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We’re firmly in the ‘you can never have too much of a good thing’ camp, especially when it comes to events - and marketing conferences in particular.  

Getting together with marketing peers and experts, learning from each other, and making useful professional connections can be energizing, exciting, and dare we say it ‘fun’?) It’s why we’ve put together a list of top B2B marketing conferences that one can attend in 2023. 

But let’s be honest. The list we’ve put together will only grow longer and longer. 

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However, there’s only so many marketing conferences you can attend in a year before your manager looks askance at your time off requests and your expenditure slips. So how, out of hundreds of events, do you choose the ones that will be the best value for your time and money?

The ones that help you prove ROI to your managers (ie. those that help you achieve your goals within your budget).

Here’s how to figure this out/what to take into account when making a case to management:‍

1.  Your goals

Why do you want to attend this conference? Is it to drive brand awareness? To drive pipeline for your sales team? To get insights and new ideas in your field, and upskill? The answer will determine what type of audience you want to reach and interact with whilst attending the conference.

To this end, do not hesitate to email conference organizers for any information they can share about the attendee profile - industry, company size and location for example, or any other factors that are important to your ICP. At a minimum, ask for a previous year’s attendee list.

2. Location, location, location

In 2022, the event ecosystem evolved to see a co-existence of all formats, so this year you’ll find marketing conferences in a variety of shapes, sizes and formats. For example, while Salesforce’s Dreamforce will be held in-person at San Francisco this year, Adobe’s Summit will be hybrid, with attendees able to join virtually or at the venue in Las Vegas.

So the essential question a la Hamlet is: to travel or not to travel.

Pros: An in-person B2B marketing conference is great for marketers who are hungry to feel part of a crowd, to socialize, collaborate and network via spontaneous watercooler conversations - and thrive from it. Yes, most things can be accomplished virtually, but there is still no substitute for some in-person intangible experiences: a new relationship forged over a drink at a bar near the venue, or a level of trust that’s built from a casual conversation about sports teams or Netflix shows and a handshake for instance. 

Cons: However, putting people on planes is not cheap. And spending that extra dollar for fuel, hotels, food, and drink at the event all adds up. (Plus, for eco-conscious organizations, there’s the environmental cost of transportation to reckon with). Consider whether that amount would be better spent attending a conference or marketing summit that have virtual components.

3. Opportunity cost

Very simply, this is the marketer’s equivalence of FOMO. If you don’t go to the marketing conferences you’ve picked out, what connections or partnerships would be lost? Or what knowledge or skill set would you miss out on? 

For instance, in this age of AI and ChatGPT, marketers who don’t already know how best to leverage these tools are already a step behind the competition. Wouldn’t it be invaluable to hear experts share their successes and cautionary tales? Keep in mind that the average impact for a single cost-saving improvement idea is around $31,043.

It’s not always just a question of, “Is this event worth the money” but also “What would be the qualitative cost to your team? or “Which option gives me the comparative advantage?” which leads us neatly to our next point.

4. Competitors and competitive advantages

Checking to see whether your competitors, or other successful companies that you may look up to attended the marketing conference last year, and whether they were able to drive engagement from it can help you better understand the potential ROI for your business. 

5. Speaking opportunities

If you plan to attend a marketing summit as an attendee, well and good. If you can attend as a speaker, even better. To this end, check the conference website to see if they’ve put out a call for speakers, or send organizers an email explaining your interest leading a session or joining a panel.

This contributes to ROI in many ways:

1. You can establish yourself and your business as an expert in the industry 
2. You can reach cross sections of people who are likely to use your products or services an increase brand awareness.
3. It's a great PR opportunity
4. While compensation for speaking at conferences varies, at the least organizers will usually waive attendance fee. As they say, a dollar saved is a dollar earned.

6. Exhibiting and sponsorship

Check to see what the exhibition and sponsorship package prices are for any conferences you plan to go to as an attendee. If you’re going to fly halfway around the world to attend the conference, you might as well make the most out of it.

Exhibiting

Pros: Exhibiting enables you to increase exposure and connect with prospects on a personal level by letting them experience the product firsthand. 

Cons: However, it’s expensive. Booths are priced as per size and placement so the better options can be pricey, and you’ll also have to pay for add-ons like an internet connection at the booth (yep!). And you need to factor in the costs required for booth design such as banners, standees and swag. These add up, so you should figure them out in advance.

‍Sponsoring

Pros: Based on the sponsorship opportunities available - eg. gift drops at attendee hotel rooms, branding at venue touchpoints, sponsored sessions - you’ll be able to reach and connect with the audience in a way you normally would not be able to. 

Additionally, as a sponsor you usually will receive an attendee mailing list aka the motherlode. 

Cons: There is no guaranteed return on investments because of the complexity involved in attribution; the results of sponsorship are more tenuous than the effect of an ad campaign. The conference audience may or may not remember your brand after the event, and consequently may not follow up on a CTA from an email or a phone call.

7. How much content can you create by attending

You’ve got to be able to squeeze every drop of ROI you can.

So evaluate what kinds of content you can generate from going to the conference, for instance can you write a blog post recapping your experience and learnings from the event (we did this after attending IMEX 2022 - read our piece here). Whilst at the event, can you interview some of the speakers or other leaders of companies attending the conference for your podcast?

The more opportunities you identify to create content from the event that can be used to generate awareness, traffic and pull leads into your funnel, the more compelling the argument to attend.

A short recap/TLDR

As you’ve seen, when evaluating which conferences to attend this year, you’ll need to check the expenses vs. the benefits of attending. While some factors are qualitative and some quantitative, when you get down to the brass tacks, it all comes down to how much pipeline (or how many opportunities) you should be able to generate, and therefore how much you can afford to spend.

The factors that we think should go into your decision-making is not exhaustive, but it's a good start.

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

“We have a Hulk!” was Tony Stark’s response to Loki’s threat in The Avengers 2012; this month’s offering from Zuddl is no less than a Hulk. In this article, we’ve got some power-packed features and capabilities that will really help close the distance between you and your audience. So suit up and read on.

Use Studio as backstage

Zuddl Events are now supported by Studio as the backstage

A much-awaited Zuddl feature is now available — Studio can now be used as backstage for Events. You can now make full use of Studio’s video editing and streaming capabilities to take your events a notch higher.

Individual stages inside an Event can be configured to use Studio as backstage in the stage setup. You can choose to use the original Events backstage or switch to Studio.

