordPress events um uh and I think at my time uh before
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rocket genius I was a service agency in the WordPress space called modern tribe we had done a little bit of sponsoring outside of the WordPress space uh just
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to to see if there was you know if we can think about clients and clientele uh
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where are they going to be and where can we find those opportunities and that was a different kind of goal
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um but yeah for Rocket genius I think it's only been in the WordPress space
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what about you Katie do you sponsor non-wordpress events or just WordPress
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events what's your experience we just sponsored one WordPress event and I'll get on to that in a minute but I just
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have another question for Travis first which is everything you said was super interesting but it didn't sound very
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measurable so to what extent if any have you been able to measure the ROI
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yeah super great question yeah so I would think there's there's different ways to think about measuring sponsorship Roi I I do think you know
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there are key wins for a brand in the in the WordPress Space by being present at events and sponsoring events but there's
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different ways to look at actual metrics and for us we think about
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um number of leads generated right if we're running a giveaway or if we're doing something at our booth it's an
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experience where people can come and we can interact with them in different ways and and try to gather new leads which is
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key for for a marketing team in general um it's purchases right so generally
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speaking we tackle uh and and promote a sale during Flagship events and that's a
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key way for us to not only uh provide a discount on our products uh at an event
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and during an event but also to generate uh actual metrics for us on the backside right how many purchases have we seen
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during the during the sale and during the event um and then other things right
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um website visits right how much traffic are we getting during an event um social media interactions you know
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how much are we interacting with uh both customers as well as leads on social media
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um for us we do uh a lot of stuff at our booth right we give away free shirts we
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try to interact with people by giving them other giveaways and swag items and those things are fun because they
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actually create those opportunities to interact with those customers or potential customers in different uh
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different Avenues so yeah those are generally the measurable ones but yeah it is tough right there's there's a uh
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unmeasurable side of the event sponsorships and then there's a measurable side yeah
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um before I go into my story in more detail to pick up on two things you mentioned there which was traffic to
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your website and also if you did a sale and what actual sales did you track
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during it through a coupon code or something I did both of those things at wordcamp Europe and there was no
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difference in our traffic at all or branded Search terms which is one that Matt Cromwell suggested I look at and we
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ran a sale 50 off everything and there was no sales as a result so um obviously
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gravity forms are a lot bigger than us and have a bigger Booth do you get much from those
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we do yeah I would say there's an increase at events uh of purchases
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during our sale um I don't think anyone in the space
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should probably look at it as an opportunity to double quadruple sales during uh or purchases rather during
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that sale period or during an event um but definitely an increase for us
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generally during the sale and during the event days uh massive no but worth it I
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would say yes yeah I think on that point too it's
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important probably to note I'm guessing you use like UTM parameters and things like that on your URLs so for someone
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who's watching it is new and they're trying to figure out how they would even begin to track that because I know if
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you just have a free plugin on wordpress.art org that's really hard and so that's where you might want to make
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sure that you have you're not sending people to wordpress.org you're sending people to your website using those ATM
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parameters and things like that yeah yeah so we do that and as well as
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trying to use things like QR codes we can track those um both scans as well as uh click
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through to the actual uh landing page or the giveaway page in this instance um which are just different ways for us
