How can you make six figures from event marketing? The strategy you have to start with is to identify your ideal event attendee. Then you can reverse engineer your offer from that knowledge. Juliet Clark’s guest in this episode is Alexis Caldicott, known as the Queen Of Event Marketing. Alexis discusses with Juliet that when you position your event as the solution, people will naturally register for it. But it has to be the solution your ideal client clamors for. Tune in, learn more, and rock event marketing!

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How To Make Six Figures Via Event Marketing With Alexis Caldicott

Our guest is Alexis Caldicott. She is an international speaker, event consultant and market strategist. For many years, she has traveled across the world teaching business owners how to strategically use their events to get clients. Often called the Queen of Event Marketing, her clients have generated multiple six figures in sales from single events with less than 50 people attending. Mentioned over the years by experts like Callan Rush, Lisa Sasevich and Sandra Yancey, Alexis now combines her background in Psychology, sales copywriting and education-based marketing, helping her clients grow millions of dollars from hosting and attending live events.

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Welcome, Alexis.

Thank you, Juliet. I’m happy to be here.

I can’t even believe that I couldn’t read a simple bio. She and I have both got back from vacation. We are having like vacation brain farts, I think.

That means we are also refreshed and ready to rock.

I hope so, but I can’t read something that got lost in translation over vacation. I can’t talk either. Events, online events, live events, we have morphed a little bit with COVID from live to online. Let’s talk about the marketing, strategy and offers, and how all this works together.

That is such a key point because that is why a lot of people fail with their events quite simply. We hear about events, “You should be hosting an event. You should be doing webinars or 3D events,” whatever it is. They see these people having phenomenal success and they want to have these 5 or 6-figure paydays. Who doesn’t want to get $100,000 in their pocket in a couple of days? What they don’t realize is the people that are having massive success with their events know three core things that have to be a part of the event.

If you don’t know and integrate all of these three core things in your events, you are not going to have success or your success is going to be significantly capped because there are a lot of people out there doing events. Even six-figure events could be doing multiple six-figure events for the same amount of work getting triple their results. These three core things that you and I are going to discuss are made or break. It is. If I haven’t piqued your interest yet, definitely read and you want to incorporate all three of these things. If you don’t incorporate these, you may as well not do an event.

Several years ago, there was a person whose event I was interested in on Facebook. I have to tell you, I clicked on her Facebook where she’s dropping the link in, “Go here.” It’s a link to her website. It’s not even the link to the page with the place to sign up. I remember it was the first of the year, it was one of those things like, “Get yourself improved.” The first day I click, I go to the website and I said, “I don’t have time to go look around.” She posts again a few days later. I go over to the website.

I look around again. I finally find the page and it says, “Call me.” I don’t have time to call you. There was this loop that was going on continually where I would see the posts. I would think about the event again then there’s no way to sign up and I literally gave up. Tell us a little bit about that marketing. Why it’s so important to make everything easy for people?

We always have to be thinking about what is the event attendee experience before they even become an attendee. What is the experience that they are having? You painted a picture beautifully of what happens is we don’t think about, “They’ve got to click here. They’ve got to go there and put in this promo code. They’ve got to register and have to confirm it.” We have to make it super simple, just one click it takes you right there, done.

It’s because we are all busy. There’s so much information, stuff coming out and that we all have to do. Wearing multiple hats in our lives and our business that we have to make it simple. That takes us back to the first place that we have to start, which is our strategy for the event. The user experience is part of that. Who is this event designed for? What are they inundated with? What are they busy with? What is happening with all the craziness going on in the world? How is that impacting their life? How can I make things easier for them and simpler for them? How can I serve them?

With the strategy, we have to start by thinking about, “Who is my ideal event attendee?” This touches into the marketing a little bit because we have all heard about ideal-client. Ideal-client is important. If your offer, which is always where you want to start with your event strategy, a reverse engineer from the offer. If your offer is something specific, maybe it’s a specific leg of your business, multiple products, offers and services. We will use you as an example, Juliet, with your publishing company. I’m sure you do some coaching and consulting but then you also have probably a program that people could buy.

