How to make friends and influence people: A B2B events guide

Results, results, results.

In the current wintry economy, brands and businesses are hyperfocused on closing the next sale or finding the next quality lead. Everything else takes a backseat for now, because revenue is king.

To that end, staging an event is a great way to kill several birds with one stone. It’s an avenue to establish thought leadership with content and bring your company to top of mind with branding. Most importantly, it helps put you in touch and directly connect with potential new business partners and clients.

There’s nothing like meeting in person / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

“The best events are a combination of knowledge sharing and fun,” says Eng Zhiting, events team lead at Tech in Asia.

Of course, there’s more to event planning than just shoving your guests into a room and providing them with food and drinks. Here are some key points to putting together a B2B event that people will remember (for the right reasons) and that will lead to a strong return on investment.

What exactly is a meaningful lead?

Let’s begin by defining terms. How do you differentiate between a lead that’s meaningful and one that isn’t? This is a question that only the brand itself can answer.

“You need to have a target persona: the verticals you are targeting and the type of person you want to speak to,” points out Eng. “These could be either the decision makers themselves or the ones who have their ear.”

There’s a degree of open-mindedness that’s required, because while you might not always get the head honchos in the room, you can always look for those who can be your cheerleaders.

Once the target persona is locked in and only people who fit the bill are invited, most of the battle is won. At this point, anyone at the event is a meaningful, quality lead.

“For Tech in Asia, if it’s an event for about 100 people, we scan the job titles of each participant to maintain the integrity of the final attendee list,” Eng says. “We also rely on our strong marketing team to target and invite only the most relevant people – using lookalike profiles – in our outreach efforts.”

Eng Zhiting, events team lead at Tech in Asia / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

Brands would also do well to avoid constantly inviting the same pool of people. If you aren’t consistently working on expanding the invitation list and marketing to new and relevant profiles, your brand will end up preaching to the choir. It would be a case of diminishing returns and, eventually, no new business.

“We recently hosted a Regional Founders Meetup event in Vietnam. The thing is, it’s not like founders weren’t already doing regular networking sessions. They were, but because their networks are limited, it quickly became a case of seeing the same faces every time,” Eng explains. “With our network, we were able to bring new people, and that made for a great dynamic and fresh conversations.”

The next question is: What will appeal to your target audience and drive them to attend your event?

Short answer: content.

Give the people what they want

Content is simple, right? After all, every brand has a ton to talk about.

Well, think again: Finding a balance between what brands want to convey and what their target audience actually wants to listen to is very important. It can be dangerously easy to think that simply presenting the latest features of your product or solution is interesting enough to attract and hold the attention of the crowd.

But that’s actually too specific. Content that doesn’t acknowledge and address the audience’s point of view and experiences – their pain points, their larger concerns, and so on – won’t leave a positive impression.

“It can’t just be brands talking about themselves – that will come off super salesy. You have to find what the problem at hand really is, why it’s so critical, and then how you can discuss and present it in a way that’s relevant for everyone,” Eng advises.

Content matters / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

Your target persona will also inform the kind of content you should put together. C-suite executives, for example, would probably be interested in more strategic, bird’s eye view topics. On the other hand, if your event is aimed at middle managers, then topics about day-to-day operations would be a better bet.

Last but not least, you’ll have to decide on the presentation format.Will it be a panel discussion, a fireside chat, or something else entirely? The choice depends on the content topic and speaker lineup.

Going for the nitty-gritty

Locking down the target persona and content are the main items on your events to-do list, but there are other important factors to consider.

The choice of venue is a key decision. A venue’s location and ambience often set the tone for the event, and numerous little details have an impact on the overall experience of participants.

Details about the venue such as “the kind of floor and walls, how high the ceilings are, what the furniture is like, and the layout of the room” can affect things like “acoustics, temperature, even where people congregate,” Eng says.

Again, the target persona plays a part here. If you’re looking to talk to the people who handle the operations on the ground, then a venue conveniently located in the central business district that’s casual and serves beer could do the trick.

Different venues offer different vibes / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

On the other hand, if you want to target the senior leadership, then you should consider venues that they’d be interested to check out even outside of work. Places to see and be seen in such as an exclusive member’s club could be good options.

More than the sum of its parts

Ultimately, successful events are the culmination of a series of actions taken to maximize and enrich the attendee experience.

Eng points to the 2022 edition of SYNC, Tech in Asia’s premier tech summit, as an example. Held in Bali, the event featured an agenda that included items outside of the usual roundtable discussions and stage presentations. But the TIA events team ensured that everything was still related to the core experience of connecting and learning.

“We arranged for everyone to do high-intensity interval training sessions on the beach, and everyone was sweating under the 9 a.m. sun,” laughs Eng. “After that, people went to get juice or breakfast together, and then there was a very natural transition back to business talk, with the camaraderie enhanced because we’d all just ‘suffered’ together and bonded as a result.”

The aforementioned “suffering” / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

This kind of holistic thinking also extends to this year’s sustainability-focused edition of SYNC. The events team is working on incorporating site visits to innovative climate tech projects around Singapore to the event’s agenda.

Keeping track of all the components necessary for a successful event is a tall order, but TIA’s events team has the expertise to do just that, equipped to handle details such as inviting the best speakers, determining the optimal number of roundtable participants, and estimating how long a discussion can go on for before people start getting antsy, among others.

All these aspects are combined to create the best attendee experience, which results in eager potential business partners – aka, quality leads.

“Events should really be about education and learning and sharing,” Eng affirms. “Hopefully, they also walk away with newfound connections.”

This content was produced by Tech in Asia Studios, which connects brands with Asia’s tech community. Learn more about partnering with Tech in Asia Studios.