Co-Founder Bizzabo! Connecting with People in an AI World w/ GUEST!! Alon Alroy Co-Founder & CMO | Ep. 438

Jay: We are back for do this, not that podcast. And I have an awesome guest. I really do. Now, if you're even remotely in the world of events, you know this dude. Okay? 'cause he is a really big deal alone. Roy, who's the co-founder, CMO, and Chief Customer Officer of Bizzabo. You know Bizzabo.

Jay: 'cause when you get your badge, you got that thing at the bottom where you squeeze it and you connect with other people. It's the coolest thing of all time. But beyond that, just squeezing the badge thing, they're really the first event experience, like operating system for hybrid, virtual in-person events.

Jay: Basically, if you're in the event world, Bizzabo is one of those companies that you've been following, that you're seeing everywhere and alone is like the guy. Named 40 Under 40 Leader. He's been named the top 100 most influential people in the event space. The 19 executives that are shaping the industry.

Jay: He knows about events. That's why I brought him here. 'cause we're gonna talk about events and the age of AI and all things alone. How you doing, man?

Alon Alroy: That was a great, uh, intro. Like I can keep listening to that, uh, even more, but thank you very much. I'm so happy to be here.

Jay: All right, so before we get into kind of AI and how it's crushing all industries and the event world, oh no, it's gonna collapse, but that's not the truth. Tell us a little bit how did alone become alone? Like, like how did this all happen?

Alon Alroy: Um, well we are my co-founders and I actually are not events people. Um, we, all of us served in the Air Force. Then we, um, started together in university and we actually each had their own domain. I started business and law, another one, computer science, and we met at this entrepreneurship program that was a year long venture creation program.

Alon Alroy: Everything was chaotic and we started getting an itch to events and started speaking with a lot of people about the networking experience, the. Organization experience that was very lacking. And we realized that we're very passionate about solving a big problem at a big market. We kind of like abandoned that other venture and started jumping in into that industry.

Alon Alroy: And I interviewed, I don't know, hundreds and thousands of, uh, event organizers throughout the years and. And if, because I think that's how you learn. You ask smarter people along the problems and then you try and build solutions to satisfy that. And uh, over the years I had the privilege of building all of our go-to market functions, so sales team or marketing team, or customer success team operations.

Alon Alroy: So had to hands-on, kind of like build everything from scratch. And we were, were grateful that over the years we, we saw. A lot of ups and downs, but more ups than downs. Raised a lot of money and kind of grew nicely. And today we are lucky to have some of the, uh, best event teams on earth, uh, youth visible to power their events.

Jay: I love it and I see it because when I go to events, I am using your technology. I'm aware of it, and it's, and it's awesome. And I think you have a unique perspective. Um, you know right now when people are going to events, companies will send somebody to event, oh, they spent a thousand dollars a ticket.

Jay: What was the ROI in that? We got a booth, we just dropped 30 grand on a booth. What was the ROI on that? And they take a step back and they're like, you know what? This is a money loser for us. Why are we getting involved with events? And now with ai, it's like, it's even harder to justify because it's is, is do we even need to go there to learn anything?

Jay: You just get it all outta chat, BT or whatever. So how do we look at events these days in terms of the return on investment that we're making? And is AI destroying events? What? What's your take?

Alon Alroy: Well, there's a a lot to unpack here. Um, let's maybe start a bit about, about AI and events, just, just a little bit. I think we are, we're living in a super exciting, interesting times in which AI is all over us. Most people are super overwhelmed, overwhelmed with what's going on. But one thing we see very, very clearly, because we have data that shows it that.

Alon Alroy: The number of events is at all time fine, actually more than pre pandemic, which is great because I honestly, as a human, I'm very happy about it, that people still believe in the power of handshakes and, and face-to-face meetings. But there's another factor to it. AI creates a lot of digital noise. It's so easy to send emails.

Alon Alroy: I know you are a master at sending great emails, so you know that, um. That people get the highest number of emails ever. So there's a lot of digital noise. And to get through the clutter and build real relationships with the community, with prospect, with customers, I'm pretty confident that AI will not be able to replace that.

Alon Alroy: So in your marketing mix, if you are in a business, that relationship is important. Events are probably. Will play an even more dominant role in the marketing mix today and in the future. There are many ways in which AI can enhance it. So I'm definitely not anti ai. Like on the contrary, I think it'll make our meetings actually way more effective, less time on logistical stuff, more time on intentional meetings that, um, deliver on the promise.

Alon Alroy: And you're like, okay, what is the ROI of events? Like why are we running them? How should we even measure them? Honestly, event is a big, broad word and they, and they have many, many different objectives. Some are related to influencing pipeline and revenue, and some are about honestly, planting seeds for relationship that may one day will turn into revenue and some are all about brand.

Alon Alroy: And to make sure that your brand is seen because there are events that you just, you need to be there. You need to be there for the press. You need to be there for the influencers. You need to be there for the competition sees you and you need to be to be there sometimes even for your own employees. So the approach to ROI is unique and, but it, they can be very measurable depending on what the objective is.

