5:3 Creative marketing for events

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Lee:
Welcome to the Event Engine podcast. My name is Lee, and today we have none other than Cat. Cat, how are you today?

Cat:
Very good, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Lee:
Excellent. I just hyped you up there, folks. Cat is from Electric Cat Productions. I think I see what you did there. Are you the cat?

Cat:
Guilty.

Lee:
Guilty as charged. No, I love what you did there. For the folks who don't know who you are and who Electric Cat Productions are, would you mind giving us a I don't know, 60-second bio?

Cat:
Yeah, sure. Electric Cat Productions are a B2B marketing agency, and we work almost exclusively within the events world. We work with a lot of suppliers and organisers in helping them with their marketing.

Lee:
I like it. That was very clear and concise. How long have you been in the marketing space?

Cat:
It goes back to my degree. I actually did study events and marketing, so I'm now where they both cross over. Really interesting. I started out more on the event side, freelancing, straight off the bat of graduating. Then COVID happened, so I fell back on more of my marketing experience The rest is just history, really, with Electric Cat. We've really brought the two together. Now I'm in between both worlds where I do still do a little bit of freelancing myself, but a lot of my focus is on Electric Cat and building the business because we're still That's the worst time, isn't it?

Lee:
To get into the events industry just when our entire industry nearly closed. Well, did close down, didn't it? For a significantly long time. You mentioned that you moved into the marketing space. How did you make that switch and what were you trying to do during that time? Because it was very difficult for everyone.

Cat:
I think it just happened really organically because I always really enjoyed marketing, but I never really saw myself working for a big marketing company where it was data and it was huge numbers and very detached. The impression I had about marketing when I was at uni is that it would be very salesy and very... I was picturing big Coca-Cola campaigns, which, yes, when you see them on TV, they look great, but the reality behind that is not as exciting as what we do at Electric Cat. That's where I really started to see lots of small businesses emerge over COVID. The very first project I got involved with was, of course, my dad's restaurant opening. I did his his logo and his branding. Then my other friend did. She started her vintage brands and I did help for her. Then it really just snowballed from there. Everyone in my family got a new website. Then it was all of my colleagues that were then in the events industry when I felt confident that I could tie my experience with Uni, the more theoretical with real-life experience. That's when it all really started to take off, when the industry was coming back and getting back together after COVID.

Cat:
That's when it really took off. Then Electric Cat really was born off the back of having all of these great marketing clients and then events coming back. I found myself really, really busy all of a sudden on the border of burning out. Then the electric cat happened very organically after that.

Lee:
Well, I'm glad it didn't burn out. I'm assuming you didn't, although we've all been there before.

Cat:
Yeah, it comes in ebbs and flows, doesn't it? But it was just seeing that there was an opportunity there. Actually, that's what I find really interesting is not only do we do... Yes, we do websites, yes, we do graphic design, but we really work with companies who often don't have a marketing team or they don't have... Not a huge company, we have some owner-founders, we've got medium-sized businesses. It's really looking at marketing through the lens of helping with positioning sales, business development. It's more than just a tick box exercise. If we need to get five posts out a week, it's really integrated into the whole business plan and strategy more than just the deliverable in itself.

Lee:
Well, I guess a very good example is, so an event engine, we've got a web platform for event organisers, so we supply the events industry. We're very good at what we do. We are all developers and designers. That's all we do every single day. But what we don't understand necessarily is that whole marketing piece. What's the difference between marketing and sales? Absolutely no clue. What is good marketing? Sorry, absolutely no We are absolutely very often checking boxes. Oh, let's do an email thing. Let's do some social posts. We've got this scatter gun approach. We also, for better or for worse, have this a little bit of an opinion when it comes to marketing, because all we ever hear, if we say go on YouTube to go and research it, is lots of buzzwords and B2B this and data analytics that, et cetera. It just feels so overwhelming. I was very encouraged when I had a look at your website, folks. The link to Cat's website is in the description, that you focus on making it unboring and actually understandable. Can you explain a little bit about how you do that for people like us?

