Are you gearing up for a conference this fall or spring? Our team at Hedy & Hopp is deep into conference prep, and we thought it would be useful to share some insights on how you can better prepare and make the most of your attendance. Here are five solid tips to help you walk away with everything you need.
- Set Clear Goals: Know why you’re attending. Whether it’s networking, gaining insights, or scouting speaking opportunities, define your goals ahead of time to stay focused.
- Personal Branding: Stand out with a unique personal brand. Think about how you present yourself — from your attire to your interactions. Make a memorable impression.
- Pre-Event Prep: Pick your sessions and speakers in advance. Reach out on LinkedIn to those you’re excited to see. Being prepared makes networking easier.
- Never Eat (or Sit) Alone: Use every opportunity to connect. Make a list of key people and organizations, and strike up conversations during meals and sessions. A casual chat could lead to unexpected opportunities!
- Follow Up: Carry a pen to note details on business cards after each conversation. Follow up within a week to continue discussions, follow through with promised items or explore collaborations.
Bonus Tip: When returning to the office, hold a lunch and learn session with your team to share key takeaways from the event. It’s a great way to engage your team and strengthen your case for next year’s conference budget.
Connect with Jenny:
- Email: jenny@ec2-3-80-87-79.compute-1.amazonaws.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
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Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am the CEO and founder here at Hedy & Hopp. We are a full service and fully healthcare marketing agency, and we are the creators and producers of this show. I am excited to come to do to you today with a topic that my team and I from the heavy marketing and sales perspective, are knee-deep in conference prep.
So I thought it could be useful for those of you attending a conference this fall or even next spring for me to do a little bit of behind the scenes view on some tips to better prepare for a conference and really maximize your attendance at a conference. So this is for providers and if you are a vendor, keep on scrolling.
These tips aren’t for you. But if you are a provider or payor and you’re attending an event this fall or winter or next spring, hopefully this will give you five really solid [00:01:00] tips to make sure that you get everything that you need out of this event and really maximize the opportunity. So first of all, The tip number one is to develop your goals and really make sure you know why you’re going to this event and what success looks like.
There could be a couple of different kinds of goals that you’re aiming for. First could be to network. Maybe you’re going and you want to come back with a variety of folks in similar non competitive positions like yours across the country. So you have kind of a think tank or a mastermind group that you can rely on and start building those relationships to experience share.
Maybe you’re wanting to learn. Maybe you want to have a great agenda that you’re going to be going to all of these key speaking sessions and you want to walk away with some key insights and some areas of marketing that perhaps you don’t feel as comfortable or confident in, or maybe it’s your focus for the upcoming year.
Maybe your goal is to speak next year and you want to attend sessions to [00:02:00] see how folks are doing it. Maybe use the opportunity to get some ideas for what your topics could be for next year and some key ways that you want to show up as a speaker or presenter next year. And finally, maybe you’re going to find a vendor or a couple of vendor options.
Maybe you’re looking for a new marketing agency or an email marketing vendor or something like that. And that could be a key take away for you, whatever it is, make sure you spend a moment and actually write this down. Here at Hedy & Hopp, we have a, we’re very organized, but we have a folder for each conference we go to, and there’s lots of documents inside.
One of them is our event goals. Why are we going to this particular event? How is it different from other events? We’re going to, and when we get back from the event or a month or two months after the event, what did success look like? And did we achieve that? So, yeah. Absolutely write it down and hold yourself accountable next.
And this is one of my key secrets to attending events. And I think it [00:03:00] really goes to one of the reasons why events are so successful. One of the many reasons that why events are so successful for Hedy & Hopp is spend time to develop your own personal brand. Visual is one of the key things, but it also could be in the way that you show up.
It can be the way that you make people feel there’s lots of different ways that you can develop and curate a personal brand, but I strongly recommend that a visual brand is part of that formula for Hedy & Hopp. My brand is a really bright blazer, pink, purple, something with the Hedy & Hopp colors, always have really awesome kicks on.
So Jordan 4s, whatever. We have some really cool ones for this year. I’m excited to wear next month for our first fall event. And then for me, I always have, handmade really bright earrings. That is my formula. It allows people to see me, remember me. And then when they see me later in the event or at a networking event at the event, or even at the next event, the next month, [00:04:00] they recognize it’s me.
The Hedy & Hopp team will show up at an event in November after going to one in October and people will say, Oh, Hedy & Hopp.. I know you guys, I recognize those blazers. So please don’t copy after us that shouldn’t be your brand. But for example, in 2021, there was a woman and she lives rent free in my brain because she was wearing three and a half inch studded, like sparkly stilettos, the entire conference. That was her brand. And she lives rent free in my brain because this was right after COVID where nobody wore heels. And this boss lady comes out wearing these killer shoes. They were gorgeous. I don’t know how she did it.
I couldn’t do it for the entire event, but that was part of her visual brand. When I saw her anywhere, I knew it was her. Other people may be. One of my good friends she’s a neutrals person. So it’s all neutrals hair, very clean and like slick back a little bit. And for her, it’s more, her approach is how she makes people feel during the event.
So the visual compliments it, but there’s more components to it. So I [00:05:00] know this sounds extra, but if you are wanting to accomplish your goals at the event, and part of it includes anything around your own personal branding or growth, please take a minute to do it. For three tip number three pre event, please don’t show up to an event without knowing what sessions you want to go to and which speakers you want to tune into.