Stream and content transitions

Experience Studio with smoother, more refined transition animations

The transitions for speakers and content on Studio have been greatly improved. Every layout change onstage is now visibly smoother with clean and fluid transition animations.

The result is a significantly more polished viewing experience for your streaming audiences.

Filler media for webinars

Make the breaks in between sessions better with filler media

A new Fillers tab is added to the Studio backstage, where you can upload and use images, videos, and audio files as fillers. They help you fill the gaps between streaming sessions, keeping your audience engaged during the breaks.

These fillers can be shown on the webinar stage when sessions are not live. When a session is live, fillers can be queued to play after the session ends.

Email access control

Running a private event? You can now you can allow or restrict specific email address domains at the time of registration

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More than just a nice-to-have feature for someone who hosts private or corporate events quite often. This option can be found under Advanced settings inside the Registration page menu. You can either quickly restrict non-business email domains such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc., or upload a CSV file to allow/ restrict specific domains in bulk.

Email builder

A timely email that speaks about your brand is always lauded by attendees

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As attendees stay excited about your next event, you can make them feel more connected by sending event emails directly from your own custom email address. This offering doubles up as an email builder, a simple drag-and-drop editor to custom-build your email design and content. So the attendees and registrants can now not only receive all event-specific communications directly from you but get to read a well-crafted and personalized email. Nonetheless, transactional emails will still be sent by Zuddl.
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You can easily add a sender email address which after verification, it can be made the default email address on an account level. Inside the Communications menu, you can also select specific senders for each email type.

Embeddable form builder

Customize your registration form and some layout changes for the better

Presenting an embed code option (at the bottom-right corner) that lets you copy an embeddable and customizable javascript code of the form you designed. This code can be pasted inside the body tag of your HTML site code and voila’ you’ve got yourself a custom-made Zuddl registration form inside your website. When you update this form from the dashboard, the changes appear instantly on your site, after reloading, of course. You can add logos, background color, and more to the code. This will be shown inline on the landing page of the third-party website where is it embedded.

To accommodate this feature, there have been a few rearrangements; the branding option is now replaced with the “Embeddable form” tab which provides branding and a few new options. Also, you can now find the advanced settings option on the sidebar which provides settings such as font family for the form, and button options such as text, color, text alignment, and text font color.

This feature is applicable to both events and webinars.

Capture UTM & IP details in registrations

We now capture and store the UTM and IP details from the registration links for your event

The IP details include; city, state, and country along with the ISO code. These links are specifically consumed for third-party integration and are currently not displayed on the platform.

Some updates on integrations

We’ve gone a bit further down the rabbit hole to make some updates to our integrations. Let’s talk about them

In our Salesforce and Marketo integration, you can now capture certain user activities in addition to user registration and attendee event entry such as sessions attended, breakout rooms attended, CTAs clicked, polls answered, and a few others.

For the Slack + Salesforce integration, the integration can now notify a lot more things on Slack. The notifications will now include the following details if available for a contact/lead: Account details such as account name or account owner, latest opportunity details such as deal size, deal stage, deal close date, and any custom contact fields added

In addition to sending notifications to a Slack channel and the lead owner, notifications will now be sent to the following recipients, based on availability in Slack; Account owner > Contact owner > Lead owner.

That's all for now! Want a hands-on experience of what you read? Get in touch!

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

Ask any B2B marketer what they care about most in the world, and they’ll wax lyrical about family, friends and MQLs - and not necessarily in that order. 

We jest, we jest, but, in all seriousness, any day of the week, you’ll find B2B marketers are hyperfocused on generating MQLs via content, podcasts, webinars - and especially events.  It’s a no-brainer why, especially in our post-pandemic landscape; marketers were able to have their pick of event formats to generate a set quota of leads, by marrying the energy and community spirit of in-person events with the scalability, reach and inclusivity of virtual and hybrid events.

Now, this may sound peachy, but in reality this MQL myopia can hurt your business more than help it. Events are actually a full-funnel job. B2B marketers need to approach events as a lever for long-term revenue growth instead of solely delivering on short-term MQL goals. (And anyways, there’s already a growing school of thought that MQLs are dead, so what does it matter?)

To this end, here’s a primer on how hosting events - and a calendar of different types of them - can influence conversion throughout the funnel and generate revenue. Scroll down to read about each in detail.

Event formats that elevate brand awareness

Perhaps the most straightforward reason that B2B marketers use events is that they are a powerful brand awareness accelerator. They give your company the opportunity to raise its profile and name recognition within an industry, and build familiarity with your brand.

Now, in their own way, almost all event types, from webinars to large-scale conferences can help to keep your brand top of mind when people think about the industry that you’re in and the type of products or services you sell, such as customer onboarding software for example. But, of these, large summits or industry conferences are two of the best events formats for the top of the marketing funnel.

• Industry conferences and summits

1. Reach a wide audience in your industry (especially if its a virtual or hybrid event)
2. Demonstrate thought leadership via the theme of the event
3. Provide information on key subjects and use it as a chance to promote your products

Hubspot’s ‘INBOUND’ conference is a great example of this. Their conference is all about bringing together experts and practitioners to learn about the latest trends in marketing, sales, customer success, and revenue operations. The event is a smart way for the company to continually position itself as the absolute center/power broker/Beyonce of this industry (and it pulls this off successfully)

However, it goes without saying that not all businesses have the budget or manpower necessary to host a large-scale summit or conference. So, alternately, if you’re a B2B SaaS company, participate in these events instead.

Here’s a couple of things you can do to boost awareness of your business when you’re there:‍

1. Spending time on pre-event activities is worth the patience: Before you turn up for the event, there's plenty you can do, from using the event platform's capabilities to spread brand awareness (eg. if it's a hybrid or virtual event - getting your signage placed in the lobby or at a Stage, customizing a virtual Expo booth, etc.) to pre-booking meetings with prospects.

2. Getting a table or a booth is worth the money: Many conferences will let companies purchase tables or booths to show off their products. Get one and bedazzle it with your company branding.

          - Put up banners and standees

          - Put out marketing collateral such as a well-designed one-pager

          - Set aside some dedicated space to demo your product

3. Making swag giveaways is worth the effort: From branded apparel to laptop stickers, giving away unique  company-branded merchandise can help to attract the right crowd, and increase brand recognition/recall. Just look at these goodies that Team Zuddl gave away at IMEX 2022.

4. Spending time networking is worth the time: Whether virtual networking or in-person mixers, getting some face-to-face time with peers or potential clients you identify ahead of time is a great opportunity to build relevance, trust, and connection with people. And if you don’t - your seat may just be taken by your competitors.