Cat:
Yeah, well, first and foremost, I always say when I do a discovery call with a potential client and they say, We get all of our business through word of mouth, we don't do marketing. I want to work with them because it means that they've built a sustainable business through word of mouth, so their product is good. To me, that's a green flag. That's exactly

Lee:
I feel good already, Thank you. That's exactly what we do.

Cat:
It's just about having those conversations and thinking. I've been reflecting on this quite a lot recently, and especially for smaller businesses. If you're a new company or you're perhaps trying to gain in market share and become a bigger company, a bigger supplier or overtake your competitors, you do have to really be quite creative because there has to be some It's a purpose. Funds are limited. There are lots of things that need paying. Often, marketing can be more at the bottom of the important scale in terms of you do need to pay your bills on, you need to pay your rent for the office that you have, your warehouse, your storage, whatever that might be. You need to pay for your software if you're a software company. Your tools, your project management software, your this, that. It adds to that, doesn't it? You've got other things that you need to be considering. I always try and think outside the box and think of marketing as really... And again, we've had these really interesting conversations. What's marketing? What's sales? What's business development? How does they all work together? I really see marketing in its form of bringing in that.

Cat:
If you think of the marketing funnel, I think for me, marketing really sits at the top. It's about the brand awareness. It's about getting your name out there, it's about people knowing who you are because they're never going to ring you if they don't know who you are. There's that first piece, and then the sales and business development I think business development sits in parallel, and then that's when it becomes sales, is you need to have the right product to convert that potential customer. And it's really funny because I was just doing a workshop with a client around mission and vision and things like that. And it's just so important to do the groundwork, putting in place solid foundation. So learn, just be really clear as a company, as an individual, what are your goals, what's your mission, what's your vision, what are your values? Very linked to another talk I'm doing as well around corporate culture. If you're clear on those things, you've got loads of great content to talk about and you can position yourself. I think thought leader is perhaps a word that is a bit of a buzzword at the moment, not so much in the B2B space.

Cat:
Well, I guess in the B2B space, but you're going to be a thought leader on what. I think that's just so important, knowing your why as a business, getting your team involved, people buy from people. I think for us, a lot can be done on LinkedIn, yes, but not falling in the trap of being too salesy. If we did this event, we've just done this, we've achieved this. You need to be putting out content that is relatable, that is meaningful, and it will help build a community.

Lee:
Yeah, that's absolutely true. Now, You mentioned during that about... You didn't say standing out, but that's pretty much what I think you're alluding to is how can you actually stand out and how can smaller businesses stand out with those smaller budgets, et cetera? I think your words were being more creative. What does that look like?

Cat:
I've always challenged conventional thinking in the ways I do business, I guess, because I've never worked in-house for a big agency. Everything that we're doing is we're doing what is organically is right, that works for our clients. What works, we do more of it. If something doesn't work, we scrap it. We're not tied to lots of processes and rigid. We're very agile as a business, and lots of our clients don't have huge budgets. What we'll do is really, again, just going back to those foundation blocks of being, what are your goals? Being really clear on your value proposition, your services. If I land on your website and it takes me 10 minutes to figure out what the hell you're actually selling, I just like to strip things back and go to basics and saying, right, okay, you've got 15 services on your website. What are you really selling behind the scenes? Is it three? Is it one? Is it really 12? Equally, I doubt it. People aren't going to be coming to you for This and that and this and that and event manager.

Lee:
That's the best way approach, isn't it? Where we're hoping that someone will come in on one of those services, but that's probably the wrong way of looking at it.

