Ep 3: Building an Agenda that Blows Your Audience Away
At a first-year event you have two jobs: make sure the right people are in the room and make sure they are blown away. But without a history of success or equity built in the event, how do you do that? In this episode we talk about how we punched above our weight with speakers to get the right people in the room and how we wowed them once they were there.
[MUSIC]
Hey.
>> Yes?
>> What makes a good event speaker?
>> I'm not quite sure.
It's been a really long time since I-
>> Glad you asked me, Todd.
[MUSIC]
It's teaching the audience something.
>> But what type of thing?
>> Maybe like a thing to do their job better.
>> Yes, that type of thing.
>> But how do you know they're good at the thing?
>> Because they do the thing.
>> Not just talk about the thing?
>> Yes, that's the thing.
Interesting.
>> No sleep, no.
[MUSIC]
>> I think we have most of the core agenda developed and
we made a lot of assumptions around the mix of keynotes and
panels and deeper workshops and how to really think through all of that.
So there's a lot of dynamics in play for actually producing content.
It's not as easy as, we're doing our own TEDx owned media.
Sure, but that's a big level of effort to produce something like that on
the content side and you're going to have to have speakers that are going to
sign
up to produce all of that.
But the biggest creative risk is we're doing a parallel event that is happening
during the in-person experience that is hosted and that has commentators that
are a part of it and that we're sending footage to the main stage and then back
to the desk and people are stopping by for exclusive interviews and all of that
will be broadcast live to a global audience.
And that agenda is definitely up in the air at this point, a lot of work to do.
[MUSIC]
>> Live events are chaotic.
There's a lot going on.
[MUSIC]
One thing that I found in my experience is having a solid run of show well
before the event is in place.
And I'm talking breaks, MC moments, transition moments so
that whoever is running the event, the producer knows exactly what time they
need
to be on and all of the speakers know exactly what time they need to be there,
what time they need to take the stage, how long they have.
It makes the day go so much more smoothly.
It may seem counterintuitive, but my brainstorm always starts with finding
a big keynote speaker.
Especially for a first time event, your speaker agenda is literally the only
equity you have in the entire program.
Back in December of 2023 when we were still debating whether or not we should
do golden hour, we made a list of
our target headline speakers.
Folks like Colin Fleming who started Salesforce Plus,
John Miller, the co-founder of Marketo,
Alex Lieberman, co-founder of Morning Brew.
Make sure to include this in the B-roll.
One of the jobs of the event marketer over time is to transfer the brand
equity from your speaker list to the event itself.
But in all reality, it never truly goes away.
That's because the people you choose to speak at your event validate the
movement
that you're creating.
After securing your initial batch of headline speakers, and before filling out
the rest of your speaker agenda, I'd recommend starting to synthesize your
early confirmations into an agenda outline to guide the rest of the process.
What clues do you have from the early confirmations?
What conversations are missing that might be important to your audience?
Here's how I'd approach it.
Start with a blank Google sheet and time block, knowing that everything will
change a thousand times before the day of the show.
Walk out meals, arrivals, departures.
Don't forget to add in breaks throughout the day.
Break down what remains into 25 to 45 minute chunks to start to see the run of
show come to life.
Now, start plugging in your early speaker confirmations to see if there are
natural places and conversations for them.
Then fill in topic ideas.
As I'm filling out topic ideas in the Google sheet, almost unintentionally,
I'm starting to see each session title in the keynote stage come to life.
We're typically using the word why on the keynote stage and
every session in the breakouts with how.
Again, it's not a hard and fast rule, but it helps me focus the conversations
and
speaker selections as more and more proposed session titles are filled out.
We can start to ask ourselves what topics are missing from our program.
And also, who are the best voices within and
outside our audience to speak on this topic.
Now that we have a rough working agenda in a Google sheet,
the next step is to slot in the right speakers for each session to fuel your
brainstorm.
Let's talk about the types of speakers who you can target.
I refer to this as the speaker pyramid.
At the very top of the pyramid are your celebrity speakers.
These are one or two notable names and voices whose intention for
your event is to draw a crowd.
Does it matter if they know anything about your market?
Not really, but at one other event, can you hear Taylor Swift talk about owned
media?
All right, maybe that's too big of a dream, but you get my point.
Your creativity here is only limited by the budget you have.
So make sure to consider this when putting the initial budget together.
The next rung of the pyramid are your CXOs and your executive voices.
These are folks from recognizable and well loved brands who add an important
perspective around the job of your hero attendee.