Jay: So, okay. And I think that's really important. I'm glad that you said that. 'cause I agree that the word events is almost like it's not fair, right? Because you could throw. A dinner with 20 people, or you could put on an event that like, Dreamforce has a hundred thousand people and somehow they're both, they're both events.

Jay: Right. Uh, and so for, for everyone out there, it's like, well, I don't put on Dreamforce. I don't even put on a conference that has 500 people. Um, but I would like to have events as part of my marketing mix. Is, is it like, what is. How do you go about saying, we have no line item for this on our budget. We don't have anything to do an event, but I wanna start a small event.

Jay: Like how do you go about that internally? Say we're gonna start out with a, with a dinner, we're gonna start with a hundred person thing. Like how do you actually initiate internally and justify starting out having events in your organization? Because I wanna figure out how to do that for in-person events for my own business.

Alon Alroy: Yeah, no, that's a great question. And one tip that, uh, worked for us is the following. First of all, I'm a big believer in micro events and dinners and kind of like small field adults, small field events. Having said that, even to run, let's say a 15 to 20 people dinner at a major city will cost you, um, you know, 10 to $14,000.

Alon Alroy: You need to make sure there is a win-win. As always, with partners, they get to sit at the table, they get access to the whole list, they need to contribute to guests, and suddenly you have a win-win win. One more interesting for the guests that are able to actually engage with several vendors. Um, two very.

Jay: See, I love that because I, it allows you to kind of grow from there. I think it's, when people say to me, they're like, 'cause we plan on virtual events. They'll say, well, you should a big in person one. I'm like, that's a massive roll of the dice. That's a massive cash outlay and I have no idea how the hell it's gonna go.

Jay: But you do a dinner, you partner up with a couple people, it works okay. Let's, let's grow from there. But let's flip the script for a second here. Instead of doing these micro events, which I think is awesome, um, a lot of people either exhibit at events, they sponsor events, they're thinking about should I exhibit here or there, wherever.

Jay: And so often people look at their ROI be like, oh man, that was terrible. We, we just didn't, we can't show any value there. What are some secret sauce things that people are doing wrong as it relates to exhibiting or sponsoring at events of almost any size?

Alon Alroy: That's a great one because as you said earlier, some companies. Invest. Sometimes they spent, but sometimes they invest, um, 30, 50 some, a hundred thousand dollars in the booth. They invest so much in the design of it and how it looks like, and to get the internal buy-in and they say We have to be there, and so on, so on.

Alon Alroy: And then they forget to invest at least the same level of effort in activating their go-to market team and actually preparing them for the onset experience. And then you see. Things like reps that are on the phones when an audience walks or lack of outreach and, um, prep before the event. And it's also very, very difficult to look at the numbers if they measure the numbers to prove the ROI.

Alon Alroy: Another thing that, uh, I found to be a bit crazy is that the lack of understanding of follow-up urgency. If you speak with a prospect at the show, you should assume that that prospect spoke with 20 other exhibitors and the speed to get to their inbox with a thoughtful, intentional, personalized note.

Alon Alroy: Influence a lot, whether you will continue the conversation or not. So practical tips is to work with your go-to market team. Set expectations on what are the metrics, what are the goals of each individual person who is attending, who is being paid to go pre, during, and post. And it's important to distinguish between pre, during, and post.

Alon Alroy: Pre. You're expected to reach out post you're expected to. Greet people do demos. You're supposed to get to 10 lead whatever follow up. This is how you do it, this is how you're gonna measure it. And it'll never be successful without a good go to market plan and collaboration. So it's not enough to just have an amazing booth.

Alon Alroy: It's even way more important to activate your kind of like go-to market partners to make sure that that investment actually translates to results. Otherwise there'll, there will not be a next time in the age we live it with everyone. Maximizing for profitability and you need to prove results specifically at the kind of like revenue driven events, which you, most of the exhibition at events are related to revenue driven objectives.

Jay: I think it's so valuable for people to hear about being intentional before, during, and after. Not even just about, you know, exhibiting, but if you are going to a meeting, if you're going to a cocktail party somewhere or whatever, you're not. Going, in my opinion, I know it's terrible to have a good time.

Jay: You're going there 'cause so-and-so is gonna be there. You're gonna try to get to know them, you're gonna follow up with them. And I think, you know, to your point, I don't think enough of anybody, business people, marketers, whatever, are intentional about their human. Interactions and when you were, you know, launching, you know, Bizzabo, you entered into a category that had monsters in it, giant companies, and that had to be like, is this gonna, can we even get traction here?

Jay: Why would anybody listen to us? Is that like, was that part of your playbook? Like, how do you enter in, forget about events or whatever, but how do you enter into a category that's dominated by some massive companies and be able to break through like you all did?

Alon Alroy: So we are indeed in a market that has an 800 pound go. Market leader. That company name is a cnt. They've been around, I think they celebrated their 25th birthday, um, last year. Congratulations, honestly, a great company. They got almost a billion dollar on revenue. So heads off, we believe that, uh, there are many things that we do much better.

