Conversations, Not Koozies: My Approach to Events, Branding & Long-Term ROI
I was recently a guest on the Unscripted SEO Podcast with Jeremy Rivera and we got into a detailed conversation about the intersection of event marketing, personal branding, and digital strategies. Here’s the best quotes from the interview, useful take-aways, and then a detailed walk through of the conversation which covers how to leverage event marketing, creating memorable events, and gimmick free marketing with in-person events.
Useful Quotes
"In my view, I believe anything that you do for your business is an event when it's forward-facing." - Marisa Cali
"If you're not listening to what people are saying, then what they're going to hear is your verbal vomit." - Marisa Cali
"Everyone is looking for an experience. You have to tap into that emotional feeling like I got something from this, and that doesn't necessarily mean something tangible." - Marisa Cali
"I feel like I'm a business therapist. People are coming to me like I have a problem, and they understand that if they explain it to me, I might be able to provide them a solution." - Marisa Cali
Key Takeaways
Events as year-round marketing: Rather than viewing events as isolated moments, consider them part of a holistic marketing strategy with ongoing touchpoints throughout the year. According to Cvent's 2025 Trends report, event planners should focus on "extending the shelf life of your event" by repurposing content and maintaining engagement beyond the event itself.
Adjacent events are becoming a major trend, with companies hosting sponsored happy hours or dinners alongside major conferences instead of just having a booth. Research shows "field marketing events are on the rise" with 75% of small in-person events being executed in the field, according to Cvent.
Personal branding doesn't have to be gimmicky - authenticity matters more than having a catchy nickname or logo plastered everywhere. In fact, Copy Posse notes that "86% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brand to like and support."
Emotional intelligence is crucial at trade shows to differentiate between casual browsers and serious prospects.
Digital presence should mirror real-world offerings - if you're staging high-end events, your online presence should reflect that same level of quality.
Focus on fewer, higher-quality social platforms rather than trying to maintain a presence everywhere and doing it poorly.
Defining Events in Modern Marketing
Jeremy: So tell us who you are and what you're really excited about in this season.
Marisa: My name is Marisa Cali. I am the CEO, energy giver, AI, everything behind Be Present Events. I specialize in events strategy & execution, both virtual and in person. We do help leaders plan and execute events from workshops to executive leadership workshops or conferences and also virtual events.
In my view, I believe anything that you do for your business is an event when it's forward-facing.
Jeremy: I've done the conference thing a couple of times and yeah, there was definitely the bowl of candy folks, but we did a beer pong for money. That was our most successful version. It's always kind of a gamesmanship thing of how can you best lure people who are otherwise wandering around this event floor to come and talk to you so you get that chance to pitch.
Marisa: Yeah, and there does require some emotional intelligence to figure out who that person is. I think sales and marketing is very intertwined. And if you're not listening to what people are saying, then what they're going to hear is your verbal vomit, right?
You kind of have to learn how to navigate that. A lot of people will think, okay, maybe the beer pong was great for that audience. And they'll put it into somewhere else and it doesn't resonate. It could be very simple as like color coordinated shirts or a shirt that sparks conversation.
Jeremy: Yeah, like this. I just noticed that this shirt is a Wistia shirt that I got at inbound in Boston when I went to the conference. So some things stick around and some things stick out.
The Emotional Intelligence of Event Marketing
Jeremy: SEO has had kind of a forced renaissance with how Google has been re-ranking things and devaluing sites that don't have enough brand signals. And I'm a big proponent of engaging in the community and creating events. But it's also about an awareness of brand in what your messaging is to people.
Marisa: Right, exactly. Yeah, they have to align. You can't have someone who is selling a tech product that's heavy on AI and then say that we also care really a lot about our environment, because there will be people that will say, will never use your product because it's damaging to the environment.
I think a lot of people, especially salespeople, they're really good at what they sell, but then they don't know how to blend it into the marketing and branding side. They know their product really good, but they don't have the outside perspective to give them new ideas of how to combat that at a trade show where someone's just like, don't wanna talk to you, don't care, I know you're gonna sell me something.
Beyond One-Off Events: Building Year-Round Engagement
Jeremy: I'd be interested to hear, aside from conferences, what are some smaller venues, smaller time, smaller commitment, let's call them achievable events for brands and businesses that you've seen or executed on that most people wouldn't jump to?
