4 cities, 43+ marketing leaders, and one small team

✍️ “Let’s host our a dinner roadshow”

Earlier this spring during our weekly Marketing check-in, Evan suggested we host a dinner roadshow.

And like any good startup marketer, I knew this meant, "Quickly put a v1 plan together, keep spend down until you prove it out, and make some magic happen." 

When Evan first mentioned it, the idea sounded solid. I mean, Jason Lemkin always talks about getting on planes to meet top prospects and customers IRL. If he preaches it, it must be true.

But this idea also sounded like it'd require a ton of work—in a very short amount of time. 

So, we rolled up our sleeves and got to it.

Coming up with an initial plan

We teamed up with Growth Union (our demand gen agency) to answer three big questions:

• What cities should we prioritize?

• What restaurants should we book?

• Who should we invite to each dinner?

Before we jumped into HubSpot, we created an initial list of potential cities: the usual suspects and up-and-coming tech hotspots.

We ran a few HubSpot reports to find where senior marketing leaders (all VP+ level) from our target accounts live and a few LinkedIn Sales Navigator searches to fill in the gaps.

We landed on Chicago, Seattle, NYC, and SF as our starting lineup. We intentionally picked Chicago as the first stop so we could do a test run on my home ice (any hockey fans reading this will hopefully get that joke).

Growth Union booked the restaurants in each city (more on that below). All we had to do was let them know how big we needed each dinner reservation to be.

We kept ~2 weeks between each dinner, so we had enough time to coordinate and stay sane. This meant we were always working on two dinners at the same time. 

Getting people to actually show up

The tricky part of all this: getting VP+ marketers to RSVP yes, especially during the summer months.

It was a true GTM team effort. We sent 1:1 emails and LinkedIn DMs, Sales invited open opportunities, CS invited customers, and we tapped advisors for intros. We even flashed the bat signal to Evan and Ray and had them invite CEOs and CMOs from their networks.

We promised intimate dinners with marketing leaders and intentionally called out that there wouldn’t be any UserEvidence pitch slaps. We included social proof in outreach for future dinners, namedropping which companies had attended previous dinners.

And you can thank me later for this cheat code:

We confirmed more people than we had room for at every dinner. Kept a waitlist too.

People always bail at the last minute because life happens (plan for 20%). It’s nerve-wracking, and it sucks, but it’s part of the game.

What we did differently

Here are five things we did that set our roadshow apart and made the dinners worth attending:

1. Left the forced pitches at home: If UserEvidence came up naturally, great. If not, no biggie. We focused on having fun, getting to know people, and creating a relaxed vibe.

2. Leveraged influencers: I tapped into my own network to bring in some well-known faces for added exclusivity. Nothing like a little B2B marketing star power to get people interested.

3. Booked restaurants that people got excited about: We intentionally picked high-end restaurants that would make people want to leave their homes (and families) on a random summer night.

4. Avoided private rooms to keep costs down: This was a gamble that mostly paid off, though some venues were a bit loud. This kept the average dinner cost down to ~$2,200. The average would’ve been ~$1,900 if our sommelier Udi Ledergor hadn’t joined us in SF.

5. Created a little FOMO: To top things off, we had some fun with how we promoted each dinner on LinkedIn. If you saw any posts from the UserEvidence crew, you’ll know we created some funny social cards that played into pop culture references from each city.

🤓 Stuff I’m learning (and digging) right now

• Our new homepage—We worked with the FletchPMM squad on this and I'm stoked with the clarity of our new positioning and messaging. I'll write another edition of Evidently to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what went into this.

• Mutiny open-sourcing their ABM strategy—I have no idea how this came about or whether it's working for them. But I respect bold B2B marketing plays, and this definitely fits the bill. Great to see them pushing the boundaries of B2B marketing.

• beehiiv's newsletter platform—We're almost done moving Evidently from HubSpot over to beehiiv (I'll share more behind the why when we officially flip the switch). Learning a new platform is always scary. I love what I've seen so far, though.

💰Opinions are cheap and proof is gold

In episode 14 of The Proof Point, Jill Rowley, Mark Organ, and our very own Evan Huck discussed what it means to truly focus on your customer while keeping sight of what's best for your business. 

My biggest takeaways:

• Customer obsession needs boundaries. There's a delicate balance between putting the customer at the center of what you do and coming off creepy.

• Your customers don't always know what they want. Keep this in mind when listening to new customer requests and prioritizing what to do (or not do).

• Building an employee-centric culture can actually help you deliver better customer experiences and outcomes. The customer doesn't always come first.

Plus, Jill and Mark had two incredible stories from personal run-ins with Marc Benioff back in the day. You don't want to miss those.

Listen on Spotify or Apple, or watch on YouTube.

UserEvidence, who?

UserEvidence is a customer evidence platform that helps B2B marketing teams generate verified proof points that credibly prove the value of your product.

Using custom surveys at key moments throughout the customer journey, you can capture case studies and testimonials, as well as competitive intelligence, product stats, and ROI data.

Turn happy customers into your best sellers with UserEvidence.