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Do Offline Events Pay Off for You as a Self-Employed Person? In this video, I will share my experiences from offline events that I have had over the last three years. I have booked offline events where I had a tenfold return on investment, and I have booked offline events where I wasted €60,000 to €70,000 solely on event costs, without earning a single euro. I will share my experience, and my name is Marwan. I am the founder of Finance Influencing. We are a consultancy for self-employed design developers and marketers, and we have supported over 1300 people, self-employed individuals, and last year we made over a million in profit before taxes. Let's go.
Do events pay off? What I would do before I go to an event and book myself there and buy in. By buying into events, I mean that you are either an exhibitor and/or a speaker and exhibitor, or just a speaker. That is, when does such an event pay off for you? Before you do that, I would go there as a guest. Why? A lower, lower risk, because the event organizers, the event is a business model. A lot of money can be made with it. Someone plans an event, holds an event, invites people, sells tickets for the event, and the exhibitors then book sponsor tickets and spots and are allowed to exhibit and/or speak in order to win new customers. That's the principle of an event in a nutshell, and of course, this person, the event organizer, is interested in getting you in because you are a customer for him for the event, and of course, he will tell you that your target audience is exactly there, it will be really cool.
With events, it's the following. If the event is taking place for the first time, you will get prices that are so cheap that they will never be available again afterwards if the event is a success. That means it's always a gamble. I had an event that took place for the first time, where I really paid €10,000 for my booth and my speaking gig, and we generated €150,000 in new customer business because it was really good. Then again, I had events where I was told, yes, the target audience, it's a perfect fit. We paid €60,000 to €100,000 for the speaking gig and for the booth. But that was also a marketing measure, because before that I was allowed to speak to 3,000 people. We generated €0 in revenue. There you see the differences. And to avoid that for you, I would, in your position, always go to the event as a guest first, as a visitor, to get an impression of the people there. Is your target audience there? What is the atmosphere like? What are the vibes like? Does it fit you, your service? Is your target customer walking around there? That is your only goal. Target customer or perhaps recruiting, to attract or poach people for your company. So, first you go as a guest, and then you see if you book yourself for the event or not.
When it comes to booking an event, you always have room for negotiation, you can always negotiate. Pay attention to this: if you have speaking slots, and I'll go into speaking slots a bit more, but first, there's the event dynamic, and that can definitely be worth it, events. Why is it worth it? Because I would always book a speaking gig as well. Standing alone on a stage with a microphone, talking about your expertise, is very strong branding. People give you their attention differently at events than online or in a YouTube video, and you can do a lot with it on social media, LinkedIn, and it lends a certain authority. That's one reason why you should do events.
Then, as a remote company, you can also use events to bring the team together and go out for dinner with the team in the evening, perhaps have a few drinks in the evening on the last day of the event. It's also a bonding measure. Now to events as a conversion mechanism. I see events as a conversion mechanism. Please don't just do this booth where you just say, "Yes, do you already know what we do?" Think of something. Your booth should definitely have our booths, always a call to action. A call to action, ideally a QR code, something that people are excited about. You should have something at your booth that makes people want to come to the booth. Natural needs. Good espresso, good cappuccino. Can work wonders. We had popcorn at some events because there was popcorn smell everywhere. Cool merchandise can be very strong. We have very cool merchandise at our event booths. That can also help a lot to make your booth attractive. What I would definitely not do is take everyone to the event and say, "Hey, we are now at the event, your team." Why not? Because you haven't clearly defined the tasks and roles. What you don't want is for your employees to behave like event guests. "Oh, I'm going to that talk, I'm over there, I'm back there at the food court." Why? As a rule, if your employees are hired by you and are with you at the event on the weekend, they get compensatory days off. You still have costs, and it was nothing but a waste of time. You want to avoid that.
I'll give you a few pro tips now. Events have a single purpose and that is to collect leads. You want to collect leads with the right interested parties. I'm talking about the booth. The people at the booth are either lead hunters, people who collect leads, or customer service representatives who build relationships with customers. It can overlap for both, but their task is to collect leads, and we in our company do it this way, it fits our culture, we are all competitive, we all want to go for it, that every single person collects leads, and everyone has a score for the leads they have collected, and we write this in our WhatsApp with everyone in our team. Not just the event team, so that people get credibility for collecting leads. This is a friendly competition. If someone from my team says, "I've already scheduled the twelfth appointment," and the other person has three appointments, the other person feels bad and wants to catch up. That's our culture, and I wouldn't look at how many leads you collected per event, but per person, how many leads were collected, because the people who are at the event are also resources, and you want to know how many appointments this resource, the employee, generates. Employees are also not equal. An employee with a salary of €80,000 to €100,000 is a more expensive resource than an employee who works purely on commission or has a very low salary. You should also consider that. That means you should have clear KPI targets. Collect the things in the back, and then the employees with the leads, and they should actively approach people, not just wait for someone to come to the booth. It's really impressive how my team is on it. We actively approach people, and that is very, very important for collecting leads.
