How To Dominate Your B2B Event with Video Content | Content Wars – EP15

Nathan Yerian: When they're at the event, it's usually a different story. Now, this level of speaker normally is not going to let you record their session, which in this case they did not, but they were available for Q &A afterwards. They were available to sit there and have conversations with the client and also the attendees and just ask questions about topics that were brought up in the session or how that might apply to the specific industry. 

And that content is gold because those speakers came in tailored their presentation to that audience, to that industry. So it's been a while since we've actually got together and done an episode. We've been traveling a lot, shooting a lot, working on some extra projects that don't necessarily involve podcasts. But one of the things that's been happening recently, I think, is when a lot of trade shows happen, a lot of conferences happen, a lot of customer events happen. And us being in a video production capacity, we get invited to a lot of these to cover the events. We talk to a lot of marketing teams that are putting on these events. And usually when they come to us, they're talking about the event itself. Hey, we're going to have this event. 

It's going to be great. We're going to have customers there, employees there, investors there, whoever it's going to be from their audience. And normally what they're talking about is covering the event. We're talking about the speakers or interviews with the attendees or something of that nature, or maybe just getting general B-roll of that it happened so they can have a recap video. So that's normally what people bring to us. But some of our clients, instead of coming and saying, hey, we want to do this one thing, they came and said, hey, we're having an event. What do you think we should do to make sure that we get the most amount of video possible that might benefit the actual event that we're putting on? 

Adam Marquardt: Yeah. And I think you hit on an interesting point with saying about the B-roll for an event recap. One of the things that is valuable is if you come and plan this in advance and think through what could be done, it gives you more flexibility going forward in how you can use things in the future. So one of the things you talked about was an event recap video. I just want to highlight an opportunity here because even just thinking about for the next year when you do that event, you can actually take the footage you shot from last year and use it as a teaser for the upcoming event. So there's all sorts of things that if you think in advance about what you're going to create, there's a lot more opportunities than you might think of. 

Nathan Yerian: That was actually how one of the clients that we recently shot an event for started. They said, hey, we don't really need video for this event. We're going to go ahead and have you out. We're going to cover the event so that next year or the year after when we put this on again, we're going to have some footage that we'd be able to use to show people what it's like or invite people with. And that's really what opened up the conversation of why don't we do more for this event than that? 

If that's what you're already thinking about for next year, why don't we start planning some things for this year? And they were open to the conversation. And that's really what gave me the idea for this episode was looking at what they did and then looking back at a few of the other events that we recently covered. It's like, I think that marketers would benefit from a wider spectrum of ideas of how video might fit into an event. And everybody's events are different, right? So not all of these ideas are going to fit into every event. 

But if you are on a marketing team that puts on events or plans to put on events, I think some of these ideas would probably be useful. So obviously, if you're putting on any event, there's a lot of communication that needs to happen. There's communication that happens before the event. There's communication that happens during the event. And hopefully there's communication that happens after the event. And if thought out properly, you can use video to effectively communicate in all of those arenas. 

Adam Marquardt: Yeah, and you're right. And if you plan it well enough, there's plenty that you can capture before the event. There's different routes that you can go as far as what you need that will lead up to the event before the event actually happens. And then there's things that you will need to plan and shoot before the event that you will actually use at the event. And we see this all the time with our clients, them utilizing stuff for it, leading up on social or through email or different marketing campaigns they have, as well as the day of the event and throughout the event. Absolutely. 

Nathan Yerian: If you're going to put on an event, the marketing of that event happens prior to the event. Therefore, marketing is communication. So the video should be happening prior to the event. And you know, a lot of the types of video content that we've seen prior to an event is going to be really capturing the reasons that someone should go. It might be a landing page video. It might be something that went out in an email. It might be something that's going to be hosted on the website or social or some other place that your audience is hanging out that allows them to know the events going on, who it's for, when it is, what's happening, what's the value and ultimately why they should attend. And it could be just simply announcements from the company that it's happening and letting people know that it's happening. 

You could also get previews as we kind of touched on. If you've taken footage from past years, you can kind of show this is what the event looks like. You can show the highlights and the fun parts of why somebody would want to come to that event. 

We recently just did one where the marketing team did a preview interview with some of the speakers to talk about the presentations that were going to happen, the value points that were going to be delivered within those presentations to give someone a reason to actually attend. 

Adam Marquardt: And who did that go out to? Who was like, what did they do with that video? 