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to try to gather as much information as we can on that Roi right because it is you know as Katie and you have said
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Amber it's it's tough to to measure those things um effectively and really make sure well
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is it worth it is it worth it for us as either a small business or a large organization right
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um and see if it's a win yeah we had an interesting comment from
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um Matt who I think is at gravity forms now he's used the mat Report with this
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map deros um and he mentioned that you can use these events to gather testimonials live
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from customers which I think you would then use in future marketing you'd have
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those and I don't know if that's something you could speak a little bit more to Travis if that's something that you're doing at these events yeah yeah
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especially at word Camp us right where we were able to uh have Matt attend uh as a part of our team the goal was to
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see if we can try to talk to people um at the event and gather testimonials
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get people on video that are comfortable and have those real conversations right and as a part of our marketing
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initiatives Matt's launched a podcast called breakdown uh as a part of the
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gravity forms brand and that and a lot of that uh podcast is actually built around talking to real people both
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within our community uh developers agencies Etc that are utilizing our products um
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and uh and able to speak to how they utilize our products for real world application you know it's it's really
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great for us to have those conversations and yeah as a part of it uh again you
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know trying to think about different ways uh to really measure that Roi and these are the types of things that we
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can try to get from an event so Gathering testimonials or talking to people uh even at word campus actually
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we ran demos so these are different ways that we can kind of both give back as well as as a gauge and educate our
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customer base Okay cool so uh moving on to my story
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time um it's a bit different because we I was a first time sponsorer of any event at
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wordcamp Europe this year so hopefully people who are thinking of sponsoring for the first time will be able to
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identify with that a bit so I've been to quite a lot of word camps but it was only at last year's
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word Camp Europe that I started thinking for the first time or we could sponsor this and the reason was because our team
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had got big enough that I realized that it wouldn't just be me and my husband stuck on the booth all day which was a
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bit of a worry so last year there were six of us um in the team um but there's more but
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that actually came to word Camp Europe and the same this year so um because there was enough of us we thought let's
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sponsor this and see how it goes um it was a really incredible experience it was a lot of work to prepare a lot
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more bigger project than I perhaps naively anticipated um ordering swag is complicated if you
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haven't done it before particularly when you live on a random island in the middle of the Mediterranean it's not
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easy to get stuff um I felt it was really important to get it shipped to me for quality control
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reasons and I was glad I did because a lot of it was terrible so I was glad
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that I did that extra work to order it and you know ship it in the suitcase to The Venue there was lots of work to do
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in thinking of branding signs they print your signs for you but little things you
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might want to put on the booth we ran like a quiz competition type thing to
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get engagement and we did a video to go on the screen behind the booth so there was a it was quite a large project to
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prepare for um and we also did a sale which as I've mentioned generated zero sales
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so was it worth it um well for the experience I'd say it
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was probably worth it because it was very different to attending a word Camp as a non-sponsor in many ways it's
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better not sponsoring because you get to relax and have a bit more fun um at word Camp you're I I know I have
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my team but as the founder people kept asking for me so I ended up spending most of the time there and people were
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just coming all day long for two days um to talk some people knew us and
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wanted to sort of meet in person others and wanted to know what we did and
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people were coming over genuinely curious so tell me about barn too what do you do
