How to Successfully Incorporate Events as Part of Your B2B Marketing Strategy

It goes without saying that the events and conferences space has experienced a lot of disruption in the past few years. With the rapid advancement of technology, AI, and digitization, this industry has had to reinvent itself in order to adapt to changing market dynamics.

How can B2B marketers successfully incorporate events into their strategy? How can they utilize offline and online components to create a seamless experience for attendees? How can they leverage data to maximize opportunities before, during, and after events?

Join us as we discuss all of these topics with global events expert Muhammad Younas (Founder and CEO, vFairs). During our conversation, Younas talks to us about the latest trends in the B2B events industry and how B2B marketers can capitalize on these. He also elaborates on the mistakes to avoid, how to strategically utilize data, and highlights the metrics that B2B marketers should pay attention to.

https://youtu.be/oZlZAuykAYw

Topics discussed in episode

• Some common mistakes that B2B marketers make when it comes to events, and what they should do instead [3:46]
  
• The importance of conducting research in organizing and implementing successful B2B events [17:19]
  
• Younas elaborates on how B2B marketers can maximize opportunities before, during and after events [20:39]
  
• Younas’s actionable recommendations on what B2B marketers can do to successfully incorporate events into their B2B marketing strategy [24:20]
  
• Metrics that B2B marketers should pay attention to when it comes to events [30:13]
  

Companies and links mentioned

• Muhammad Younas on LinkedIn 
  
• vFairs 
  

SPEAKERS

Muhammad Younas, Christian Klepp

Christian Klepp  00:03

Welcome to B2B Marketers on a Mission, a podcast for changemakers, where we question the conventional, debunk marketing myths, provide actionable tips, think differently, disrupt industries, and take your marketing to a new level, from improving your campaigns to making you a better marketer. These are the inspirational stories that will help us change the way we think and approach B2B marketing, one conversation at a time. This podcast is brought to you by EINBLICK Consulting, helping you to stand out in the market and drive revenue to your B2B business. And now your host, Christian Klepp.

Christian Klepp  00:44

Okay, welcome everyone to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission. This is the show where we help you to question the conventional, think differently, disrupt your industry and take your marketing to new heights. This is your host Christian Klepp. And today I’m joined by someone on a mission to provide innovative solutions to businesses around the world to help them run their in person, virtual and hybrid events. So coming to us from Oakville, Canada, Mr. Muhammad Younas, welcome to the show, sir.

Muhammad Younas  01:11

Thank you Christian. Thank you for having me, happy to be on the show.

Christian Klepp  01:14

A pleasure to have you on and let’s dive in. Because this is really going to be an interesting and relevant topic for B2B marketers out there. So you’re clearly no stranger to the events industry. In fact, your company vFairs has experienced phenomenal growth in the past few years. But for this conversation, let’s focus on the following topic, which is events as part of your B2B marketing strategy. So talk to us about why you believe events are such an important component in B2B marketing.

Muhammad Younas  01:45

Yeah, see, I think the great thing about events is just the focus that it brings in, for anyone who’s participating in one, right. So again, I’ll just give you my own example. I’m pretty busy guy, you know, having back to back meetings throughout the day, but when I would go ahead, I would tend a particular event, I really, you know, you have to make an effort to be there. And when you are there, you make an effort to go through everything, whether it’s through the content that that particular conference has to offer, the network opportunities that particular conference has to offer. So the way we have seen is that customers who are running the conferences where they are able to bring in attendees that are of like minded people, you can really make the best use of it, you know, in the form of the content that they’re going to consume, and in the form of just networking opportunities that they’re going to get. And in today’s world that is becoming, I think it’s more and more remote by nature, whether it’s a virtual conference or an in person, one, I think you want to form those communities. And the best way to form communities is through events. And again, we have just seen that our customer base, have over the past up, I think this couple of years has really mastered it and have seen just tons of opportunities to, again meet with existing customers, as well as just connect with prospects through to any any of these types of conferences.

