In this episode, you’ll learn about the realities of our review-based economy, easy ways eventprofs can establish social proof, and how to embrace both positive and negative reviews.
As the visionary founder of Eventible.com, Ankush Gupta is spearheading a paradigm shift in professional event discovery and evaluation. With over two decades of leadership experience, Ankush is leveraging cutting-edge technology and user-generated insights to make Eventible the Glassdoor of business conferences.
Here’s what you’ll hear about in this conversation:
Rachel Moore - Host: Welcome to Event Experience by Bizzabo, the podcast, where we bring the best and brightest event experience leaders together to share stories, tips, and lessons learned from creating some of the world's biggest events. I'm Rachel Moore, your podcast host.
Every event planner wants their experiences to get that five star rating.
And there's a reason for that, the power of reviews. In this episode of the pod, Ankush Gupta, founder of Eventible, highlights the importance of social proof and reputation to event success. As we dig into the realities of our review based economy, Ankush shares easy ways event profs can establish social proof, embrace both positive and negative reviews, and help new conferences establish great reputation.
It's all coming up now on Event Experience.
[00:01:00]
Rachel Moore: Our guest today touts a 20 plus year career in marketing, event production, product marketing, and marketing tech. And today he's bringing, his very well rounded wealth of experience to our podcast.
He is the founder of Eventible, the world's first B2B event reviews platform. I'm delighted to welcome Ankush Gupta to the pod. Ankush, thank you so much for joining us across microphones today.
Ankush Gupta: Thanks, Rachel. Really excited to be here and have this chat with you. Thanks for having me
Rachel Moore: Absolutely.
I delight when I think we all know the power of reviews and recommendations and kind of that social proof that's out there. And when it comes to events, I think this is going to be a super interesting topic for our listeners. And I gave you a very high level introduction, but I want to turn it back over to you.
I want to ask you some get to know you questions. We ask all of our guests, these questions. I love these.
[00:02:00] All right. So. On the occasion when you are at an event and you need to be on the ground all day, what are your go to event day shoes?
Ankush Gupta: Hey, I think that's a good one. Uh, I'm partial to what I call dad shoes, uh, these days, at my present age, which is a pair of, uh, new balance, uh, 574s. Uh, I think they're super comfortable. Uh, I can be on my feet. I can walk, uh, all day without being exhausted. So the 574s.
Rachel Moore: I love it. I just take notes all the time. Every time I go shoe shopping now too, I keep these in mind because I'm like, maybe, cause you know, we all have those days might be in an event, might be just a day where you're walking all day and you're like, what makes sense? And excellent recommendation there.
Is there anything that you are listening to watching or reading these days that you can't put down?
Ankush Gupta: I think that's probably going to be the same as everyone else. Um, you know, Netflix, The Gentleman. I don't know if you've seen that, by Guy Ritchie. I thought that was pretty mad. Let's get a look at that, if you can. And I
[00:03:00] recently read this book called Magic Words. It's by a Wharton professor, uh, by the name of Jonah Berger.
Ankush Gupta: And he's really talking about, you know, the use of language and how it can really help you get what you want out of different situations. Very fascinating and extremely, extremely applicable to event marketing and for event profs. Especially you know, all the communication that they have to do and put out.
Ankush Gupta: I would highly recommend getting a copy of this.
Rachel Moore: Excellent. Love those recommendations. And is there a particular social post or a piece of media or even a hot take about events that you found interesting lately?
Ankush Gupta: Yeah, absolutely. I think a few weeks back, I came across this little video on somewhere on social media about Sam Altman, CEO at OpenAI, that's the firm that makes ChatGPT. And he was talking about different things and you know, he said that we are now coming into an air, into a part of the world where we are gonna be so [00:04:00] inundated by AI generated content. That really finding the space for making those human to human connections is going to become more and more precious.
Ankush Gupta: And I take it as that he was simply talking about conferences, events, you know, right? Because those exactly are venues which are tailor made for human to human interaction. And that's what it's all about.
Ankush Gupta: Right. So in a sense, I think that we're going to be entering, uh, really the golden age or the golden era, of conferences, right, which will now become more and more important than they ever were.