Marisa: Yeah, so a big trend that's happening at the bigger events are adjacent events. So let's say you go to Inbound and someone is gonna have like a sponsored happy hour or a dinner. So instead of going to the show and spending thousands of dollars...But also outside. And that doesn't necessarily need to be two or three days before it can be a year long thing. An example that I have with a client, there's two signature events in person. There's also a membership style slack community throughout the year. There's virtual events that bring that community together.
Jeremy: That's interesting, because instead of thinking of events as just like flash in the pan, you're really talking about leveraging that as a long-term marketing funnel. You're trying to generate a community aspect of getting them into a place where they're giving you their information and tacitly saying market to me, but also somewhere where you can build community.
I love the idea of creating like a Slack channel that connects to these marketing events so that you can follow up later and offer additional resources that move them down the funnel. Because ultimately in SEO, in marketing in general, not everybody, it's like 3% are transactionally ready at that moment. So there's that 97% of time where they will eventually or probably might.
Marisa: Yeah, I think years ago it was like seven maybe five to seven touches and then they're ready to buy now. It's probably like 15-20 because of all the extra channels that we have to reach out and all the extra noise, especially if you're in a high ticket or your event is a little more high touch.
Creating Memorable Experiences at Events
Jeremy: I was just speaking yesterday with the guys from Majestic Photo Booth and they have like a super fancy photo booth they rent out, they've got like a venue placement partnership thing where venue owners can have a booth. Are the physical things that you're looking for as an event planner in that space, whether it's like a photo booth or a shrimp bar, like what are the things that you're looking at to tie that messaging in?
Marisa: Yeah, it's a good question, because I think everyone is looking for an experience.
It could be a hug. I find myself just my personality and the people that I hang around with. I feel like I'm a business therapist. Like people are coming to me like I have a problem and they understand that if they explain it to me, I might be able to provide them a solution.
We have a partner that is like an agency, and we go to different shows and what we offer instead of something tangible like a koozie or piece of candy, we offer our personal branding lab sessions.
“Everyone that is in business is a personal brand... We offer personal branding consultations. We go through their LinkedIn. Sometimes we go through their social media, depending on the industry... And we give them advice.”
They almost walk away like, okay, like I'm either on the right track or I need to step it up and these are some small little things that I can do. That's not something tangible and that is an experience for someone because they leave thinking they got something from it in terms of knowledge.
Personal Branding Without the Gimmicks
Jeremy: That makes sense, because there are dozens and dozens of real estate agents in Clearwater. So there is that aspect of actually finding a way to activate the personal branding. I think I'd be curious, how do you leaven that with not getting realtoritis and having a big picture of yourself with giant hair?
I saw this billboard. My favorite was "everything we touch turns to sold." We had a real estate agent friend and she was like, I make cupcakes. So why don't I be the cupcake realtor? And I'm like, Sweetheart, you need to do some Google searches on that phrase because I think you would get some definite clientele, but I think they might be expecting a little bit different piece of real estate.
Marisa: Something else. Yes, exactly. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be a brand, so to say. If they like cupcakes, they can still be Marisa Cali who likes to make cupcakes, but it doesn't have to be the cupcake realtor, right?
It could just be, your branding is you're always at a cupcake shop or you host events at cupcake shops or every event that you have, you give a cupcake thing, but it doesn't have to be branded in terms of like a trademark or a tagline.
Jeremy: That's a good point. There's this concept of like, my brand is my logo and my logo has a platypus. So I need a platypus costume and I need platypus business cards and a platypus shaped car and a platypus shaped business and all of these platypus logos everywhere. But that's not branding.
Yeah, it's like a car dealership like Major World. You don't have to have like the Uncle Sam costume every single day. Like your brand can be, we don't hard pitch you as you step in the door. You know, like that can be a brand, but you don't have to have like a shark net and like spears and everything.
Marisa: Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of people will do that. They're starting out, okay, I have to have a brand. And it's like, just start talking to people. It'll come to you.
Online-Offline Brand Alignment
Jeremy: So I'm curious if you think this is valid. I've talked with several different CEOs about the through the looking glass representation of businesses versus online. And so you'll have what you do in the real world needs to be mirrored in what's presented or available or findable online.
So that means if you're staging up photo booths for Gucci, then you can't have a one-page website built on GeoCities. How do you talk to your clients to make sure that what they're doing is represented online?
Marisa: Yeah, going back to the touches, you have to think about where is your audience going to get the information? And then if they get the information, make sure it's correct.
There's this analysis paralysis of 'I have to change my whole website but I'm offering this new thing now'... and they just don't do it.