Cat:
Yeah, not being afraid to niche a little bit in what you're portraying and just being really clear. You said you went on my website and it was very clear that we do B2B marketing, it jumped out. It sounds really silly, but just starting by really honing in on exactly what you're trying to sell and to who and just being realistic and saying, Yes, I'd love to work for beauty brands, but I've worked in the IT space for the last 15 years. Well, realistically, our beauty brand is going to really be able to... I think you just have to have difficult conversations with yourself if you're an owner founder and with your team, if you're a bit of a bigger company, but really just honing in on what you're doing, who you are, and who your audience is. If you know that everything else just happens very naturally, so just not I think people we're running a lot when we're running a business, you're keeping your head above water and it's hard to really pause and go, right, even if you stop posting for a month and go, right, that time I was spending posting, let's just revisit some of the basics.

Cat:
Let's pencil in. Okay, 2 hours this week, we're just going to focus on brainstorming around what's worked, what hasn't. I take an hour with the team and go, Right, okay, we have an Instagram account, but we have 50 followers, and the three likes we get are my sister and two of the employees. Is that really working? But how much time are you spending on that? Are you spending three hours a week on Instagram and probably some of it just scrolling? Is that really valuable? You're engaging with other accounts, but they're not engaging back. Is it that it's very hard to sell B2B on Instagram, so why are you even really spending that time? Then maybe you're just cross-posting, What is their value in that? I think really just taking the time to go back to basics and think, Okay, what's working? What isn't? What are we trying to achieve here? And then going forward, why you're doing things and setting a bit of a budget. If I was to ask in the audience, if there were 100 company owners, founders, smaller companies, what's the budget and how are you going to spend that for the year?

Cat:
It's more just people are just catching their tail a little bit. So just being really clear on the budget and saying, Okay, this is the budget we have. And then with that, it's easy to rule things out because it can be overwhelming. You think, Okay, do I exhibit an event? Do I put money on email campaigns through paid? Do I do paid social? Do I attend events? Do I spend time on my personal branding that will then lead to this? There is an overwhelm of things that can be done. I think people often make the mistake of trying to do everything. I need to create a TikTok because now TikTok is value, but you're not going to... I'm not going to start posting on Electric Cat's TikTok about how we do graphic design as a service because nobody cares. That's an advert and people do not like to be sold at. It's all about just creating personality, showcasing who you are, and leading in with the product and services a little bit around that as well. But just being really creative in.

Lee:
I can't remember who said this, but it was someone said document rather than create. Is that a good way of doing things if you're going to do stuff on, say, social media, et cetera? So document what's going on behind the scenes, i. e. Showcasing yourselves rather than saying, Hey, we've got this amazing Whiz-Bang product that does exactly what you need. Instead, it's like, I can't think of anything now, but I know his is doing some development in the party we had afterwards or whatever, I don't know, or his lead knitting because that's what he does in his breaks when he's stressed and can't solve a bug. So I just sit here knitting for a while to de-stress. Just sharing some of that stuff behind the scenes is probably, I guess, I don't Definitely.

Cat:
It's just always about having a strategy behind whatever it is you're doing, you know why you're doing it. When you talk about your content pillars, there's going to have to be some content that is around your product and service. Ultimately, you're not going to That is where you are. That is what you're selling, so it does need to be clear. An example could be maybe instead of posting a... I'm trying to find an example. Say it's a prop company and they do props for events and furniture and things like that. Instead of posting a photo with saying, Our props are available for high, get in touch. Here's the phone number. I just can't really picture myself scrolling on I go, I'm scrolling on LinkedIn, I see a prop higher, a company saying, Hire our chairs. I don't know. I'm worried about what I'm having for dinner. I'm worried about that I need to go get a manicure.

Lee:
Let's face it, you're sharing reels with your best friend who doesn't read them, but carry on on Instagram.

