EVENT ABOUT IT: Event Marketing, Strategy & Business Growth

Megan Martin
  • 5.0 (13)
  • Marketing
  • Updated Weekly

Struggling to make events drive business growth? Welcome to Event About It, the podcast for event-led growth. Hosted by Megan Martin, we ditch surface-level logistics for the high-stakes event strategy and event marketing your CEO, CMO, and CRO actually cares about. We blend actionable tactics with wild, backstage stories to ensure your next activation is a strategic powerhouse, not just a party. Join us every Friday: • 1st/3rd: Event strategy, stories and “Vent of the Week.” • 2nd/4th: The Aftershow—unfiltered truths & Dynamic Dialogue Stop guessing. Start growing.

  1. 6d ago

    Should You Gate Your Event Agenda or Give It Away?

    Gating your agenda is one of the most common moves in B2B event strategy. According to today’s guest, it is also click bait. Laura Davidson has run more than 2,000 event campaigns a year across more than 40 countries, which means she has watched this exact decision play out at a scale almost nobody in this industry has access to. Her argument is that your agenda is the single most discoverable asset your event owns, and locking it behind a form costs you far more than the email addresses it collects. Especially now that buyers are asking an AI before they ask Google. Then we made her rule on seven more event marketing tactics most teams run on autopilot. In this one: Why gating your event agenda works against you in AI search, and what to publish instead The one paid channel she says event marketers should stop buying entirely, and where that budget belongs How many brand touches it actually takes before somebody registers for a B2B event, and why your campaign plan assumes a smaller number Why the "last chance to register" email should go out four separate times, and the one thing that has to change in each send The reason every trade show ad looks identical, and what the events pulling ahead are doing instead If you are building next year’s campaign plan right now, this is the 18 minutes that will change two line items in it. About the guest Laura Davidson has spent 14 years running paid media for some of the largest trade shows and conferences in the world, at a volume that means she has watched the same mistakes repeat across more than 40 countries. She built Tag Digital out of Glasgow with her husband, sold it to Freeman, and now leads digital at mdg. She is unusually willing to tell you which of your tactics are wasting money. Connect with Laura Davidson and Tag Digital: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lauratagdigital mdg, a Freeman company: mdg.agency Instagram: @tagdigitalglobal About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She’s the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. In it, Laura breaks down what replaces the click now that 68% of searches end without one, and what actually decides whether your event gets funded. Send this episode to the demand gen lead who still thinks the agenda is a lead magnet.

  2. Sep 25 ·  Bonus

    Can You Vibe Code Your Way to Real Event Technology?

    The honest answer is no. And the person telling you that actually built it. Huong Nguyen spent 13 years running a multi-million dollar events agency before she started building Aletheia, an AI platform for event operations. She tried the vibe coding route first. She knows exactly where it breaks, what it costs when it does, and what the real gap is between a one-time AI workflow and a scalable event tech product. Her advice: do it for fun. Just do not do it for your actual program. That's one of six conversations in this Aftershow. We also got into how she built a seven-figure client roster for 10 years without a LinkedIn presence, a $500K contract she landed at 24 by working for free first, and what she now understands about event tech vendors that she didn't before she became one. In this one: Why vibe coding gets you a prototype and leaves you with a maintenance problem — and what it actually takes to scale event technology across different program types and budgets How 10 years of building an agency without a personal brand generated more client retention and referrals than most visible founders ever see What a non-technical founder with no coding background actually does when she decides to build event tech — and what breaks first The one question every event planner should ask in a vendor demo that almost nobody thinks to ask until they're already locked into a contract If you are currently evaluating event tech, thinking about building your own, or wondering whether being less visible is costing you business — this is the one. The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious. About Huong Nguyen Huong Nguyen is the 2x CEO and founder of Shiloh Events and Aletheia, an AI-powered intelligence platform for event operations. She co-founded Zoomtopia and spent 13 years producing enterprise tech events for Zoom, Microsoft, Samsung, LG, Uber, and Google without ever building a personal brand. In 2023 she surfaced, started climbing, and started building. She is still doing all three. Connect with Huong: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mshuongnguyen/ Aletheia: https://aletheia.events/ Shiloh Events: https://shiloh-events.com/ About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): https://msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: https://msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious.