Let’s say you taught people how to speak to sell their book, how to write and publish a book. Your offer for that event is going to be geared towards, which one are you selling? Which one are you trying to fill at the time? Based on that strategy, let’s say, for example, you are going to be selling the course, how to write and publish your book.

That’s the offer we are going to write, then we need to reverse engineer from that offer and say, “What do my ideal clients, my ideal event attendees for this event that are going to buy that offer, what’s going on in their world now? How did they need to be served? How did they respond to being served? Are they going to be served better with a bootcamp style event, where it’s roll up your sleeves, let’s get some stuff done?”

Event Marketing: The strategy we have to start with is to identify our ideal event attendee.

Are these like action takers like, “I will pay to come to an event. I don’t mind paying a high ticket to come to an event. If I know, I’m going to go there and I’m going to show up. I’m going to get something done and I’m going to leave.” Are they the kind of people that need a little bit more time and nurture? They want to dip their toe in the water, make sure you know your stuff but get some value so they walk away fulfilled. Maybe a three-day event might make more sense. They get to learn about you, some results, value and then you make an offer for the program.

We always have to think about, not just, “What kind of event do I want to do? I’m a rock star and I’m cool. I’m going to host this event.” It’s always about them. What do they need? What’s the offer? What’s going to best serve them to see your offer is the best next step in their business. We always have to be thinking about them. That’s why I love that example you used of user experience because it’s about them. First and foremost, with the strategy is, what type of an event is going to support the attendee and is going to support the offer? That’s where we have to start.

I know when we had the in-person event, it was action, networking, getting to know people. Do you feel like the online events have to be a lot of action to keep people engaged? Is there a difference from the way we used to do things?

Yes and no. I will go back to what I said. Think about the user experience of your ideal client. Are your ideal client is the kind of person that wants that engagement and the action? Are they the person that’s like, “Firehose me. Give it to me. I want the goods?” Some people don’t want that. It’s too much for them but some people do that. You want to think about, “What do they need? What kind of person are you dealing with and what are their needs?” Zoom fatigue is real. We have been in this for a while. At this point, COVID is not new but we have all been on Zoom forever, it feels like. We do need to have some things that are going to keep them engaged.

It also speaks to your speaking style, some little tactics, things that you can do and create some engagement. If your type of people does miss, crave that networking and that interaction with people, there are ways that you can pepper that in throughout your events. You can create breakout rooms, networking experiences to create an experience for the people that are there to create that engagement piece.

Some people are starting to get into in-person events again, now that things are opening up and people are getting vaccinated. There are protocols that you have to have in place if you are going to do an in-person event. That’s part of the strategy as well. It’s knowing your tribe and people. Are they more likely to come to an in-person event or a virtual event? Should I consider a hybrid of the two? People have both options of in-person versus virtual or both.

That’s a big piece, especially with what’s going on that you have to think about in your strategy. Hybrid events are their own beast. You are hosting two events at the same time. You have to have the budget for it. You have to have the team for it. I’m not saying it’s not lucrative and that it can’t work. Back in the day, pre-COVID, people were doing hybrid events, before it wasn’t called hybrid. It was called Live Stream. The event host would do it because like, “It sounds so cool.”

Some people always say they want to come to the camp because they can’t fly, they can’t get childcare or whatever. They were like, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to live stream my event.” Most event hosts live-streamed their event, maybe did it once or twice. It was like, “I’m never doing this again,” because it’s so much work. It is. You’ve got to try and do stuff to keep the live streamers engaged and the in-person.

Pick one. Pick a horse and ride it. That’s my personal view. I personally wouldn’t host a hybrid event but I know lots of people that are. They have the team and the budget for it. It goes smoothly, they love it and do a great job. Bless them. Go for it. It’s not my personal cup of tea. I like to pick a horse, ride it and roll it out. It’s something you need to factor in your personality.

Do you want the in-person? Do your tribe want the in-person? Are they cool with the virtual? Virtual is not going anywhere. People are making so much profit from virtual because the costs are lower. People are still buying high ticket items from virtual events. A lot of people were like, ” Why would I go back to live and in-person? It’s preference and knowing your people.