Christian Klepp  03:09

Yeah, no, that’s incredibly interesting. And I mean, part of the reason I suppose why your company has experienced growth is because the world has changed short of stating the obvious, right? The way that customers have… behaved have changed, the way that they consume content has changed, the way they make buying decisions has changed. So it’s a combination of all of these. But I bring that up, because it’s such a great segue into the next question, which I’m sure you will have no problem answering. Talk to us about the mistakes and misconceptions you’ve seen when it comes to incorporating events into the marketing mix. And what should we done to address these?

Muhammad Younas  03:47

Yeah, I think, for me, the the biggest thing with any event is that it needs to be fully aligned with the overall business objectives. Like why are you even running that event to begin with? So for me, I think just some of the mistakes and misconceptions start with, you know, just failing to align with overall business objectives. Many business events are just as a standalone marketing activity, they sometimes fail to align with what the overall business objectives are. So I always try to tell our customers that, okay, let us just first discuss what your KPIs are, what your overall business objectives are, what your company OKRs are, and then let’s plan for an event that really aligned well with that goal. So failing to align events with all business objective, I just see that as just a mistake that, you know, once in a while, you know, some of the event planners are just go through. The other one is, again, I think in today’s world, when everyone’s attention is just you’re trying to grab everyone’s attention, just over reliance on traditional event formats. I’ve seen that sometimes it does not work well. You know, we all have to be a bit more in innovative, we all have to be a bit more agile. And we have to see like what exactly our attendees are looking for now. So for example, you know, maybe five years back a conference can purely be just one way, you know, you come and you consume content. And that would have been okay, because people were not, let’s say, short of networking opportunities at work at a lot of other places. But nowadays, in many ways, any event is both about content, you know, create content will drive attendance, but it’s also just one of the only few days or weeks when people might get those networking opportunities, because some of those people might be working from home. And they are just, you know, just really kind of, they are, they’re struggling with having those, you know, business related a network of opportunity. Otherwise, I think, just don’t rely on traditional event formats, just be creative and see what works now. The third one I would say is that just lack of integration with other marketing channels, you know, I have seen that just people, they, you know, they might just have few channels that they really mastered pre-pandemic. And if it would have been, maybe I will do a press release, maybe I’ll send out an email blasts, and so forth. But now with, you know, social media and email marketing, and LinkedIn and Tik Tok, etc., you need to make sure that you are using all the different channels to really market your event. You know, don’t limit yourself to just only few mediums that you historically have been use of. And the last one is just failing to measure and analyze event performance. So many businesses, I feel that they failed to measure analyze performance, making it very difficult to assess the ROI and identify areas of improvement, you know, and again, this this can result in wasteful resources, and missed opportunities for future events. And hence, I am of the opinion that make use of the event tech, make use of the technology that’s available now for both in person events and virtual events that allows you to measure and analyze event performance at all times. And I just feel that, you know, not doing that would be a mistake. You know, which historically speaking, people were… events business, events industry in general, were not very much tech friendly, you know, in five years back seven years back, but after the pandemic, everybody’s used to tech, and everyone now should make use of that to again properly track the event performance.

Christian Klepp  07:28

Absolutely, absolutely. Those are some really great points. Thanks for sharing those, I’d like to go back to things that you mentioned and dig a little bit deeper, if I may. So I think that you mentioned one point about lack of integration of the different channels. And we all know and you pointed it out in the past couple of minutes about embracing the digital aspect of events. Can you talk to us a little bit more about that? Like, what are the differences that you’ve seen, like pre and post pandemic?