Imagine the CEO of a beloved company in your market speaking on your category
from the keynote stage, affirming every member of your audience that the work
that they're doing matters.
>> There's nothing in the way to see more than X customers say to boy.
>> Get close, be the source of customer insight.
>> And just could stretch up to investors and industry analysts or
down to the functional VPs that you're selling into.
But the role that this speaker cohort serves on your agenda is not to teach
every best practice, but rather to validate that the practice should be taught.
The long tail of the pyramid are the practitioners within your core audience.
Individuals whose stories and subject matter expertise are more important than
their titles and resumes.
What matters most is that they are great at what they do.
And they're willing to share their learnings with your audience.
>> Eight years ago I started being conscious.
These were things that I saw and learned.
Even to this day I believe in this wholeheartedly that we're going to see more
like head of toxic creators and community companies.
>> Here are a few other considerations once you've brainstormed your dream
speaker list.
Consider prioritizing customer speakers over prospects.
Maybe the breakdown should be something like 60% customers, 40% prospects.
Customers are betting on your business over the likely many other brands in
your
marketplace.
An invitation to speak at your conference is an incredible value add to the
relationship
and benefit of membership into your customer base.
On the other side of the coin, approaching prospects or
target accounts to make up the 40% is a great way to start a relationship that
maybe you otherwise couldn't.
And one that you can have the potential to turn into a customer over time.
Consider saving a few spots for sponsors and partners.
The reality is that top tier sponsors are going to request a speaking slot on
your
core agenda.
So be ready to make some concessions or
to find the right place for voices who are paying to be part of your show.
Make sure you are building a diverse speaker roster and
are actively tracking progress along the way.
Beyond just being the right thing to do, the content at your event will just be
better if you're able to lock in voices that represent the diversity found
within
your audience.
Hold yourselves and your team to a really high standard here.
Send calendar invites right away to block the time.
I know it sounds tactical, but no sessions are confirmed until they're accepted
on
their calendars.
Before Golden Hour was even greenlit, we had reached out to some of our ideal
speakers to get some feedback.
Would they say yes to speaking at a first time event held by an early stage
company?
Would they travel to Brooklyn for us?
Would they do all of this with less than four months of notice?
My first email was to call in Fleming, SVP of global marketing at Salesforce
and
the man behind Salesforce Plus.
I'd met him once before, but just knew deep down how important the Salesforce
Plus story was to our audience.
When he said yes, I went to Alex Lieberman at Morning Brew and I said, "Hey, I
have
Colin Fleming from Salesforce confirmed to speak at our first conference all
about
audience marketing.
What do you think?"
Then he said yes.
Then I went to John Miller and said, "Hey, John, I have Colin Fleming and Alex
Lieberman
confirmed to speak at our conference about the future of marketing.
What do you think?"
He said, "Yes."
That was our play.
We leveraged each confirmation as they came in, starting with our number one
draft pick
in Colin.
Eventually, we had an all-star list of early headliners that we could leverage
to fill
out the rest of the agenda.
Suddenly, Golden Hour didn't feel like a first-year event, but a gathering of
some
of the brightest minds in marketing to talk about the future of our industry.
13 years to Salesforce has been really fun-streaming.
That's awesome.
Again, the road led you to Salesforce, having to be a worldwide marketing.
We need to celebrate 25 years since this is about it.
I think the challenges finding speakers who aren't just really great titles
from great
companies that have this draw a crowd, but they have to actually be good at
speaking
as well.
They have to have something relevant to say.
A big part of what we're doing is actually defining some best practices around
the event,
making sure that people get a speaker guide before the event starts, so they
understand
a bit of our expectations on not being overly salesy and focusing on content
that's not
super relevant, things like dress code, some of the basic things too.
I think the hardest thing is I'm literally committing to do a one-on-one with
every single
speaker and hear their session and be able to give them feedback on it, which
is going
to take a lot of time.
You're going to have some folks that are either earlier in their career that
they're going
to be totally game to basically have their content edited before going on stage
But we've got some heavy hitters as well who, just getting up time with their
calendars
is really difficult.
I think that net it should be positive if they do.
Are you worried that when you start embedding some of these people's speeches
that they'll
just decide things can go wrong?
Or if I can't do it my way, I'm not doing it.
Yeah, I think there's real risk that folks aren't going to want to be microman
aged with
what their content actually is at the event.
So already confirmed speakers aren't going to potentially push back and not
want to edit
their content.
So that's going to put us in a tough place because we're going to have to make
a tough
decision.
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