2. Three Types of Events for Three GTM Challenges
- Nishchal Dua VP Marketing, inFeedo
InFeedo currently faces three core Go-To-Market challenges, and events play a key role in addressing them.
The first problem is creating demand among our core ICP: CHROs and other C‑suite executives, typically over 50 years old.
Acquiring these individuals through email, LinkedIn, or ads is ineffective, as our approach is strictly top-down. We cannot take a bottom-up approach because junior managers lack the influence to convince CHROs to invest in company-wide projects like ours. This has to be done at the highest level.
The first GTM challenge for InFeedo is creating demand among CXOs who are unlikely to respond to emails or other digital outreach.
The second challenge is accelerating bottom-of-the-funnel sales. We always have multiple deals in the pipeline worth several million dollars. How can we advance these deals by engaging the right decision-maker, creating urgency, and demonstrating that their peers successfully use our product.
In the space we are in, especially concerning CXOs, FOMO is a bigger driver than anything else. If you know that five of your peers in the industry are doing this thing, then I’m more likely to be convinced by what they have to say and implement the same process. This is the second challenge we address in some part with events.
The third GTM problem is that because we are in the enterprise space, our game plan is to land and expand, which means expansion plays a key role in how we grow our ARR.
How do I constantly feed more progress or product updates to key ICP customers and get them to invest more in our company and buy other solutions we offer? Account expansion is the third problem.
Those three core pillars of our GTM are each a problem area for me. How do I generate demand among CXOs? How do I accelerate my bottom-of-the-funnel pipeline? And how do I get new product updates in front of customers to drive expansion revenue?
Because we operate in the enterprise segment and have a high ARPA game, all of our events are driven in an account-based marketing fashion. This means that one additional lead from an account in focus is better for me than hundreds of other random leads in my funnel.
This is why we focus heavily on specific accounts. The real way to succeed here is to build genuine, deep, authentic relationships with each account.
Events work very well for this. To solve the demand generation problem, we hold in-person, close-door, invite-only roundtables. These are about three-hour events, with one hour of core learning session followed by two hours of mixer and networking.
We invite a maximum of 10 enterprise CHROs who are familiar with each other. They learn from each other, become aware of market trends, and become aware of our brand and product. Meeting these 10 CHROs in person is far more effective than digital channels like email, ads, or cold calls, which often fail to reach them.
The second challenge involves advancing 10-20 stalled deals in the pipeline. These prospects are satisfied with the product but still have objections and doubts preventing them from buying it. To address this sales acceleration problem, we host a 'virtual customer power hour'—a webinar-style event for a small group of prospects.
We invite 10 – 20 bottom-funnel prospects who have seen demos and tried test versions but still have doubts. Along with them, we also invite a customer champion who has used our product for two years and experienced real benefits to do a fireside with them.
In these chats, we ask specific and pointed questions like: Why did you buy? What benefits have you seen? What feedback have you received from other stakeholders? How will you implement it in the future? These questions are crowdsourced from the 20 prospects attending the event. This helps address their objections directly.
We have seen significant conversions after power hours, as doubts are addressed by senior peers in the industry, not salespeople.
The third challenge involves engaging our 330 global customers, approximately 5,000 admin users. I want to update these 5,000 users quarterly on product enhancements, ways to optimize usage, and new capabilities they can purchase.
This is the expansion problem. This expansion challenge involves a larger audience of 5,000 globally dispersed users, which means it has to have a virtual approach.
This is also more relevant for us because with our ICP email campaigns typically achieve a 15-20% open rate and a 2% click rate which means only 2% of your user base will be aware of updates from your monthly newsletters. This does not work for product awareness and upselling over time. To solve this we host a quarterly customer conference. It is a large-scale virtual summit paired with multiple carefully curated sessions.
We typically invite a well-known industry speaker. The event begins with a 10 – 15-minute product update from our co-founder, head of product, or CEO highlighting critical releases from the last quarter. For example, we might announce that InFeedo 4 and InFeedo 5 were released last quarter, ensuring everyone is informed.
We typically achieve a 40 – 50% attendance rate, meaning 2,000−3,000 of our 6,000 admins join the virtual event. I cannot get that scale from any other channel except events.
Next, our product marketing and sales teams conduct a 15-minute segment highlighting the latest capabilities available for upgrade. We also include a 10 – 15-minute customer spotlight session, giving awards to customers who have effectively used the product and seen significant benefits. These stories are powerful to share.
For example, we invite a top bank or enterprise CHRO to discuss their experience. They share how their metrics improved after using the product for two years, and we recognize their achievements with an award.
This also becomes something they can showcase internally, highlighting their achievement as a badge of honor.
These are the three types of events I use to solve my three GTM problems. Additionally, we address a fourth high-level challenge: demand sourcing. We participate in trade shows and industry events by sponsoring them.
These include tech HR, SHRM, and ETHR events. At these events, we set up booths and secure speaking slots. Our goal is to maintain consistent brand awareness within specific markets, generate additional demand, and build a sales pipeline.
The first three are owned events and a constant part of our playbook, while industry sponsorships are based on regions where we want to increase demand and can be temporary.
When measuring these events' success, we don't strictly view it as an event ROI, although it does exist. We evaluate the cost of solving each problem versus the benefit obtained.
For demand generation, our output is clear: creating opportunities. Attendance and leads are secondary; the main focus is on the number of opportunities sourced from an event. In the case of these demand-gen TOFU events, we have a clear cost comparison between events and digital channels.
For example, if sourcing an enterprise opportunity costs 1 lakh rupees through LinkedIn ads and emails, then I can justify spending up to 1 lakh rupees per opportunity for a TOFU event. If an in-person roundtable costs 5 lakh rupees, we expect to generate five opportunities.
This calculation does not fully apply to in-person roundtables, which provide valuable FaceTime with CXOs. Even if immediate opportunities do not arise, these events help build long-term relationships. We’ve sometimes seen opportunities emerge a year and a half after the event.
On the TOFU events, we have a clear cost of opportunity as the ROI metric. The BOFU event has minimal costs as we invite prospects, conduct it virtually, and feature speakers from our existing customers. While the cost is minimal, the ROI is measured by the percentage of pipeline closure.
If 20 prospects attend the power hour, our benchmark is to close 60 – 70% of that within the next quarter. It can be closed won or closed lost because we want a decision. The goal is not to win always but to get a decision.
The third type is the large-scale customer event, which incurs specific costs. It’s a small cost because it happens on our own platform, but we pay for engagement and gifts. But the tolerance level for this cost is high because we look at it in relation to the cost per expansion opportunity, which is massive.
For example, suppose my tolerance for digital channels is 1 lakh rupees per opportunity. In that case, my tolerance for in-person roundtables is 1.5 lakh rupees, as they provide valuable FaceTime. For customer events, my tolerance is 2 lakh rupees per opportunity.
The benefits extend beyond direct revenue: educating customers, preventing churn, enhancing retention, improving product NPS, and increasing product usage and adoption. Although there are multiple benefits, the key measurable benefit is the cost per expansion opportunity.
For sponsored events, we attribute 40% of the cost to brand awareness for industry sponsorship events. Of course, the cost per opportunity on something like LinkedIn Ads can be lower than these sponsored events, but because we can attribute the 40% to brand awareness, it becomes more tolerable.
Whatever the success metrics and cost tolerance might be, we sit down with our CFO to align on it clearly before setting up our events so we can always be sure of their ROI.