How to generate leads with an event? #GrowthGames

It’s not just online that you can generate quality leads. Cold calling, networking, as well as quality events are also extraordinary growth generators. We recently created a free event for entrepreneurs, the #GrowthGames 1.1. With a simple yet very effective strategy, I will explain how to generate leads with a quality event.

What is the #GrowthGames event?

We teamed up with Ludvic Laperle from Laperle Corp. to offer workshops focused on business growth generation. During these workshops, we provided very precise tools on lead generation, automated marketing, and cold calling. After the day, participants left with a simple yet effective strategy to generate leads as well as a host of tips and tools suited for most businesses.

How to generate leads with a corporate event?

First, to generate leads with a corporate event, you must have good content to present… that’s pretty obvious! But beyond that, you need to go further. There are certain steps in preparing your lead generator that you must consider.

The strategic planning of your event

The first question to ask yourself is: what is the goal of your event? Ultimately, we know that the goal is always to generate business. However, ask yourself more specifically: what is the objective?

• Awareness?

• To upsell your products and services?

• To attract specific leads?

For us, the #GrowthGames event was the perfect time to showcase our expertise. As the online world is filled with pseudo-experts, we knew we could be labeled as such by many entrepreneurs. Therefore, our sole objective was to grow our awareness among our audience.

Once our goal was identified, we then had to determine who the prospects were that we wanted to showcase our expertise to. You need to determine who your audience will be. We made a list using Monday management software with two criteria that were important to us: influence and the stage of the participants' businesses. Here’s part of our list:

Some entrepreneurs are at an advanced stage in their business journey. These entrepreneurs can be excellent prospects but may also not be very interesting for our awareness. An influencer who shares our event and endorses our expertise can be worth much more than a contract, even if it’s a contract worth several tens of thousands of dollars.

Therefore, we tried, as much as possible, to create a mix of influencers and business authority. As this is purely subjective, I will keep this information confidential.

Once our goal was determined as well as our audience, we had to determine the content of our event. As our goal is to showcase our expertise in lead generation, automated marketing, and sales (including cold calling), the content had to focus on these elements.

We held workshops offering a lot of value to our participants by sharing the results of our campaigns. No bullshit, everything was live and not staged.

How to get guests to your event?

Eventbrite is an ultra-simple and effective digital tool for event planning. I first created my event and made sure the description was relevant to my audience.

Then, since we were two organizers, we simply contacted people directly via Facebook, LinkedIn, and by phone.

I also posted the event on Facebook. Since it was free, we received 75 sign-ups in just 24 hours.

Eventually, I will update this article since we will soon use marketing campaigns on Facebook to increase our number of participants.

The conversion funnel “post” event

As the ROI of each of our actions must be maximal, we established a simple yet very effective strategy. Our goal being to generate awareness for our businesses, I had to think of a good strategy that would be beneficial for everyone.

For those who know Frank Kern and Grant Cardone well… I compare my vision and values to those of Frank Kern. I don’t like to be pushy in sales, but that doesn’t mean I am lazy. I like to provide real value in my articles and talks to generate a lot of attention and leads.

However, this requires me to follow up very closely because I am not a “closer” in my client relationships.

Of course, we had the emails, phone numbers, and some relevant information that we added to our CRM. Since our CRM is synced with our automated marketing tool Autopilot, we retargeted participants with quality emails and remarketing campaigns on Facebook and Instagram.

This way, we stayed in the minds of our prospects. We also contacted participants to ask for their feedback. At that point, some of them expressed a desire to meet with us.

Use technology to your advantage

It’s super important to use a CRM software like Pipedrive or Hubspot to ensure you make your follow-ups properly. Then, for everything related to automated marketing, you can use digital tools like Autopilot or Active Campaign, which are very easy to use and affordable.

Organizing an event can be expensive. Make sure to get the most out of it by being hyper-efficient!

Don't wait, start now!

Organizing events can sometimes be simpler than it seems. Ultimately, you need a venue, something to say, and food. Start with short events (2 to 3 hours) without too much spending, and add new things over time.

Like us, you can also decide to go all out at the beginning, but well, it’s up to you! If you’d like to have ideas for your events, come check out the next #GrowthGames!