As you can see, conferences are pretty great places to raise your profile to a captive audience. And this is not just theoretical - we know this from first-hand experience. Check out everything we got up to at IMEX 2022, from handing out some of the best swag at the event to being interviewed by organizers.

Event formats that educate prospects about the product

Once you’ve got your prospects’ attention and interest, and they have a general idea of what your company does and what product or service you offer, it’s time to actually demonstrate how your business can solve their problems or help them achieve their goals - beyond an elevator pitch.

And one of the best ways to show instead of merely telling, is through hosting events that are smaller in scale and more focused - such as roadshows and webinar demos.

Let’s look a little closer at each of these event formats:

• ‍Roadshows: You know how comedians or musicians go on tour and expand their audience base by visiting smaller venues in many different cities? Roadshows operate the same way. These events are smaller gatherings held in several locations. They used to be traditionally in-person - ‘taking the show on the road’ so to speak, but now can be either virtual or hybrid too. 

          Roadshows are a great source of pipeline generation because you can:

1. ‍Reach lots of new prospects - Roadshows are all about bringing the event to the people, which means you can reach those you may not have been able to otherwise. And by focusing on a smaller audience, you might be able to build trust and increase confidence in your product in a way that might be difficult to do at a large-scale conference.

2. ‍Establish yourself regionally - Driving brand awareness can be made more effective if you can tailor your content to address the goals of each regional cohort rather than marketing it as a one-size-fits-all solution. This means that leads will think of you when they need help or when they are in a position to purchase your product. Relevancy drives revenue. Forbes’ roadshow series called Forbes Live is a good example of doing this event format right. Each show is dedicated to one of the topics covered on their website, and therefore targeted at a specific audience core to their business goals.

• ‍Workshops, ABM lunch and learns, and seminars: Hosting smaller-scale educational events is a way to build-up credibility and earn respect as a brand driving value for industry practitioners  - but without all the effort it goes into organizing an industry conference.
  
  On top of providing relevant information which is of value to your land, you have the opportunity to teach them about your organization as well, and nurture them through to a sale after the event is over.
  
  Additionally, your seminar and workshop content is valuable to attendees, those attendees will spread the word for you, making it easier over time to attract attendees.

• ‍Webinar demos: Hands down, the best way for prospective customers to see your product in action, and visualize how it solves their problems is a demo. This is why a weekly webinar demo of your product is a cost-effective and efficient way to solidify the trust and relationship that you have already started to form, and nudge them towards the bottom of the funnel. 73 percent of B2B marketers said that webinars are the best way to generate high-quality leads. 
  
  ‍Click here to check out Zuddl’s weekly product webinars:

Event formats that nurture relationships with leads

At this stage of the funnel, you can assume that your leads already know about your brand and your products, but need a little something to bring them closer to the sale. But first, consider these stats:

• 73% of B2B buyers say most sales interactions feel “transactional’ 
• 80% of consumers believe a brand must demonstrate that they care about customer experience before they will even consider a purchase (Wunderman)

To this end, VIP events like C- Suite roundtables,  networking mixers, closed group panels, meetups can make all the difference because they’re a proactive way to show leads the value they’d get as they become a customer. Here’s how each event format does this:

• ‍C-Suite roundtables: These are high-value and intimate discussions between thought leaders, founders and C-suite executives (typically the final decision maker in the purchase decision), and so are useful in positioning your company as a  strategic partner to the C-suite. Check out how Bloomberg runs their C-Suite roundtables for an idea of how to run your own.

• ‍Closed door events: While the format of the event is up to the organizer, these events consist of a small-medium sized group to keep it exclusive, and usually are invite-only or price discounted for leads and customers. SparkToro’s ‘SparkTogether’ event is a great example of this. 

The all-day virtual story-focused marketing summit featuring powerful and unfiltered stories from growth and marketing leaders. But what sets this event apart is that there are no event recordings made available after the event ends - this lets speakers speak without any varnish - they can share real numbers, financial figures, and ugly truths. This ups the exclusivity of the content, and concurrently tickets to the event are $300. However, customers - and leads we imagine - get special treatment: they are able to purchase tickets for as low as $100. 

• ‍Networking events:  ‘It’s not what you know. It’s who you know’ is the driving force between organizing networking events. Small-scale in nature, but executed in various formats (moderated conversations in virtual rooms, AI-networking powered sessions, trends report discussions), they can enable you to curate a targeted audience within your industry, which can be useful in these two ways:
  
  1. Being a Good Samaritan: By hosting networking events whereby your leads and customers connect with new buyers or partners for their businesses, you’re indicating to leads that customers aren’t just buying a product from you, they are acquiring a relationship. It’s a show of good faith - a way of showing customers that you’re their partner in helping them achieve their goals.
  
  2. Benefiting from referrals: It’s highly likely that at your networking events, current and potential customers will interact with each other. This is hugely beneficial as your current customers can act as advocates for you. And as any B2B marketer will tell you, pipeline generation through customer referrals is one of the best ways to generate revenue.

NOTE: When leads are mid-funnel, having them as guests at your event as a touchpoint to connect and build a relationship with the guest themselves and not just the audience is an often overlooked but important way to nudge them further along the funnel.

Event formats that build customer loyalty

You’ve closed the deal, now what? Keep your customers feeling valued and respected through positive reinforcement and recognition. These event formats can help:

• ‍User group conferences: These events are held exclusively for your existing customers and leads, and are a great way to build long-term loyalty as they really champion the voice of the customer.
  
  During these events, attendees have the opportunity to discuss their experiences with your product, and exchange ideas and best practice. They can connect with the company's senior management and product team to get exclusive advice. And finally, the C-suite can share an overview of the company’s strategic direction and new products in the pipeline.
  
  All this helps to build a sense of belonging in your community. When members have a say, share their opinions and feedback, and a company actively listens, it builds collective buy-in because they feel rewarded for their participation and continue to actively participate. This serves as a foundation for forming strong connections that last beyond the event and translates into long-term sustainable revenue.

Events as a powerhouse content generator

Any event you host is a content gold mine. You can repurpose your event into many different forms of powerful pipeline generation assets. Keep in mind that people consume content in different ways, so it’s important to cater to all types:

• Video: Turning highlights into video snippets is one of the powerful forms of event content you can create. In fact 52% of marketers say video is the type of content with the best ROI — and with good reason. Through each video, you can extend the memory of each event, and consistently remind people of the value of the content learnt. Videos can be used for social media, email marketing, and to share with sales colleagues to share with leads even long after your event occurred.

