8 Tips for Successful Conference
Marketing
01. Identify and focus upon the intended audience.
Current customers should be your priority. It is a fact that investments made towards
customer retention are 5 times more profitable than investments made towards
customer acquisition!
02. Gather the right business intelligence in advance.
Know the “big picture” but also go deep into understanding how the event fits into your
on-the-ground sales picture. Work with individual sales teams – defined by region,
product or service – to understand their goals and challenges. Identify the strong
opportunities. From this you will be much closer in determining what attributes will fuel
overall success.
03. Develop a simple, but focused, conference messaging strategy, e.g.
 What is new about the company, products and/or services?
 What defines you and your products, solutions and/or services?
 Communicate why your customers love you, and select you over the competition.
Note: By being focused and keeping things simple, you will allow your message to stand out
against the background noise found through other vendors and competitors, likely
‘unfocused’ messaging.
04. Have a solid idea of what you want to accomplish and plan accordingly.
 Define your core goals in advance
 Build product presentation scripts and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse!
 Communicate goals and scripts with all members of the attending team, via
mandatory training that is held in advance of the conference
 Have all meetings, attendees, contact information and schedules confirmed, written
down and included within the conference information pack that you’ll circulate, with
all of your team, in advance of attending.
www.proxivision.net/blog info@proxivision.net

05. Keep an eye, and an ear, towards what the competition is doing.
What message are they promoting?

What kind of influencers are they engaging?

How are they positioning their products, solutions or services against yours - and other

players - within your field?
Note: Understanding your competitor’s strategy and communications approach should
enable you to define messaging that differentiates you from the pack, and delivers a
compelling overall message, about your organization, with your intended audience.
06. Create an environment that stimulates participation at your booth.
For anyone that has ever attended a conference the size of CES, NAB, IBC you’ll know what I
mean when I call it a zoo! Fatigue often sets in rapidly, mostly commonly in the forms of
sensory overload, sore legs, ankles and especially feet! My suggestion is that you create an
area(s) (depending on your budget) that allows for private seated meetings, refreshments,
enclosed and calm presentation environment(s) with comfortable seating (I cannot stress
seating enough)! It is also a very good idea to provide at least one computer terminal for
people to check the internet/email; you’ll be surprised on how many people will take
advantage of this amenity. If you have a more limited budget, I suggest that rather than
have a booth at the convention floor, instead rent a penthouse at one of the nicer hotels.
This provides you with an environment to invite your core customers for private
viewings/meetings over breakfast or lunch, conduct reseller and partner training sessions,
and in the evening provides an ideal space for cocktails with potential customers and
members of the press. A final idea that I have utilized with great success has been through
hosting a wine bar with cheese and biscuits during the last 30 minutes of each show day;
and holding a raffle for participants that return with a post-presentation (received during
the day) ticket. This stimulates precious one-on-one time, where you get to know your
customers and they get to know you. I first tried this in 1999, and have been amazed to see
just how many other companies have employed this tactic, with much success, since.
07. Have a plan for measurement and stick to it!
Identify several key areas that you are able to consistently measure against e.g. attendees
at booth, lead generated, leads to sales ratio, how quickly did leads transition into sales?
By having a measurement practice in place, you will be in a much greater position to
maximize the ROI, and will become more efficient year-over-year with this high-cost
marketing spend.
www.proxivision.net/blog info@proxivision.net

Note: It never ceases to amaze me at just how many organizations do not factor this into
their conference strategy. As such they are spending blindly, and rarely leverage the true
value found from attending conferences and corporate events.
08. Utilize free community based communication tools.
This year it will be interesting to see how organizations adopt and utilize community based
communications tools such as a conference blog and/or twitter. Here are some suggestions
that you might employ at this years upcoming NABShow (or CTIA) in Las Vegas.
A) Set up a team tweet (Twitter account)
Allows team to actively update other team members with events, gossip and
i.
updates as they happen, real-time.
Keeps all members up-to-date on meetings and scheduling changes. And stimulate
ii.
rapid response times to unpredicted hick-ups that you will invariably encounter.
B) Set up, in advance, and communicate to your customers that you have a company
tweet and will be publishing conference updates for their benefit during the conference.
Provide daily morning alerts outlining industry news / announcements, etc
i.
(remember that Twitter is restricted to 120 words so stick to headlines and
reference company conference blog for additional information
Market the top alerts on company announcements, though remember do not
ii.
saturate with your messaging - this should be a beneficial service to your customer.
If it is successful it will stimulate its own form of viral marketing for your company
Provide customer participants with a tweet code, if they present this at your booth
iii.
they might perhaps receive some form of ‘participation reward’ from your company
either at the booth, or after the event.
Tweet nightly events to attend and what core executives will be attending.
iv.
Tweet your company’s social events, and updates.
v.
C) Set up a conference blog with daily updates. Promote in advance of the event, market
at event, have employees mention this blog in every industry or client facing conversation
they have during the event.
Communication during the course of the conference will keep a level of consistent
i.
client facing messaging, update subscribers on last minutes advisories and updates,
and bring an added layer of focus for your organization.
www.proxivision.net/blog info@proxivision.net