  3. Sep 18

    Should Your Event Team Report to Demand Gen Instead of Marketing?

    Most event teams are filed under marketing and measured on attendance. That's not a strategy problem. That's a reporting structure problem — and it's costing you pipeline. Huong Nguyen has produced enterprise tech events for 13 years: NASA to ServiceNow to co-founding Zoomtopia. She knows what events look like when they're treated as a logistics function, and she knows what they look like when they're wired into demand gen. The difference is not effort. It's where the team sits and what they're held accountable for. Plus: the vent nobody in the industry talks about out loud — what happens to your F&B and room block when your client has surprise layoffs and the hotel won't budge. And yes, she's the one who moved an entire conference to a parking lot overnight after the pipes burst mid-keynote. In this one: Why demand gen — not marketing — is the right home for your event team, and the one game answer that makes the case in under 10 seconds How to negotiate hotel contracts that protect you when your client's headcount gets cut without warning (the clause most planners skip until the F&B bill lands) The event insurance line item most planners overlook until it's too late — and the AV equipment bill that proves it Why designing for emotion first and logistics second isn't a soft strategy. It's the pipeline strategy B2B event teams are still missing. If your event team is still reporting into a marketing org that measures success in badge scans, this is the conversation to send up the chain. Subscribe so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops — that's where Huong gets into what it actually cost to build Aletheia and what every planner thinking about vibe coding their own event tech needs to hear first. Send this to the event leader who's still trying to prove ROI in a marketing meeting instead of a demand gen one. About Huong Nguyen Huong Nguyen is the 2x CEO and founder of Shiloh Events — 13 years producing large-scale enterprise tech events for Zoom, Microsoft, Samsung, LG, Uber, and Google — and Aletheia, an AI-powered intelligence platform for event operations. She co-founded Zoomtopia, produced events for NASA, and grew Shiloh from zero to multi-million dollar revenue in three years. She named her company Shiloh, Hebrew for peace. She is now building the technology to deliver it. Connect with Huong: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mshuongnguyen/ Aletheia: https://aletheia.events/ Shiloh Events: https://shiloh-events.com/ About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): https://msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: https://msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. Next week Huong and Megan get into what it actually costs to build event tech from scratch — and why vibe coding isn't the shortcut planners think it is. Send this to the event leader who's still trying to prove ROI in a marketing meeting instead of a demand gen one.

  4. Sep 11 ·  Bonus

    Which Four Numbers Do Executives Actually Want From Your Event?

    Six hundred registrations is not an answer. The first thing a CRO wants to know is which logos are in the room, and most event leaders cannot answer that without asking for time to go look. This is not a recap of the main episode. This is the meeting that rewrote our guest's entire career, told in full. Sara Ann Straw walked in with a binder, a highlighter, and a registration count. She walked out with an $80 million pipeline target attached to her event and no idea how to hit it. What she did in the weeks after that meeting is the actual lesson, and it is more repeatable than it sounds. In this one: Bring the four data points executives consistently ask for: who is in the room by account tier, what percentage have open opportunities, which accounts are up for renewal in the next six months, and how many attendees are repeats from last year Find out why one event leader lost a director role after three flawless product launches, and what the person who got the job did instead Get the Strategy, Alignment, Scale framework, including why scale means consistency rather than running more events See the real math on pulling a fragmented event org under one roof, including the $130,000 a year one team stopped spending on an agency Sit in on an honest conversation about pricing anxiety, discounting people you like, and what nearly 20 years of experience is actually worth per hour There is also a Bravo break, a Bethenny Frankel story that got someone's father genuinely concerned, and a real debate about whether Montana deserves a Housewives franchise. If your next executive review is on the calendar and you are still building the deck around attendance, listen to the first ten minutes before you touch another slide. About the guest: Sara Ann Straw has spent nearly two decades building and rebuilding global event organizations at high-growth tech companies, usually by pulling field, partner, webinar, and corporate events under one roof. She learned to speak executive the hard way, in a meeting where she could not answer why her own company was investing in its own event. Her book, The Experienced Executive, is the version of that lesson she wishes someone had handed her at the start. Find Sara: Website: saraannstraw.com Book: The Experienced Executive — https://a.co/d/07Rit5wG Podcast: Solo Travel Woman, on Spotify LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saras23/ About Your Host: Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going: The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious.

