Everything I learned From My Corporate Pop Up at Meta

This week, I just did my FIRST corporate pop up at Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, CA. I’m incredibly thankful and inspired to say the least (and was profitable). In this article, I break down everything I’ve learned from this unique experience. If you're an artist or thinking of outreaching to companies to do corporate pop ups, I hope this is helpful! 

In short, here are the 10 lessons: 

1. Stricter Guidelines
2. Buyer Intent Changes
3. Sidewalk Reassurance
4. Demographics
5. Peak Hours
6. Purchasing Power
7. Tracking KPIs
8. Stock Up on Snacks
9. Browsing Time + Customer Confidence
10. Business Acumen 
11. Bonus: Recommend Others + Retail Strategy 

Section 1: How I got this opportunity

I was scouted, onboarded, and scheduled to pop up. 

My business coach, Kirstie from A Jar of Pickles, told me once that the most important thing when it came to pop up events wasn’t necessarily insane capital gains but instead the LEADS that came from them. 

At a previous market I did in February this year, a second day of the event was cancelled due to bad weather. Although this meant lower profits (still broke even), I was able to meet someone from the Meta amenities team who scouted me as a vendor for their pop up shop! 

After that day, I went through the onboarding process of scheduling, signing, and reviewing documents that went into the pop up vendor recruitment process. 

What exactly did I learn? 

Section 2: Lessons Broken Down

1) Stricter Guidelines: Working with a larger corporation means that security must be really thorough. From checking in, be prepared to provide all information of yourself and your helper.  

• Solo Tabling: While Day 1 I had Moo as my helper (so thankful), Day 2 was solo, which meant aspects like using the restroom or grabbing a snack required the Amenities team to come back to watch my booth. Not bad at all but just felt bad to inconvenience them.
• Load in and Load out: Because of the security, you may have a staff member join you in the loading in and out process to ensure everything goes smoothly + badges are returned properly.
• Layout Preparation: Something that helped me a lot however was having an exact layout provided to me to prepare my tabling and product display strategy. I won’t share the document provided but here was my initial scrappy sketch in the planning process: 

• Internal Promotions: because this is a private corporate event, that meant that I wasn’t able to promote it DURING the event to avoid any miscommunication with public customers being able to enter the corporate campus. Instead, Meta shared the vendor details (sales, photos, brief description) with their staff prior to my pop up. Many people came in with intention and knowledge of my business, which was awesome! 

2) Buyer Intent Changes: In terms of buyer intent, I noticed that with most private events,  people shop based on STAND OUT displays or things that peak their interest. People are there to primarily work and are walking between meetings, meals, or just getting to the office. This intent is different from your typical marketplace environments in which people are there to specifically shop. (I’ve had people at other marketplaces tell me they came with a $500 budget!)

• Leads: It was a common experience for people at this corporate pop up to be interested in the FOLLOW UP experience. For example, I was able to have one commission lead and several customers either follow me or asked about my next event. 

3) Sidewalk Reassurance: A fun detail I noticed were that people felt confident to enter the store if either 1) they fit my customer avatar and were attracted inside 2) they were on a meeting or lunch break and interested 3) there was ANOTHER employee in the store (and they felt encouraged to enter. 

4) Demographics: The primary target audience as you might expect were corporate working professionals, in the typical range of Millenials to Gen X, although this can vary from company to company. There were a few Gen Z interns, this was the minority.

• Kids: However, depending on your product offering, keep in mind that employees with families (daughters, sons, nieces, nephews) will have that intent to purchase for them. Although this happens at marketplaces, this was quite common in this pop up experience.
• Pitch Differences: with this demographic in mind, this audience is more receptive to conversation related to your story, your brand, and spoken in a precise and easy-to-follow way. I had zero issues and positive impressions of my story pitch and short brand pitch (all under 45 seconds). Keep it short and sweet as they know how to market too! 

5) Peak Hours: Keep in mind that traffic will potentially be slower. Private events simply have this dynamic depending on the audience’s activities (in this case work, meetings, lunch, commuting, etc.). Peak hours I found were at lunch time and closer to end of work day when people either 1) knew the pop up was ending and wanted to stop by or 2) were finished with all meetings and had free time. 

6) Purchasing Power: a positive experience with not just this age range but specifically employees from a large corporation like Meta were the purchasing power. Most customers weren’t shy to purchase multiple large items instantly (in interest of time and availability of resource) and were interested in premium or higher ticket offers like acrylic prints, art commissions, or other partnership interests. 

7) Tracking KPIs: Here comes the fun numbers part. As a part of this pop up experience, I had to also track some stats to report back to the Meta Amenities team to help them understand best ways to optimize pop ups for a win-win between sales and traffic flow.

• Sales: the gross sales of each day was documented for their reference. - Order count: the number of orders from each day.
• Traffic: The number of people that ENTERED the store. I didn’t count those who gave a peek but didn’t enter. I was given a clicker to track this!
• Bonus Metrics: I also reported on conversion rates (traffic/order count) and average order value (gross sales/order count) for some extra data for them to have.

8) Stock Up on Snacks: This is a silly one, but I didn’t realize that lunch areas would be closed to vendors, so I made the mistake of not packing a lunch! I ended up taking more snacks than I’m proud of to sustain my energy for the day 😂. Yogurt, coffee, granola bars, you name it LOL.

9) Browsing Time + Customer Confidence: This is a unanimous experience amongst most pop up events, however, a corporate setting implies that people need more browsing time and more nurturing to feel confident in exploring your brand more. I typically allowed for a 10 second viewing, stood up from my checkout table, and asked them if they had any questions. After this, another 7 seconds is perfect before beginning my pitch. “In case you wanted more context of the brand…” and I would give my 30-45 second pitch in a digestible and value-dense way.  

10) Business Acumen: Unsurprisingly, you’ll be faced with customers WELL versed in business jargon. Something I believe is creative businesses must have the craft side and the business side mastered or in-progress of learning to a relatively fluent level. I was surprised when customers approached me and asked “what’s your target demographic?” “give me your unique selling proposition /USP” “did you learn your pitch from a marketing workshop?” Note that this isn’t a negative experience by any means but wildly fascinating to me!

Bonus:

• Recommend Others: A bonus lesson I learned from this experience was that helping the community and having genuine intent is what matters. Were given to give again. I was given this platform from Meta and gave them a follow up list of vendors to reach out to for future pop ups. After working with you, they probably have a positive impression of your business acumen, professionalism, and trust your network more than scouting by intuition. 
• Retail Strategy: another bonus is that as a result of this amazing opportunity to pop up in a brick and mortar style setting, I did my proper research on retail psychology, lighting design, and overall store layout to increase conversions! Generally speaking, I had a solid flow from entrance to checkout that allowed customers to browse, explore, and feel safe if I approached them within the first 45 seconds of entering. 

Section 3: Would I do it again? 

Absolutely! 

I ended up getting a commission client as a lead and had the incredible experience of seeing my business that typically sets up as a 10 x 10 tent into what felt like a DREAM brick and mortar simulation come true. 

I’m incredibly thankful for the Amenities team at Meta for assisting me in this process and for providing this opportunity! 

Being able to talk to customers in this environment was incredibly helpful for my business growth and iteration! 

Let me know in the comments of this blog post what you thought! Have you done a corporate pop up before? What were your experiences? OR have you had a pop up at your company before, what was that like as a customer? 

Email me at notebeans.co@gmail.com with inquiries for collaboration or partnership related questions. 

Cheers! 

Madeline