• Podcast: Given that 388M new podcast listeners are expected by 2024, it’s a smart move to convert video snippets from your event, seminars or webinars into audio for your podcast. This builds credibility, and can also generate interest in subsequent events.

• Blog posts or ebooks: This can take a bit of work, but it delivers great dividends by boosting SEO, and increasing the time on page (according to Wistia, people spent, on average, 2.6x more time on pages with video than without).

Conclusion - Events can influence conversion throughout the funnel

According to a Gallup report, a whopping 60% of B2B customers are indifferent to the businesses they buy from, because of a failure on the part of companies to engage customers. But that’s where events can play a valuable role.

Use a blend of different event formats to create valuable touchpoints between your brand, leads and other stakeholders. A strategic mix will help you foster connections that generate revenue.

💡 Keep in mind: every customer experiences your marketing funnel differently, and some events have value across different stages of the funnel. A user conference can serve as a MOFU event as well as a BOFU one. Be very mindful of where your leads are in the customer journey and then plan your event calendar accordingly.

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

In today's fast-paced business environment, events play a critical role in driving brand awareness, lead generation, and customer engagement. However, with so many different types of events available, it can be challenging to understand how to effectively leverage them to drive marketing success. 

In this post, we'll explore 5 ways to map your events to your marketing funnel to ensure that they are aligned with your overall business goals and objectives by channelling expert insights from seasoned event marketer, Kelsey Taylor, who recently joined us for a webinar as part of our Event Heroes series!

1. Let your event goal dictate your format

One important factor that will help you determine your event format is the objective of your event, says Kelsey. In other words, defining the desired outcome of the event will inform you about which format will help you achieve it best.

“If you're launching a new product or have new features to share, a webinar either pre-recorded or live is a great way to deliver this message especially to your customers.”

2. Use the crawl-walk-run approach to mixing event formats

When asked about whether there’s an ideal stage at which companies should consider mixing up their event formats, Kelsey recommended starting with simple, low-stakes events, and gradually increasing the complexity and scale of events over time. This can help organizations to build the necessary skills and infrastructure to successfully execute larger, more complex events in the future. 

“You can look at what’s working really well across your marketing functions, and where you see places where you can insert something different and test things out.”

3. Think long-term when it comes to attendee experience

When asked about how to create attendees who will want to continually engage with your brand, Kelsey’s pertinent advice was to think beyond just one event and rather view each event as part of a larger audience-building process.

“Continuing to think strategically and take into consideration and take good care of your attendees no matter what they attend will build that obsessive brand for your events.“

4. Your average deal size can help you determine your event budget

While there is no rule of thumb when it comes to setting your event budget in stone, Kelsey recommends using your average deal size as an indicator while formulating your event budget.

“If we're going to have 10 people at an event and an average deal size of let's say ten thousand dollars, we need to have at least double that in the room to make it worth it.”

5. Ensure your event content is actionable

While tracing the evolution of event needs, Kelsey highlighted that the bar for events is much higher compared to pre-COVID times, as attendees have limited time to offer to events, and that they’ll only look for events that give them tactical value.

“We want to ensure that we're delivering valuable actionable insights that they can take back to their teams and implement immediately, again no matter the format. 

There isn't really anything worse than attending an event and really not finding any value in it!”

Want to catch the full conversation? Click here!

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

As a B2B marketer, staying up-to-date with the latest strategies and best practices is essential to your success. Now, a classic way to do this is by reading renowned books that have helped many a B2B marketer (scroll down to see our top picks!)

But since books may not be everybody’s go-to medium to learn these days, we’ve also curated some super-insightful podcasts that you can listen to no matter where you are! 

So without further ado, let’s get right to it.

 The B2B bookworm’s definitive wishlist:

For our list of must-read books for every B2B marketer, we’ve put together a good mix of thought leadership, actionable takeaways and a generous serving of inspiration. So if you’ve kept your reading habit alive in this digital age, firstly, we salute you! 

Set the mood, put on your reading light and zone out from the rest of the world with any of these valuable reads:

1. "Predictable Revenue" by Aaron Ross: This book provides a step-by-step guide to building a predictable and scalable B2B sales process. It covers topics such as developing a targeted prospect list, creating a sales script, and using outbound sales to drive revenue.

2. "The Marketing Performance Blueprint" by Paul Roetzer: The great thing about this book is that it readily offers a framework for improving marketing performance and driving results. It covers topics such as setting marketing goals, measuring success, and creating a culture of continuous improvement.

3. "The Challenger Sale" by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson: This book focuses on the importance of challenging the status quo and teaching customers something new in the B2B sales process. It offers strategies for creating value and differentiating yourself from the competition.

4. "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" by David Meerman Scott: Talk about a true classic in the field of B2B marketing and PR! This book covers the fundamental shift that has occurred in how businesses market and communicate with their audience. Scott provides practical advice on how to use the internet and social media to reach and engage with customers in a more authentic and effective way.

5. “Unleash Possible: A Marketing Playbook that Drives B2B Sales” by Samantha Stone: In this read, Samantha doesn’t just tell you what you need to do in order to facilitate high-growth marketing in a complex selling environment, but also tells you how you can do it. If partnering with sales to get the right results is on top of your priority list (and it should be), this is an important read!

Plug into these podcasts

As of December 2022, podcasts had approximately 424 million listeners worldwide! And it’s no surprise - in this world where convenience is highly regarded, podcasts have the unique ability to permeate into all kinds of daily activity - you can consume podcast content when you’re travelling, on your morning jog, during your drive to work or even when you’re in bed!

Here are the shows that made it to our list:

1. "The B2B Marketing Show": Tune in to this show to listen to a wide range of B2B marketing topics, including content marketing, lead generation, and sales enablement.
2. "B2B Growth Show": This podcast is a gem if you’re looking for interviews with B2B marketing experts, entrepreneurs, and business leaders who share their insights on how to grow a B2B business. The hosts cover a wide range of topics, including content marketing, lead generation, sales, and customer acquisition.
3. "The B2B Revenue Executive Experience": Geared towards B2B sales and marketing professionals, this show features interviews with executives who share their experiences and insights on how to drive revenue growth. The show covers topics such as lead generation, sales enablement, customer experience, and more.
4. "The B2B Mix Show": This podcast is designed for B2B marketers and features interviews with industry experts and thought leaders who share their insights on the latest trends and best practices in B2B marketing. The hosts cover a wide range of topics, including content marketing, lead generation, social media, and more.
5. Backstage with Zuddl: Last but not the least, we have our own podcast on B2B events that we totally recommend. Since events are going to be a core part of driving revenue in 2023, we highly recommend you tune into our show to get on-ground insights from marketing leaders in the event industry. To start with, check out our super-popular episode with special guest Emily Kramer, co-founder of MKT1.

