Conference Sponsorship: Worth It?
This is my favorite time of the year: budget time. At my company we look at all the wonderful ways to spend money on communicating with prospects and customers. Working for a small company, we take every dime we spend very seriously. Last year, we attended five conferences. As we plan this year's budget, we are asking the hard questions about whether sponsoring conferences is really worth it.
We all know the kinds of conferences I'm talking about. They include SalesForce's DreamForce, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, user conferences, etc. These conferences can be very costly. In addition to the steep fees they demand for companies to qualify as sponsors, the travel and prep costs are often significant (unless you get lucky and the conference is in your town). Money aside, the amount of time spent on collateral, prep, logistics, and so on is a big investment. Granted, once we get to the conference, we usually find our time is worth it. We end up demoing to a large group of people who appear to be genuinely interested. We usually acquire a handful of customers by the time we work through the sales process, so there is a return on investment there.
However, when you add it all up, the ROI may not be worth it. Could we have spent our time and money on more fruitful endeavors? Maybe. There are ancillary benefits to these conferences. We usually meet writers, analysts, and others, so we get exposure and PR, but it is usually hit or miss. If a particular conference is a priority for your company, attending it certainly could change the equation.
Another big factor to consider these days is the economy. Attendance at conferences looks like it will fall sharply over the next few years. Companies are not going to spend money to send people to them unless absolutely necessary. Attendance at the CES conference dropped 30% this year, for example.
Even if you do find the right conference for your company, and it manages to pull in a decent crowd, the problem with sponsoring it is that the bulk of the attendees usually aren't there to purchase new solutions for their companies; they are there to learn, network, and have fun (all of which I vigorously support). This is the key to deciding which conferences to attend, at least for us. It is all about push-and-pull marketing. If the people who are going to the conference are there to buy, then it is a good conference to attend. If we are there to pull them in, rather than push ourselves out, then we love it. But if we are there amongst a sea of other booths and companies to display our wares, then no thanks. This is the main criterion we use to pick which conferences to invest in: are the attendees real buyers with real budgets? It sounds simple, but you would be surprised at how few companies really look at conferences this way.
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Comments
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That's a good question to ask, it is the same with attending, the audience dictates the feel of it and whether you will build solid networks.
So Jason - will we meet up again this year? How's your conference schedule shaping up
:-)
Hey Ben,
You never know. If we find an interesting conference in San Francisco and get comped, I'll be there :) Seriously, we'll be at a few. I'll let you know.
It would be interesting, if a statistic could be made of the number of companies that have been sponsoring conferences over the last 10 years and the number of those companies that still exist.
The effectiveness of Conference Sponsorship is hard to measure.
In the current budget restricting time, companies are more likely spending on measurable marketing investments: like online advertising.
Jason - many good points here. I think that there are many organizations that will be re-thinking the big shows and looking at more targeted niche events.
One point that we are working on with our sponsors for Chris Brogan's New Marketing Summit is to look beyond the leads that they are getting at the event. We are also providing a report on tweets that include the sponsors name, slideshare stats for speakers, and other online metrics.
Bottom line: as marketers are making these hard decisions, they need to carefully consider all the metrics for success of an event.
@crbrowning
Our company is a technology consultancy focused on the K-12 market. Historically there have been several conferences folks have attended, but there has never been any "front end loading" done - or planning why we are at a conference and what we want the particular outcome to be. I think the "that's what we've always done" mentality will definitely start falling by the wayside - and while sponsorships can be good if looked upon strategically, you also want to be careful and not fall prety to all the chatchkey whores who tend to roam the exhibit hall floors.
We are having a similar discussion at UpTake. We are taking a serious look at each conference to determine its value. Many are not making the list this year. The ROI just doesn't justify the expense.
my 2 cents -
http://gluecon.ipower.com/blog/?p=19
ejn
Eric's blog post (#8) is a very good one if you are interested in this topic.
"... they are there to learn, network, and have fun (all of which I vigorously support)."
Also, many of them are there hoping to SELL their services to you, the exhibitor, potentially turning the ROI question seriously upside-down.
Having attended many, many conferences and trade shows in my career in all of those roles at one time or another I personally am surprised that there hasn't been MORE change in the structure of these events particularly for software user and developer conferences. Something like a mix of large structured "Mix" or "User Week" confabs and the barely structured events such as BarCamps and the like and the low-cost but low-impact "web only" solutions.