Rachel Moore: Which makes Eventible really important because that's where people are going to be reviewing all of these conferences, right?
Ankush Gupta: I sure hope so. Yeah,
Rachel Moore: Love it. Yeah.
Rachel Moore: Could you please tell us more about what it means to be the founder of Eventible and kind of what your world looks like with that role?
Ankush Gupta: So, like a lot of other first time startup founders, we ended up being incubated. You know, during the pandemic, for some reason, I think, you know, it left people [00:05:00] with a lot of introspection. A lot of people are thinking if they should move on with their jobs or, you know, start with ideas that they've already had.
Ankush Gupta: And I was one of those people that really wanted to pursue a couple of ideas that I'd been building up until that point. And, you know, my idea essentially was, why doesn't a review platform for business conferences exist? You know, especially seeing how prevalent platforms like a g2.com or acrossradius.com, had become for the SaaS space.
Ankush Gupta: And it struck me as being a little weird that a platform didn't exist where potential attendees, speakers, sponsors, could make participation decisions or investment decisions in conferences based on pure insights, based on reviews, left behind by people for previous editions, And everybody just had to go with what event organizers were saying. And, you know, most event marketers will always say, you know, they're putting on the world's best show. That's something that we really wanted to take a shot at. And even more so because I firmly believe that we now live in a review economy.
Ankush Gupta: You're [00:06:00] literally followed around by the little five stars every time you flag an Uber or you purchase something on Amazon. Or perhaps you've looked up a hotel review on a TripAdvisor or some of our listeners would have used Glassdoor. Essentially what used to be, I feel a word of mouth for our parents, is now an online review for us, right?
Ankush Gupta: And that's all we wanted to do was to bring conferences, kicking, and screaming into the review economy.
Rachel Moore: I love that you touch on that. You actually kind of covered a question I wanted to ask you because this does all drive back to social proof and reputation. You're completely right. Marketers, I'm a marketer, you have marketing in your background and a lot of our event, people listening to this, our listeners work in marketing events.
Rachel Moore: They're a marketing channel for brands. And we will say, and as we should, we're like, we are the best. We have this, you will get this from us. But the proofs in the pudding, as they say, is what do the actual attendees think? What do the people who had [00:07:00] that experience think? Did they get what they were promised?
Rachel Moore: Which leads to that social proof and reputation. I love that you mentioned we're in, what was that? You said a review-based economy?
Ankush Gupta: Yeah, we are in a review economy, so to speak. it's all around us. I mean, we're often doing it subconsciously. We're not even thinking that you're being asked to consume a review or leave a review for so many things that happen in your lives daily.
Rachel Moore: Yeah. Absolutely and think about that. I want everyone listening to this too. Think about the normal purchasing decisions you make on a day to day basis. You are probably going to go seek out, I mean, look at like influencer economy right now. If you see somebody and you kind trust what they say or even a friend, or a colleague, or an acquaintance, and you're like, "Well, it worked for you. That's why I'm going to go try that thing."
Rachel Moore: That same thing applies to the humans who are making decisions about how they're going to invest in which conferences they're going to attend, which trade shows they're going to exhibit at, and things like that. So I'd like to get into this too. I think event [00:08:00] planners listening to this are probably like, okay, so how do I do that? . I'd love to ask you that Ankush, what are the easier ways, and maybe not the easier ways too, that event profs can establish and demonstrate social proof and their event reputation if they don't have that yet?
Ankush Gupta: You know, that's a good question. And the easy way out is what everybody is already been used to taking. Especially in the events industry and the B2B event space, if you talk about easy ways to leverage social proof, I would say, you know, a few things come to mind. For example, event profs have been leveraging the social media channels.
Ankush Gupta: They've been posting on social, they've been encouraging their speakers and, you know, some of the attendees, to post on social media. The other thing that they can do and they have been doing is to share speaker endorsements, to share, you know, about who's speaking and, you know, how much they love speaking at a conference, to share perhaps, event pictures.
Ankush Gupta: You know, that's an easy one. I mean, you can just take a bunch of pictures and, you know, share them on whatever social media channels you have. And some of them have also been displaying attendee numbers, an event [00:09:00] landing page saying, oh, we expect 500 people this year. And, you know, last year we had so many people come.
