5 networking tips and tricks from a researcher and small business owner
Editor’s note: Kayte Hamilton is the founder of marketing research and social media engagement company The Social Question.
You’ve probably heard advice before about how networking, specifically through attending conferences, is one of the most important and best ways to promote your business. General tips usually range from connecting with a large quantity of people to being authentic and lots of, in my opinion, extroverted tactics that can feel daunting to someone who is used to communicating with their peers through digital means. And now in a world still learning how to live with COVID-19 and many other viral illnesses, in-person conferences can have a new form of tension added to the mix of big and small personalities in the room.
Conferences and trade shows used to hold a very specific value to an organization’s networking strategy; meet with as many quality decision makers who you could partner with, or nurture existing relationships. I realize I am hyper-generalizing with those two statements. Regardless of why you attend, the truth is that conferences are expensive … registration rates, travel and hotel costs, on top of dollars spent on entertaining. It’s not surprising most companies emphasize the need to see a bottom-line impact and positive ROI to justify attending. The marketing research community is deeply rooted in relationship-based sales after all.
Virtual events and in-person shows have different networking capabilities, despite our best attempts to say otherwise in 2020 and 2021. This time of year, there are often opinion posts about which shows to attend or individuals asking for help on deciding where to go. Each marketing research event has a slightly different emphasis and you need to have a strong point of view on why you want to attend a show in the first place.
Call me a Millennial (spoiler: I am!) but I don’t attend conferences to close sales. As a researcher, I attend to join conversations. Conversations are where relationships ultimately begin and where relationships can flourish. You may have seen my LinkedIn highlight videos that recapped many of the 2022 industry events last year which all started from having conversations with other attendees.
I’d like to share with you five undervalued reasons to show up in-person in 2023.
When at an industry conference, meet people, not faces.
When you are e-mailing with a potential client or peer, you only see their name and get a little bit of context to their personality. When you meet with them in an online conference call, you can now put a name and face together and peel back another layer of who they are. However, when you meet someone in person, you get a fresh perspective on who the other person is on a more human level. And not just their physical traits, though you’ve probably heard statements like “I didn’t know how tall you were.” We make assumptions about people we meet online and on camera, we can’t help it.
When you meet someone at a conference you gain a sense of their confidence and their passion for industry topics. You can read and learn from their body language. You can see where their interests are by the different sessions they attend. You can have a casual conversation about preferring to eat dessert first when you’re in line for cake instead of an entree. The point is, you get to be humans together, for a short period of time, without a meeting timer or agenda. You get to meet people in a professional setting that helps take the pressure off scheduling a meeting just to talk with them and can have more natural introductory conversations.
Use conference time to shake up your routine.
There’s an ongoing debate happening in and outside our industry: go back to the office or keep with remote working … or what about a hybrid solution? Regardless of where you work, attending conferences and trade shows break up your daily routine. We sometimes need a break to walk away and be more intentional with our business ideas or research strategies. Attending industry events is a break from the energy-draining e-mail reality we’ve become accustomed to. Walking away for a few days from that steady stream of communication can be stressful if you aren’t intentional with your time away from your desk.
Before attending a show, I encourage you to do the following:
- Tell people you’ll be attending said show.
- Add the dates of the show to your e-mail signature a week or two before the event.
- Remind colleagues that you will be unavailable on certain dates.
- Add an out of office reply to further communicate your lag in responses.
All of that is sound advice before heading into the event, but don’t forget to turn off your phone notifications when you arrive. Embrace the temporary disruption to your regularly scheduled programming.
It’s not much of a change in your routine if you are still doing your routine … in a ballroom.
Take advantage of immersive experiences at a marketing research conference and use them as inspiration.
Once you’ve come to terms with a temporary e-mail break up, I highly encourage you to embrace the networking experience. Part of turning off your phone alerts means you are not distracted and can appreciate the information sharing and discussions happening around you.
This feels completely unnatural, I get it. Being uncomfortable is often when we allow ourselves to grow, even if just a little bit.
One of my key strategies for attending sessions is to mix up the ones you are naturally drawn to, the ones that make the most sense for your line of work with content that is new to you or slightly out of your comfort zone.
When I listen to or learn about new material it often energizes me to make a new consideration about my own research methodologies. Reality check: you’re at a market research event, most presentations aren’t going to be completely out of view. Regardless of your research niche, check out the schedule ahead of time to hold yourself accountable to going to a new-to-you presentation. You never know who you’ll meet or what you’ll learn; sometimes the best ideas come from unexpected places.
In-person market research conferences provide face-to-face exposure to industry peers.
Listen, it’s a fact that the marketing research industry can sometimes feel like a small community. Suppliers and clients all circle similar events and methodologies. What is equally powerful about this same fact is the level of recommendations that naturally occur to those who participate and engage. This may be an unconventional perspective; I consider my attendance and referrals as deposits to my own personal karma bank.
The more people you meet, the more conversations you can have and the more likely someone is going to talk about you in their following meetings. As long as you are reciprocating the referral wheel, the degrees of separation will get smaller and smaller.
Move your body.
This is meant to be a good thing.
Despite the positive associations with literally moving your body, I must caveat this last tip and implore you to wear comfortable shoes. It’s highly likely you’ll be on your feet a lot depending on the venue and event layout. If that means you’re staffing a booth you may be literally standing for hours at a time which can be a shock to someone who’s usually sitting at their desk. Even as an attendee, sitting up and down and walking back and forth can do a number on your knees and back.
The first couple of shows I attended in 2022 I learned this lesson the hard way. While I was excited to wear something other than a Zoom outfit, I underestimated how out of practice I was balancing in heels or much tighter my shoes had become.
I’ve since learned to pack extra bandaids and a backup pair of walkable shoes to nearly every event. Bonus points if you have a watch or wearable that counts your steps – your weekly averages are likely to have some jumps after pacing the ballroom floor a few times.
Bonus tip: As cliché as it sounds, go to events where you are comfortable. Literally and figuratively. With ongoing health concerns, I am still someone who wears a mask during most events. I avoid shaking hands. I bring back-up hand sanitizer and wash my hands before meals. These actions aren’t perfect and despite being incredibly self-conscious, I have never felt unwelcome by other attendees by doing any of these small acts. They are what I need to do to feel safe in what can be risky situations.