Nathan Yerian: They took that video and they made it into social content and it actually went out organically and I think paid. Can't commit to paid, but it probably should have. I think organically and paid to their audience to let people know, hey, this is going on. We have this speaker. This is what they're going to be speaking about. Join us at our upcoming conference so that you can hear this speaker and others. 

Adam Marquardt: And that's really cool because it acts as almost like a sneak peek. So you not only can understand who they are as a speaker, maybe you've never heard of them. 

Maybe they're somebody famous, but so either you know them and can resonate with them or you can hear them and resonate with them. But either way, it kind of leads into the content that will be there at that event. Yeah. 

Nathan Yerian: Yeah. In this particular case, it was people from the company themselves and then people that are kind of well known in the industry. So people within the industry would know who they are, but you're right. If you have somebody who's well known, that is a great way to let people know, hey, we've got somebody kind of special joining us. 

And here's what they're going to be talking about. Any content that you can capture that gives people a reason to get interested in the event that you're hosting is going to be what you want to create. It's going to be what you want to show them. The goal, we want to get people interested. We want them to learn more. And ultimately we want them to sign up to attend our event. 

Adam Marquardt: So yeah, there's a couple of great ways on how to use video before the event to be able to promote it, be able to get people in the seats for the day of the event. But also you can use video during the event. We've seen a bunch of our clients use this recently and have helped them with that. It's a really powerful tool that can help take the event further. 

Nathan Yerian: Yeah. And there's a lot of ways to use video content in the event itself. But if you're going to do that, if you're going to have video that plays at your event, you have to think of it, shoot it and actually have it delivered prior to that event. 

So that really needs to be in the pre event category, I would say. And it really comes down to what are we presenting? You know, there's different types of events. Maybe we've got one stage, maybe we have five, maybe we have one presenter, maybe we have five. 

It is going to vary by event. But for instance, in the one that we just did, we had an overview of the company itself. So this was an event for investors. Some of the investors are very familiar with the company, some not so much. 

And this particular company does things a little bit different than some of their peers, I would say. So they wanted the investment community to really understand where their value was. So they did almost a overview of their capabilities and their approach to how they operate their business that showed to really open up that conference for their investors. They also were launching a brand new product and I say knew it wasn't brand new to them, but they were bringing it to market for the first time. 

And they were able to build kind of a hype video that led in and showed some very flashy aspects of what this particular offering was prior to their long presentation. They also had speaker transitions. So, you know, the speaker is going to come in. They had a little piece that kind of hyped the speaker and gave them a little bit of a pedestal of what they're going to be talking about and how they're going to be talking about it. So the audience got a little taste for what's about to happen prior to the speaker taking the stage. 

So, you know, those are just some ideas of how video might be used. They had a different conference that we did. They also had little stations around in the lobby area that had different showcases of some of their offering that played different videos and allowed their audience to experience different things. So again, if you break down what are you trying to communicate and what are the opportunities to communicate with your audience specifically at your conference or trade show, then you can start opening up the ideas of how do we use video in those different formats for those audiences in those locations at those times to effectively communicate everything that we want that audience to leave. It's not just what happens on stage. It's the entire experience that can benefit from a presence of video if you have the foresight to think about it prior to the event. 

Adam Marquardt: Okay, so that was a lot of really good information as far as what you can shoot leading up to it to be able to get human beings to your event in a seat. 

But I think that there's also probably one of the more common use cases of video at an event, which is where we get called up and say, hey, can you just show up day of the event? This is what people tend to think of most. This is where their brain kind of naturally goes is, oh, we're doing this big event. We need to have somebody there to capture it and produce this and turn it into content. 

But I think that even that ends up as an overlooked component of let's just capture B-roll, like you said, when in reality, there are so many other opportunities there that can help for the day of and future use that I think that we've experienced and helped clients think through in the last few months. 

Nathan Yerian: So I think most people, when they're hosting an event, they think about it like the types of events they've had the most experience with. So for most people, the biggest events that you've gone to is a wedding. You think of a wedding and it's like, okay, well, we got to have a photographer there. We got to have a videographer there. We've got to document that this happened. And that's the way a lot of companies approach their events. 

We just have to document that it happened, which there's nothing wrong with documenting that it happened. That's important. That's cool. There's a lot of really cool content that you can create if you document those events. Documenting is important because there's a lot of really cool content that you can create from that content, whether it's recap videos or something else. 