Muhammad Younas  07:57

Sure. So the way I see it is that events industry have seen these three, just these three different, I would say eras, pre-pandemic, mostly all of the events were in person, mostly, even though we have been in virtual events for almost six, seven years. But I would say like 99% of the conferences, still used to happen purely in person. So that was pre pandemic, during pandemic, almost the same 99% the events were purely virtual right. Now, late 2022, 2023 onwards, it is a mixture of both, there are some virtual, because there are some types of conferences that are just well suited for virtual ones to begin with, for example, you know, we work with tons of universities, where previously hundreds and 1000s of employers used to go and attend a job fairs in person with these universities. Now, job fairs internal, whether it’s with universities, or of a particular city, etc., have gone virtually most of the people are hiring virtually most of the people do work remotely. And hence as a result of that. That photo segment has gone just virtually conferences, again, there’s a dearth of demand, where a lot of people want to go back in person, they want to meet their members and they want to meet. So those conferences have gone back in person. Having said that, we see continuously that attendance level for these conferences is not the same, you know, so unless the conference is of the nature where, you know, again, it’s happening, where the attendance is mainly locally, which rarely happens. Most of the attendance for any decent sized conferences, at least, you know, from the country or from regionally, if not internationally, right. So each one of these conference providers are doing some sort of a virtual piece of it. So again, we are seeing that as just a continuous trend, where in person events are using technology, but most of them are also having a virtual piece of it because they realize that a decent amount of their attendees might not be able to travel because of a) they’re no longer in that city or country. They’re working from home. And you know, home can be anywhere it can be in the country, it can be outside the country, b) also the cost of travel and accommodation has gone up significantly, you know, it has been, it’s up by more than 100% for many international travelers, right. So, for them to justify that cost. Sometimes it’s not, it’s just not there.

Christian Klepp  10:32

So absolutely. I mean, you know, for us here in Canada, especially in Toronto, let’s not forget about the horror stories we’ve heard about the flight delays, you know, exactly, yeah.

Muhammad Younas  10:41

And again, and trust me, it happens, even though it happens a lot in Canada, but it happens even more in the US. I attend kinds of conferences in the US and you realize that you have a connecting flight and that connecting flight, you know, until you just it kind of it was one hour late, and then you have missed all of your connecting flights. And you know, you’re stuck there for a day.

Christian Klepp  11:01

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, God bless all those people that needs to travel a lot like you. Exactly. Talk to us about a challenge. And I know that there are many, but talk to us about one that you help the clients to solve in the past 12 months.

Muhammad Younas  11:16

I think I can maybe quickly tell two because they are just for different use cases. I think one of our customers, just recent customers is American Educational Research Association. So they run one of the biggest conferences out there in the US. And just again, you know, they were facing a similar challenge where a couple of years back, they were doing a virtual conference, maybe with a certain provider, it didn’t go well. Two years later, they realized that, of course they want to do an in person conference, but they want to make sure that they are using a much more stable technology provider. So we worked with them just again, last month in April, that big conference was in Chicago. Thousands of attendees. And in this time they wanted to use again, historically speaking, what would have happened is that you have these 1600 to 2000 people coming on historically speaking, what would have been is that their conferences have almost 650 plus sessions, 650 plus sessions, trying to print the agenda of that would have meant that you would have had, I know that almost one big full auditorium room have just a agenda because it would have been a booklet printing 650 pages, and then photos, attendees to carry on those 650 pages all around the different conferences, right. So like they make use of our mobile app, the entire conference agenda is on the mobile app, people can create their own agenda, which sessions they are going to attend, where exactly those sessions are happening. Is it happening in this hotel, this room versus another hotel in another room? And just a very seamless experience. Now, again, those of you who don’t know about this conference, it happens in almost six to seven different hotels. Right. So what would have happened is that by the time you go from one session to the other that you want to attend, in that session, you might not have enough seats for you to even sit. But now just because the technology is there, the same session is now streamed live on the mobile app. So if even if you’re not getting a seat over there, you can actually access it through your mobile phone on the go. You can see who are the other people who are attending that event. So you can book meetings with them, you can go ahead and have appointments booked with the event organizer and so forth. So just, you know, again, just the use of technology allowed them to be a lot more efficient. Just one piece of it. I’ve actually seen, you know, a couple of 1000 people out there attending the event. But more important than that, just today as we are having this particular podcast recorded, their virtual conference is happening. So two weeks earlier, they did an in person event, almost a couple of 1000 people attended there and in Chicago. But now today, almost twice of that almost four to 5000 people, if not more, attending the same conference virtually. So again, historically speaking, it would have been only in person, then it went purely virtual. But now they’re using, making use of technology to again, go to a much bigger audience, but you know, having a far bigger reach at a much lower cost. And you know, just having a great time with all of their members. That’s one.