Ankush Gupta: So these are all really simple ways that event profs have been trying to display social proof, you know, that's what I think. And social proof is such a fundamental construct of marketing and you can't just do away with it.
Ankush Gupta: There's always an easy way of doing it, there's always a better way of doing it.
Rachel Moore: Yeah. Do you find too, I mean, in particular, if we're talking about B2B, and let's think about what you just said about social, I mean, automatically, and we're like, oh, LinkedIn. We want to make sure we're peppering LinkedIn with social posts that cover everything you just mentioned where our speakers are talking about it, we're showing attendees, you know, experiences of showing the pictures. So it's not, we're not just telling you that people were there and enjoying themselves. We actually have pictures of people smiling and, and having a great experience.
Rachel Moore: Do you think like that's the most sensible platform? Are there other platforms that event props should be thinking of particularly for talking about B2B events?
Ankush Gupta: You know, I think what event profs should be thinking about more is that, you know, sharing it anywhere is [00:10:00] fine. You can share it on Twitter, you can share it on LinkedIn, on Instagram. But really, they have to start thinking about whether them sharing it is the most beneficial thing that prospective attendees really want to listen to.
Ankush Gupta: I mean, would you rather that your prospective attendees sponsors really had you, sort of, tooting your own horn or would you rather that, they get their information from somewhere else, and they see how cool your event was and how much your attendees loved you?
Ankush Gupta: So, it's a little bit of shift in mindset that's probably required on the part of, you know, some of the event profs.
Rachel Moore: You bring up a great point there. It just kind of covers too, what we've already mentioned. It's one thing if the event themselves, and every event planner is going to do this, every event marketer is going to do this. Of course, you're going to gather all that information and put out marketing about from your own channels, from your own accounts that your event was great. And that's the reason people should join.
Rachel Moore: I'd love to ask you about this. So how much more powerful is it though, when you get an unbidden, unsolicited review [00:11:00] or commentary from someone? It's not from the person or the brand that put on the event, but it's from someone who attended.
Rachel Moore: They are sharing their own perspective that carries a lot more weight then, right? Than the brand itself saying, this was awesome.
Ankush Gupta: Well, of course, you know, I would just ask the event profs, I would ask the folks listening in, to look at their own experiences, as you're sort of going about your day to day things. You're taking a holiday somewhere and you want to look up hotel reviews, you'd probably go to TripAdvisor. It's less likely you'd go to the hotel site and then want to read reviews and think, "Oh my God, how credible is this? I'm going to book it straight away." But, on TripAdvisor, it starts feeling more credible. You think that there are other people who were sharing their experiences, it's a community of people. And you sort of start believing that, you know, those are authentic reviews, and that's something that helps you make up your mind.
Rachel Moore: That seems to like, A., exactly right. And I can even speak from experience. I just had the opportunity to travel to New York in the last couple of weeks, and I chose a hotel based [00:12:00] on Google reviews. I was like, I want to see pictures. I want to see what people are saying about it. I want to learn how walkable it is.
Rachel Moore: You know, sight unseen, I need to be able to at least take some other people's experiences and make my decision. And it wound up turning out great. You know, I think I made the right decision. We all want to make the right decision, especially when we're
Rachel Moore: paying money for experience.
Ankush Gupta: When it comes to conferences, you're not only paying money, you're making the commitment to take time away from your families and your jobs, perhaps to travel to a new city, make all of those hotel bookings. And you want to get it all right.
Ankush Gupta: And what's going to help you in getting all of this right, and what's going to help your decision making, is having the benefit of what people who went before you, to a previous edition, give their unfiltered views on, you know, what they experienced and what they saw and sort of what they felt.
Rachel Moore: I think we've kind of covered maybe the low hanging fruit, the easier ways that a lot of our event marketers are probably already doing like they're, yep, we're totally sharing on social. We're even asking our people who attend the conference, please [00:13:00] go, tag, the hashtag tag, our, our brand on your social post when you post about this event, they're encouraging that.
