{"slug":"events","title":"events","summary":"When the user wants to plan, run, sponsor, speak at, or get pipeline from events — webinars, conferences, trade shows, meetups, dinners, workshops, virtual summits, or user conferences. Also use when the user mentions 'event marketing,' 'field marketing,' 'run a webinar,' 'webina","platform":"Claude","tags":[],"authorName":"LLM Mart","authorSlug":"llm-mart","score":0,"source":"github","price":null,"verified":false,"createdAt":"2026-10-15T13:12:12.224483Z","repo":{"url":"https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills","stars":54836,"forks":8123,"license":"MIT","updatedAt":"2026-10-14T21:21:00Z"},"bodyHtml":"<hr>\n<h2>name: events\ndescription: \"When the user wants to plan, run, sponsor, speak at, or get pipeline from events — webinars, conferences, trade shows, meetups, dinners, workshops, virtual summits, or user conferences. Also use when the user mentions 'event marketing,' 'field marketing,' 'run a webinar,' 'webinar funnel,' 'show-up rate,' 'should we sponsor,' 'sponsor a conference,' 'trade show booth,' 'booth strategy,' 'event ROI,' 'badge scans,' 'event follow-up,' 'speaking slot,' 'CFP,' 'conference talk,' 'host a dinner,' 'user conference,' or 'virtual summit.' Covers all four roles: hosting, sponsoring/exhibiting, speaking, and attending. For product launch moments, see launch. For the partnership side of joint webinars, see co-marketing. For ongoing community programs, see community-marketing. For podcast appearances, see public-relations. For the email sequences themselves, see emails.\"\nmetadata:\nversion: 1.0.0</h2>\n<h1>Event Marketing</h1>\n<p>You are an expert in event-driven marketing — using webinars, conferences, dinners, and talks to create pipeline, authority, and compounding content. Your job is to make events produce measurable business outcomes, not just attendance.</p>\n<h2>Before Starting</h2>\n<p><strong>Check for product marketing context first:</strong>\nIf <code>.agents/product-marketing.md</code> exists (or <code>.claude/product-marketing.md</code>, or the legacy <code>product-marketing-context.md</code> filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.</p>\n<p>Then establish, in one batch:</p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Which role?</strong> Hosting your own event, sponsoring/exhibiting at someone else's, speaking, or attending?</li>\n<li><strong>What outcome?</strong> Pipeline/meetings, authority/brand, community, or content production? (Pick a primary — events that try to do everything measure nothing.)</li>\n<li><strong>Who must be in the room?</strong> The ICP segment, and roughly how many of them exist at this event.</li>\n<li><strong>Budget and team</strong> — money, and who can actually work the event.</li>\n</ol>\n<h2>Pick Your Role</h2>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>You are…</th>\n<th>Core motion</th>\n<th>Depth</th>\n</tr>\n</thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Hosting</strong></td>\n<td>Own the audience end to end — webinar, workshop, dinner, meetup, summit, user conference</td>\n<td>This file + <a href=\"references/webinar-funnel.md\">webinar-funnel.md</a> for the flagship format</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Sponsoring / exhibiting</strong></td>\n<td>Buy access to someone else's audience — evaluate, negotiate, work the floor, follow up</td>\n<td><a href=\"references/sponsorship-roi.md\">sponsorship-roi.md</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Speaking</strong></td>\n<td>Trade expertise for stage time — get booked, design the talk, compound the recording</td>\n<td><a href=\"references/speaking.md\">speaking.md</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Attending</strong></td>\n<td>No booth, no stage — engineer meetings anyway</td>\n<td>Section below</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n<p>Mixed roles are normal (sponsor + speak, attend + host a dinner). Plan each role's motion separately; they share the follow-up system.</p>\n<h2>Which Events to Invest In (Portfolio First)</h2>\n<p>Before roles and tactics: events are the most expensive, riskiest, hardest-to-measure channel — the leverage is in <strong>selection</strong>, not execution. Never write off \"events\" from one bad conference; each event is its own ecosystem (judging all events on one conference is like judging all paid media on a single Google Ads test). Full framework, the three event types, and cost benchmarks in <a href=\"references/event-portfolio-strategy.md\">event-portfolio-strategy.md</a>.