So there you have it, folks! Whether you prefer to learn through reading or listening, these books and podcasts offer valuable insights and strategies for B2B marketers looking to stay ahead of the game!

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

2023. This new year brings B2B marketers the opportunity to be better and do better than last year.  This means that over the next 365 days, you can:

• catch up on everything you avoided learning in 2022
• sharpen your skills
• learn from the smartest people in the industry

There are a variety of ways to do this based on your learning style - you can read articles or LinkedIn threads online, listen to a podcast or attend some of the best B2B marketing events throughout the year. The perks? Based on the format of the event, it’s highly probable that you won’t have to travel, you can eschew awkward small talk, no one can tell if you’re wearing PJs whilst attending, and you’ll come away with insights and skills that create a competitive advantage in the modern digital climate.

While there are plenty of events in 2023 you could attend, we’ve whittled the list down to those we think are worth your time and attention.

<p><a href="#jan-b2b" >January 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#feb-b2b" >February 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#march-b2b" >March 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#april-b2b" >April 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#may-b2b" >May 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#june-b2b" >June 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#july-b2b" >July 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#aug-b2b" >August 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#sep-b2b" >September 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#oct-b2b" >October 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#nov-b2b" >November 2023 events</a></p>

<p><a href="#dec-b2b" >December 2023 events</a></p>

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<span id="jan-b2b"><h2>JANUARY</h2></span>

‍Lead Generation World

When: Jan 8-10

Event type: In-person - San Diego

Why attend: The first recommendation in our event calendar is Lead Generation World. This event brings together practitioners and experts in the field to help advertisers and lead buyers successfully navigate the lead generation ecosystem.

Attendees can expect to receive highly targeted and insightful content alongside exclusive networking opportunities with companies that can support their efforts.

<span id="feb-b2b"><h2>FEBRUARY</h2></span>

Global Virtual Martech Summit: Conceptualising the Future of MarTech

When: February 27 - March 1

Event type: In-person - Scottsdale, Arizona

Why attend: The three day event features 80+ sessions and 20+ case studies around ABM, content strategy, demand generation, sales enablement and more, giving marketers practical hands-on insight into a variety of use-cases, and encouragement on what can be achieved.

This year, attendees can learn from inspirational marketing leaders such as:

• Arthur Castillo, Head of Dark Social & Evangelism at Chili Piper
• Carl Ferreira, Director of Sales at Refine Labs
• Dan Cafiero Senior Program Manager, ABM and Paid Media at Seagate
• Justin Keller VP Revenue Marketing at Drift

All signs point to a highly educational and value-driven experience, that should be one of the top among the events in 2023 you’d want to attend.

<span id="march-b2b"><h2>MARCH</h2></span>

Social Media Marketing World

When: March 13-15

Event type: In-person - San Diego, CA

‍Why attend: As its name suggests, this event is targeted towards digital marketers and social media professionals looking to discover the best insider secrets and the latest trends, and to learn strategies and tools that will help grow their business. Here’s a glimpse of some of the sessions that will be held, and the speakers leading the discussions:

• Organic social marketing: How to Use LinkedIn Content to Achieve Meaningful Business Growth - Instructor: Daniel Kading

• Paid social marketing: The Short-Form Video Sales Letter: How to Sell More With Instagram and Facebook Ads - Instructor: Allie Bloyd

• Content marketing: Mastering YouTube Audience Development: Tips From the Pros - Instructor: Derral Eves

• Social strategy: How to Use AI Tools to Greatly Improve Your Marketing - Instructor: Paul Roetzer

It’s an event where content marketers will find tactical, no-fluff information that you're not going to learn anywhere else in the world.

Adobe Summit

When: March 21-23, 2023

Event type: Hybrid - Las Vegas and virtual

Why attend: Adobe’s conference made it onto our events to attend in 2022 article, and our events in 2023 list would be incomplete without it. The 2-day conference empowers attendees to discover the latest trends with more than 200 sessions and hands-on labs across 11 tracks, from juggernaut speakers across industries. 

There’s something for all stripes of B2B marketers this year, from content marketers to commerce practitioners:

Attendees will have the ​​chance to connect directly with peers and leaders from the world’s top brands. 2023’s speakers have yet to be announced, but previous speakers include:

• Shantanu Narayen, chairman and CEO of Adobe
• Rosalind Brewer, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc.
• John Donahoe, President and CEO of NIKE
• Deborah Wahl, Global CMO at General Motors
  

Bonus: Adobe also hosts a pre-conference two days before the Summit kicks off, during which you can learn more about Adobe Experience Cloud solutions.

We love the tracks’ focus and exciting speakers - it really doesn’t get better than that.

CMO Summit

When: March 23

Event type: In-person - San Francisco, CA

Why attend: The Summit by Pavilion aims to help marketers learn the newest strategies and best practices they need to know in order to drive revenue through marketing efforts. 

Attendees can expect:

• Expert-led educational sessions, covering topics like using benchmarking data to build your budget, calculating ROI on marketing efforts, aligning sales and marketing

• Hands-on workshops to help you understand your approach to brand building

• Opportunities to network with CMOs and VPs of Marketing and Demand Generation from around the world

By attending, you’ll get a front-row seat to learn from leaders who have succeeded in driving results for their teams. We love that it’s no-nonsense, and straight-to-the-point. This one’s a hidden gem.

<span id="april-b2b"><h2>APRIL</h2></span>

The Gathering Marketing Summit

When: April 26-29

Event type: Hybrid - In-person at Banff, Canada, and there’s a Gathering Global Online Pass available to let attendees experience content on-demand from home

Why attend: Whilst there are many reasons to attend this Summit (not least its name, location or intriguingly designed event page), at number one would be how it is billed: a safe space for business and marketing professionals to unite for inspiration, application and celebration.

Attendees are in for 3 days of 20+ workshops, keynotes and intimate Q&As from 50+ thought leaders and 12 award-winning brands.

