The 5 Highs & Lows of attending a Marketing Conference (Spoiler alert: I miss them!)

I’ve been flying from Ireland to the USA for marketing conferences since 2012. My first ever conference was a 200 person app conference in a beautiful resort in San Diego. As usual, we saw very little of the resort with days packed full of presentations & then networking at night …

The post The 5 Highs & Lows of attending a Marketing Conference (Spoiler alert: I miss them!) appeared first on Sweet Funnel Strategy Podcast.

I’ve been flying from Ireland to the USA for marketing conferences since 2012. My first ever conference was a 200 person app conference in a beautiful resort in San Diego. As usual, we saw very little of the resort with days packed full of presentations & then networking at night time. But I LOVED it! 

It was the first time I had met other online bootstrapped entrepreneurs like myself. 

People who wanted to build a sustainable business online, so they could quit their jobs, change their lives. They came from all over – USA, Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland, Europe… and they all wanted one thing – to create freedom for themselves, and they were determined to learn as much as they could, and work as hard as they could, to make it a reality.

Since then I’ve gone to a TON of marketing conferences. App events, Jeff Walker’s PLF, Launchcon, Underground Online (I actually ended up on stage at that one), Traffic & Conversion, Great London Business Show & Funnel Hacking Live 4 times, flown to the UK for some other ones I can’t remember the names of .. 

This year I got to Funnel Hacking Live in january, but then with Covid everything was cancelled. So I thought it’d be fun to look back at the best bits & the worst bits of flying around the world to attend conferences!

THE BEST BITS:

Getting excited about learning new strategies. I just soak them up like a sponge. I totally geek out on any type of marketing education. I love hearing stories of how people in totally random niches were successful with challenges or launches, or little offers. Meeting & helping people. I usually go alone, so I ended up chatting to people I sit beside, having lunch with strangers, making friends in the queues in the morning, having marketing discussions in the ladies bathroom… It’s often easier to help others gain clarity. You ask them what they do, and they share what they’ve done, what they’re struggling with. Sometimes it’s as simple as leting them know there is a cool software program that would save them so much time! Or let them know how to hire a part-time Va. Or that they REALLY hire to fire that app developer! I was talking to guy one at dinner in Nashville last January. He had done a B2B live webinar. And it had converted at something insane – like 50-60% of people on the webinar bought the offer. But he never did it again, and was thinking of starting a different business. And I said – your first ever webinar converted at 50-60%? Why not just do it again? Find more people with the same problem, and get them on the webinar! He’d never thought of doing it again! So I gave him some tips on what we could do. He actually said that just this lunch alone was worth the ticket to come to the event from Canada. Meeting people & getting new ideas or contacts. Get contact for an outsourcing company as I needed to out-source the translation of my docu-series during another lunch. The feeling of being in a room of people who UNDERSTAND you. You think like you do. Who don’t want the 9-5.Who don’t want to settle. Who knows there’s more to life than an office job, TV in the evenings & the weekend spent in shopping or at Ikea. Meeting up with friends you only see once or twice a year & the surprise reunions. I flew over for an event in Dallas. I knew no one going. I have never been to Texas or to Dallas. I was at the bar, making friends with other entrepreneurs and someone shouted “ELAINE” across the room! Seriously! Yes. It was one of my old app friends!

THE WORST BITS:

16 hours on a plane. Jetlag there. You’re awake daily at about 5am, fading at about 7pm. Keeping going on sugar & caffeine.  And the jetlag when you get home is ever worse!The lunch queues!The mindset talks. 6 x 1 hours talks of someone’s struggle story. Either have less of them or make them shorter. I know other like them but… !Viruses. You need to stock up on vit C & D, because it’s so easy to catch colds, visurses etc at large events. No speed networking. Meeting people is quite often EXTREMELY random. Who you sit beside at the conference, lunch, at the bar. Some events have VIP evenings (hit and miss). I think any entrepreneurs needs a MENTOR and a COMMUNITY of colleague on the same level. It’d be cool to have speed networking events (3 minutes each) by industry. So one evening have a room of ecom people, agency people, infoproduct B2B people, infoproduct B2C people, bricks & morter.. The next night, do it my monthly revenue. Room 1 is 0-5k month. Room 2 is 5-10k a month. Room 3 is 10-20k a month. Room 4 is 20-50k a month. Done on the honor system. 

Even though there are various pros & cons, overall due to the pandemic and not being able to fly, and most events being cancelled… I miss meeting my fellow entrepreneurs in real life so much! 

And I look forward to the day when we can meetup again and enjoy the lunch queues together

If you are interested in getting help with your online business, I have 2 coaching intensive slots open this month. You can find more details at www.sweetfunnelstrategy.com 

What are your best bits & worst bits of attending marketing conferences? Do you love them or hate them? Let me know in our facebook group.

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For too many years, we’ve been told to work every hour in the day to build an online biz? That sounds crazy to me! I want a successful online business – but I want a life too!

In this show you’ll meet smart online biz owners just like you, who are creating profitable online funnels that their customers love – without working a zillion hours a week! And they’ve promised to share all their secrets with me. Sounds good? I’m your host Elaine Heney. Let’s get this show started!

If you want to  get EVEN more inspiring ideas AND join our awesome online community of online entrepreneurs, who are building online businesses that result in high converting sales pages, profitable cold traffic ads, beautiful funnels, ascending value ladders, hundreds & thousands of happy customers, & the freedom to work FAR LESS than 40 hours a week – hop on over to www.SweetFunnelStrategies.com

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The post The 5 Highs & Lows of attending a Marketing Conference (Spoiler alert: I miss them!) appeared first on Sweet Funnel Strategy Podcast.