Rachel Moore: That's low hanging fruit. Are there more difficult ways, though, a little bit more challenging and maybe requiring more resources, energy and even money, that these event planners and event marketers can be establishing social proof?
Ankush Gupta: Of course, I think, you know, some event profs can perhaps create case studies, you know, around particular attendees, sponsors with the measurable outcomes that were achieved. That requires a whole lot of more work than just taking a bunch of pictures and sticking them onto LinkedIn or Instagram. So, you know, that's one of the things where you can say, oh, you know, for this group of people, this is what we did, this worked out very well. So case studies is one thing.
Ankush Gupta: Secondly, they could be engaging on platforms like Eventible. You know, we're a review platform, we are custom built from the ground up for exactly this sort of thing. But that requires a little, shift in mindset. You have to learn to take the bad along with the good.
Ankush Gupta: So even if there's a negative review that comes in, you can't just wish it away because [00:14:00] having that negative review with some positive reviews makes you look more authentic. You know, no event is going to be flawless, no conference, no trade show, no webinar. Nothing is really ever going to be so flawless, without a single mistake.
Ankush Gupta: assuming you've done your best, and you, you have to let your attendees share what they really thought, what they really experienced. And therein lies the beauty of the authenticity, right? Which is where other people who will be able to see that these reviews are genuine, that these are people who walked to this conference, before us, and really make up their minds.
Rachel Moore: Excellent point. And this is something I hope our listeners are really taking note here, too. This doesn't just apply to events, but just generally to when you get feedback or reviews that may not be glowing, right? We all love when we get five out of five stars, everybody's loves everything.
Rachel Moore: But we also, we know let's, we live in reality. It's impossible to make everyone exactly happy all the time. if you could expound on a [00:15:00] little bit, when an event planner or event marketer, or their team does see, someone has either left a review on Eventible, or they've made a social post that could range from being very negative to just saying, oh, it was good except, you know, for these things that I didn't like. How do they approach that? What's your best guidance for how to approach negative reviews?
Ankush Gupta: So we've thought about it a lot, you know, obviously. And I'll start with a little story. There's an old clip on YouTube about Jeff Bezos, at the early days of Amazon, talking to a bunch of media reporters, about books and book reviews, you know. Because that's how Amazon, got its start by becoming a marketplace for books as you know.
Ankush Gupta: And a bunch of people sitting in the audience and, you know, one guy picks up the mic and asks, Mr. Bezos, why do you have negative reviews? Why do you allow negative reviews for the books? You know, what if there were only positive reviews? Wouldn't that make us buy more books?
Ankush Gupta: And Mr. Bezos says, no, you need the negative reviews over there. I would never do away with the negative reviews. It helps the potential buyers make a [00:16:00] more informed decision, you know. And then they get to make up their own minds, right?
Ankush Gupta: And this is a guy in like 1999 or 2000, and this is what he's saying about book reviews and reviews in general, that you do need to have the negative reviews over there. And I think it's even more important, Rachel, in today's times when we are inundated by fake reviews, and so many AI generated reviews, like you mentioned, you know, you looked at Google reviews for a recent trip to New York.
Ankush Gupta: What if all of those Google reviews were just glowing and positive and like 500 positive reviews? Now your brain would tell you there's something off about this. You know, there's something wrong. You know, this is, this looks a little dodgy.
Ankush Gupta: So when the negative reviews come in, you get a sense that, oh, it's a little balanced. You know, some people maybe didn't enjoy it. Some people enjoyed it. And then you can sort of read the tool and, you know, sort of start making up your mind. So we've thought about it. We give event profs the tools to deal with this by replying to the reviews. They're able to reply and say, if you have a problem, you can talk to us. But thank you for sharing.
Ankush Gupta: And by doing that, and by doing that publicly, on a platform, in addition to being [00:17:00] authentic, they're able to show that they care. They care about their attendees. They're able to show that they care what their attendees are telling them. You know, with sometimes in a closed survey mechanism, it's not really so apparent.
AD Break
Rachel Moore - Host: We'll be right back with more event experience after the break.
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Rachel Moore - Host:
AD Break
Rachel Moore - Host: We're back with Ankush Gupta and a look at our current world of leaving reviews.