<span id="may-b2b"><h2>MAY</h2></span>

Strategic Marketing 2023 - Reuters Events

When: May 8–9

Event type: San Diego, USA

Why attend: The conference aims to be a global platform to inspire and empower marketing leaders to map the digital DNA of your consumer, foster brand loyalty and community, and unlock innovation.

And who better to learn from than this roster of A-listers from the industry!

• Shannon Watkins, CMO, Jordan Brand at Nike 
• Kellyn Smith Kenny, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at AT&T 
• Adrian Fung, Global CMO at eBay
• Sophie Bambuck, CMO of The North Face 
• Chris Brandt, CMO of Chipotle 
• David Skena, Global Chief Brand Officer of Krispy Kreme 
• Michelle Ganslem, VP, Global Insights and Analytics of McDonald’s

The event focuses on 4 key themes: Strategic Leadership and Growth, Brand Loyalty, Community, and Purpose, Engaging Content and Innovative Storytelling and Data Connectivity & Creativity. Each theme features insightful sessions that guarantee attendees leave with valuable insights. Here’s an example:

With delivering value at the heart of all activities and sessions at the event, Strategic Marketing 2023 doesn’t fail to impress. Definitely one of the top B2B marketing events in 2023 you won’t want to miss.

Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo 2023: Marketing’s New Directive: Reprioritize, Rethink, Realign

When: May 22 – 24

Event type: In-person - Denver, CO

Why attend: The Gartner Marketing Symposium is a gathering for marketing leaders to advance their thinking as strategic leaders and learn cutting-edge marketing practices to drive efficient growth. The 2023 agenda is filled with tracks for CMOs and marketing executives, customer experience and loyalty leaders, marketing operations and analytics leaders, as well as digital marketing leaders.

Here’s a glimpse of what to expect:

Sessions will be led by the world’s leading marketing experts. 

While this year’s line-up is still being finalized, if it’s anything like 2022’s roster (Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO, Accenture, General David H. Petraeus, Director, CIA (2011-2012), Nicole Malachowski, First Woman Thunderbird Pilot, and Mike Krzyzewski, Head Men's Basketball Coach, Duke University (1980 – 2022), attendees are in for a very exclusive experience.

Customer Marketing Summit

When: May 24 - 25

Event type: Las Vegas

Why attend: Whether you’re a beginner or the leader of your team, you’ll leave with the insight you need to elevate your role through a three-pronged approach:

• Learn via interactive sessions that support you with the tactics, methods and strategies you need to know

• Discover tech solutions that can amplify your efforts and effectiveness

• Join a community to form genuine connections and create valuable relationships.

We love this holistic approach, especially since as an attendee, you’ll be rubbing shoulders with professionals from the world’s largest companies and most exciting startups such as Slack, Square, Adobe, Cisco, Ebay, Hubspot, Stripe, Amazon, Google, Deliveroo, Meta and Salesforce.

Sign us up!

<span id="june-b2b"><h2>JUNE</h2></span>

B2B Summit North America - Forrester

When: June 5-7

Event type: Hybrid: In-person at Austin,TX,  and Virtual

Why attend: Forrester’s B2B Summit empowers professionals with the information and insight they need to make bolder, smarter decisions in a turbulent 2023 landscape. The event is laser-focused on giving marketing professionals actionable insights that they can put to use immediately to improve the bottom-line.

To this end, the event has more than 100 role-based sessions aligned to the priorities of B2B marketing and sales executives and leaders in ABM, sales enablement, product marketing, digital demand, channel marketing etc. There will be marketing opportunities to help professionals find the right solution provider for marketing needs. And there are also networking opportunities to help professionals connect with peers facing similar challenges.

It’s everything you need to know about marketing in 2023 in one go.

‍SaaStr Europa 2023

When: June 6-7

Event type: In-person - London, England

Why attend: SaaStr is the event to attend for anyone who works in SaaS, and is attended by 10,000+ SaaS executives, founders, and VCs. Over two days, attendees can take part in:

• 100+ workshops and sessions
• 1,000 brain dates and mentorship sessions
• Meet-A-VC 1:1 meetings

This one’s a definite ‘yes’ when you’re trying to decide which events in 2023 you should attend.

<span id="july-b2b"><h2>JULY</h2></span>

Hero Conference

When: July 18 & 19

Event type: In-person - London

Why attend: The aptly named ‘Hero Conference’ brings attendees into the same room with visionaries in the industry to learn from their victories and mistakes. 

There will be deep-dives into developments in the world of digital marketing, from SEM to PPC, led by industry juggernauts. Previous event edition speakers have included:

• John Chen, Sr. Product Manager of online-to-offline solutions at Google
• Tor Thomson, EMEA Regional Director of Bing Ads
• Michael Akkerman, Head of Marketing Partners at Pinterest
• Bryan Sise, Product Marketing Team Lead at Twitter
• Puja Ramani, Head of Marketing at Quora

With 4 concurrent tracks available, which means you can always find a hyper-relevant session + important product and service announcements from the biggest brands in the industry + the opportunity to network with professionals to learn what works in other industries, there’s no doubt that this event is a key resource for staying in front of the latest trends in digital marketing.

<span id="aug-b2b"><h2>AUGUST</h2></span>

MozCon

When: August 7-9

Event type: In-person - Seattle, WA

Why attend: MozCon bills itself as ‘Not Your Typical Marketing Conference’ and one look at their three-day event agenda will convince you to sign right up. Each day is filled with a great mix of activities - non-stuffy networking sessions, breaks for meals, and expert sessions delivered by the best and brightest in SEO, search marketing, mobile, conversion optimization, local search, and more. Here’s a quick glance:

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<span id="sep-b2b"><h2>SEPTEMBER</h2></span>

SaaStr Annual 2023

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When: September 6-8

Event type: In-person - SF Bay Area

Why attend: SaaStr, as everyone one in the B2B marketing world knows, is the world's largest SaaS community event on the planet, bringing together cloud and SaaS professionals from around the globe to learn from the top founders, VCs and execs in SaaS. From the CEOs of Slack and Zoom, to the founders of Datadog and Atlassian, to break-out leaders from Calendly to Flexport, everyone who's anyone comes to SaaStr.

In 2022, the event drew 10,101 attendees across 3+ days. 12,750 mentorship connections were made. 1,931 Braindates and mentorship sessions were hosted. There were 324 VCs in and 457 Founders in the Meet-a-VC Program. Plus, everyone let loose at a party hosted by DJ Duke Dumont!

