68% of US Google searches now end without a single click, which means event SEO as you learned it is quietly breaking. If your discovery plan still depends on getting somebody onto your website, that is a problem nobody has budgeted for.

Laura Davidson ran a search agency for a decade and she is blunt about what is happening: the touchpoints have collapsed. Someone asks an AI, gets one answer, believes they have done thorough research, and registers. Her argument is that this is not new marketing at all. It is a return to something much older, and the event brands that already invested in being known are the ones it rewards.

In this one:

• What zero-click search actually means for event marketing, and the two metrics her team watches now that attribution is breaking

• Why a B2B buyer is only in market roughly 5% of the year, and what to do during the other 95%

• The one question that decides whether your event gets funded, and why a well-known bad event beats an unknown good one

• What connected TV and ChatGPT ads really cost, and whether an event marketing budget can actually reach them

• The ambassador program setup that cut cost per acquisition by 49% on a single creator video, and the contract clause that makes it work

If you are heading into budget season with a number you are not sure you can defend, start here.

Mentioned in this episode

• Zero-click search study, SparkToro via Similarweb clickstream data: Search Engine Land coverage

About the guest

Laura Davidson spent 14 years running paid search and paid media for global trade shows before selling her agency to Freeman, which means she is watching the collapse of click-based measurement from inside the discipline it disrupts. She now leads digital at mdg. She has also produced her own events, which is why her advice sounds like someone who has been on both sides of the invoice.

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

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.

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.

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.