It's like, I gotta update all of these platforms. But also providing, when you're at the event, maybe providing a way for people to actually go to the right channel.
Now you have Substack, you have an email marketing campaign, you have TikTok, you have YouTube, all these other platforms. And I think people are like, we're everywhere, go find us.
On my website, I'll only do LinkedIn and Instagram. Or if I want people to connect with me on LinkedIn, I'll just put LinkedIn. Even though I have all the other platforms, they're just not built out in a way that represents who I would work with.
Platform-Specific Engagement Strategies
Jeremy: And it's also like each platform, people are going there for different purposes and you engage in that network, in that platform differently. Like Instagram is very different from threads, where you have like Instagram, you're just projecting and putting this stuff out and hope that somebody likes. There isn't even an option to directly link to stuff.
Versus threads is very like, Dear algorithm, I would like to be connected with left-handed sheep herders who are interested in making yogurt huts in the middle of the desert in the Sahara. Let's work together, team.
And then X is like Twitter users and they are there for their specific community and they're stuck because everybody like SEO is like that. There's a stubborn SEO community but if you jump into it, like I tried creating a new account and it's a desert, it's hard to find the right community there.
Marisa: Yeah, it's a good reminder. I'm getting stuff in my thread feed that's related to something that I'm not necessarily trying to transition out of but I'm not branding myself as a live stream producer. I've done it for years. I did it mostly during COVID because all these people needed virtual event help.
That came into my feed this morning. And then I realized, well, like I could respond to this person as helping them, but my website has nothing about it anymore, really, cause I want to shift into this new thing.
Instead of thinking my god, this is someone I could work with because look they need what I can offer, just being okay with like not necessarily saying yes to everything because there's a reason why you've switched or you want to focus on something else. Yeah, we'll align if we align, but it ends up not working out if you force it too much.
The Freelance Balancing Act
Jeremy: Yeah, if you're too hungry, you know, like it is hard that freelance life of like, it's feast or famine and I either have, I've Ahabed and I've got my whale and I've got all everything tied up in it and then they're gone. So there is that kind of challenge as a freelancer in my experience of keeping enough on your plate, keeping your pipeline flowing.
Marisa: Yes, no, and I don't know about you, but the slow season is like November, December, some of January, right? Because people are like, it's holidays. I don't want to think about any work or pay you for anything because it's the end of the year.
It's a reminder for me. Because I set a reminder when I am in busy season, which is right now, April, May, June, July, to reconnect with those people that may have dropped off that really wanted to connect and do something in the early part of the year, but for whatever reason, it didn't work out.
The business cycle is not fast. I'm not talking to you and then tomorrow we're working together always. There's vetting, there's trust that needs to be built, there's how can you really help me? And that takes time.
Marketing for "Boring" Industries
Jeremy: Just two more questions. One is, I'm always curious how people approach boring industries. We have a device that saves 50% on your restaurant oil, or CPR classes… Boring. I mean, it's not a new car or a luxury vacation right? So what do you do for boring industries to kind of help in their marketing when obviously the niche itself is not going to be super engaging?
Marisa: So I always, when it comes to something very niche, I had a client for like six years. They were in medical manufacturing. So it's like for periodontists and dermatologists. It's glue you use in surgeries in your mouth. So this is not exciting for most people, but people that use the product are excited to share it because it's an innovative thing for that industry.
In a boring industry... I would say lean on the super fans that actually already use the product and find ways that you can create real videos.
So they created some visual content, but then we leaned into like the trade show side, having a decent presence there. Really leaning into those people that already use it and they have a network. Leveraging those people versus trying to get one person or two people that might see it on social.
That's the hardest part because it might not be the actual person using the oil that's seeing it on social, but it might be their office manager. So you don't know, you have to kind of say, okay, well, how do we navigate this?
What's Next for Marisa Cali
Jeremy: Last question is, what's coming up for you next? Where can people find you?
Marisa: Yeah, I'm actually working on finalizing details for a retreat that I have in January. So this is for mostly women entrepreneurs. It's boutique style. We're going to have about 12 people. We're going to do that business therapy basically.
What are you intending to do for your business? Now a lot of people will think, 'okay, well I do accounting or I am an aesthetician. I'm good.' Yeah, but okay, what's next? Like, what's your five-year plan and how can we set you up?
That's my Aligned and Affirmed Winter Retreat in January. It'll be in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And if you want info, you can go to the Retreat Interest page nd fill out the form and you'll get all the info.