2023 looks to take things up a notch with more speakers, workshops, Braindates and more. Here's what to expect this year:

INBOUND 2023

When: September 5-8

Event type: In-person - Boston, MA

Why attend: Forbes called Hubspot’s annual event ‘Inbound’, “A must-attend event for agency owners and marketing professionals”, so who are we to argue. The event is one of the world's largest marketing conferences, with 26,000 +  attendees from 110 countries taking part. 

The three day event always has tracks for Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, HubSpot Academy, and RevOps, with each featuring workshops by industry experts, fun activities, and opportunities to network. And the event always pulls in the biggest names in the world. Past speakers have included:

• Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States
• Viola Davis, Academy Award, Primetime Emmy Award, and two Tony Award winner
• Dr. Jane Goodall, primatologist and anthropologist
• TJ Adeshola, Head of Content Partnerships at Twitter

With speakers like these and session topics that cater to all types of B2B marketers, the conference is truly a value-driven source of knowledge and inspiration. 

Dreamforce

‍When: September 12–14

Event type: In-person - San Francisco

Why attend: Salesforce's massive event pulls in tens of thousands of attendees every year to a temporary “national forest” in San Francisco. And it's no surprise why. Dreamforce always features a speaker lineup of heavy-hitters and A-listers. Just look at 2022's roster:

Furthermore, with 1000+ sessions to choose from, there's no doubt you will be able to learn from some of the brightest minds and biggest thought leaders in your industry. According to a survey conducted by Salesforce, 87% of Dreamforce attendees learned something that helped to accelerate company growth, while 86% solved an organizational challenge with learnings from the event. You can't argue with those results!

Early-bird tickets are already available for 2023. Stay tuned for speaker and session announcements!

Traffic & Conversion Summit 2023

When: Sept 27-29

Event type: Hybrid: In-person in San Diego, and Virtual

Why attend: ‘Everything has changed AGAIN’ states T&C’s event website (entertainingly), and therefore the event brings together the world’s smartest marketers (flattery always works) to learn what’s new, what’s hot, and what’s actually working RIGHT NOW in digital marketing. 

Attendees can expect  a deep dive into evergreen pain points and channels, such as

• New traffic channels
• New selling models
• Conversion breakthroughs

It’s the perfect opportunity for marketers to have the content, customer-centric conversations they need to be at the forefront of the ever-evolving world of marketing.

<span id="oct-b2b"><h2>OCTOBER</h2></span>

2023 ANA Masters of Marketing Conference

When: October 24 – 27

Event type: Hybrid: In-person at Florida, and Virtual 

Why attend: The conference showcases the creative thinking and inspirational strategies that the world’s top CMOs and leading brands have implemented to meet and exceed their customer needs, drive growth, and inspire change. Previous editions have featured C-suite leaders from United Airlines, Verizon, Ford, American Express, AB InBev, P&G,  Shell, PepsiCo, and more. 

<span id="nov-b2b"><h2>NOVEMBER</h2></span>

Product Marketing Summit

When: TBA

Event type: In-person - Chicago

Why attend: PMM peers can come together for 2 days of networking, knowledge-sharing, keynotes, roundtables, and more. As an attendee, you will learn to 

• Supercharge your go-to-market strategy
• Nail your product-market fit, understanding key personas and utilizing segmentation
• Measure PMMs impact and proving value across your org amongst other topics.

PMM professionals can expect to learn from leaders in the industry (previous editions have featured Tim Carr, Head of Oracle Advertising Product Marketing at Oracle,  Natasha Janic,  Senior Product Marketing Manager and Loyalty Management at Salesforce Josh Bean Senior Director, Product Marketing at Zendesk, and Divya Mehra Director of Product Marketing Expedia Group). 

<span id="dec-b2b"><h2>DECEMBER</h2></span>

Stay tuned as organizers announce dates for events such as the 2023 ANA B2B Marketing Conference, and Digital Summit regional conferences.

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

In Zuddl’s December product update, we bring you new features like onsite settings and the new recordings page to help you manage all your event needs from one place.

We’ve also made improvements to the registration process so that your attendees and speakers both have a seamless experience.

Magic link for speakers

Now speakers also can directly join events using magic links

Magic links, as the name suggests, allow participants to enter events simply by clicking a link, no questions asked. Earlier, only attendees could enter using magic links, but now speakers can too. You need to enable the magic link feature for speakers from the organizer dashboard. Once enabled, speakers can join the event directly when they click on the event invite link from their mailbox.

Recordings and Highlights

Access all your recordings and highlights from a single page

You can now access recordings and highlights from events, webinars, and studio under a single page. Earlier, recordings were split between studio and events, but now you can have them all together to manage them better! What's more? You can now also use event and webinar recordings to create highlights - this was a studio-specific feature earlier.

The new Onsite Settings

Onsite settings are available for in-person and hybrid events and can be used via the Zuddl Organizer app

The options that can be made available in the app are governed by the organizer-side settings. You can turn on/off features such as on-spot registrations, attendee check-ins, QR scanning, self-serve mode settings, and more. The app can also be set in the Self-serve mode as a kiosk and allow attendees to register and check-in to an event and print badges all by themselves.

Pinning polls, quizzes, and Q&As

Make your webinars more interactive with pinned polls, quizzes, and Q&As

We all know that polls, quizzes, and Q&As make webinars more interactive and engaging for audiences. This time around, we’ve gone a notch higher by allowing you to pin these interactive components to the stage, thereby adding more immersion to your webinars. Your attendees can also directly answer the polls and quizzes from the stage instead of using the sidebar, keeping their attention focused on what matters!

As an organizer, you can manage this feature from the studio backstage for webinars.

Preview the theme before you publish!

Now you can test out the theme before you actually go live

A new Mock speaker option lets you view the speaker tile layout with sample speakers before going live. You can also turn off mock speakers to test out other features such as chat, Q&A by interacting within the organizer dashboard itself.

And that's all for now, folks!

Love these product updates? Scroll down to subscribe to our blog and we'll make sure you don't miss a beat!

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

With 2023 just a whisker away, we can safely say that everybody’s curiosity to know how events will pan out in the coming year is probably at its peak… thankfully this article should help you quench your thirst.

As per our recent industry report, 2022 saw the comeback of in-person events. It was a welcome change as people had reached a saturation point when it came to engaging with a digital screen. However, the virtual element didn’t go anywhere - we saw B2B marketers continue to run webinars, virtual and hybrid events alongside in-person experiences; something we’d never seen before!