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um and so that was nice um the only Roi I can say I definitely
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got from it was the impact on the team because I can really see the team coming
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together like with a shared purpose I saw the team develop developing skills
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they hadn't had to use before like talking to potential customers about what we do and particularly for our
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developers that's not a skill they'd had to use before um describing the company in a nutshell
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and giving that overview and answering questions pre-sales type things that was
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a really useful experience for them and just seeing them kind of come to the
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booth to hang out and bonding in a way that happened when we weren't sponsors but definitely less so I'd say that
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given the value of staff to a company it was worth it because of the team impact
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but I didn't track any sales and I have to just hope that the wider branding impact was worth it and we did gather
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about 150 email addresses from our quiz as well that we did uh so number
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this year well we did this like WordPress quiz on
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which was quite fun so that's why they gave us their email address and um I don't know was that like on their
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phone they could just take a quiz to try and win prizes or what was it yeah yeah so the Ultimate Prize was an all-access
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pass through all of our plugins um and the rest it was just kind of fun and there was like a leaderboard so
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they'd scan a QR code on their phone and then they'd do this quiz and then it would show them where they came and
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everyone was like oh I did better than ghost or something like that it was quite fantastic how people compared and
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things and uh some people got quite competitive as well but Roi wise it's
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only the soft things that I could measure which is why I was interested in Travis's experience but you've just
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sponsored wordcamp us haven't you Amber so um let's hear your story yeah well so we've we've been sponsoring
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events since 2020 in the beginning they were virtual virtual events are a whole
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different ball game it's a lot harder to measure our Roi on that unless you can
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get email addresses of opted in attendees um we actually sponsor a fair bit of
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events outside of the WordPress space uh because with accessibility we sponsor accessibility events and we also sponsor
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higher education events so high Ed web WP campus which is a WordPress but it's
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not part of the WordPress Community it's its own non-profit so it can do what it wants so for example with those two when we
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sponsor them we will choose a level where when attendees register there's a box they can check that says I agree to
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share my information with sponsors and that's actually with WordPress accessibility day which I'm one of the lead organizers of when we set up that
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event because again it's an independent event we were like we're going to have that for sponsors because I like it so
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much and we have found at least with WordPress accessibility that a third or more attendees will do that
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so like last year we gave sponsors 400 plus emails from that and so for me when
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we're choosing to sponsor I will prioritize that because I don't know that I'm expecting somebody to buy my
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product or install my free plugin that day or during the event like will they remember no probably not
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and so I'm really thinking about what can we do before the event to promote that we're going to be there and that
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we're a sponsor and how to connect with us and then what do we have as part of our plan for after the event to continue
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to follow up with those people word camps are a little harder because they don't by default if you attendee email
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addresses although I do hear that that came up at the community Summit this year as a possible add-on for sponsors
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which I would definitely support I mean obviously people have to opt into it but if they opt in I think that would be a
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great benefit that I'd appreciate um at work campus that was the oh yeah
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do you have thoughts on that Travis no I was just agreeing with you yeah it's funny because you mentioned uh Hyatt
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Webb and nwp campus we we sponsored those actually at my time before uh when
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I was at modern tribe um as an attempt to do other events yeah so I did and you would mention digital
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events or remote events during the pandemic too we had uh we had done that with a HubSpot event which I think was