  5. Sep 4

    The Event ROI Question Every CRO Asks and Nobody Preps For

    Most event teams are not badly run. They are badly wired. Three teams doing the same job in three different directions, and the event ROI conversation never actually happens because nobody owns it. This episode runs a live diagnostic on that wiring. Ten real decisions event teams make every week, sorted in real time into executor thinking or executive thinking, with a guest, Sara Ann Straw, who has walked into fractured global event organizations and rebuilt them from the inside. One of her calls is going to annoy you. She is also right about it. In this one: Run your own week through ten real scenarios and see which side of the executor and executive line you are actually operating on Stop carrying a contingency line you have not questioned in five years, and know exactly what to interrogate instead Learn what executives actually want from registration pacing, which is not the registration number and not the segment breakdown Understand why a lead that sits longer than 24 hours loses roughly a third of its conversion rate, and what that does to the marketing and sales blame cycle Hear what happens when your production partner walks six weeks before a 2,000-person sales kickoff, and why "vendor" versus "partner" is a budget decision, not a vocabulary preference If you are walking into budget season with a number you cannot defend, this is the one to start with. The diagnostic takes ten minutes and it will tell you something uncomfortable. About the guest: Sara Ann Straw has spent nearly two decades building and rebuilding global event organizations at high-growth tech companies, usually by pulling field, partner, webinar, and corporate events under one roof. She learned to speak executive the hard way, in a meeting where she could not answer why her own company was investing in its own event. Her book, The Experienced Executive, is the version of that lesson she wishes someone had handed her at the start. Find Sara: Website: www.saraannstraw.com Book: The Experienced Executive — https://a.co/d/07Rit5wG Podcast: Solo Travel Woman, on Spotify LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saras23/ About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. That one is the full story of the meeting where a CRO asked why the company was investing in its own event, and the answer was "because I was told to." Send this episode to the event leader on your team who is excellent at the wrong thing and has not been told yet.

  6. Aug 21

    Event Creator Programs: Are You Paying for Reach, Content, or Influence?

    Every event on the circuit is running some version of the same program right now. Comp the badge, comp the flight, comp the hotel, get content in return. Suddenly the registration list has "creators" on it, and almost nobody in the room agreed on what that word actually means, or what they're paying for when they use it. The quick answer: a content creator asks what to post this week. A thought leader asks what only they can say. An influencer asks whether their audience will buy what's being shared. Three different jobs, three different payoffs. Most hosted creator programs in the events industry never decide which one they're actually hiring for, and that's the expensive mistake this episode is built to fix.  This is a solo episode, no guest this time, built around a distinction Megan couldn't stop thinking about after her own turn inside Cvent CONNECT's first hosted creator program. It pulls in growth executive Elena Verna's writing on the "operator" path versus borrowed authority, breaks down where creators, thought leaders, and influencers genuinely overlap, and then puts Megan's own campaign data on the table, including the one post that outperformed everything else in her lineup for reasons that had nothing to do with strategy. What you'll learn: Why "content creator," "thought leader," and "influencer" are three different jobs with three different goals, and why most event budgets quietly default to the easiest one to measure instead of the one that actually moves the business The three questions to ask before you build or join an event creator program, so you know whether you're buying reach, content, or influence What happened when Megan's own Cvent CONNECT wifi failed and accidentally proved the entire thesis of this episode, with the real numbers: her best post pulled six times her next-best result and roughly a third of all her campaign engagement Why a niche, relevant audience routinely outperforms a massive, unengaged one, and what that means for how you evaluate who to bring into your event's creator program The honest goal nobody wants to say out loud when they build one of these programs, and why saying it plainly beats dressing it up as "community" or "creator partnerships" This episode connects directly back to event-led growth: how event budget decisions, event marketing ROI, and B2B event strategy actually hold up once real campaign data gets put next to the pitch. If you've ever approved, built, or been comped into an event creator program, this is the episode that tells you what you were really buying. About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going Subscribe to Event About It so you don't miss what's coming next. Send this episode to the marketing leader who just signed off on a creator or influencer program and still isn't sure what they're actually getting for it.

