Beyond Big-Name Speakers: Creating Engaging and Impactful Conferences with Strategic Marketing and Programming
How do I get big name speakers at my event?
Big name conference speakers, are they worth the big price tag they come with? Join Isaac and Nessa as they discuss why that $20k speaking fee does NOT mean what you think it does.
The core question of how to get a big name speaker at a conference is largely rooted in a lack of confidence and a lack of strategy. To address this, focus on the marketing strategy, the program strategy, and understand and internalize what the audience, community, and people need and want from a leader. Then identify the right people to be involved in the program and the right ways to deliver on that strategy.
You can learn even more about selecting the best speakers for your next event in our deep dive guide you can read here: Conference Speakers for your Next Event.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:44 Today's question and what people are actually asking
02:42 The real problem is insecurity.
07:38 Solve it with strategy.
10:34 The results of having a "big name speaker" for the smaller conference host
14:56 Recap
Key takeaways
Celebrity speakers may get more bodies in a room, (and big emphasis on MAY) but… that’s about it.
A celebrity speaker is not a marketing strategy and they won’t sell your event for you. Get your marketing strategy in order!
You’ll get people to come back year after year by giving them well thought out, targeted content that serves their needs.
If the content strategy of your conference sucks, there is no celebrity on earth that can save it.
The question we started with was how to get a big name speaker for a conference. What people really want to know is how to sell tickets and impress people. We focus on marketing and program strategy to help leaders understand what their audience wants and needs. From there, you can identify the right people to be involved in your program and make sure you're delivering on that strategy authentically.
Next episode: What platform should I host my event on?
Transcript
[00:00:00] Isaac Watson: How do you as a leader of a growing community, Truly make a conference or event that has impact, a gathering with purpose and an attendee experience that knocks their socks off. An event that leaves your audience in awe and wondering where you've been their whole life. Make it Kickass, the podcast that explores these questions by uncovering the strategies, tactics and tools that we use every day to bring our clients' conferences to life. I'm Isaac Watson, Executive Producer of Kickass Conferences, and we are here to help you make it kick ass.
[00:00:51] Isaac Watson: Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Kickass. As always, I am Isaac Watson, executive producer at Kickass Conferences, and with me is the illustrious Nessa Jimenez. Hello . This is our operations manager. We are back with a wonderful season of episodes for you focused on all of the amazing questions that we get asked all the time from our clients, from the people that we talk to about events, all that kind of fun stuff.
[00:01:21] Isaac Watson: So we're taking every episode and diving a little deeper into a single question and really just like figuring out. What do people really mean when they ask this? . And how does that inform how they think about hosting conferences and and their strategy around it all? Because as we will tell you time and time again, strategy is everything.
[00:01:42] Nessa Jimenez: That's right.
[00:01:44] Isaac Watson: So let's dig into today's question. Today's question, which we also get all the time, is how do I get a big name speaker at my conference? How do I get a big name speaker at my conference? So Nessa, what do people really mean when they ask us that question?
[00:02:04] Nessa Jimenez: Yeah, big name speakers. That's always top of mind for people. But what they're actually trying to get us to tell them is, will a big name at my event sell tickets for me? I think that's the actual question that they wanna know. How do I impress people right by will a big speaker impress my audience, and how easily can I get people through the door if I have one big celebrity name, if I get Michelle Obama. Am I gonna get like everybody up in there , just cuz she's there. So that that really is the question. Is this big name gonna sell my tickets for me?
[00:02:42] Isaac Watson: And at the end of the day, the actual underlying problem behind that line of questioning, behind that desire to get people in is a lack of confidence. Lack of confidence.
[00:02:56] Isaac Watson: It's definitely a lack
[00:02:57] Isaac Watson: in selling tickets. It's lacking confidence in marketing strategy. There's maybe a little bit of self-esteem. Like I don't know if I have what it takes to deliver on this experience, So I'm gonna lean on a celebrity. Or a big name or an influencer to do this for me. And I think that really, that is especially true of and I think hello, Imposter syndrome, we all have it.
[00:03:22] Nessa Jimenez: I was gonna say that imposter syndrome is part of that. Yes.
[00:03:26] Isaac Watson: Yeah. This is not an accusation, this is a, we feel you a situation. Yeah. That at the end of the day, it is challenging for us, especially as community leaders and even solo business owners and people who are working hard to influence a space.
[00:03:41] Isaac Watson: We often encounter problems with self-esteem and low confidence and a bit of that imposter syndrome, and that is totally normal to feel that kind of stuff. I think where it's key is we don't want you to direct that toward compensating by trying to get a big name, because at the end of the day: you want Michelle Obama to be there? You are going to be paying a lot. A lot of dough
[00:04:09] Nessa Jimenez: Yes.
[00:04:09] Isaac Watson: To get a woman like that in the room, and it may attract a lot of people, but I doubt you're gonna make it up in revenue.
