ABM-ify YOUR Events | Ep. 284

Most event programs are a booth, a badge scanner, and a hope that the right buyer walks past. This episode of Scrappy ABM is pulled from a webinar Mason Cosby ran on ABMifying your events, and it covers two programs from the past six months.

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One client invested two hundred thousand dollars into a single event and generated 31 opportunities in three days. Mason's own two-person team spent thirty to forty thousand dollars across a full year of events, got punched in the mouth at SaaStr with zero connections after day one, and rebuilt the whole approach around selling to sponsors instead of chasing attendees.

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Mason walks through the four reasons events fail, the five audiences you can build before the doors open, the three roles to split across the floor, and the 4D framework behind every playbook. The through-line: if your event isn't ROI positive before your flight takes off, there is a better way.

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📌 What We Cover

The four reasons events fail: no list visibility, booth and badge scans, the one person bottleneck, and no follow-through planWhy Mason and Jim Gilkey almost flew home early from SaaStr, and the single question that turned it aroundWorking the empty showroom floor during sessions, and why roughly 10% of a 350-account target list was sponsoring the conferenceThe five pre-event audiences: last year's list, the event app, social search, Sales Navigator plus location, and the sponsor rosterZero-budget floor plays: the co-branded latte, the buffet-line lunch run, and a two hundred fifty dollar taco night that produced four meetingsNetworkers, offerers, and setters, and why the setter should be on the first callThe half a gift play: 28 of 30 executives came to the meeting suite after receiving an empty glasses caseThe 4D framework, the 10X pipeline target, and why in-person meetings cancel at a higher rate

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

Sequel.io, whose sponsor-selling play Mason creditsOneScreen.ai for out-of-home advertising around conferencesKatie Ray on inviting locals to event dinnersRob Jones, the unofficial mayor of INBOUNDInforma, the event company behind the executive car serviceSales Navigator for persona plus location targetingscrappyabm.com/taco and scrappyabm.com/b2bmx, the event landing pages referencedEvents discussed: SaaStr, Forrester B2B Summit, Gartner, B2BMX, Drive, Unbound, Dreamforce, Pavilion's GTM, Demand & Expand

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