Cat:
Instead, maybe trying to... If I find a prop company and they've just posted a really funny video of someone in their warehouse on the furniture doing some knitting, it's a funny video. I still know that they're selling and it's more likely to be something that I remember. I think an example of this, there's Social Pantries, there's some really good content. I think it's them, but there's another prop company that I see on It's not normally the content that you'd want to go follow, but they've got loads of followers. But it's also just thinking about which platform you're using. I think if you were to start posting too much of that on LinkedIn, it might devalue your offering as a business and your credibility. But if you're doing it in a way that knowing your why in everything you do will then mean that everything else really makes sense. Just thinking about your different platforms, different audiences. Quite often as well in B2B, we have the struggle that A lot of our clients have two audiences. They're split between... A security company will need staff to come on board, but they need clients. They've got a B2B element to it.

Cat:
They've also got a always B2C, B2 Two audiences, same with staffing companies. Venues are a good example of that as well. They've got the people that turn up to go to an event, and then they've got the clients that they're trying to bring on board. You just have to think about why you're doing it. So much comes down to the why.

Lee:
It's a great book, by the way, Simon Sinek, folks. I believe that's probably one of the books you'd recommend, I'm guessing. Start with why.

Cat:
I wish I had time to read books, but I'm quite guilty of not reading as much. I listen to a lot of podcasts.

Lee:
Okay. That's good. You're on one right now as well. Yes. I think that what I'm hearing here is there is that start with why, but also starting as well with who. So who it is that you are and who it is that you are serving and what problems are you solving for them or what are you helping them achieve? It doesn't have to be problems. It could be their aspirations, et cetera. All of that, along with a why. Why am I even doing this? Do I even care about this? Do I care about what it is I'm doing? Do I care about who it is that I'm serving? If you can package all of that up, as it were, into some statement plan, whatever that is, and get everybody on board. If it's just you, great, you're fully on board. If it's a small team, get everybody on board and everyone can I understand that. Now we can go ahead and go and create some content. Maybe if we're that prop company, show us playing a game of Tetris, putting the props into a container or something like that with the Tetris music on it, because that's just a different way of doing it as opposed to the latter, Hey, we've just had an influx of microphone stands.

Lee:
Click the link in the bio, et cetera. Have you any cool examples of stuff your client has been up to as well?

Cat:
In terms of what, really? Because it's so raw. We work with quite a few different companies. I guess maybe off the wall, any marketing activities that they've engaged with that wouldn't be perceived as the norm that you've helped with.

Lee:
Something that has helped them stand out as opposed to what people often do, which is your token post on social media or do a quick email blast that's not really relevant to a database that they purchase that they're not even sure if those people exist.

Cat:
Well, maybe something I'd like to speak about because it's just something that we've implemented a little bit more recently at Electric Cat. Because we do social media management, I love the posting and ghosting concept. That just really resonates to not post a ghost because I think it's quite catchy. It's easy to remember. Don't just put a post up and then ignore LinkedIn for the rest of the week. If you're going to the- That's me.

Lee:
Go and look at my LinkedIn. It's totally me.

Cat:
Anything, do it properly. If you're going to exhibit an event, don't just think, I bought and stand. We turn up on the day, we give away pens, we say we sell the reg platform for your event. Bye. What's the strategy behind it? With social media engagement, it's so important to tie sales and marketing. You need to be speaking with those two teams. One of our clients are a headphones supplier. They're called Silence Seminars, and they're also at Event Tech Live. We're that way, we're that. Yeah, just really thinking, okay, so there are going to be companies they work with already. They're the relationships they want to be nurturing. We need a little bit of a list. If we're interacting as them on their social media, we need to know who are the accounts they're going to want to engage with. Those will be current clients. Obviously, it just makes so much sense because you're promoting them, they're promoting you. Also working in partnership with other accounts and people and brands is always going to help that message go a bit further. Then in their CRM, there's going to be clients that they're trying to get over the line or potentially they've had a discovery call with or they met at a trade show.