[00:04:17] Nessa Jimenez: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about that. To your point, yes. The core of the problem is lack of confidence. And it can be summed down to, 'I'm not confident enough that the content that I'm giving, or the experience that I've created is enough to get people to come. Don't feel confident that what I'm giving to them will get them to spend whatever the ticket price is. I don't feel comfortable putting myself out there'. You've created this experience and now you're putting it out there for the world to join you. But I don't feel like it's enough. So I think that having a celebrity or a big name speaker that is going to do the work for me. And then people are gonna get there and they're gonna love the event, they're gonna love the conference and it's all gonna work out fine.
[00:05:06] Nessa Jimenez: But the reality is that big names do not sell the event. Big names sell themselves. People are not gonna be there for you, for your event, for your community, for your experience. They are there because they found out that, Michelle Obama was gonna be there. That I'm trying to think of like other examples without putting anybody on blast. But we all know those speakers that charge a ridiculous amount, and people are always like after them trying to get them at events, but people are there to see them. They're not necessarily there for your event. . Yeah.
[00:05:39] Isaac Watson: I would say the only the only exception to that rule is if you are, a big company running a highly influential, massive annual conference, and you're leaning on your celebrity connections as part of that, but you've built that reputation already to do that as a community organizer, as someone who is leading a space. A celebrity like that is not going to serve your needs. At the end of the day, people. What are they gonna remember? Remember they're gonna remember, Oh, that, yeah. That one conference I went to, that Michelle Obama spoke at. I know, don't me wrong, I love Michelle Obama, but that was, we're just using her as the, like the blanket example, they're gonna remember, Oh, that one thing that, that Michelle Obama was at, What was that called? Oh, I don't, But she was great, right? Yes. And you've lost it because now your event has become the brand of the celebrity, not your own brand.
[00:06:33] Nessa Jimenez: And right now we're not speaking to, we're not speaking to like these big billionaire companies. That's not who we work for. That's not who we wanna work for. we're talking about creating community events for the community by the community, with a certain a certain focus in mind, that these. Huge companies. That's not what they're trying to do. A lot for these big companies it's more about it's just about attention essentially, or reminding people that you exist.
[00:06:58] Nessa Jimenez: It's like Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola still does commercials. Everybody knows Coca-Cola. That's not the point of the commercials, right?
[00:07:03] Isaac Watson: Yeah.
[00:07:04] Nessa Jimenez: They do it cuz they wanna remind you that they're there. But big names, They don't do what most people at our level think they're gonna do. Exactly. And we could go into the whole process of. Working with that type of speaker, but we're not-
[00:07:20] Isaac Watson: because you're not gonna do that as a community leader because after this episode you're gonna be like, No, I do not. I do not need that. I don't need that .
[00:07:29] Nessa Jimenez: Exactly. So we get what the problem is, right? It's the lack of confidence. It's this, I don't wanna put myself out there. So how do we turn this around? And actually address the problem?
[00:07:38] Nessa Jimenez: If you were paying attention at the beginning, we already mentioned a couple of these things. ? . One is marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy that comes from knowing who your audience is, knowing what you're trying to achieve, and having the content and the the resources.
[00:07:55] Nessa Jimenez: Available to you to speak to them is going to do way more than a headline name. That's gonna attract a lot of eyeball. That marketing strategy is key and it's not just about, which channels we're gonna hit and how frequently, and what kind of content we're gonna do. It's about how are we going to reach the right people that we want to attend this?
[00:08:18] Nessa Jimenez: How are we gonna demonstrate that we understand who they are and what they want, and why this particular conference is going to speak to them or be compelling enough to. And then crafting the content and the patterns and the channels around that.
[00:08:33] Nessa Jimenez: Because your marketing strategy, it grows out of your programming strategy. What is your programming strategy? And we sit down with people and we ask them, what is the message you're trying to send? why are we doing this? Why are we here? How do we give that audience, that community what they need and what they want in a creative way? In an exciting way? In an engaging way, right?
[00:08:54] Nessa Jimenez: And then when we get to the marketing strategy, how do we communicate that? How do we frame that so that they get it? This is gonna be cool and this is for you. Yeah, and then it's essentially at its core, what do the people need? What do they want, what are they expecting? Why you have this community? What are you giving them that keeps them coming back, and how can we deliver that to them in an event experience?
[00:09:15] Nessa Jimenez: Yeah. And that's the crux of the event strategy. Understanding what your people need and want from you and how you can then deliver that. Developing a program. That will speak to that and that will help support those needs and wants along with your own. And then how do you translate that into a marketing strategy? Just this kind of layer cake of strategic elements that are absolutely critical to get in place upfront. And I.
[00:09:45] Nessa Jimenez: This occurred to me a second ago, and I want to just hammer it home like someone like Michelle Obama could get up in front of a room and give a speech on just about anything. And be like the Michelle Obama thing. And yay, that's great and everything. But what if you actually found speakers who had something unique and relevant and impactful to say about a particular subject rather than being a powerhouse celebrity that can speak about. What if we gave your lineup some focus and allowed them to use their own voices to fill that, rather than leaning on somebody whose voice, speaks to whatever.