Alon Alroy: And of course as a strategy, they have way more resources than us. Like I'm sure many of your listeners compete with bigger organizations and. It was clear to us that we need to compete differently. If we do the same thing they do, we're always gonna be behind because they're bigger, they're fast, they are, they have more resources.

Alon Alroy: In addition, kind of a challenging brand is all about truly understanding the real pains of your big competition. Um, customers and speak very specifically to their pains. One of our more successful campaigns was what we call busy versus venting. I'm sure that if you Google Busy versus venti campaign by bbo, you're gonna it, it won some awards and all that, and I believe that one thing you can do is to do things that don't scale.

Alon Alroy: And until you can't. So we truly invested for our size. We invested in this big campaign. We had these two characters similar to Mac versus PC or Android versus iPhone. I'm not sure if you saw these competitive campaigns. And we had venti, which is a character that likes to vent. Similar to maybe some c event customers.

Alon Alroy: And that, uh, campaign only spoke to real paints we heard on the phone from customers, and then there was a busy, which is a super cheerful character that highlights the things that we, we do better. So these days we just need to do things that don't scale. We cannot scale that campaign. But it was very clear that we need to just challenge the, the big gorilla to go outside of our comfort zone and to make sure that it's kind of like this, uh, purple cow moment that, uh, the customers or the community will not be able to ignore.

Alon Alroy: So, to do some craziest things from time to time when you compete against a gorilla is something that I really recommend to do. And there could be backlash. You can get some, uh, scare letters. People will, will react with, oh no, I can't believe they did it. And if it feels a little bit not comfortable, it means you are on the right track.

Jay: Yeah, I, first of all, I love that. And I also think it's a great business lesson that you know so often, like I love the show Shark Tank, but the problem with Shark Tank is everybody that goes on Shark Tank, they're trying to invent a product that's never existed before. They think that. They can't go into a category of this competition because they'll never break through.

Jay: But I'm of the belief that you wanna look at the categories that have the most competition because there's probably enough business there for one more company, maybe if that company does a little bit of a better job. So I, I love how you steered towards a category that was. Competitive as opposed to just trying to recreate the wheel and make something that's never existed before.

Jay: 'cause obviously you guys have done very, very well, uh, playing kind of that challenger role and I'm sure that's something that you thought about that you know, there's gotta be enough business there for everybody 'cause events are exploding, right? Yeah. Alright, so, alright, before we run outta time here, um, I'm just curious about something non Bizzabo events or whatever, do you just like.

Jay: Love events. Are you like at Coachella and Lollapalooza and you just every day, like, what event am I going to go to this weekend? Or is that not what you're doing in your free time?

Alon Alroy: That's a great question. I think, um, I love people more than I love events. And I'm kind of like, I'm a super social individual and I believe events just kind of like bring that all together. So it's not that I'm in love with events, I'm in love with the outcome of events that, uh, it's actually a super human thing.

Alon Alroy: And during the pandemic we, we did this kind of like when everyone thought that in-person event will not, will never come back because look, we can meet virtually honestly. We were praying that everyone were wrong and that we actually. Made a big bet, like click the Smart Batch Technology. We bought that at the peak of the pandemic when no one talked about in percent events, and we were like, it doesn't make sense.

Alon Alroy: Like people will need to meet, people will need to engage. So we made a big investment that really paid off. But, uh, no, it's not about me being in love with events. It's me being in love with people and events is just a great medium to to, to bring them together, I guess.

Jay: You're a better person than I'm, I like to sit home and I like to lie to people and say, I have other plans and I like to sit on my couch and just watch TV and say, oh, no, no. I'm at a dinner, but I'm really not at a dinner. So, um, I am very.

Alon Alroy: and we host, uh, people every Friday. Uh, we had 30 people at our, at our apartment last week, so yeah.

Jay: that sounds like a nightmare to me. Amazing. Um, well by the way, if you invite me, I'll definitely un, unfortunately I'm busy, but thank you for the invitation. Um, alright. Before we run outta time, we're gonna put it all in the show notes, but how does everybody get involved with you? Should they follow you on LinkedIn?

Jay: What should they do? Tell 'em everything.

Alon Alroy: Um, you can follow me on LinkedIn, you can follow BBO on LinkedIn. bbo.com is word to find us and evaluate whether we can help you. We'd love to help. Um, you talked, we talked a lot about micro events. We actually have a webinar about micro events in two weeks on bbo.com. You can find it, uh, or send me a note, I'll send you a link.

Alon Alroy: Um, but we generate a lot of valuable content, so feel free to just, uh, follow us and, uh, hopefully we'll find it valuable.

Jay: Yeah. And I'm not just saying this 'cause I, I'm staring alone here. He really does. His company shares a lot of stuff and let me spell his name and the company so we all get it right. It's A-L-O-N-A-L-R-O-Y. Okay. You're not gonna find many of those on LinkedIn so you could find him. And BBO is B-I-Z-Z-A-B-O.

Jay: Follow everybody, connect, do it all. Great guy alone. Thanks for being here, my man.

Alon Alroy: Thank you.