That’s such an interesting comment because I brought on a new client. We were looking at our profit and loss statements from the year 2020 of not traveling. We both were astounded at how much we were spending on travel but we made more money in 2020 being online. For somebody like me, it’s like, “Where’s my incentive to go travel anymore?” I do have a question about the live versus the live stream.

I want to know what you think about this from an offer standpoint. I have been to a lot of events with the guru in the room who thinks they are God and don’t touch me like, “My time of the stage is my time,” and then I look at the people who are super accessible in 2020 online. I feel like you do have to be more accessible when you do online events.

The trust factor that’s built there with the more accessible you are as the host on these, can you talk about that a little bit because a lot of people want to have an event but they don’t want to be seen? It’s that passive-aggressive thing that people do. “I want to be famous but I don’t want anybody to know me.”

That’s true. I have struggled with that myself in the past about being seen and all, and am I perfect for the camera or whatever. None of us are. We are not all tens. Most of us aren’t tens. If we do our hair and makeup, maybe we are 6 or 7.

Event Marketing: Power plays in marketing.

I’m going to turn this off now. I think she insulted us.

I’m keeping it real. That’s okay. The thing is, you can’t be a success and be a secret. I’m borrowing that from someone else. I can’t remember who but when I heard that I was like, “That hurts but that’s true.” Especially in the world that we live in nowadays. We have so many gifts from this virtual world that we live in. We can be anywhere, on a laptop, be making money and run our businesses. There are gifts to it but the pullback at the same time is we have the fear of being seen. We have to use that to our advantage. It’s non-negotiable.

In the world that we live in, you have to be seen and visible, whether it’s speaking, writing a book or hosting events. You have to be visible and put yourself out there because when something crazy like COVID happens, those offline strategies are now gone. You have to have both online and offline. You can’t be afraid to be visible otherwise, your business is not going to succeed. It’s something that we have to push past.

Confidence only comes from doing and the more that we do it, the more we do the Facebook Lives, the Instagram, Tiktok, Zoom, our events, speak on stages, you get more comfortable with it. You will realize that people are so busy thinking about what they say and how they look but they are not paying attention to you.

I love that you have to go out and do it. I was playing golf and one of the youngsters was with us and she said, “I don’t want to hit that because I will fail.” All of us older folks looked at her and were like, “We fail every day. What’s your problem?” We do. When you think about it, we all fail every single day at something.

Most of us pick right back up and do it again because it takes practice to get good at these things. A great example, if you go back and read my first episode, it’s tragic. I’m 160 in now. The first one is the one that people read the most. They find you, they go back and go, “I will read from the beginning.” You suck those first couple of times but it gets better.

What do people also love now? Being real and vulnerable. When you make mistakes, it’s endearing. When you trip on your words and you can’t read the bio right, people don’t care and they laugh. They were like, “Juliet is so sweet.” People want humans. What you were saying earlier with people at the events, “Would that guru know up in the air, I’m this and I’m that?” People are done with that garbage. They don’t care about that crap anymore.

I have heard the statements, “Who do you think you are?” That comes back up when we see someone that’s got the nose in the air. It’s like, “You don’t need to act like that.” That’s not approachable. People don’t want to work with someone like that, the idleitis. That type of thing is gone that people used to have at events because people get the game and the world that we live in with so much garbage going on, no one has time for that.

I was at an event in the summer of 2018. I pretty much announced that guru marketing was over. It was at this dinner table and there were a couple of bigger names there. They are like, “No, it’s not.” I’m like, “Yes, it is.” Those people during COVID fell flat on their faces. A lot of those older guru types also have not developed the teams and the systems the way that a lot of us smaller people action takers have. That’s what I found during that time.

One of them called me and said, “I need help.” I’m like, “Are you going to pay me?” He’s like, “No.” I won’t say his name. It’s like, “I don’t work for free. See you.” A lot of them are very used to that person that will dive at the chance to work for them because they are that big name but it never gets you anywhere.

You hit on the second core piece to having a six-figure event. It’s the marketing side. We talked about strategy, which was number one. The second, though is marketing. What the people need to realize, marketing is always morphing and changing as you said with the guru. The guru of marketing is over. I agree with you 100%.