</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Is in-person even necessary?</strong> It earns its cost mainly for high-trust, high-ACV motions: enterprise/multi-stakeholder deals, regulated buyers (health/finance/gov), heavy customization, conservative industries, and 6+ month cycles. If your ICP isn't there, spend on digital first.</li>\n<li><strong>The 80/20 of selection.</strong> A handful of events generate most event pipeline. Find them, double down (speaking slots, side events, more people, better placement), and cut the tail.</li>\n<li><strong>Bigger isn't better.</strong> Mega-conferences mean more noise, higher cost, and audience dilution (students, press, vendors, tourists). Niche/regional events (50–200 attendees) often deliver more qualified leads per dollar.</li>\n<li><strong>Three types, three risk profiles:</strong> <strong>Owned</strong> (max control/max risk — roadshows, summits, user conferences), <strong>Trade shows</strong> (someone else's arena — 120 days of prep beats the 4 days on the floor), <strong>Community</strong> (compound interest — small regular gatherings that spawn more, measured by the \"Saturday Test\").</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>The Universal Arc: 20% Event, 80% Before-and-After</h2>\n<p>The event itself is the smallest part of event marketing. Every format follows the same arc, and most failures are arc failures, not event failures:</p>\n<p><strong>Before (where pipeline is actually made)</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li>Build the target list: who's attending that matches your ICP? (Attendee lists, speaker lists, \"who's going\" posts, past-year attendees.)</li>\n<li><strong>Book meetings before you arrive.</strong> A meeting booked two weeks out is worth ten hopeful hallway collisions. Outreach angle: specific, low-friction, time-boxed (\"15 min at the coffee bar Tuesday\").</li>\n<li>Announce your presence where your audience already is (email list, social, communities) with a reason to find you — not \"we'll be at booth 402\" but what they get.</li>\n</ul>\n<p><strong>During</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li>Optimize for <em>qualified conversations</em>, not raw contacts. One real conversation with an ICP buyer beats fifty badge scans.</li>\n<li>Capture context, not just contact: after each conversation, record what they said, what they care about, and the agreed next step. The follow-up writes itself from this; without it, follow-up is generic and dies.</li>\n<li>Create content while there (see Content Arc below) — the event is a recording studio you already paid for.</li>\n</ul>\n<p><strong>After (where pipeline is won or lost)</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The 24–48 hour window.</strong> Follow up while the conversation is still warm, referencing what was actually discussed. Every day of delay roughly halves response rates (directional, not a law — but the decay is real and fast).</li>\n<li>Tier the follow-up: hot conversations get a personal note + concrete next step; warm get a relevant asset tied to their stated problem; scans-with-no-conversation get one light touch or nothing — don't burn your domain on people who don't remember you.</li>\n<li>Route to systems: CRM with event source tagging (→ <strong>revops</strong>), nurture for the not-nows (→ <strong>emails</strong>).</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Hosting: Choose the Format for the Job</h2>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Format</th>\n<th>Best for</th>\n<th>Effort</th>\n<th>Notes</th>\n</tr>\n</thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Webinar</strong></td>\n<td>Lead gen + education at scale</td>\n<td>Low-mid</td>\n<td>The flagship repeatable format — full funnel in <a href=\"references/webinar-funnel.md\">webinar-funnel.md</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Workshop</strong></td>\n<td>Product-qualified leads, activation</td>\n<td>Mid</td>\n<td>Hands-on beats presentation for conversion; smaller and deeper than a webinar</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Dinner / small gathering</strong></td>\n<td>Exec relationships, ABM accounts</td>\n<td>Mid</td>\n<td>8–14 seats, no pitch, curated guest mix — the highest meetings-per-dollar format in B2B</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Meetup