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about probably the only one during that time period and actually even outside of
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the WordPress space that we've done since I've been at Rocket genius um but we did get emails uh from that
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from that event right and we were able to kind of gauge the you know the reach on the and add people to our leads list
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um that were uh attending and had been interested in either WordPress products
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or gravity form specifically so yeah yeah it's interesting what we found last
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year so last year between um High Ed Webb WP campus and WordPress
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accessibility today which we also sponsor like I pay money as a sponsor so
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I can get the email addresses yeah um we grew our list by like 800 people between
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those three events and while they didn't all purchase and we'll and we did have one or two that would use our like we
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did a 30 off coupon code for the event and we had a handful for each event that would do that but what we saw was
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um when we did a Black Friday sale and it was 40 off or whatever it was like it
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was a Deeper Discount and it was Black Friday which is when people know to look for plug-in sales a lot of the people who came into our email list because of
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that event bought then so there it's Roi it's just a longer term Roi and we were continuing to
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Market them between the events because we send a regular email newsletter we do
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the We Run The meetups and as an organizer you know we get some promotion
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out of it a little bit um and and so I think like that helps to
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tie and so it's not necessarily that you're going to sponsor and get a whole bunch of sales now that said with
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wordcampus for us this year we went back and forth we had thought about sponsoring word campus last year and
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then we were just looking at the cost and we ended up deciding we couldn't swing it because you really have to think about what I call the hidden cost
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of sponsorship because there's the boothby and then there's if you've never done it before buying banners and
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tablecloths and all those things like Signs which we've had to do um team shirts because we wanted
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everyone to match and we don't have T-shirts that we just make uh swag all
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we did with stickers because we ended up deciding that we didn't have a budget to like give out fancy swag and I didn't want to give things that people were
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just going to throw away and I was like I'm going to make stickers they don't have our logo on them because I was like no one wants a sticker of my logo like
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I'm being realistic so I'm like I'm gonna make a sticker that hopefully somebody will ask where'd you get that
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stickers cool and somebody else will say oh go to the equaliz digital Booth right like that kind of thing um I don't remember got it and then any
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other sort of shipping okay mailing the stuff there and back that was a couple hundred
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dollars uh we had to pay 400 for electric at our booth like there's a lot
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of hidden costs um but but this year we decided that with it being in DC because of
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accessibility we assumed there was going to be a larger attendee base of people who work on government websites that
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know about accessibility um and then the NASA project was a keynote and we
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were the accessibility team on the NASA project so we participated in that way my partner Steve was also speaking so we
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had coverage at the we got shouted out unexpectedly at the NASA keynote which
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you know we didn't plan for we didn't know was a surprise and then I Steve and I were at the breakout session for that
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and then Steve had a talk and then you know so we had like a lot of things to kind of pull people to the booth
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um and then one of the things that we did is we had the ability for people to book and we promoted this in advance a
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15-minute just like micro audit with me or my partner Steve where we would sit down we'd look at the
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home page of their website we would show them what it looked like in our plugin like what the results we figured out a
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way to scan their website even without our plugin installed from a different WordPress website so you've sort of hacked it
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um with the idea that hopefully they would go install our free plugin at least um but then we gave them like actual
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feedback on how to either test for accessibility manually or how to fix problems and that really went well and
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and so we actually left like there was a university who came and scheduled one of
