DEMAND 2021 & 2022

Metadata calls itself a demand generation platform. It allows B2B marketers to use a single tool to launch their paid campaigns across Facebook, LinkedIn and display. 

The idea of creating an event was born from the team's disappointment they had felt about other industry events. They felt there was always an undercurrent of an agenda to sell something, and Metadata wanted to reinvent the game. 

Mark Huber, Director of Growth at Metadata, said:

“We really wanted to give B2B marketers in the demand gen community access to some pretty unbelievable speakers. People who had been through the process, done the work.”

“We also wanted to give some of the smaller, more ‘up and coming’ B2B marketers - who really know their stuff, just aren’t that established yet - a platform.”  

The first-ever DEMAND event was in some senses the MVP. 

Marketing for DEMAND didn’t mention specific speakers until right before the event. 

Mark shared:

“We had to start promoting the event before we had the speakers finalised. It was scary but I needed to get over that feeling and just get things done.”

A brave attitude, but as we all know, it’s better to get something done than to never start at all!

Mark went on:

“We want to be transparent, we want to attract our buyers as much as we want to weed out the ones that don’t fit. We always try to say ‘this is what we are, and this is what we aren’t.”

“I think this theme of transparency was what led us to announce the event before all the details were finalised.”

And this approach received a lot of positive feedback from people, praising their openness and honesty. 

Mark added:

“I think because we had been so nervous announcing the event early, it was all the more special for the team when the event went so well.”

Mark explained that because over half the talks were recorded, the team could pick out the key moments. They used these to dangle like a carrot in front of a rabbit to encourage last-minute registrations. 

He also revealed how Metadata utilised the speakers as marketing channels:

“We had built strong relationships with our speakers over the previous year or so, so we were able to tap into their networks, getting them to promote the event. Many of the people who spoke had much larger networks than we did.”

The marketing team at Metadata understood the value of getting people hyped and excited ahead of the event, so their efforts to get people talking didn’t end there. 

They also held a competition, rewarding people for sharing the talks they were most looking forward to. Around 105 people entered, writing their own LinkedIn posts about the event. This meant DEMAND was shared amongst attendee networks too. 

Not only did these marketing efforts impact the number of people registering for the event, but they also helped generate demand.

As a result of their work on DEMAND, Mark’s team had generated eight opportunities and one closed-won deal before the event had even taken place.

Mark says:

“It was really amazing to see we had measurable positive business results happening to reinforce what we were doing.”

And after the event, the opportunities and deals just kept rolling in.