But the reality is you're missing a huge opportunity if all you're doing is documenting. You're there with some of the smartest people from the company. You're there with speakers. You're there with customers, employees, investors, a whole team of people that you could interact with in some meaningful way that you don't always get access to, that you now have the opportunity to create content with. So again, referencing a few of the conferences that we just covered, there was a number of ways that the marketing teams creatively used that opportunity to get in front of people that they would not have gotten in front of. One opportunity that our clients have taken advantage of is really getting access to speakers that they probably wouldn't get access to otherwise. So this particular client had a rather large event. 

They had a really lengthy roster of speakers that were A-level speakers. They're not the people that are going to respond to your email or join you on your podcast or be interviewed in any way. But when they're at the event, it's usually a different story. Now, this level of speaker normally is not going to let you record their session, which in this case, they did not. But they were available for Q &A afterwards. They were available to sit there and have conversations with the client and also the attendees and just ask questions about topics that were brought up in the session or how that might apply to the specific industry. 

And that content is gold because those speakers came in and tailored their presentation to that audience, to that industry. Missing out on the opportunity to capture the presentation. Sure, I understand why they can't do it. This is their profession. They need to give this speech elsewhere. Documenting is probably not in their best interest, so they can't let that happen. But being open to a Q &A session afterwards where the audience, who obviously is industry specific, is able to ask pinpointed questions about, hey, what about this? Or how does it apply here? 

Or what are your thoughts about this? Those answers, maybe 10 people that were standing there heard, but taking a video camera and sticking in that environment and actually capturing that answer to compartmentalize it to deliver to a social audience later. Guess what? No one else in your industry has that person talking about their perspective on your industry, and you do. 

That's special. If you don't think about it beforehand and you just had a video team capturing the event and not thinking about, maybe we could talk to these speakers. You would have missed that opportunity, and I think that's what a lot of marketing teams do. They have brilliant people on stage that they never stick in front of a camera because someone's over there, filming the snack tray and the event attendees raising their hands, which again, B-roll is cool, but getting actual content is probably more useful and definitely more valuable to the audience. 

Adam Marquardt: I think for those top tier speakers, you're more than likely not gonna be able to record their full sessions because you're right. That is their livelihood. That's something that they're going to use kind of in a proprietary basis, but I think that there's definitely opportunities for industry-specific speakers or for subject matter experts who are talking about things with their permission to be able to capture that, as well as what we've even done in the past is interview customers at an event. And so whether you're trying to get their perspective on the event, on the industry, on your product, and their relationship with it, there's so much opportunity there of what you can capture with people and conversations that are happening, you're right. Don't just wander around and aimlessly capture things in slow motion when there's a really big opportunity to capture the conversations that are going on, specific to this industry, specific to what your event is about, and to be able to reuse those in the future is to be able to invite people on the outside into the conference or into the event that weren't there or on the other side to be able to provide exclusive access back to the guests that were there that are looking for either the conversations that they missed out on or the pieces of content that are valuable for them to dive deeper in. But there's so many different layers that you can unpack there for a day of event capture that without proper planning, you just miss out on because you don't think about it or you don't spend enough time exploring it with your video partner to be able to really dissect what you should be capturing. And that's 100% it. 

Nathan Yerian: I mean, there's people in the room that the marketing team's just not able to get access to normally. And it isn't just on the speaker side. So, hey, that's great. You've got these speakers that now have access to because you had this event and paid them a lot of money to be there, but you also have your own team, probably, that's presenting there. So you can record those presentations, so do that. 

But just recording presentations isn't going to be the full extent of the content that you wanna create. There's subject matter experts that your company sent there to interact with the attendees, get their perspectives. What's going on in the industry? What are they hearing? What are they seeing? What are the conversations that they're having with customers while they're there? 

This is a great time to document your subject matter experts thoughts, opinions, and ideas because they're already there. They're already being social. They're already having these conversations. It's top of mind. There's nothing wrong with walking over and sticking a camera in their face and saying, hey, Jim, let's talk about this real quick. 

I believe I overheard you last night talking about X, Y, and Z, giving me your perspective on that real quick. It's a great place to capture content from your team on stage, but also off stage as well. And as you brought up, it's an excellent opportunity to also capture other attendees' content. 

Most marketing teams, when they think about that, I think they think it's gotta be about the event. It has to be, oh, hey, how's it going? And what are you learning? 

And how's this speaker? There's nothing wrong with that. Your video team can definitely do that and capture that content because it can be used later in a recap video or it can be used next year when you're gonna host this event to show what people thought of the event, right? 