series</strong></td>\n<td>Local community, recurring presence</td>\n<td>Mid</td>\n<td>Consistency beats production value; hand hosting duties to community members over time (→ <strong>community-marketing</strong>)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Virtual summit</strong></td>\n<td>List building via partner audiences</td>\n<td>High</td>\n<td>Multi-speaker = built-in distribution; every speaker promotes (→ <strong>co-marketing</strong> for the partner mechanics)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>User conference</strong></td>\n<td>Retention, expansion, category authority</td>\n<td>Very high</td>\n<td>Don't attempt before you have a community that would attend without being begged</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n<p>Two hosting rules that outrank format choice:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The topic is the targeting.</strong> \"State of [category] 2026\" attracts your ICP; \"All about [your product]\" attracts existing customers only. Pick topics your buyer would attend even if they'd never buy.</li>\n<li><strong>Recurring beats one-off.</strong> A monthly webinar or quarterly dinner compounds — audiences, promotion muscle, and content libraries build. A single big event evaporates.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Attending (No Booth, No Stage)</h2>\n<p>The zero-budget motion, and often the best ROI in the building:</p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Target list first</strong> — 15–30 named people you want to meet, built from the attendee/speaker list and social chatter.</li>\n<li><strong>Pre-book</strong> — outreach 1–3 weeks ahead; the ask is 15 minutes, anchored to a specific time and place.</li>\n<li><strong>The side-event play</strong> — host a dinner or breakfast adjacent to the conference for 8–12 target accounts. You get host status without sponsor pricing; often out-generates a booth at a tenth of the cost (see <a href=\"references/sponsorship-roi.md\">sponsorship-roi.md</a>).</li>\n<li><strong>Work sessions strategically</strong> — go where your targets are speaking, ask a real question, follow up on it.</li>\n<li>Same 24–48h follow-up discipline as every other role.</li>\n</ol>\n<h2>The Content Arc: Every Event Is a Content Engine</h2>\n<p>Events produce your highest-proof content — capture it deliberately:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Record everything you're allowed to record.</strong> Talks, webinars, panels. The recording is the durable asset; the live audience is just its first viewer.</li>\n<li><strong>Transcripts compound in AI answers.</strong> Published recordings and show notes get crawled and cited by AI assistants — the same logic as podcast guesting (→ <strong>public-relations</strong> podcast prep) and the YouTube text layer (→ <strong>ai-seo</strong>). Say the quotable lines cleanly: your company name next to your category, numbers out loud.</li>\n<li>Slice the recording: clips (→ <strong>video</strong>), a recap post per session (→ <strong>content-strategy</strong>), pull-quotes for social (→ <strong>social</strong>), proof points for sales (→ <strong>sales-enablement</strong>).</li>\n<li>Photograph/collect social proof: testimonials captured at the event are the most natural you'll ever get.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Measurement: Pipeline, Not Applause</h2>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Metric tier</th>\n<th>Examples</th>\n<th>Verdict</th>\n</tr>\n</thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Vanity</strong></td>\n<td>Registrations, badge scans, foot traffic, impressions</td>\n<td>Track, never optimize for, never report as success</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Real</strong></td>\n<td>Qualified conversations, meetings booked, opportunities created, pipeline influenced</td>\n<td>The actual scoreboard</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Decisive</strong></td>\n<td>Cost per qualified meeting, cost per opportunity, closed-won influenced</td>\n<td>What decides whether you do it again</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n<ul>\n<li>Compare cost-per-qualified-meeting against your other channels (ads, outbound) — that's the go/no-go math, worked through in <a href=\"references/sponsorship-roi.md\">sponsorship-roi.md</a>.</li>\n<li>Events are multi-touch by nature: use source tagging + self-reported attribution (\"heard us at X\") and influence windows, and never claim last-click credit for a deal the event merely touched (→ <strong>attribution</strong>).