Ankush Gupta: The whole thing is really, a shift in mindset. You know, event marketers are also marketers. And, you know, at some [00:18:00] level, they know the importance of reviews, you know, because they're living pretty much the same way we all are. They're being asked to provide reviews for, you know, the Deliveroos and the food delivery apps and the Ubers and the Amazons.
Ankush Gupta: They're reading reviews all day long, but when it comes, to their own little babies, their conferences, they suddenly get very possessive. And they have to realize that just like everything else, and you have to give that conference a chance, to be reviewed publicly.
Ankush Gupta: And that's really when the magic starts happening. That's when the flywheel starts spinning and more and more people say, Oh, this looks like a cool thing. I think I would like to attend this. Because it's very important to understand that most people don't have a structured way to find conferences.
Ankush Gupta: And that's, you know, one of the problems that we came across. You know, if I was to ask someone across the room, you know, hey, you're, you're a designer, you know, what are the top five conferences you want to go to this year? Nobody ever seems to have an answer for that, right? People make up their minds by looking at stuff that falls into the social media feeds, people make up their minds, during water cooler [00:19:00] conversations.
Ankush Gupta: Sometimes somebody sees an advertisement by a large event and says, oh, you know, Michelle Obama is going to be the keynote speaker. I got to go for that. But no one really has a process and a structure and we're actually trying to change some of those things. So the way that we are set up, you can come in and in a couple of minutes, you can say I want to network, I want to learn something new, and our platform will sort of recommend the best conferences for you based on, of course, reviews. Mm.
Rachel Moore: Thank you for saying that too. I can also attest. sharing all the anecdotes about myself today, y'all. But I've done that. I think I did that earlier this year. And I, I Google search, I was like, uh, okay. What are the top, , marketing B2B conferences I should try to look at attending? And a couple of the, you know, usual suspects popped up like, Inbound, or Content Marketing World, or things like that.
Rachel Moore: but then I'm like, yeah, but, knowing too, there's this whole other aspect too, if the people behind marketing a conference are doing their job, they're probably doing some growth strategy. They're probably paying for Google Ads. So when someone [00:20:00] like me enters a Google search, their stuff is going to pop up to the surface on page one.
Rachel Moore: And that's great. I'm probably going to go see, their website and stuff like that. I love what you're sharing though, because people today, and I think particularly if we're talking about Gen Z and things like that, they will go deeper. They will go ask Reddit. They will go search for, instead of searching for which conference should I attend or which the best conference, I'll say reviews about X conference. And that's where the discoverability part, I think that you're bringing up to about what Eventible provides, I think that that absolutely does seem to like it meets a need that has been out there for when people are deciding what conferences to go to.
Ankush Gupta: Yeah, it's very difficult to make that choice. And I've spoken to like tons of people, nobody seems to have had any kind of process to find conferences. You know, most would do exactly what you're doing, do a Google search for a list of conferences, and then, hope that it's going to be something good.
Ankush Gupta: So we are, we are trying to take [00:21:00] the guesswork out of that and the way that we are set up, the way our algorithms are set up, we can even sort of look at the reviews and look at what people are actually seeing. Are people saying they were happy with the networking? Are people seeing that, you know, they learn new stuff?
Ankush Gupta: They're able to generate new ideas for their workplaces. And using those inputs, we are able to then recommend them to people who want to go network at a conference or who want to go learn something new, right? So we are trying to make it more helpful all the time. And it's the same for, uh, for event profs.
Ankush Gupta: I think we've recently kicked in with a feature which tells event profs who is reading these reviews on the flip side, you know, so the people reading reviews, event profs can now see who's reading the reviews and, they can potentially hit them up and say, hey, do you want to, do you want to come to the next conference? You know, because if somebody is reading the reviews, you can bet that they're interested
Ankush Gupta: in your work.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, light bulbs just went off there. I just talked about people doing growth campaigns and stuff. And that's some really good information and insights to have there to optimize your targeting strategy. Excellent. I want to ask you, [00:22:00] what about brand new conferences?
Rachel Moore: I mean, we've got some, you know, in events, I'm not talking just about conferences, but anything like trade shows or anything like that. But what if there's a brand new, a company is trying to say, we're going to kick off this thing. It's the first year out. You don't have any social proof.
