Most brands waste their events. Here's how not to.

Too many brands throw events because their competitors do. Event strategist Melissa Lee joined us to break down what it actually takes to turn an event into a business lever, and how to measure it when it's over.

From our FOC semimonthly community call  ·  Featuring Melissa Lee, Founder & Event Strategist

Brands don't have an event problem. They have a strategy problem. They show up at a trade show or throw a launch party because someone on the team said "we should do more events," and then six weeks later nobody can explain what it actually did for the business.

Melissa Lee has seen this pattern more times than she can count. She started in corporate events, moved to adtech, then to Timeout Media where she ran brand campaigns across the world, and eventually built her own agency. She joined the FOC community from Mexico City, where she relocated during COVID and never left, to share the framework she uses with every client before a single venue gets booked.

The core idea is simple: start with your business goals and work backwards. The format, the venue, the influencers, the swag all flow from that.

The three roles every event needs

Before getting into KPIs, Melissa made a distinction that most brands miss entirely. There are three roles that need to be filled at any event — and they can all be one person, but they each need to be accounted for:

How to actually measure ROI

This is the conversation most brands avoid because it's uncomfortable, especially when they're not selling product at the event. Melissa's framework buckets ROI into three categories:

Own your event vs. plug into one

Melissa's take on this is nuanced and worth internalizing. The right move depends almost entirely on where you are as a brand.

Early stage: align with larger events and existing communities. You borrow their credibility and their audience. The Trojan campaign Melissa mentioned is a great example — six events across Atlanta, plugging into a chess club, a pickleball club, a game night. Each community already had the exact audience Trojan wanted. The brand didn't have to build the room. They just showed up in the right one.

Scaling stage: start owning your own events. Launch parties, product drops, brand experiences. You control the guest list, the content, the narrative. BPN's Last Man Standing event is the gold standard here: live streamed to tens of thousands, every influencer in the wellness space shooting content, a YouTube documentary that lives forever. They weren't selling anything at the event. They were building a funnel that converted months later when Black Friday hit.

Paid vs. free — settle this debate now

This came up from the community and Melissa was direct about it: free events are harder to execute successfully than most brands expect. You might get 200 RSVPs and 30 people show up. Without skin in the game, attendance is unreliable and the audience quality tends to be lower.

The exception is high-end intimate events for media or influencers where "free" is the point. Exclusivity is the draw, not a ticket price. For everything else, even a small fee signals commitment. The people who pay are the people who actually show up, and they tend to be closer to your real target audience.

The tools worth knowing

A few specific callouts from the conversation that are immediately usable:

• —ManyChat. An interactive Instagram tool that lets you create QR-triggered storytelling flows at events. Someone scans, gets guided through your brand story, and you collect their data in the process. Works before, during, and after the event.
• —Splash. A more customizable alternative to Eventbrite for invites and landing pages. Email marketing is built in and you can actually make it look like your brand.
• —LinkedIn for speakers. Most people who speak at events don't advertise it prominently, so a direct message tends to work. Eric's tip: offer a fireside chat format instead of a formal speech and your yes rate will go up significantly.
• —Post-mortems with brand ambassadors. Not optional. The people working your booth heard every question, every objection, every reaction to your product. That intel is more valuable than any survey. Always build a pre-meeting and post-meeting into your staffing contracts.

What we took away

• —Start with your business goals and work backwards to the event format. Not the other way around.
• —ROI lives in three buckets: brand, business, and relationships. Track all three, especially relationships, which almost nobody tracks.
• —Your team's time is a cost. Put it on the P&L.
• —Early stage: borrow audiences by plugging into existing communities. Scaling: own the room and control the narrative.
• —Virality is designed, not hoped for. Think about the shareable moment before you plan anything else.
• —Charge something. Even a small fee dramatically improves attendance quality and show-up rate.
• —ROI doesn't start and end at the event. Pre-event marketing, on-site activations, and post-event content are all part of the same campaign.

One more thing worth flagging from this call: Eric and the FOC team also launched Founder Connect, a free matching tool for founders, creators, and investors at founderconnect.ai. Nearly a thousand matches made in the first 20 days. If you're looking for partners, investors, or collaborators, it's worth a look.

This recap is from our FOC semimonthly community call. Melissa Lee is the founder of her own event strategy agency. Reach out to her directly if you have events coming up and want to make sure you're getting the ROI out of them.