Muhammad Younas  14:26

We also work with Tulare County Office of Education. So this is again, part of the government of California. And those of you who are new to this topic, there’s a huge teachers shortage in California, and it’s very hard to find teachers in California. So again, what they are doing is that they’re doing virtual job fairs using our technology, which is trying to connect districts with teachers across the country who want to, you know, become teacher and you know, have an employment in California. and they have been, they have been doing that. They started with one, but now they almost run a dozen of them in a year. And even those are becoming less for them to fulfill the overall teachers shortage that is happening in California. And they’re also doing in person events, you know, which was, again, trying to connect with the local district or local, you know, kind of a school or college, who want to hire teachers and just making use of technology to help connect our teachers with these districts. So just again, you know, two of those examples. We have hundreds of those on our website. But for the audience, I think just isn’t good enough.

Christian Klepp  15:33

Yeah. Yeah, no more than good enough, I would say, Wow, thanks for sharing those. Not a couple of things that I heard you say. And I think these are incredible. With all this technology, or because of technology, it’s opened the doors to new opportunities that I wouldn’t even say, pre pandemic might have already been there, but not at this scale. Right. So for example, the virtual events, so in terms of like, definitely bigger coverage, it gives guests that are unable to attend the in person events an opportunity to attend so they can actually scale this right. Yeah. And that’s incredible. And I think the one that you mentioned with the sessions being held in different hotels, and how that in person would have been such a logistics nightmare, and how that became a little bit more seamless with, with the app, and with a platform and with this technology. I mean, it’s incredible, just thinking about it.

Muhammad Younas  16:29

Now I can see the great thing about just that conference itself was, as people figure it out, you know, and they were there in the conference, people were just, they were on Twitter, they were saying, Oh, by the way, you know, just having a great time attending this conference, kudos to whoever found vFairs to, you know, again, put all of those conference topics and the agenda and everything else on the mobile app. So again, you know, just the audience was, you know, again mesmerized of how technology can make, again, a really complex event, in essence, a huge conference, not an easy one. But just again, seamless when you use a technology to help solve those problems.

Christian Klepp  17:07

Well, and it’s also a question of customer experience, and understanding the journey that these attendees go through, right? And looking at it from their perspective, and how can we improve that. And that’s clearly what your platform provides, which is great. Going on to the next question. And I think this is a critical one, what role do you think conducting research and having the right strategy have in organizing and implementing successful B2B events?

Muhammad Younas  17:36

You know, I think you’ll see research, and just the right strategy is critical, I will say to organizing and implementing any successful B2B event, I think, for me, research starts, just first of all, identifying the right target audience, you know, just understanding the target audience is critical for successful event planning, and, you know, research will always help you identify the needs, the preferences, and the pain points of the target audience. So for me, that’s always a key unless you really do that. You don’t know what you’re trying to solve. And for me and who you’re trying to solve, right, so who you’re trying to solve, finding out the target audience, what they really care about it, what their needs are, what their preferences are, what their pain points are, is, for me, the key. Once you have done that, then again, you know, through research and you know, having the right strategy, you need to identify just the right format, and the right content for that B2B event as well. You know, what exactly that particular target audience is here for now, is it the content? If yes, what should be the nature of that content? What should be the format of that content? Is it more of one way, which is, you know, someone is giving a lecture and they’re just consuming that, or it is more interactive, where, you know, again, it’s more of a roundtable discussion, or a panel discussion. So those things are, are important. And just, again, a strategy to ensure that it doesn’t affect event. It’s a cohesive event, right. So just having a strategy to kind of really, what, you know, finding the right vendors, finding the right venue, you know, making sure that the logistics are all there, having a strategy for that is extremely important. And I always say that, you know, an event is… running an event is a really stressful job. And it’s really, really hard. You spend days, weeks, if not months, really for that one, two or three days. And I think sometimes just people lose track of making sure that all of those things are important, which is the hotel is important, communications is important, the vendor is important, you know, you know, the content, the speakers, exhibitors, you know, I can go on, you know, so it’s a checklist of 100 things. But the one thing that’s more important than all of them, is to make sure that you also have a strategy to help measure and analyze event performance because you’d have to run the same conference next year or similar conference next year. And you want to always learn what did work and what didn’t, right. So again, just having a strategy for that itself is going to be important as well. So I think for me, researching the target audience, having the right format and a strategy to run a very cohesive and effective event and a strategy to help measure, analyze event performance, I think they are critical to run any successful B2B event.