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those and they are going to per we don't have an unlimited license so I'll say that first but they want 10 000 sites so
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for us this is an Enterprise sale that is going to pay for everything um and there's another government agency
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that I had no idea but they've been using our free plugin for all these years and they came and talked to us they were like okay we think we're ready
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to buy and so they've been having licensing conversations as well with us
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so we will 100 make our money back on everything that we spent on where Camp us but I think it's a little bit of a
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perfect storm like I don't know if it would always be that way it was like timing and location and a lot of stuff
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yeah that that is amazing it's it's super
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interesting um hearing about that and actually you know you've nailed it I mean there's so many hidden costs with these events
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right and to Katie's Point how does a a smaller business and or an individual theme author or plug-in author
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um really gauge whether or not it's worth it for them and I think unfortunately
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Flagship events just might not be there that that Avenue for them is how it
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seems today right when given the high cost of sponsorship at the flagship events and um and those hidden costs I
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mean for for booth and we were on we were you know a 10 by 10 booth we were not even a large Booth uh but that Booth
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cost the setup the printing the layout the you know furniture rental I mean
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you're talking another you know depending on how you plan it another five to ten Grand in additional cost
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Beyond just the sponsorship fee and that's for a 10 by 10 booth right and I
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imagine some of those larger ones um and some of the larger hosts paying double quadruple easily that more than
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likely and then um yeah all the extra stuff right those shirts that we do massive uh investment worth it right
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because we we do get a lot of uh engagement from it but it's yeah those hidden costs I love your shirts
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yeah my husband likes them and their useful presents when he doesn't come to a word camera or get him another gravity
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form shirt aren't they they're always different yep you got to collect the set yeah
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so we've talked to talk about the flagship word camps Have Eyes review sponsored a more smaller
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local word camp and how did that compare yeah Amber you first uh so we have not
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sponsored a smaller word camp we have sometimes there hasn't really been any
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close to me recently this year Steve and I both flew and spoke at
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Birmingham and I flew and spoke at Phoenix um our general take well and then also for
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WP campus my Chris and I both went to that now we're also married so we drove
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together we took our kids it was like a vacation but we did talk about like this is an event because WP canvas is like
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two to three hundred people it was like we kind of just had one person here like it doesn't really make sense from a like
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meals reimbursement and uh now he and I share a hotel room so it's not a big
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deal but if you had two employees that needed separate hotel rooms like it probably wouldn't be worth it a smaller
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event but even our thought on just like speaking at Birmingham we were like I don't think it makes sense for both of
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us to be flying to a far away small event even as a speaker and we're not paying any sponsorship fees
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um and I you know I don't know if we'll even fly to any small camps next year
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like we might only go to once that are in driving distance and otherwise say like there's no Roi on that
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so I don't know what do you think yeah I mean similar for on our end I think the flagship events make sense based on who
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we are as a as a product um and and gravity form to scale
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uh but that that being said I mean we we do sponsor a couple smaller camps and we have we generally sponsor word Camp uh
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Costa Rica or San Jose every year Carl of course is at least part-time located in Costa Rica so it does make sense for
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us to kind of try to support some of the smaller camps when and if they make sense for us but that Roi is difficult
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to measure too right and generally we see them more as um an opportunity like we said at the
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beginning an opportunity to give back to a local or to a potentially a smaller community and in this case a smaller
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community that we have a close relationship with and tied to in in Costa Rica or San Jose