Then, for your talk. If you have a talk, please ensure a strong call to action during the talk. A call to action can be anything where they download a freebie, where they connect with you on WhatsApp. What I often like to do is send a freebie via WhatsApp, and then you have the people's WhatsApp number directly, and your follow-up can go from there, or that there's something at the booth. If you have 200 people at your masterclass or 500 people, and you say, "And at my booth, there's now XY," so that your booth gets full. When a booth is full, people wonder what's going on, and more and more people come. Those are a few things about the booth.
Now, regarding team organization. At the first events, I did a lot and was the clown and the jack-of-all-trades. At the last event, the founders were there. That was last weekend. I only flew in for my talk, gave my talk. Afterwards, I was at the booth for a few hours and flew home again. That's okay, and I would recommend that to you as a CEO. As a CEO, you and your energy are the most important resource. Back then, I had Friday as travel days. Saturday I was there, Sunday I was there. I drank with the team. Monday I had to go home, away for two days, and on Tuesday and Thursday, Wednesday, I had to get back into it. At some point, as a CEO, your resource is more valuable than that, and you leverage it by focusing on your talk, arriving there, giving energy to the team, and then leaving again, and having someone responsible for the event. That is very important. You need someone you trust, who holds the team together, who has an overview of everything.
And also think carefully about whether everyone needs to be at the event, right? It's not that everyone has to come to the event. It's also a reward to be able to come to the event. I would really look at who you take with you and who not, because it involves travel costs, it involves hotel costs. There are many things that follow. You really have to have made all the mistakes in the past, where events were like excursions for people. You don't want that, of course.
So, that's the second part of how you are at an event. And then, the most important thing at the event is the evaluation. What were the costs for the event? What were the total costs? So, event costs to be an exhibitor and speaker, and then total costs. How many employees did I have? What did the hotel and everything cost? How many appointments did we schedule? How many sales resulted from that, how much revenue was generated from it, how many appointments per person did we schedule? And then you create a table and compare all events in the past, different events with each other, all events, then you have a very good KPI-driven feeling whether and which events are worth it.
I think events are worth it. Why? In a digital age, people love personal exchange and personal contact. And especially if you are someone who runs advertising campaigns and has already run many advertising campaigns, events are offline retargeting. That was about four years ago, I think, in 2022 at OMR. For a year, my advertising rate was €500 per hour as a freelancer. People thought I was crazy when I told them that was my hourly rate as a freelance designer. The advertising campaign that went through the roof on YouTube. I'm at the urinal, and a guy next to me breaks the golden urinal rule. He looked over at me, and I thought, what does he want from me? And while washing my hands, he says, "Aren't you that €500 per hour guy?" And I said, "Yes, I am." And we talked. He said, "Hey, in real life, you're much more likable to me than on YouTube." And so many people approached me about my ads, and that's a very important thing because online there are so many trolls and so many haters, and in real life, people are actually nice, and if you're not an asshole and are a normal person and down to earth, and you can talk to normal people, that has always worked very well for me, that I made real connections at events. And at OMR, I will be speaking this year in a masterclass. No booth, but just a masterclass. But when I'm at OMR and walking around, it's offline retargeting. My employees can't do that, of course, because I'm a personal brand, but I walk around with one or two employees, and when people approach me and we get into conversation, my employees also talk to them and can schedule appointments if they belong to the target group. That means you can also do offline retargeting without being an exhibitor at an event. But if you are an exhibitor and have a speaking slot, you naturally have a greater lever and greater leverage.
That was my video on events. If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up, write something in the comments. This was a complete one-take. We didn't cut anything. I'm planning a second YouTube video per week, on Thursdays. This is a somewhat raw format where I just talk into the camera and share behind-the-scenes insights. I have no script, no agenda. If you like the format, give it a thumbs up. These are more entrepreneurial topics because I talk about my daily life. I hope you like it. If you liked it, give it a thumbs up. Write in the comments. If I get little response, I will stop after 3-4 weeks. We'll test it out now. Have fun, and I don't even know what. Have fun. I have no script, but I wish you a nice day. Bye. Bye.