Christian Klepp  20:18

Absolutely, absolutely. I’m glad you brought that up. Because that’s such a great segue into the next question, which was something I was going to ask you earlier, because you brought up one of the mistakes of which was failing to measure and analyze performance. So you cannot really avoid the topic of data when it comes to events, right. So talk to us about how you believe B2B marketers can maximize opportunities before, during and after events.

Muhammad Younas  20:47

I think that that’s, that’s a brilliant question. So for me, again, data is a critical component of a successful event marketing. So before the event, I will say it’s really first of all, identifying the target audience using data and analytics, B2B marketers should identify and target specific attendees, who are most likely to engage with that event, with that brand, with that product or service for whom they’re running that particular event for right. So that’s, for me, is a key, then the next thing is once you have identified that target audience, you need to have a personalized outreach, you know, kind of kind of a strategy. You know, I can use data by using by leveraging data, marketers should prioritize and personalize their outreach to attendees and create a more relevant and engaging messaging for them. And as a result of that, just again, use the data to also optimize the event promotion, see, before the event, it’s really about how can you target the right audience, you know, reach out to them in a personalized manner. And you know, and really kind of create the hype about that particular event, right, because you always need those people to RSVP for the event, people need to know who else is coming, and has that event promotion becomes the key. And using data, you can also figure it out, which marketing medium is also working out for you know, during the event itself, it is about collecting data as much as you can, right. So first of all, is about collecting the attendee data, you know, who are these people who are coming, you know, I can get their contact details, because if you want to share it with other attendees who want to connect with them, or other exhibitors or sponsors who want to connect with them, you want to make sure that that’s done properly. The other thing is, again, having a personalized attendee experience. Not everyone want to have a similar experience. If there are thousands of people coming, they all have many times they have different preferences of why they’re coming over there, the ability for an attendee to have a personalized experience in a particular event, whether in person or virtual, is key. And again, by collecting data, marketers can personalize event experience and create more relevant and engaging content and plan activities for those particular set of attendees. And the last one during the event is to keep on monitoring the event performance. Having is real time data, to monitor the event performance and make adjustments as needed, it’s going to be critical to maximize engagement, and to maximize ROI. So for me, that remains a key when you are running an event itself. After the event, it is crucial that you follow up with attendees, again, use the data collected during the event and follow up with attendees in a very personalized and relevant way. Create opportunities for them to still engage and still, you know, do that relationship building with other attendees and data or speakers or exhibitors that they were unable to, again, do that in that particular conference itself. I guess really, after the event, measure and analyze event performance, you know, go back look at the data, you know, see what happened during the event. And, you know, before the event. And using that, you know, again, we don’t create areas of improvement, identify those areas of improvement for yourself of how you’re going to be a better planner for next year. And again, once you have done that the same data will help you again, inform about the future event planning, create a strategy and help your overall business optimize the Event Marketing planning and achieve better results as a result of that. So for me, I think it’s all of those things are absolutely key.

Christian Klepp  24:23

Yeah, no, those are incredibly insightful. Um, thanks for sharing that. I have one question regarding the post event initiatives because I see this happen time and time again and I’m sure you have as well. That the follow up that’s I think are what some of those bad habits are kicking in. Some companies are still choosing to use that old follow up method, where then transforms into something like a pitch slap, right? Whether they’re saying thanks for attending the event, and then pitch pitch pitch and here’s my link to my talent lead. And let’s jump on a demo call. Have you seen any of that happening? And if yes, how do you think companies and get rid of this kind of bad habit.