This will not take long. I promise. Set aside a couple of lunch hours or a couple of hours in a block of time in an afternoon and just knock it out. Every conference you go to will publish the sessions in advance, along with the speakers. Some platforms for conferences have the ability to actually pre select the sessions so it can be in a curated agenda.
For others, you could create a separate document where you list out your tentative agenda, but go in with a purpose. And for this, you want to look at a couple of things. Number one, what topics do you want to learn about? Make sure that you attend all the sessions that are topical that you’re interested in.
And number two, what speakers do you want to hear from other organizations like yours presenting at [00:06:00] the conference? Are there vendors you’ve been thinking about calling up and talking about a potential partnership or scope of work with attend their session and see how they present themselves.
There’s lots of different reasons why you’d select your different agenda and craft it. And again, that goes back to what your conference goals are tip number one, but spend some time crafting it and then key tip. Any speakers you’re going to see, go find them on LinkedIn, connect with them and say, really excited for your session at this conference next month, next week, whatever.
I look forward to seeing you speak. That is the number one way to kind of warm up that relationship, especially if it’s somebody that you would like to introduce yourself to at the event, and you would like to get to know them and build a relationship. Do it. Every single person that goes to these events wants to meet people.
Every single person does. There is nobody going to these events that thinks they’re too good to network or that they’re too busy to network. That’s the point of attending these events. So doing your homework and determining who you would like to meet puts you in the driver’s seat of that and helps [00:07:00] you be more successful.
Which goes directly into my next point number four, never eat or sit alone. So if you created and crafted your list of the kinds of organizations that are people for the organizations that you want to meet, that can be helpful. You can create a VIP list of people that you want to scan and look out for at lunches or at breakouts to perhaps introduce yourself to them or whatever.
But even if you don’t see anybody or perhaps it’s like in the mid afternoon and it’s a coffee break and you’re just kind of mentally tanked, don’t have much left in it for networking, still sit by somebody. Cause I assure you that other person’s feeling the exact same way, but you still could develop a meaningful relationship with just a five minute conversation or the start of a relationship.
I’ve had lots of those situations where part of me just wanted to like, go sit outside in the conference and get some fresh air. And every time I chose to stay inside and sit down next to someone, whether it was a payor, provider, another vendor, whatever it resulted in a fun, delightful conversation that actually gave me a little bit more energy going [00:08:00] into the last couple of sessions.
And then the last event or the last tip for events tip number five is post event follow up. So what I do when I meet somebody, my personal tip is I always have a pen with me. And I write on the back of their business card. Now this is sometimes controversial. Sometimes people think business cards are sacred and you don’t write on them.
I’m not one of those people. For me, the business card gets added value whenever I write key notes or conversation points on it. So it’s your decision if you want to do it that way, or maybe keep a pack of sticky notes next to you that you would hear to it. Your choice. But I immediately write either when I’m with that person or immediately whenever we’ve parted ways, what we talked about and what I owe them as a follow up.
So often I’ll say, oh my gosh, we had a great podcast episode on that. Let me send that to you because that could give you some ideas about ways to think about how to tackle that problem. Or, oh, I know a provider that actually is focusing on that service line for growth right now as well. Let me introduce y’all because you’re not in competitive spaces.
I think you could have some really great [00:09:00] conversations about it. Whatever promises you made. Do it. And from a timing perspective, don’t do it that day. Don’t do it a couple of days after the event. Give people a little bit of breathing room and then send the follow up because people are inundated returning from conferences.
Let’s say the conference is Monday, Tuesday. Usually I would wait until the following Tuesday to actually send that introduction or whatever. Sometimes I send a note later in the week of the conference and just say, it was so great meeting you. I have it on right to do early next week to do this.
Want to let you know, I didn’t forget, but I’m not going to inundate you as you’re catching up from the conference. So, doing all of this, it may feel like it is burdensome or it’s extra. But I assure you, it will absolutely make sure that you’re getting the most out of the event for both your organization and your own personal brand.
And I know a lot of folks are still kind of like fighting their way to conferences. They’re having to really make the case for why the budget [00:10:00] to go to the event makes sense or why getting the time off from the day to go to the event makes sense. And if you were one of the lucky people that were able to win that fight, please take these five tips to heart and leverage them because it will really allow you to show your boss or a decision maker or whatever that you walked away with educational content of value, connections of value, etc.
One bonus step. One other thing that I will add is that if you are a marketer within an organization, one of the key things that I recommend you do is take notes about some of the key learnings and offer to do just a lunch and learn for the rest of your marketing organization that wasn’t able to attend and give them some of the key learnings, some of the key talking points, some of the key things that you found interesting, maybe case studies or organizations that are doing cool things that are like yours that they may find interesting that will absolutely help you with securing the budget for next year if you take that proactive approach and put something [00:11:00] like that together.
So thank you for tuning in today. We are super excited about the fall conferences. If you are attending, please come by the Hedy & Hopp booth and say, hi. I’m speaking at both SHSMD and HCIC this fall, our booth is going to be amazing.
We have art we’re going to be handing out. We’re going to have friendship bracelets again this year and lots of other fun surprises. So. If you’re attending either of those events, please come and see us. And if you’re attending another event that you think we should be at this fall, shoot me a note, we’re trying to fine tune our conference schedule for the upcoming year and would love to learn about events that are must attend.
Thank you for tuning in for today’s episode. I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week. See you next week on a fresh episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