Cat:
I just think Thinking about things strategically, linking things up with sales, business development, your CRM, and making marketing really just targeted. I think that's just an easy thing that anyone can go and implement is, are you following every single potential lead as a business, your business as their business, your personal as to their business, your personal to their founder's personal, or if it's a bigger company, if it's a bigger company, If you might be hired by the Ops person, then go follow the Ops person. If you think you might be hired by the resourcing, go follow the resourcing. Whoever is that's relevant to your... Who is going to be bringing in your work, go and follow them and engage with them because maybe that project didn't come through because the requirements changed, the client changed their mind, the event got cancelled, they went with another supplier. But how are you going to then... It's not a goodbye, it's more of a, Okay, how do we then nurture that so that that relationship might potentially turn into a sale. With Electric Cat, a great example of this is there is a client that we pitched to and it was quote number one in zero, which is, as any founder will know, very meaningful.

Cat:
I spent hours and hours on that proposal because it was the first one that we'd really done with our Electric Cat branding. I do remember spending about a day working on this proposal and I was so proud of it. I was so happy. It looked so good. We sent it to them and then they actually ghosted us. But it is a nice story because in the end- I was playing the overwhelming music in my head, to be honest. We've nurtured that relationship, stayed in touch. A lovely example of that is that I commented on their post because they put out some really cool product photos. I just went and commented on the founder's post and I said, Those photos look epic. Love them. Then he emailed me and said, Hey, I've been meaning to email you. This was literally two years ago. It was May 2022 that we've sent that proposal. He's now come back to me and said, Things have changed and we are definitely keen to open the conversation again. It just goes to show that not thinking of social media as, Oh, we got to do it. It's It's boring. How can you leverage it?

Cat:
How can you integrate it as part of your sales funnel?

Lee:
Here with social media, I think what I'm hearing is that to be creative is not to come up with the next viral campaign that's going to go crazy on social media. But be creative is, in fact, you mentioned earlier, again, understanding who it is that you're targeting and also who it is that's going to be potentially bringing in that business. Then, of course, still post on social media, but don't ghost that post like I sometimes do. I love that phrase. I'm going to keep that. I'll post something, and I know loads of people comment, but I don't respond to them until a week later when I finally got around to going back onto LinkedIn again. That's probably a bad move. I can be creative just by replying to comments on my own post. But the other part of that creative process is not, again, becoming viral with any content creation necessarily, but actually having that communication plan by following the five different event marketers that are on my radar right now that I know could really use my product. It would be great if I can go and engage on their posts and show that I'm interested in what they're doing and maybe even post some helpful content that I think will really help them that's maybe got nothing to do with me necessarily, but would be really cool or tag them into something.

Lee:
Ha ha, I thought of you when I saw this. It was funny or whatever. But I think that's where we're going with this. Would that be a fair summarization?

Cat:
Yeah, exactly. Whatever you're going to do, know why you're doing it, do it properly, invest a bit of time really think it through and think, Is it serving me? Is it serving the business? If it's not, just not being afraid to let things go as well. I think we're quite hard on ourselves sometimes. We try and try them. If something's not working, just try something else. I always like the image of exactly what we did for Electric Cat at the beginning when we launched was just we tried lots of different things. We work with and we test things on ourselves as well because then we can see if it will work well for our clients. But sometimes it's just doing a little bit of everything or doing some things well. At the beginning, you're going to want to try and do a bit of everything to see what works. It's like, Okay, so I've got £10,000. I'm going to put £1,000 on some PR. I'm going to put £1,000 on in time and developing the website. I'm going to put... You can allocate into buckets, Okay, attending an event or two, the budget would be as an attendee, maybe £500, and just really test different things.

Cat:
Then if something doesn't work, It's really not helping. But another brilliant example of this is people say, Oh, you're always getting shortlisted for awards and you're always doing this and that. But those things don't just happen. It's PR. You have to do it yourself often. There are lots There are loads of awards. As soon as you start looking, you can find more and more. Just having a quick look at that, and it's quite easy to do relatively. It's not high. You just fill in a form. So realistically, you can do... And some of you can do a video application. So if you don't like filling long forms, spend one minute recording a video. I kid you not, we had Jet2 contact us off the back of an award. They literally... I thought it was spam. I almost did an answer. I was like, No way. Imagine you're in your first year of business and Jet2 comes to you and then you put in a proposal for £100,000 worth of work for two projects. We didn't win it, obviously, because there were other companies that were much better.