Muhammad Younas  25:01

You know, I think people’s like, companies will do that. But I will tell you like what successful event marketers are doing right now. I think they all now realize that everyone is bombarded with a cadence of emails with a lot of cold calls. And every time, it has been less about the quantity of this data. It’s more about the quality of that data. And if you care about the quality of the data, you would also realize that those people also expect quality engagement from your side as well. So it’s less about doing a mass generic email or mass generic follow up, it has become a personalized email, a personalized touch. So it has to be that oh, by the way, Eunice, I saw that you did, you came to this conference, and you attended X, Y, and Z. But you were not able to attend A, B and C, you know, here is that A, B and C that you might see benefit from. So it has to be at that level where, you know, you need to show it to your end customer that you know what they care about. And here is a very specific recommendation for them. Everyone now figured out if it’s a generic email, a generic follow up, and people are just immune to that. And you know, people will unsubscribe you, people will mark you as spam. And I think more than more people realize that. And they know that every single relationship that they’re going to build matters. And I see that people are putting a lot more effort in trying to build that relationship now with their specific attendees.

Christian Klepp  26:35

Absolutely. All right, we get to the point in the conversation, where we’re talking about actionable tips, and you have mentioned some of these points already. But Let’s appreciate that you can’t do all of this in one day. But if somebody out there who’s a B2B marketer, were listening to this conversation that you and I are having, what are some of the things that you think they can do right now to successfully incorporate events into their B2B marketing strategy?

Muhammad Younas  27:00

Yeah, I think for me, it is more like a checklist. And I know, the way I would go about it is that, again, the very first thing is that describe or define your event objectives. You know, even before planning the event itself, define your company objectives, define your event objectives, and determine what you want to achieve. This will always help you stay focused in your success. For me, that’s number one, define event objectives. Once you have defined that, identify the target audience: who is that target audience? What are their needs, what are their interests, and how you will be able to engage with them, given this event in mind. Once you’ve defined that target audience, keeping that audience in mind, lead the right event format, you know, whether it’s going to be in person or virtual or hybrid, you know, what best define, you know, the objectives of that particular audience and event objectives. And the result of that, what would be that right event format, that would work out for them. Once you have defined that, then you have to plan for the event content, defining that or developing that content strategy that aligned with the event objectives. And the target audience will be extremely important. You know, that might include presentations, that might be panel discussions, that might be demo of a product, that might be some interactive activities. But you know, you will need to kind of define what the event content would be. Always leverage technology, use technology to create a more engaging and interactive event experience. Again, whether it’s in person or virtual event, live polling, q&a sessions, breakout rooms, roundtables, they’re all going to be key for you to maximize engagement between attendees. And people remember that, you know, having just one great conversation sometimes in a particular event, sometimes justify the ROI for an attendee who might have traveled, you know, a country, you know, to attend that particular one, right. So, so try to see, like, you know, how they can have those aha moments. And, you know, technology will always help you do that. Promote your event, you know, again, we don’t have a multichannel promotion strategy to use to kind of reach your target audience, you know, generate the buzz, collect the data, measure the success of that, and once the event is over, just remember that it’s still not over, follow up with your attendees, follow up with them, to keep continuing the conversation, nurture the relationship, because even after the event that you know, a lot still goes on. And you know, you need to make sure that you know, I’m sure you’d be tired. You need some time. But don’t ignore the follow up. Follow up will get you sometimes the bigger result and the event itself, so make use of that.

Christian Klepp  29:45

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, some great points. And I love the bit about leveraging technology because as you said, going back to the case study examples that you highlighted, it can help to really move things along so much in such a way that It was probably not possible, like a couple of years ago, right? Yeah. We spoke about this a little bit. I mean, we’ve talked a lot about data, we talked about follow up and so forth. But metrics. So what metrics do you think B2B marketers should be paying attention to, and why on the topic of events.