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um that uh you know just makes us feel feel good about that sponsorship right makes us feel good about you know
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spending some sponsorship dollars in a smaller Community providing a nice
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discount on our product to those people into that local community
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um but it's tough yeah I mean I I think events in general I I just recently obviously you talked to my team kind of
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recapping and retroing the this year's events right after work Camp us we did
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we've done every event since word can't be you last year as a flagship sponsor
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or as a sponsor at the flagship events um you know so that was Portugal uh at
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Europe last year through to uh word Camp us this year um and it was a lot of work
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I mean you're you're talking a lot of people hours a lot of travel time um and commitment and design resources
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and and things that you know to be honest Amber probably fall into the hidden cost of Work Camp side of things
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right and it does depend on how much that uh is a is a priority for you your
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brand your branding right and the awareness that you could potentially gain out of out of those Flagship events
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I mean you do get a lot of um uh visibility which I think is really
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great for product companies you get the opportunity to talk to people as Matt had said you know the opportunity to
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talk to real people in person Gathering some you know real content is another another opportunity right it doesn't
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immediately pay off but it's something that we can gather and utilize as a marketing team either shortly thereafter
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or in the future so it's tough yeah I think it's really about having that
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well-rounded it's not just part of the marketing like right now I'm gonna do
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this and I have to get money back from it right now um you know so like a big call to action
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for us I mean of course our free plug-in but also a really big one is come to
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Wordpress accessibility Meetup or come to Wordpress accessibility day both of
31:54
which are totally free um but the idea being is that gets them into ecosystem it's a really easy ask
32:00
like oh you want to learn more about this or you're doing stuff with woocommerce oh we're going to have a talk in in three weeks about woocommerce
32:07
here's the info on that it's like people don't feel like oh you're taking right
32:12
like you just want me to buy something from you and and so then I think you build this this plan that then allows
32:19
you to get multiple touches in with people which over time helps build your rapport with them which resolves into it
32:26
and I know we could also go down this whole tangent about pricing but like I mentioned we don't have an unlimited
32:31
license and it's a lot easier to get Roi like you know if the 10 000 site
32:38
University could just buy an unlimited license for 500 or whatever that's like it's a lot harder to get Roi
32:45
off that so I don't know if we've had to talk Katie where we've had a guest talk about pricing if not I feel like we
32:51
should have one on because I do feel like WordPress products need to think about that yeah yeah
33:00
um it's really interesting Amber how you have this very specific ecosystem the accessibility
33:06
um subset of the WordPress and web design community that you can tap into
33:12
so that's a really interesting way to get into different types of sponsorships which I'm as a more sort of generic
33:18
company I suppose I hadn't thought I don't know if they're woocommerce specific event with sponsorship but
33:23
you've given me something to think about
33:28
woocommerce but more like e-commerce right like yeah um
33:37
right like those might be a good place to go to find or even a very specific
33:42
niche in e-commerce like if you're Artisan products maybe there's like an Etsy con or something I don't know I'm
33:48
like making this up right and you're like I could go there to try and convince people why it's better to have
33:54
a woocommerce powered website than Etsy or you know whatever maybe Etsy wouldn't
33:59
like that but like I I think that's the thing too about thinking about some of the sponsoring events like outside of
34:05
Wordpress like identifying who is your demographic that would buy your product and then that might help you to identify
34:11
events you know like we were like we just do higher ed events um so yeah which leads me to a question
34:18
for Travis which is have you noticed a different demographic of people coming to the smaller and the bigger events
34:25
because one of my worries is that a lot of my sponsorship efforts were um coming to product people I know loads
34:33
of product people they're not the people that necessarily going to be buying my product they might integrate with them
34:38
but they're not my target market directly so did you notice a difference in different types of events
34:45
absolutely yeah I mean I think at the flagship events we definitely see more of our Target demographic you know which
34:51
for us is you know developers and and agencies right and obviously they overlap quite a bit right but
34:58
um at the smaller camps you see a lot of the people that are potentially starting with WordPress maybe they're beginners
35:04
maybe they're just implementers maybe they're not as technical um and it really kind of depends on the
35:09
community but generally speaking I would say you know if we were to categorize
35:15
that's usually what we've seen you know so you definitely do see uh see that at smaller camps you know in smaller events
35:23