[00:10:29] Nessa Jimenez: Let's talk about the results of having big name speakers, because we're not saying that the big name speaker is not gonna bring people. They're absolutely gonna bring people because they're celebrities and people wanna see celebrities. People wanna see big names, but what happens after that? Okay. You had the big name. You dealt with all of that. You paid the insane amount. You did all the accommodations because they have very specific lists of like demands and things through their like agents and stuff.
[00:10:58] Nessa Jimenez: So you had the event, you had them there. Okay. People went afterwards. All of these new leads, you're thinking they're new leads because they came to the event, within a week they're unsubscribing from your list. They've unfollowed you on social media, you, it's a ghost town. They're never to be seen or heard from again, because they weren't actually there.
[00:11:24] Nessa Jimenez: For the reason that you want them to be there, right? They weren't there for the community that you've built. They weren't really there for the messaging. They were there for the big name, and I absolutely believe that. People will go to your event and they can enjoy it. Absolutely. Sure. But the long term results of that, it turns into nothing.
[00:11:48] Nessa Jimenez: So you invested all of this for a bunch of people to come. They're not gonna be engaged, they're not coming back. And then next year, what are we gonna have to do? Are you gonna pull out another 20, 30, $40,000 to get another big name to try to get people in the. It's not sustainable. , at the level of business we're talking about, it's not a sustainable strategy and it's not gonna achieve the goals that you think it's gonna achieve
[00:12:12] Isaac Watson: and people don't relate to someone like Michelle Obama, right? They admire, they maybe there's a little hero worship that they look up to. They see her as a leader. But when we're talking about community oriented conferences, what people want when they go to these is to feel, seen, to feel like their experiences are shared to feel that they That they are not alone, that they have found their people.
[00:12:41] Isaac Watson: And a celebrity speaker isn't gonna fill that. It's, that's why it's important for your program lineup to, to represent as best as possible the makeup of the audience, because that's how you build community relationships around that is you give people something to identify with.
[00:12:59] Nessa Jimenez: Exactly. And the celebrity name. That just it's the attention for them. And then your event becomes about them and then service of them, right? And your actual community, the people that were there from the beginning before you announced this big name. They're left behind they're left in the mess of this big name and everything that goes along with that.
[00:13:25] Isaac Watson: Yeah. And that's something that's, this emphasis on the strategy for us is so critical because that setting that up from the beginning will help you avoid, get into those common missteps and getting sidetracked by By these things that don't actually matter all that much.
[00:13:41] Isaac Watson: . And that's what we do through the event lab, is we walk you through and we figure out what, those three key questions, What do your people need and want from you? What is that programming strategy? How can we craft something programmatically that's going to be compelling and serve those needs?
[00:13:56] Isaac Watson: How can you then market. To your audience. All of that stuff comes from that big picture, strategic thinking. And then from there, yes, let's find some speakers. Let's find people who fit within these goals and within these points that we wanna deliver on. And then we can go from there. And it's gonna cost you a lot less than bringing in some high falutin' speaker.
[00:14:23] Nessa Jimenez: And you addressed insecurities Yes. As well. Because if you've done your homework, your strategy work at the beginning, you know what the people need. You know what they want, you know how to present this to them. So there's no reason to be insecure, unsure, because we've done this work.
[00:14:38] Nessa Jimenez: You've done the homework and you can go forward confidently understanding that you have created something. That will serve your community. And it's not just this thing that you came up with and now you're not sure how people will respond to it.
[00:14:52] Isaac Watson: Yeah. All right. I think that about covers things. Let me do a quick recap. The core question that we started with at the top of this was, how do I get a big name speaker at my conference? That's the question that we get asked a lot. But what people really are asking when they bring that to us. How easily can I get people through the door?
[00:15:13] Isaac Watson: How can I impress people? Will a big name sell tickets for me? And ultimately, that comes through as largely rooted in a lack of confidence and a lack of strategy. So we focus on the marketing strategy, the program strategy, and what really understanding and internalizing. What your audience, what your community, what your people need and want from you as a leader.
[00:15:38] Isaac Watson: And From that core strategic structure, can you then identify the right people to be involved in your program and the right ways to deliver on that strategy and make sure that you are doing so authentically and in a meaningful way.
[00:15:57] Nessa Jimenez: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Make It Kick Ass. We really got stuck on Michelle Obama this time, didn't we? If your goals, though, are to go beyond getting Michelle Obama on a stage and beyond getting a bunch of people in a room. And it's more about serving a specific community's needs than you are definitely one of our people.
[00:16:16] Nessa Jimenez: If you wanna explore this topic more, head on over to get event lab.com and grab a copy of the questionnaire we use with our clients to help them figure out resource management and marketing strategy. That's geteventlab.com