There may be some people that still will fall like little puppy dogs and stars in their eyes with some of those people. For the majority, we, as species, I guess have grown. The marketing that we want, crave and work with us is not this, “Look at me and my Ferrari. I’m a success.” That is like, “You look slimy.”

That guru-type marketing doesn’t play anymore. What works now is being real, being vulnerable, showing the mistakes and here’s what’s worked. If you do show your success, you do it in a classy way and you are doing it to teach. It’s subtly telling them, “Look at how good I am though.” It’s doing it subtly. They make that connection themselves versus you saying and blasting on their face, “Look how great I am.” The marketing that we do for our events has to continue to grow and change.

The old way of marketing events doesn’t have the same success rate as it did before. You can’t blast your list or blast social media and say, “I’m doing an event. You should come. If you want to make six figures doing this, if you want to grow your business, you want to get more clients or whatever your outcome is, you can’t blast people about that. You have to educate them and you have to serve them on what is going on for them in the world.”

Event Marketing: When you position your event as the solution, people will naturally register for it.

The plus side for us is we’ve got lots of material to work with what’s happening in the world. COVID, Black Lives Matter, the politics and all that craziness that’s happened, all of those things need to be somehow touched upon in your marketing for your events. You always have to speak to what’s relevant and that’s what’s relevant nowadays. It doesn’t matter who you are and what you do it impacts. It impacts what they are doing, their business, your ideal client, whoever that is.

Do you have to think about how is this impacting them? What fears are they having? What are they staring up at the ceiling at 3:00 AM and can’t go to sleep? What are they worried about? Make marketing that is educational and speaking to that fear and worry that they are having late at night, then present your event as a solution and say, “Come to this event. I understand. I’m with you. I dealt with this, too. This happened for me when COVID hit and so forth.” You have to be the white knight in your marketing.

There’s a show on Netflix, maybe you have heard of it, The Queen’s Gambit. A lot of people watch it. Maybe you have it. There are some good parts if you like chess and strategy. I enjoyed it. Anyways, there’s power plays in our marketing like there is power plays with chess. Being the white knight is one of those. Being the white knight for your audience, standing up for them. Identifying is no one else in my industry doing for them? How have they wronged them? Why are people not trusting the people in my industry anymore? What has happened?

Stand up and be the white knight for them and say, “Here’s how I’m different. Here’s what’s different. I know this has happened. I know you have had this experience but here’s how we are going to solve that. Here’s how you create the results.” When you do that, you step up and show that, “I’m different, I have been there. Here’s how we can fix that in your event marketing,” and you position your event as the solution. People naturally will register for the event because it stands out above and beyond.

All the other people that are blasting saying, “My event is on October 10th. You should definitely come because this big speaker is coming it,” versus if you are tired of wondering where your next client is going to come from and you say, “I’m sick and tired of worried about XYZ. This event is going to show you the three steps to do this and help you walk away with a blueprint on XYZ.” You do it in a way that’s educating them and serving them. You are going to get high-quality attendees at your event and that’s the most important, the people that resonate with you, and your message. That’s who you want because those are your buyers. We want buyers. We don’t want butts in seats. We want buyers in seats.

The third pillar, the offer. Many years ago, I coached for someone and I remember he was putting this offer together. One of the other coaches and I had the main people in there. We were flummoxed by this offer because we knew as coaches for the group, it was a deliverable that couldn’t have been delivered. Here we have a coach, the head guy who had never done any of this himself. He had a team. Here he was. This is what he was selling.

Tell me about when you are crafting that offer because I will tell you that only about twenty people in a room of 300 bought the offer and zero of them were successful at the end of the year on the deliverable. Tell me about the offer. When you put that together and how do you ensure that your offer once it’s purchased is delivered?

One word, integrity. It has to start with that because you shouldn’t be making an offer from the stage. I don’t think that’s a huge issue because I know that most people, if not all the people reading this have integrity. They are reading this because they believe in you. They know your heart and that you are on a mission to help, serve other people, you are sincere and genuine. You are only going to attract people that are like that as well. It’s rare.

That’s rarely going to happen but you always have to start with your offer. Make sure that, “I can deliver on this.” That’s integrity at the end of the day. Making sure that if I want to make this offer, I have helped other people do this before they’ve gotten results. There are always going to be a few that don’t because maybe they don’t do the program. They don’t show up. They don’t do the work. It happens. They start to listen and they decide, “I’m going to do it my way. I’m not going to listen to Juliet.” That happens. “I know better than the person that I hired that is an expert.”