um you know when Amber was talking a little bit about sponsoring other events as well and I think you know marketing
35:28
strategy when you know you know I think Amber even mentioned it but nailing like a holistic marketing strategy when it
35:34
comes to events is what you want to do because the events even outside of the WordPress space potentially even more
35:39
expensive when it comes to the sponsorships right and that's that's also surprising right and maybe not the flag maybe not the smaller camps right
35:46
those are generally pretty cost effective but it does depend on if that's your target market uh like we
35:53
just mentioned um but those larger events I mean they're very expensive but potentially
35:58
still cheaper than something like a large like conference or SAS or or product uh conference for sponsoring
36:07
um we've done a little bit of research on it we're going to continue to see if there's a spot for Gravity forms and or
36:12
the gravity forms uh product Suite in the future but yeah it's it's it's tough sponsoring events is certainly got to be
36:19
a targeted uh you know campaign and thinking about Roi and thinking about what else you want to get out of events
36:26
you know so for us it's it's been a big uh a big test over the last uh posts to
36:33
pandemic years I wonder if that's a good transition into uh what's our best advice
36:40
for product owners or people leading marketing at product companies on how they can get the most Roi out of event
36:48
sponsorships um Katie do you have thoughts on this um I'd say probably only sponsor a word
36:55
camp or event if you have at least one team member there to help you and people do do it alone but I don't envy them and
37:02
it's intense and you can't do anything else um with all my sort of best advice from
37:08
my experience sponsoring word Camp you're I've published an article on our blog which has tons of detail about like
37:15
exactly what we spent on each thing and what I learned from each stage of the journey so I'll post a link to that in
37:21
the description for this episode um so you can see more there and also
37:26
have fun at the event it shouldn't just be work yeah I mean I think that's that's a
37:33
great point about not bringing we had four people but us three uh
37:39
owners we were pretty much rarely at the booth because we were we had meetings the whole time so we couldn't find you I
37:46
kept coming over and you weren't there yeah we only had our one team member Paula our marketing specialist who was
37:54
at the booth almost the whole time except for when we're like Paula needs to eat we need to go give her a break uh
38:00
so in retrospect even four didn't quite feel like enough to me uh I feel like
38:06
more could be I mean my my event my advice as I mentioned before is
38:12
um you know making a plan for before during and after like you really need a solid
38:18
plan for after and even if you only leave with 30 email addresses because you didn't you know have some awesome
38:25
quiz or whatever to get a whole bunch more um I think you can still have a solid
38:30
plan for what to do with those 30 um things and then thinking about you know if there's other ways you can
38:36
extend upon the sponsorship on an ongoing um basis or remind people that you
38:43
helped to support the event like when the videos come out from it can you re-share those on your social channels and be like we were so proud to help
38:49
make this possible go go check out the awesome content like those sorts of things
38:54
um and then of course as I mentioned we always prioritize sponsoring events at a level where we get email
39:01
addresses that just come off of the attendees that don't require an attendee to come to my booth to give me the email addresses so if you have that available
39:07
to you and it fits in your budget it can get really expensive for non-wordpress events but there are some out there I
39:14
would definitely say it is almost always worth investing at that sponsorship tier
39:20
yeah yeah I would agree I mean I think you know the to Echo a little bit of what you're both saying I think for for
39:27
us it's about planning ahead right and validating and post-morteming the the event right how do we validate that we
39:34
achieved success I think for some folks it might be you know adding leads to a list some folks it might be sales and
39:41
sales numbers during an event some folks it might be building new relationships and Partnerships right and for some uh
39:47
it might be all of the above right but when we think about event success um and getting Roi out of those events
39:55
you know trying to work off of that checklist has really helped us right when we think about who's going to be
40:00
there we target uh who's going to be there and we try to set up uh meetings if it's partnership related stuff and
40:06
then you know different engagement levels at the booth right and trying to make sure that those things you know
40:11
after the fact we've at least achieved X Y and Z we've at least you know created a new relationship or connection or
40:18
partnership there or we've you know met or exceeded you know expected sales
40:23
numbers during the event or something like that I mean I think there's definitely uh planning as much as you
40:29
can in advance and even if you're missing some of the the uh specific goals or you haven't quite made
40:36
um exactly what you expected when it comes to uh to sales numbers there's still a goal to set and to see if you
40:43
can meet or exceed excellent all great advice
40:49
um so I think we've given people lots to um really concrete things that will really hopefully help and think about
40:55
whether to sponsor events in the future and we also have a I just clicked the
41:01
wrong thing repeatedly um a another comment um of best advice from Matt Medeiros which is the best way
41:08
is don't sponsor a word camp and sponsor a WP media brand instead can you talk a
41:15
bit about that Travis I don't actually know what a WP oh I know what I'm talking about oh
41:23
or WP product talk I don't think we're asking for partnership but yeah we don't have sponsors on don't be product hack
41:29
but uh yeah I mean do you have have you all done much sponsorship outside of
41:34
events for like never newsletters or podcasts or anything like that yeah very
41:41
little um you know we we have explored a little bit of of sponsoring different uh things
41:47
or or different initiatives uh for instance trying to find you know a
41:52