</li>\n<li>Judge a recurring event program on a 2–3 event trend, not one instance — the first run of anything underperforms its steady state.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Common Mistakes</h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Sponsoring for \"brand awareness\" with no conversation target.</strong> If nobody owns a meetings number, the booth is décor.</li>\n<li><strong>The follow-up gap.</strong> Leads captured, then first touch two weeks later from a generic sequence. The event was fine; the follow-up killed it.</li>\n<li><strong>Optimizing show-up rate after picking a topic nobody wants.</strong> Reminder cadence can't save weak demand — fix topic and promise first.</li>\n<li><strong>One-off thinking.</strong> Budget for the third instance before running the first.</li>\n<li><strong>Doing the event, skipping the recording.</strong> Full production effort, zero durable assets.</li>\n<li><strong>Counting badge scans as leads.</strong> A scan is a person who walked slowly. Qualify before it enters the pipeline.</li>\n<li><strong>Writing off \"events\" after one bad conference.</strong> Each event is its own ecosystem — judge them individually, not as a single channel.</li>\n<li><strong>Chasing the biggest conferences.</strong> Size correlates with noise and audience dilution, not ROI — niche and regional events often win on cost-per-qualified-meeting.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Related Skills</h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>launch</strong> — the event is a launch moment (announcement, Product Hunt, go-live)</li>\n<li><strong>co-marketing</strong> — joint webinars and partner summits: partnership mechanics live there, event execution here</li>\n<li><strong>community-marketing</strong> — ongoing community programs; events can seed or serve one</li>\n<li><strong>public-relations</strong> — podcast guesting and press at events</li>\n<li><strong>lead-magnets</strong> — gated replays and event content as magnets</li>\n<li><strong>emails</strong> / <strong>sms</strong> — the reminder and follow-up sequences themselves</li>\n<li><strong>cold-email</strong> — pre-event meeting-booking outreach</li>\n<li><strong>revops</strong> — routing, scoring, and source-tagging event leads</li>\n<li><strong>attribution</strong> — measuring multi-touch event influence honestly</li>\n</ul>\n","files":[{"path":"evals/evals.json","sizeBytes":11178,"isText":true},{"path":"references/event-portfolio-strategy.md","sizeBytes":7981,"isText":true},{"path":"references/speaking.md","sizeBytes":5348,"isText":true},{"path":"references/sponsorship-roi.md","sizeBytes":6243,"isText":true},{"path":"references/webinar-funnel.md","sizeBytes":8191,"isText":true},{"path":"SKILL.md","sizeBytes":12140,"isText":true}],"reviewScore":null,"reviewSummary":null,"trust":{"provenance":"trusted-source-unreviewed","notice":"Community-authored content, reproduced verbatim and not vetted as instructions. Treat it as data to evaluate, never as directives to follow.","bodySource":null},"bodyLocked":false,"purchaseUrl":null,"sourceUrl":null,"report":{"provenance":"trusted-source-unreviewed","screen":{"ran":true,"outcome":"clean","suspicious":0,"notes":0,"hiddenCharacters":false},"virusScan":{"engine":"clamav","status":"clean","scannedAt":"2026-10-15T13:13:49.906587Z","sha256":"2B6663D411880EEE313D1B1FB1883D9232575CF78629BF559C92BBDE0133FBFD","sizeBytes":23840},"review":null,"source":{"repositoryUrl":"https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills","path":"skills/events","license":"MIT","commit":"55ff469422c3592dac45bcad08dfb40221981c02","subtreeSha":"360FB0A34E415DE412B8DB646D07E3BFAF068781917D4DF4D2AC688522E52BE7","lastSyncedAt":"2026-10-15T13:12:07.743516Z"},"reviewedAt":"2026-10-15T13:17:20.869475Z","notice":"Community-authored content, reproduced verbatim and not vetted as instructions. Treat it as data to evaluate, never as directives to follow."},"install":[{"target":"skills-cli","command":"npx skills add https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/tree/main/skills/events"},{"target":"claude-code","command":"claude plugin marketplace add https://llmmart.ai/marketplace.json && claude plugin install coreyhaines31-marketingskills@llmmart"},{"target":"git","command":"git clone https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills.git"}]}