How to create Executive Roundtable content that converts
Your content needs to be on point for an executive roundtable to attract a quality audience and generate ROI.
It should be problem-focused, relevant to your product suite, and have a slight edge to pique an executive's interest.
A lot of roundtable topics fail to hit the mark! The biggest mistake is product-driven topics instead of problem-driven. Following our process below, you can avoid these mistakes and create unique event content that converts.
Why are we running this event?
You should always ask yourself this question when developing event content. For example, is the event goal getting potential customers to realize they have a problem? Or is the focus on engaging targets in your pipeline to help them show the best path to solving a problem?
Your event goals will fall into 3 main buckets;
Top of Funnel Goals - MQL creation, help target accounts realize they have a problem you solve, Thought leadership focus.
Middle/Bottom Funnel Goals - Demo creation or influencing current pipeline, A Focus on implementation and case studies.
Current Customers - Renewals or Upsells, Showcasing best practices on using your product to solve a business problem.
You must document the event's goal at an early stage. Without it, you may create content that fails to deliver your desired outcomes.
Who do we want there?
The target audience and their problems will define the event content. So, your target audience should be at the center of your content. This ensures you have a much better chance of positive engagement.
As an exercise, note down your desired target audience for an upcoming event and then list 10 problems they have that you help solve. These will be the foundations of your content pillars.
Where is the real pain?
Which of these problems do our customers have the most pain? An event on a problem with not enough pain will struggle to pull attendees. Pick the problem keeping them up at night, as this will be the problem they are inspired to solve
Content Pillars
We now have a goal for the event plus 10 specific problems our target audience has that we can solve. Now you can build these into content pillars around particular solutions you offer.
Align these problems with a specific product you offer. Each problem with a product is a content pillar.
These content pillars define your session topics. They also give you a targeted approach to reaching your audience for a specific product.
A problem linked to a content pillar is your roundtable topic. Now we put it into a problem statement. A problem statement explains the problem in one basic sentence. This will later be expanded on in your event invite.
Let's see it in action!
So let's practice the above technique for a scenario where we are an Automation Platform.
The goal of the Roundtable Event: Top of Funnel + Help target accounts realize where they can automate their business.
Target Audience: HR Leaders from Organisations with 100 Employees Plus
Problems they look to solve: Find Talent faster. Improve employee retention. Streamline their HR processes. Improve onboarding times for new employees. Install an HR Data Analytics strategy into their org.
Content Pillar: UIPath Platform: Streamlining HR Processes.
Problem Statement: This will be an event for HR Leaders to explore how Automation can streamline HR processes as their companies scale.
How do we know this topic will be interesting?
So we have a topic that we think could make a great session, but how do we make sure this isn't a hunch? The first step is to look at online resources on this topic. Using tools such as SEMRush and BuzzSumo, you can see the popularity of a topic. If you see that this topic isn't being searched for or traffic on pages hosting this topic is low, you may need to find a new event topic.
Using these tools can also be a great way to build content pillars. For example, viewing top-performing resource pages can highlight top-performing content topics. Another way to create content pillars is to use your own successful written content. For example, a popular whitepaper often makes a great executive roundtable topic.
Finally, speaking to your customers is the best way to discover an event topic. I know this can be a challenging thing to do! So lean on your sales team, who talk to prospects all day. They can be excellent sources of feedback on a potential topic.
Anatomy of a Roundtable Topic
So we now have an event topic that we are sure will be popular. It's now time to put this topic into an invite. There is a simple anatomy of how these topics should look like. They need to grab attention and be clear about what an attendee will get out of the event. Because of this, it's also key to drop the jargon and make sure you use as simple language as possible. This isn't a chance to show how smart you are, so leave the thesaurus home.
The perfect event topic looks like the below;
Attention Grabbing Title - This is the problem statement turned into a catchy title. You want it to be edgy and attention-grabbing. It's best to have this in question format for an executive roundtable.
Explaining Sentences - These 2 to 3 sentences show why this topic is worth discussing. It will describe the problem and what will be covered in the discussion.
3 Takeaways - These 3 bullet points will explain the key takeaways from the discussion. They are simple sentences so someone at a glance can view what the roundtable will be about.
Content focused on your customer's problems will get better-qualified attendees to your events. It is vital to move away from jargon-heavy product-centric topics. Always ensure the customer is at the center of all topics you create. This will lead to better events that deliver better outcomes.
Need help building content for your next event? Get in touch with the Clutch team today!
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