But you can go beyond that. Turns out when you have them there and you ask them about the event and how's it going and what did they learn and what are they taking back to their company? You can also ask them about their industry. You can ask them about challenges they're facing. You can ask them about how they're approaching those challenges. 

If they happen to be a customer already, you can ask them about working with you, what it's like, what's the value that they get out of that and really tell their story about the ways that they work with you and the ways that you benefit them in their lives. So you have to tailor the questions to the audience, obviously. We gave a few examples, but at the end of the day, who's in the audience collectively? Whether they're your employees, your investors, your customers, your prospects, others in the industry, partners, whoever it is, they have a perspective that your industry could find interesting if you position it correctly. 

So the big question to ask yourself as far as collecting that content is, who are these people? What is their perspective and how could we capture that perspective to make it valuable to our wider audience that probably isn't at the event? 

Adam Marquardt: So you mentioned about people who aren't at the event. We've also talked about people who are at the event. Let's go beyond just leading up to the event, the day of the event, but how do we give the event life after it's ended with video? How do we extend that into the days and weeks after it has already concluded? 

Nathan Yerian: That's one of the biggest opportunities with video in general. So what I usually tell people is part of what we need to do, part of what our job is, creating this experience for others. So a certain fraction of your audience is going to attend your event. There's always gonna be that person or company that you wished was there. Maybe they even signed up at the last minute that couldn't make it for whatever emergency they had to deal with. 

You want them to be able to go back and experience some aspect of the event to get some value from it. There's probably more than one. There's probably a lot of people, a lot of companies that you wished were there. Oh, I wish we could have had more people at the event, but we had to cap it at 500 or whatever it is. The more you capture, the more you compartmentalize to share in some meaningful way, the more they're gonna be able to share, not as if they were there, but they're gonna be able to share in the value of that event. 

And you're gonna get some of the same credibility as if they had attended. So why do we do events? We do events to show appreciation. We do events to increase our credibility within a certain audience to be a thought leader or the industry expert or whatever it is. 

And yes, that happens at the conference or trade show, but it can also happen after it. So the more we can capture different moments of the conference or different value points of the conference or different conversations that are happening at the conference and be able to share those with a wider audience, the better we're going to do. So all of those components that we talked about, whether they are the presentations, whether they are interviews with customers or prospects at the event, whether they are perspectives coming from subject matter experts that are at the event, all of that content can be broken down into long form content that you could send emails out and say, hey, you missed this presentation. Here's a recap of this presentation or maybe the full presentation itself, or you can create smaller content pieces that can be shared in social channels beyond a recap. 

Nothing wrong with a recap. You had an event, you do a recap, you thank your partners, you thank your customers, you thank your suppliers, you thank whoever needs to be thanked and you show the awesome event and probably party that you and the other attendees got to have from going there, that's fine, but it has to go beyond that because the majority of your audience probably was not at your event, so you need to find a way to start bringing that event to them. So if you take that other content that you captured and start turning the useful, valuable moments of that into social content that can be shared with that audience, all of a sudden you've taken that value that you had within that room, now you're extending the life of that value and the ROI from the money that you spent on that particular event to spread more awareness in that audience, not only transfer that value to that wider audience, but also increase your credibility and increase your ability to be seen as that expert bringing these perspectives and really highlighting what you're doing in your industry or your community. 

Adam Marquardt: And that's a great thing about having your content thought through and produced in a systemized way because then every future year you do this, you're able to build on that previous content or you're able to leverage some of the previous content. So I think that going through this, we've talked about the before the event, the during the event and the after the event and all of that sounds like a ton of content. And so for anybody who's listening right now, I know that for us we have basically the rest of November and then maybe a little bit of December for events that are gonna happen this year, but for people who are listening saying, hey, you know what, for next year's event, I need to take this approach, I need to think about this, I need to plan this way. 

We've talked about a lot of content. Where do they start? How do they budget for that? Like walk me through the realistic way that if somebody comes to you and says, hey, and this is what happens most of the time, they say, hey, I just want you to show up for the day of the event. And then we say, are you sure? 

Are you sure? Yeah, and then we were able to start a dialogue and say, hey, we can definitely do that, but there's a better way to approach it. And we kind of walk them through what we've talked about on this episode, which is great. But if you're thinking about planning and budgeting for video in this way in 2026 for your upcoming event, where do you start? How do you begin to think about that? How do you plan for that? It feels a little overwhelming and like there's a lot of different components for creating that content. Where do you begin? 