Rachel Moore: You know, you're creating something new from scratch. It's a brand new experience. Nobody's been to this before. Everybody's going to be taking a chance on attending and investing in going. Do you have some like advice there to like, how can the event planners and marketers behind that kind of new event, how can they try out the gate to say, hey, let's establish some social proof before we've even had the event.
Ankush Gupta: You know, if you're new, you're new. And you're like with every, everything else that's new, it's always going to be an uphill task. And you have to fight your battles. But what I would say to the new conference brands out there, is that skip the tired old stuff and just get your conference onto Eventible. Get the social proof coming in [00:23:00] and start competing with the bigger conference brands because it gives you a level playing field, right?
Ankush Gupta: If you go to. Like a g2.com, which is a review platform for SAAS. You'll see, you know, mostly the first page is made up of all the big guys, the hub sports and the marketers, right? Because, you know, they're, they're literally spending the most on marketing and branding and, you know, pulling in like hundreds and hundreds of reviews. But sometimes there's a new guy, there's a gem, you know, that people are starting to get excited about that really comes, you know, zooms up the charts, and is right there, right? So it is possible. But you have to be there. You have to get your attendees and your speakers to provide those reviews. And the sooner you do it, the sooner you will see the flywheel effect kick in.
Rachel Moore: I think too, you mentioned this earlier, just a normal way that people can establish that social proof, is utilizing your speakers. You know, people you know are already going there. They're part of their bread into the DNA of that [00:24:00] event. They have a stake in it for themselves. You know, if there's someone who, they're not directly working for your brand, they're partnering with you basically to be in the event. But they could be as well because they do, they will have experience with that event, and say again, like a speaker, if you know, you've got a keynote speaker for your event, really enticing them. I know we, we've actually had, I think one of our prior podcast guests had said, that should be something baked into the contract for speakers where, it's not an option to go share about the event on their social. It's a must do.
Rachel Moore: Like that's part of enlisting them as a speaker saying, and one of your duties as our speaker for this event, is you're going to share this out on your social, which I think is a great idea.
Ankush Gupta: It is a great idea. I think, you know, speakers are such important components for an event. People are attracted by the programming and the agendas that they see. Speakers, you know, very often, tend to pull in the crowd, right? And, good speakers can [00:25:00] make an event. Into something more.
Ankush Gupta: You know, if the event organizers can convince them to be more active on social media and probably equip them with all the tools that they need, a little design, give them a little graphic and say, Hey, you know, I've done it for you. Just, just go and put it out there on LinkedIn.
Ankush Gupta: things like that. I think it can be very helpful.
Rachel Moore: Excellent. And then finally, one really easy question. The easiest question of all, where can our listeners find and follow you online?
Ankush Gupta: Yeah, that's simple. Just go to LinkedIn, put Ankush, put Eventible. I'll pop up, connect with me, say hi, love to meet you. Always love meeting new people, listening to the stories. Just as you do, uh, Rachel.
Skill Up
Rachel Moore:
Rachel Moore - Host: In this episode's skill up, Ankush's words remind us that everything doesn't have to be complicated.
Ankush Gupta: Keep it simple stupidis the best thing that I can really tell anyone. Um, don't complicate, don't over [00:26:00] complicate things. You know, event profs, for example, they stress about so many things. And we see the reviews on our platform, you know, on a day in day out basis, and people are really talking about the simplest things, you know, the wifi, the coffee, the food, you know, the spaces to network.
Ankush Gupta: I mean, these are the things that you have complete control over. So just focus on, on the simple things and everything else will fall into place.
Outro
Rachel Moore: Thanks again to Ankush Gupta for joining us on Event Experience and thank you for listening.
Rachel Moore - Host: If you're enjoying the show, we'd love to hear it. Connect with us on social, and subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you're listening. Also, don't forget to share the show with your colleagues and friends. You can find transcripts of each episode and key takeaways on bizzabo.com/podcast. On behalf of the team, thank you.
Rachel Moore - Host: We'll gather again soon for a new episode of Event Experience. [00:27:00]