WordPress person to talk about gravity forms or something like that um but there's different ways to to think about sponsoring right it doesn't
41:58
have to be a word Camp especially if that doesn't fit into your budget right it could be sponsoring someone and in
42:04
this case like Matt is talking about um maybe potentially highlighting uh your product or talking about your
42:11
product on uh his podcast you know so WP minute might be an opportunity for
42:17
somebody uh that's that's looking to uh to get their awareness risen
42:23
um or awareness increased when it comes to your product right and I think a media brand is a great example of
42:29
potential opportunities to do some of that someone like Matt has a great reach
42:34
social presence those types of things are are really pretty great to think about when it comes to sponsoring it
42:39
doesn't have to be an event I know we've talked a lot about events you know and events marketing strategies today but
42:45
there's definitely other ways to think about spending marketing uh sponsorship sponsorship dollars I should say outside
42:50
of the event space we uh We've sponsored some podcasts I
42:58
wouldn't say we were able to track any Roi off that we also sponsored the admin
43:05
bar newsletter and we are for the second time for six months this year we're
43:10
sponsoring the accessibility Weekly Newsletter um both of those have gotten like we
43:17
have tracked purchases from those but what I'll say is the accessibility weekly is highly targeted to our
43:24
demographic and the admin bar the only reason why I think that works is because I am also highly active in that Facebook
43:31
group and so it's a reminder like I think that if I was
43:37
not in that Facebook group and wasn't like talking about accessibility in that Facebook group I don't think people would pay attention to the ad in the
43:43
newsletter so it's like again that whole having that holistic marketing strategy and thinking about how things fit
43:50
together and how you know it's not like a a one-off and I think events can tie
43:55
into that too um with sort of thinking about you know if you're sponsoring an event maybe
44:01
there is a podcast that teases talks at that event like I think um do the woo
44:08
does this before uh word campus Bob puts out an episode with like teases from the
44:15
speakers where they just talk about what they're going to talk about I don't know if he has sponsors but like that could be an interesting thing to sponsor that
44:22
and then also be at the event and then anyone who listened that podcast episode would hear you and then they see you
44:29
again at the event which if that was their first exposure to you it would actually now be their second exposure
44:34
because they heard about you and they'd be like oh wait that was on that podcast episode I saw right so like thinking about that holistic like how does
44:40
everything you do fit together is really important yeah that's very true and it's all about
44:47
sponsoring an event is one part of a long drip drip drip effect for the
44:53
customer making a sale and as an example of that Amber I bought your plug-in today and I've known you quite a while
45:01
now and I know what your plugin does and I haven't thought of buying it and then
45:08
at word Camp I was talking to one of my developers who's passionate about it and
45:13
we were just wandering around the sponsor Hall talking about how we can do accessibility audits of our plugins and
45:20
he was talking about whether he could offer to do it manually for them all and I looked at your booth and said how
45:26
about their plugin and so yesterday you can use my plugin to scan your plugin that is actually very correct yeah we
45:34
were just in the right place so we are getting your plugin to scan our demo sites more specifically which have the
45:40
plugins running and it was only because we were just walking around we happened to be together whether in person my
45:46
developer and I which only happens at these events and it was like the fine and then it was like the final thing so
45:53
that's an example of this drip drip effect it's not just it's one thing
45:58
yeah well that's neat thank you yeah the long
46:04
you have the long tail opportunities are certainly there when it comes to these things too right how much of a lasting
46:10
impression have you made on someone uh whether it's you know talking to somebody demoing a product or something
46:15
like that as well as you know a giveaway or or a leave behind right those are those are things that are hard to
46:21
measure the ROI but they're there and I I I certainly stand by them as a
46:26
marketing tactic and opportunity right has your brand left an impression on someone um if it's not next month maybe it's
46:32
next year maybe it's the following year when they're thinking about uh oh yeah there was an OP there was a uh you know
46:39
a product or uh or a service or something like that that I would need and and um that that's really something to think
46:46
about when when it comes to uh to Brand being part of uh events right how much
46:52
how much can you measure probably not a lot right away but over time I I do think it potentially might make a
46:58
difference for a lot of people especially if you're in a good spot to really create those Lasting Impressions on people great relationships I mean I
47:05
think those those things go a long way and especially if you're starting out in the space and or potentially a smaller
47:12
business even just attending events and seeing how they're ran or trying to make those uh connections is totally worth
47:18
the investment of even just attending and uh and being there
47:24
definitely well thank you so much Travis for being an awesome guest I you've
47:29
given us lots of things to think about and learn from so that's amazing next
47:35
week Matt and Amber are going to discuss customer feedback loops how they benefit
47:40
your bottom line and how to implement them with special guests Miriam Schwab and I'm looking forward to watching that
47:47
episode because we can learn so much from our customers but we don't always take advantage of the opportunities that
47:53
customer insights can give us so hoping to learn lots next week and thank you so much yeah uh I'm just
48:02
gonna say thanks real quick before we sign off to post status for being our Green Room uh if you are enjoying these
48:09
shows to our viewers please don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe on
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48:23
thank you hey thank y'all