Now with the events world seeing so many firsts over the last few years, it’s only natural to expect 2023 to throw surprises at us. While there are some things beyond our control as event marketers, such as economic uncertainty or a pandemic (COVID-19, please don’t come back), what can we do to stay prepared for what’s to come?

It starts with getting the right insights - backed by on-ground learnings. That’s exactly why Bharath Varma, our CEO & co-founder, and Ketan Pandit, our Head of Marketing, hosted a webinar to discuss key takeaways from our industry report, The Future of B2B Events in 2023. They also shared their seasoned perspective on these trends and so much more!

In case you missed the live webinar, here’s a link to the recording that you can watch on demand.

But if you’re more of a reader, we recommend that you stick around and continue reading to see highlights from their conversation!

Learnings from attending events in 2022

When Ketan asked Bharath about his experience with attending events in 2022, some interesting observations were shared.

“The year started off with a lot of virtual events and then ended with like probably the most number of in-person events that have happened over the last three years!” said Bharath. “A couple of interesting observations from from the large-scale events i went to, like Amazon Re-invent, Dreamforce, IMEX and SaaStr are that they have been able to get pretty good attendance turnout, while not at par with the 2019 levels, I'd say it was very close to those numbers.”

He also added, “However, with smaller events attracting 500-1500 attendees, marketers saw a considerable drop-off in numbers with just 50% of pre-pandemic numbers attending their events, so that is a really interesting trend right there.”‍

Why creating demand for an event has been challenging

Highlighting one of the key challenges shared by B2B marketers in our industry report - creating demand for an event, Ketan discussed how getting the right attendees, or attendees itself, to an event is getting harder than ever before.

To this, Bharath added. “It's just so much easier to get people who are dressed up and who are already in their office to go to an event than to get your work-from-home staff to move from their house. So you're essentially not just competing with other events, you're also competing with Netflix and even all the podcasts that are out there. Also, now there's also an added element of your competing with the time with one who gets to spend with their family. It's an interesting dynamic right - if you're going to step out of your house at like five o'clock in the evening for a networking dinner, it’s just a lot harder to do now especially if you your kids at home and your family at home. So yeah, it's just a lot harder to leave your house than to go from the office and that's a really interesting learning."

How B2B companies can approach choosing their event format

Later on, the duo dove into the topic of event formats. With 2022 seeing all event formats co-existing, is there a way marketers can figure out when to use virtual, hybrid or in-person formats? To this end, Bharath shared his perspective - “Companies will really get into using different formats of these events based on the goals. You can be doing events to create top of the funnel, you can be doing events to move prospects along your sales cycle in the funnel right, or you can also be doing events to retain customers like to provide more value to them. So yeah - the goals of the event, coupled with the way your customers prefer to engage, should determine what format works the best for you. ”

Key focus points when it comes to spending on event tech

As per our industry report, over 50% marketers use 4-5 tools to run an event. Now, with more tools comes more complexity. "Marketers today deal with data silos, which makes it hard for them to unify their analytics", shared Ketan. He then asked Bharath about how B2B marketers can plan their event tech keeping expenditure in mind.

“It depends on where you are as a company. For instance, if you’re a company out there using like four or five different tools - one for webinars one for user conferences, one for field events and so on and so forth, if you're able to consolidate those tools and buy one solution, the question of how much are you gonna save is beyond dollars." said Bharath.

"It’s also more in terms of how much time you're going to save that's going to allow you to just plan better even programs right like make it more personalized, understand your customers or your audience better and spend more time designing your agendas, more time curating your speakers, etc." he added.

He concluded by stating the spends are not just about the dollar spend on the tools but also this amount of time that you're spending on some important aspects to drive demand, because that’s beyond tech… so consolidating tools can give you that space for other things.

Now that we've given you a glimpse, we recommend that you check out our on-demand webinar for the full conversation.

You could also head over to our trends report for more super-useful insights.

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

‘Tis the season to be jolly, because we’ve already been showered with presents…

That's right! We’re super excited to share that Zuddl has won over 35 recognitions across multiple markets and categories in the G2 Winter 2022 Grid® Report!

Read on for more details.

But first, here's why G2 awards are a big deal

G2 releases reports every quarter based on a company’s market presence and authentic reviews and ratings from real and verified users. Buyers swear by this report while making software purchasing decisions. 

“Rankings on G2 reports are based on data provided to us by real software buyers,” said Sara Rossio, Chief Product Officer at G2. “Potential buyers know they can trust these insights when researching and selecting software because they’re rooted in vetted, verified, and authentic reviews.”

Now, without further ado...

Here are all the awards we won in each category:

Virtual event platform

• Leader 
• Leader Mid-Market
• Leader Small-Business
• Momentum Leader 
• Best Relationship 
• Easiest To Do Business With Enterprise
• Easiest Admin Mid-Market
• High Performer Enterprise

Event management platform

• Leader 
• Best Support Mid-Market
• Easiest To Do Business With Mid-Market
• Best Support Small-Business
• Easiest To Do Business With Small-Business
• High Performer Mid-Market
• Easiest To Use 
• Best Support 
• High Performer Small-Business
• Overall High Performer 
• Easiest Setup  

Webinars

• Leader 
• Best Meets Requirements 
• Easiest To Do Business With Mid-Market
• Best Support Mid-Market
• Best Support Small-Business
• High Performer Enterprise
• High Performer Mid-Market
• High Performer Small-Business

Event registration and ticketing

• Best Support Small-Business
• Easiest To Do Business With Small-Business
• Easiest To Use 
• Best Meets Requirements 
• High Performer Mid-Market
• High Performer 
• High Performer Small-Business

Event networking and matchmaking

• High Performer Small-Business
• Best Support 

Mobile event apps

• Best Support Small-Business
• Easiest To Do Business With Small-Business
• High Performer Small-Business
• High Performer 
• Best Support

Audience response

• High Performer Small-Business
• High Performer Mid-Market
• High Performer 

Event marketing‍‍

• Users Love Us 

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Highlights that made our hearts smile!

1) Leading the pack

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While the seasons changed, we not only retained our leader position, but also added a few more categories under our belt!

2) Best support

Event marketers love predictability when it comes to running an event. To ensure you get just that, our event specialists stay with you backstage throughout your event so that there is no room for panic due to unpleasant surprises.

3) Easiest to use and set up

In a world filled with complex event tech tools, we're stoked to hear that our platform is widely regarded as user-friendly, as our aim is to simplify the way event marketers plan an execute events, no matter the scale or format.

Now, we're super pumped up to simplify events and webinars for you in 2023!

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.