Anything—from podcasts to community meetups—can be an event, insists Airmeet CMO Mark Kilens. And such micro-events should take place often, in different formats, he says.

And it's important to pivot that way, because in a vast sea of online content, events can also be a brand differentiator: "You can't stand out with content anymore," Mark says.

But it's tricky, as he explains in our latest Marketing Smarts episode, because the traditional, film-once-and-watch webinar is basically dead. Dynamic event segments are a must for audience engagement.

Think of micro-events as TV broadcasts, Mark says: program, commercial, live segment, new program, Q&A. Pull attendees into a place where they can have conversations and a unique experience.

Much as in Marketing Smarts Episode 489 with Mia Masson, there is an emphasis on how events have become community-driven.

"You're not trying to build a community for people, you're trying to build a community with people," Mark says.

The original podcast also covers focus, a framework for event-planning, finding your hosts, and the importance of flexibility.

Watch the video the discover new perspectives on events and more:


Make sure you don't miss any future episodes: Subscribe to the Marketing Smarts Live Show on YouTube. And to catch up on all previous episodes, check out the full playlist on YouTube.

 

Episode Details, Guest Information, and Referenced Links

Episode No. 12

Guest's social media profiles:

MarketingProfs resources referenced in the show:

"In B2B News" article referenced in the show:

 

Full Transcript | Marketing Smarts Live Show Episode 12 | Leveraging Event-Led Growth

This rough transcript is machine-generated. It's been only minimally edited by humans.

George B. Thomas: If you're curious about leveraging event-led growth for B2B marketing success, if you want to hear some words that Mark Kilens gave us, then you are in the right place.

Welcome to the Marketing Smarts Live show by MarketingProfs and the Marketing Smarts podcast, where we dive into B2B news, resources, valuable guest content, and much, much more each and every week. Hey, if you're a B2B marketer looking for a place to learn, keep up to date and have some fun along the way, then grab a beverage and your notepad.

Today I'm super excited to bring you episode 12 of The Marketing Smarts Live show on a topic that I think is a major area of focus that many B2B marketers, heck, just marketers in general, need to have and leverage in the future as we move forward, as we will talk about in this episode.

Content is hard. No, I can't tell you how many times I'll be on stage or in a meeting and I'll hear, But content is difficult. Well, here's the question. Can event-led growth separate you from your competition, and can it make content creation easier-ish?

We'll stick around and let's find out together. Hey, I'm your boy, George B. Thomas, speaker, trainer, catalyst, and host of this here show, the Marketing Smarts, YouTube, LinkedIn, and now private Facebook group live show as well as the Marketing Smarts Podcast found on your favorite podcast app.

Now today's topic is event-led growth for B2B marketing success, and our guest clips today are brought to you by none other than the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Mark Kilens, CMO of Airmeet, a leading virtual and hybrid event platform. Mark oversees Airmeet's global marketing team responsible for brand demand, lifecycle, and product marketing. Airmeet helps organizations maybe like yours, discover, engage, and grow customers using event-led growth, which is a new way to create immersive and integrated events across your potential customer's, entire customer.

Now Mark, he has a great history. Previously he was the VP of Content and Community at Drift, where he led the brand, content, creative and events team. Mark oversaw Drifts community Drift Insider, which had 50,000 plus members and Drift's Flash Rev growth and hyper-growth events. Now, prior to joining Drift, and this is where I met him, he served as VP of marketing and founder of the HubSpot Academy. From there, he went on to build HubSpot Academy from the ground up, and in doing so educated and certified millions of people, and helped grow HubSpot to more than a 600 million and more than that today, by the way, in revenue. By the way, when Mark is not at Airmeet, mark enjoys plenty of steak and lobster as he should, a round of golf or two, and loves being on snow or in the ocean.

I love both of those. Actually, one of the things about where I live in North Carolina, two and a half hours, I can be in the mountains, two and a half hours I can be on the beach. I love it, not why we're here, so let's move forward. Remember, these clips that you're about to hear are from Mark Kilens, and today and every episode that we do, they are pulled from the full Marketing Smarts podcast episode.

If you wanna listen to the full interview with Mark, make sure to tune in to the Marketing Smarts podcast. The link will be in the show description once the live show is over. That's right, all the right links in all the right places at just the right times. All right, so let's go ahead and get this going.

One of the things I love about doing the Marketing Smarts podcast is that I'm continually getting to sit in on conversations that have the power to change business strategy and therefore business trajectories.

So what is event-led growth? What is it for? What types of events are we talking about? Yep. If those are the questions that are running through your mind, well... we are very similar. Similar ladies and gentlemen, because these were some of the exact thoughts that I had as well.

So let's actually start this journey from the very beginning and answer the question, What is event-led growth? Because you might think it's a thing or not know it's a thing, and I might think it's something totally different. So since we've got a chance to interview Mark, we asked him that question.

What the heck is event-led growth? And here's what Mark Kilens had to say.

Mark Kilens: The simple answer is it’s a way to help you discover, engage, and grow your customers using events. Using specifically events across the entire customer journey. If you unpack that, you have to first think about why would you even consider doing an event, and you have to first strip away from this idea of an event being something that you do in person, you do once or twice a year, and that’s it.

I’ll pause here and actually ask you a question. When I say what is an event, what comes to your mind?

George B. Thomas: Yeah, and here's the thing I always love when I'm doing an interview and I get asked a question where the interviewee becomes the interviewer.

And so that's always fun. But did you hear events across the entire buyer's journey? Also? I love that Mark dove into and said that we had to kind of strip away our historical thoughts on what it was. And here's the thing. In the original podcast, as you heard, mark asked me, what do I think an event is?

And well, because it's my show and you are here, I'm gonna ask you in the chat pane, what do you think an event is? Now, the reason I'm asking that is because I wanna know what you think an event is now. Right now as you're watching this, because then when we're done in 12 to 17 minutes, I'm gonna ask you that question again.

What is an event? And I'm super curious if it would be dramatically different than what it once was. Well, let's continue on with this educational safari, this journey. And by the way, if you don't put it in the chat pane, you can also put it on Twitter using the hashtag #mpb2b.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of George B. Thomas

George B. Thomas is a marketer, video Jedi, and HubSpot certified trainer with 25+ years of sales and marketing experience. George is owner and HubSpot Helper at georgebthomas.com. He has a record-breaking 38 HubSpot sales, marketing, service, CRM, and CMS certifications. George harnesses his expertise in graphic design, Web development, video editing, social media marketing, and inbound marketing to partner with, teach, and develop solutions for companies looking to develop their businesses and increase their revenue.

LinkedIn: George B. Thomas

Twitter: @GeorgeBThomas