Welcome to Event Marketers Live, a fast-paced series where we shake off the jargon and get real with the humans behind the scenes of our favorite B2B events and experiences.

In this episode, Kelly chatted with Jenn Artura, Global Marketing and Events expert.

Jenn Artura is an award-winning and data-driven strategic Marketing and Events Executive. She is passionate about solving business challenges, often through creative experiences that elevate brands, generate revenue, and give back to the community.

She is a recognized industry leader, change agent, storyteller, and problem solver experienced in analyzing existing operations while formulating new processes, and she’s always looking for new and innovative ways to raise the bar.

We had a blast chatting with Jenn! Check out the top tidbits from our conversation below, and dive into the full episode for even more insight.

Here are the top three takeaways from this episode ⤵️

It is absolutely critical to know your “why” for any marketing endeavor, and this rings especially true for planning an experience. As an event marketer, you have got to dig deep into the “why” before you move forward with an event.

Jenn recommends training yourself to be a professional “question-asker.” If someone comes to you with an idea, get to the bottom of it and see if it aligns with the overall strategy. Ask questions like, “Why is this important?”, “What are the end goals?”, “Why are these the target accounts?” and more.

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Also, remember that every question has both good and bad answers. One of the worst answers someone can give is, “Because that's the way we've always done it.” If that's the case, Jenn recommends re-evaluating your strategy.

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“It boils down to connecting what you're doing to a purpose and a strategy. So, approach any event in a structured way and with thorough brainstorming sessions. If there is a problem, start with a proper root cause analysis and get to the bottom of at least five ‘whys’.”

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Ultimately, you can get down to the nitty-gritty of what you are hoping to accomplish by throwing an event, building that program, etc.

Jenn began her career in sales, where she made a huge impact and quickly moved into leadership. This sales experience would later prove to be extremely handy to her as an events leader.

Her entry into events was a happy accident when her boss at a previous sales company begged her to take on a huge event project—and she turned it into a roaring success!

In sales, you learn to face the hard truths head-on. In events, this happens when you’re in the trenches of events together. Teams need to work transparently and in tandem to make events work, and this all starts with trust.

This internalized process of leading by intuition can come with the experience of a sales rep. If you have been a sales manager and a leader, you are always laser-focused on what customers need.

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If you are doing your job right, you're helping your customers solve their problems. You need to be able to simultaneously understand how to walk in a customer's shoes but also zone in on what is important from a sales perspective.

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It helps to be surrounded by remarkable talent (and it doesn't hurt to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you!). So, recruiting well becomes very important to ensure you build a high-performing team, and people with a sales background can make very successful event marketers.

It is not fair or right to label event marketers as “planners” or “coordinators.”

Event marketers wear many different hats and wear them well. An incredible amount of knowledge and information goes into managing events, especially since so much has changed over the past few years. Events are more complicated than ever!

Of course, planning is a very important aspect of event marketing. But, it is one small part of the job and only deals with the logistics aspect of an event.

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Event Marketers are researchers who collect stakeholder inputs, problem solvers, brand investors, ambassadors, revenue-generators, sales engines, creatives, strategic advisors to the business, and community builders.

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Event marketers are also content creators, connoisseurs, experiential designers, advocates, executive producers, and digital and technical specialists.

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Above all, they are now dream makers and futurists. “The list goes on,” as Jenn puts it.

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The environment that event marketers have to do all of this in continues to be uncertain and complicated. In the present age, they deal with inflation, weaponization of travel, political factors, safety and health, and the mental wellness of the community.

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With all this and more to navigate through and manage, no event professional should discount who they are and what they do.

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Thanks so much for joining us, Jenn! That’s all for now, but we’ll see you soon for another episode of Event Marketers Live.