Muhammad Younas  30:21

You’ll see, I think the first and the most important one is just attendance. You know, again, you know, you want to find out how many people registered for the event, how many of them attended your event, attendance is an important metric for just again, just to measure the success of any event to begin with. That’s one. After attendance, you want to measure the engagement. It is one thing that someone actually came to your event. But it’s another thing that okay, what exactly they did in your event, you know, you know, how many sessions they attended. Did they engage in any networking conversations? Did they ask any questions? Did they participate in any poll. Though all of those engagement metrics are going to be really important, because you will see that based on these engagement metrics, that follow-up is going to be extremely important. Now, depending on the type of event, you know, how many leads have you generated, you know, or how many leads have your sponsors and exhibitors generated, this is going to be the  key for your event success, as well as for you know, again, whoever is paying for, for that event, you know, whether it’s sponsors or exhibitors, or sometimes even attendees, networking opportunities are also sometimes you know, lead generated where people can go back and, you know, follow up with those people, you know, for partnerships, anything else. So that’s, that’s going to be important. After we have generated leads, it’s one thing to generate leads. But really, the quality of lead is determined by the conversion rate of that lead. Now, I might have met only five people in a conference. But if I am able to do business with all five of them, that’s brilliant, that might justify the ROI for me, versus, in another conference, I might have met 100 people. But if I’m unable to do business with any of them, for me, that’s a failure. Right? So I can, you know, measure the leads, but also measure the conversion rate that typically requires you to follow up, you know, immensely after the conference is over. You also want to find out, okay, what’s the brand value of your conference? So, again, you know, monitor just the success of your conference, you know, on social media on any of the outside world, you want to see that you know, how much brand value your conference has got, and your speakers have got, and your exhibitors have got, and so forth. And in the end, you want to, you know, see the ROI, you know, what was the cost per attendee, what was the cost per sponsor? You know, how much money it took you to run that conference and how much money you have recovered? Right. So just knowing that ROI, not just for yourself, of course, that’s going to be the key. But for everyone who participated in it, whether it was an attendee, did they get their ROI? sponsors? Did they get their ROI? Exhibitors? Did they get their ROI? Knowing and measuring success of each one of them, it’s going to be the key as well.

Christian Klepp  32:56

That’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. Moving on to the next question. Okay. Now you need to get up on your soapbox. It’s a status quo, but you passionately disagree with and why.

Muhammad Younas  33:09

For me, I think it’s mainly about that, you know, regardless of how much you work hard, it’s your luck that defines the success. And I just personally disagree with that. I feel that in anything that you do in life, and anything that you do in event, in many cases, you can really plan things to be successful if you just plan it the right way. You know, luck matters, and it matters in anything. But in many ways, I think nowadays, we have so much data, and we have so much success stories around us that in many ways you can define your own path. And you can define your own journey. Where if you follow that, and if you follow that, with the right heart, and with the right amount of hard work, you can achieve whatever you want to achieve, right? So for me, I just believe that we should not give ourselves an excuse of us not achieving a certain KPI or a goal or, or whatever it is, you know, just by, you know, kind of throwing it on luck or something like that.

Christian Klepp  34:17

Absolutely, absolutely. That’s such a great answer. Totally agree with that. Younas, thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your experience and expertise with the listeners. So please tell us a little about yourself and how people can get in touch with you. And you know, we spoke a little bit before I hit the record button and you are definitely somebody that has an international background and you know, you’ve worked in different parts of the world as well.

Muhammad Younas  34:42

So again, my name is Muhammad Younas. I live here in Toronto, Canada. I am the CEO and founder for vfairs.com. vFairs is an all in one event tech platform. We help hundreds and 1000s of organizations run events of all scale whether it’s small events, midsize event or large event. Our events have been of 50 People 100 People all the way up to 50,000 people, 100,000 people, you know, again, anyone who wants to connect with us, you know, you can just go to vfairs.com. That’s our website URL. It speaks about all the different use cases we serve as well, as you know, just again, we are a global organization, we have around 230 plus employees spread across 10 plus different countries, we serve companies across 100 plus different industries. We serve companies from 40 plus different countries, wherever you are based, whether you’ll be us in the US or Canada, in the Middle East, APAC region, UK, Europe, we have team members and customers in all of those countries so we can serve you locally as and when you need. And we can serve you both through in person events and virtual events and hybrid events. Yep, again, I’m just an email away. My email address is younas@vfairs.com. And again, if anyone wants to connect with us for anything, whether it’s just a suggestion or or how we can support you for event I’ll be more than honored to do so.

Christian Klepp  36:09

Fantastic. Younas, once again, thank you so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.

Muhammad Younas  36:16

Thanks, Christian.