Lee:
But your ego got a massive boost. I mean, that's amazing.

Cat:
It just demonstrates. It's not so much the ego, it's more it demonstrates that market does work. It would be for me. That's the proof of the pudding that you try different things and it's very hard to calculate ROI, but you have to look at things holistically. You think, Well, if I wouldn't have spent that half an hour, that hour, two hours applying for that award, I never would have got it. But equally, you do have to do all the things to see what works. It's by doing all the things that you reinforce your message, that you engage with all of your and your message gets across.

Lee:
Start with the why, the who, the what, and all of that stuff. Once you understand your messaging and the who and everything, then move into the doing all the things first to test all the things that we're all aware, all the main things we're aware of, and then start to drop the things that are definitely not working. If you're posting on Instagram and there are literally three views and your mom's the only person who's liking it, and it's been three months, probably not working. Your audience probably isn't there. But if you're actually getting lots of responses on LinkedIn and you're meeting amazing people at events, then maybe that's the track that we're going down for our marketing. I think I've learned today as well that that's all still marketing. It's all still the top of that funnel area, isn't it? Where we're getting our name known, be that our personal brand, be that the brand of our business. We're making those connexions and we're encouraging them to the Titty top of that funnel where they hopefully will at some point fall in and capture one of our wonderful products along the way.

Cat:
Don't be afraid to ask for help because I think often marketing, if it's smaller businesses, I've seen office managers in charge of marketing, I've seen EAs, I've seen Ops people. I'm recognising that marketing is a whole... It's a whole skill. There are lots of skills in marketing, so it could be that actually you're doing really well with social media, but if your website really needs refresh, the time that you're going to spend on learning to do it yourself or the time wasted by your operations person trying to figure out the ins and outs of Squarespace or WordPress, that time wasted, sometimes you're just better off. It is tough, I think, especially as a new or small business. For us, we've made some big business decisions, like working with consultants, that it is a huge cost. But ultimately, and I say this all the time, the value that they bring is just It's just incredible. Whether it's on a consultancy level, on a strategic level, don't be afraid to reach out, whether you know someone or whether it's a freelancer or whether you want to work with an agency, whatever that might look like. Or even just if you know someone else that works in a similar business, similar role, having a bit of peer-to-peer advice.

Cat:
What do you think? I always have friends send me their CV or I'll send... What do you think of this logo? Having just those sounding boards is really valuable as well.

Lee:
That's really good advice. I certainly appreciate that. On that then, how can people connect with yourself if they're thinking, You know what? We need a little bit of the electric cat in our lives and we need some help.

Cat:
Yeah, definitely. I'm very active on LinkedIn, as you can imagine. It's just cat Kevin on there. Also, electric cat, we have a website. If you want to see the behind the scenes of what we really get up to, go and follow us on TikTok.

Lee:
You have a TikTok? Oh, you're so cool. I closed mine down eventually because I can't dance and I didn't know what to post on it.

Cat:
It's a struggle, but we move. Yeah, go give us a shout. The nice thing is we want to work with businesses and really help them. We do everything from a couple of hours a month, consultancy to full scale. We could come and replace your marketing team and do all of those requirements. So don't be afraid to just reach out.

Lee:
So from literally that sounding board, couple of hours, etc, to we'll take it off your hands and do everything. So folks, check the links in the show notes and be sure to connect with cat, even if you don't want to do business, but you just want to get to know her and her team and how cool they all are because they really are. So cat, thank you so much for your time. You're a legend. I hope we can have you on again soon. Take care and have a great day.

Cat:
Thank you.

Lee:
Cheerio.