They do that infrequently.

It happens or life happens and they’ ae not able to use what they purchased at that time or whatever. If they follow what I say, if they do this, I know 100%, they will get the result if they do the work then you can in all integrity, make that offer whatever the price point is. That’s one of the ways that I teach my clients when they are doing their offer. I let them craft their offer as I say, “What is an insane guarantee that we can give them but no one else would have the rocks to give them? You know 100% if they did all the work, they would get this result.” Whenever I host my own events or I make an offer from the stage, I give a crazy insane guarantee.

Do you know how many times people have invoked that guarantee? Zero. I did an event where it was a $2,000 ticket to attend the event, to come to my event and it was in LA. This was like bootcamp style. This was a sketch of your event, start to finish. Flush out your messaging for your event. The offer did in three days. “It’s $2,000 come to LA, we will get this done. If at the end of these three days, you don’t feel like what you have learned is going to help you host a six-figure event, I’m going to write you a check on the spot for your $2,000.” Zero people, because I knew with full integrity, I know myself. I know they are going to make money from this. I know they are going to get the results. I know if I can stand in full confidence and integrity, I can make that offer.

I teach a very different approach when it comes to making offers that it’s from the heart. Heart selling, not hard selling. As if it’s my best friend across the table and telling me about a disease that she got. She’s telling me about all the problems she has and everything that she is struggling with. “I went to this holistic practitioner and this specialist. I went to this doctor,” but that person said, “Don’t listen to them. You should do this.” That’s the struggle that we have nowadays. There are many gurus out there. “You should do this. That person is wrong. You should do that.” That’s the experience that people are having.

I can look her in the eyes and say, “I get it. I’m hearing the same mixed messages. I have been there. I have dealt with that. Here’s what I found in my experience to be the solution. In my experience, this is the solution and here’s why and here’s why that didn’t work. When I tried that, this is what happened. Here’s why this is the solution. Please, I have it right here. Take it. I know this will work for you 100%.” When you are making an offer, if you approach it as if you are speaking to your best friend across the table, we don’t have to have this nose in the air, “You should do my program because I’m amazing. You are going to make this and do that.” We don’t have to sell from that standpoint anymore.

“People want real. They want humans. They want connection. They want to feel heard, seen, understood.” Oprah said that with all of the interviews that she did. It didn’t matter who she interviewed. It didn’t matter if it was a Saudi Arabian Prince, if it was Jennifer Lopez, if it was a pedophile, if it was a past president, every single one of them at the end of the interview said, “Was this good? Was that okay? Did you get what you wanted?” They all wanted to know that they did a good job.

Did she hear them? Did she see them? Did she understand them? Everyone at the end of the day wants that. When we make an offer from the stage when we do our marketing to promote the event when we strategize the event, are we making sure that they feel seen? Do they feel heard and understood? If you do that in your strategy, your marketing and your offer, you are golden. You can stand in full integrity and know, “I know them. I know what they need. I know I have the solution. Come join me.”

Where can we find you if we want to find out more about what you do and how you do it?

Thanks, Juliet. I would say the best place to connect with me is to learn a little bit more about yourself, your business, and your events, whether you have done an event before and you know that you can make more or you haven’t done an event and you want to learn more about it, I would go to EventProfitQuiz.com. When you take this quiz, it’s fun because it goes into, not just the three areas I talked about, it talks about four. There’s a bonus surprise that you are going to learn about.

It helps you look at it on a scale of 1 to 10 and figure out what are your strengths? Where do I need to strengthen these pillars? Where am I a rock star? It helps you learn more about the events. When you take the quiz, we have customized content then educational information that will go to you based on the answers on your quiz. You can take that quiz and you will also get a way to connect with me from there. We can continue the journey together if you want more information. It’s a fun quiz to take to. It takes less than two minutes. It’s super simple.

Thank you so much for being on.

Happy to be here.

Important Links

• Alexis Caldicott
• EventProfitQuiz.com

About Alexis Caldicott

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