Nathan Yerian: Yeah, so it is really gonna depend on the event itself, right? The event itself will dictate the opportunities for video. The best thing is just to have candid conversations. Don't necessarily start with, oh, we only want this one thing. Start with, we're gonna have this event. These are the opportunities before that we would like to focus on. These are the opportunities during that we would like to focus on. 

These are the opportunities after that we would like to focus on. And then the question is, how hypothetically would we get that done? What budget do we have to throw at that if we were going to do it? 

You don't have to commit to doing it, just hypothetically, if we could achieve this, what would that be worth to us? Most companies that are putting on events, well, as you know, they're not cheap. They're spending a lot of money. So maximizing the value that you get out of that event is a worthy investment. 

So if you're going to invest in something, you have to know what it is. So categorizing where you want to be, what the opportunities are within that event, is gonna be the first step. And then you can work with a video partner and say, hey, this is kind of what we're thinking, what's the best way to approach this? And also from a marketing team's perspective, you don't have to have an outside vendor do it all. 

There are tools, softwares, things, the camera that's in your pocket right now, there are tools that you have at your disposal where you can do some of it as well. It's okay to have an organic social approach to some of these pieces of content. It doesn't all have to fall on a outside production team that you're paying to get it done. 

I think certain elements probably should, but it's okay to have a healthy mix. Some companies say, hey, look, we have a lot going on during the conference. We just want you guys to handle it or the video team to handle it and that's fine too. And I think as long as you know what the opportunities are, you're gonna be able to get an idea of what that budget might look like. And then you can kind of decide, hey, how much of this do we want to do? What parts of it do we want the video team to do? 

What parts of it might we handle internally? And I think that's a really good starting point for anyone that already knows they're gonna do a conference or is suspecting they're gonna do a conference, knows that video is gonna make it a more valuable experience both before, during, and after and really wants to see what they could do with video. That's a really good place to start. 

Adam Marquardt: So one of the things that we see people kind of get tripped up on all the time is they'll come to us and say, hey, we want your help producing video for this event. And one of our first questions is great, when is it? And we find out in some cases, it's six months away, great. In some cases, it's three weeks away, four weeks away, right? 

What is the ideal timeline? Because I hear you say like, hey, go get the quote, then look it over, see what you can peel back if it's not within your budget. But there's this planning phase, there's this getting the quote phase, there's the refining the quote, hiring the person, starting the production, getting the assets back, like all of that takes time. What is kind of an ideal timeline that if somebody's thinking about this and they say, hey, we have an event coming up in Q2 or Q3, how far in advance should they be really thinking through this or starting to plan it? 

Nathan Yerian: If they already know they have an event coming up, they should be having these conversations immediately. So to your point, if they wait till three weeks before the event, they've been planning it for months. Video has now become an afterthought and when you treat it as an afterthought, you're gonna reduce the value that you can get out of it. So when you know that you are going to have the event, probably about the same time that you're looking for a space, start looking for who can help us market this thing. Part of that equation is going to be the video team that's going to bring the video aspect of that marketing. 

That's the right time to do it. And I think for most companies, it's gonna be more than three months out, probably six months, nine months is really when the marketing team or the team that's in charge of the event is gonna know, hey, we're doing this, this is the roundabout date it's gonna happen, the roundabout location it's gonna happen at, that's the right time because the partner that you select can help dictate some things to make video easier from the locations that are selected. The questions that are asked to the venue, we were in a situation with a client that were like, hey, look, when our speakers come off stage, we wanna have a podcast with them. We already have a podcast, when they come off, we want to do an episode with each of the speakers. 

Great idea. What was not thought about is where would that happen? They didn't plan for a space that would be available that would look good for that to happen. So company 11th hour, we're sitting there going, okay, where is it happening? 

There's not a good answer. We had to go back to the hotel and meet with them and kind of figure out where could this happen? But it created a room that wasn't necessarily budgeted for. The room wasn't really suited to the type of production that they were trying to do. So they had to bring in furniture, which costs extra money. So a lot of that can be avoided if you know what you're trying to do full production wise. 

That includes the show and the video of the show. If you know what's happening prior to making all the decisions, you're gonna be in a much better position. So that's a very long-winded answer to the question. The short-winded answer is as early as possible. If you know the event's happening, yet no video's gonna be involved, there's nothing wrong with getting people involved early. And now,