  7. Aug 14 ·  Bonus

    The Event Content Lifecycle Nobody Teaches You

    Everyone talks about the agenda. Almost nobody talks about what happens before the venue is even booked, or what happens to that content a full year after the show wraps. In this Aftershow, we get into the parts of event content strategy that don't make it into most conversations: how sponsored sessions actually get negotiated, why celebrity keynotes mostly fail, and the one connection that made an Olympic-themed keynote at Tableau Conference actually work. If you caught the main episode, you already know why Stephanie Wells is the person you call when your event has sessions but no strategy. In the Aftershow, we go past the headlines and into the operating system behind it. What You'll Learn: What a full event content lifecycle actually looks like when next year's planning starts while this year's event is still running Why "back pocket allocations" exist and how they save a content strategy when a company acquisition drops two weeks before an event How to balance sponsored content against owned sessions without turning the agenda into a string of sales pitches The real reason most celebrity keynotes fall flat, and the one Tableau used that didn't What to measure in a post-event report if you actually want your C-suite to fund next year's budget Guest bio: Stephanie Wells has spent over 20 years building content strategy for Microsoft, Salesforce, Tableau, and Workday. She's a founding member of the Event Content Council and most recently spent two years inside hands-on training at Skillable. This fall she's launching Gold Heart Events, specializing in event content, strategy, and operations. Connect with Stephanie: LinkedIn: Stephanie Wells Website: goldheartevents.net (launching fall 2026) The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious. About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit

  8. Aug 7

    Wi-Fi Disaster That Broke The Event Strategy

    Picture this: a dozen rooms, 200 attendees, a paid hands-on training session everyone showed up specifically for, and the Wi-Fi just... dies. Not for five minutes. For hours. Turns out the culprit wasn't the venue's internet at all, it was a stranger walking the floor with a pocket microwave sucking up bandwidth. This week's guest lived it, owned it in front of her entire leadership team, and turned it into one of the biggest lessons of her career. Stephanie Wells has spent 20+ years building the content strategy behind some of the biggest tech conferences on the planet, Microsoft, Salesforce, Tableau, Workday, to name a few. She's a founding member of the Event Content Council, just wrapped two years embedded inside the world of hands-on training, and this fall she's launching her own firm, Gold Heart Events. She's also the person you call when your event has sessions but no strategy, and this conversation is exactly why. What You'll Learn: Why an event content strategy needs to exist before the venue contract gets signed, not after The real story behind a hands-on training Wi-Fi outage that took down a paid conference session, and what it taught an entire leadership team about contingency planning Why AI-written session titles are quietly making every conference sound the same, and what that's costing attendee loyalty The "Scope or Nope" test for deciding what actually belongs in your event content plan How to build a content repurposing strategy before the agenda is even finalized This episode covers the real mechanics of event content strategy: what belongs in scope, what gets cut, and why event ROI depends on decisions made months before anyone signs a venue contract. Stephanie makes the case that content should be first out the gate and last to leave, ahead of sponsors, ahead of venues, ahead of everything. Guest bio: Stephanie Wells has spent over 20 years building content strategy for Microsoft, Salesforce, Tableau, and Workday. She's a founding member of the Event Content Council and most recently spent two years inside hands-on training at Skillable. This fall she's launching Gold Heart Events, specializing in event content, strategy, and operations. Connect with Stephanie: LinkedIn: Stephanie Wells: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-wells-6930325/ Website: goldheartevents.net (launching fall 2026) Instagram: @gold_heart_events Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. We're going deeper into the full event content lifecycle, from venue contract to post-event report, plus where celebrity keynotes and sponsored sessions actually earn their spot on the agenda. Send this episode to the event planner still finalizing the agenda before anyone's touched the content strategy. Keep laughing, keep growing, and keep eventing about it. About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit

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Struggling to make events drive business growth? Welcome to Event About It, the podcast for event-led growth. Hosted by Megan Martin, we ditch surface-level logistics for the high-stakes event strategy and event marketing your CEO, CMO, and CRO actually cares about. We blend actionable tactics with wild, backstage stories to ensure your next activation is a strategic powerhouse, not just a party. Join us every Friday: • 1st/3rd: Event strategy, stories and “Vent of the Week.” • 2nd/4th: The Aftershow—unfiltered truths & Dynamic Dialogue Stop guessing. Start growing.

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