If you’re inbox is anything like mine, you could spend a good portion of our day consuming webinars, virtual events and networking in Zoom or Facebook Messenger Happy Hours. We’re on content overload and it’s only going to get noisier as the pandemic lingers. The dynamics that we’re seeing impact conferences and their business models are very similar to the Freemium movement we experienced way back in 2009. I’ll never forget a blog post, entitled “Malcolm is Wrong," which Seth Godin penned … [Read more...]
Steps You Should Be Taking Now for Your Fall Conference
This is the fourth in a series of blogs posts, written collaboratively by our team, which uncover lessons learned in advising dozens of our clients on their events in the time of COVID-19. Although each situation has its own unique issues, we hope you find nuggets to help you with your disruption response and planning. Over the past couple weeks, conversations with our clients have shifted from crisis decision-making for conferences occurring in the near-term (reactive) to scenario planning … [Read more...]
Renegotiating Live Event Agreements When All Parties Are Innocent Victims
This is the third in a series of blogs posts, written collaboratively by our team, which uncover lessons learned in advising dozens of our clients on their events in the time of COVID-19. Although each situation has its own unique issues, we hope you find nuggets to help you with your disruption response and planning. The U.S. hotel industry is projected to report a 51-percent decline in revenue per available room (RevPAR) in 2020, according to a special forecast revision from STR and … [Read more...]
Conference Go/No-Go Decisions in a Pandemic
This is the second in a series of blog posts, written collaboratively by our team, which uncover lessons learned in advising dozens of our clients on their events in the time of COVID-19. Although each situation has its own unique issues, we hope you find nuggets to help you with your disruption response and planning. Scenario Planning Where lead time permits, work through at least three scenarios – optimistic, pessimistic and somewhere in the middle. We like using an outside resource to set … [Read more...]
Will Work for Goodwill
Living in Orlando (not the happiest place in the world today) provides a close-up view of the horrific impact the pandemic is having on people and businesses in the live-event, hospitality and travel industries. Nearly all of our association clients are making enterprise-changing decisions to cancel or postpone their marquee events while saying goodbye to their primary revenue source. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of the individuals, families and businesses who are impacted by this … [Read more...]
Top Tips for Preparing Your Presenters
Imagine how you might do your job differently if your performance and compensation were evaluated based on overall session attendance and industry presenter ratings at your annual conference. While this notion may seem a bit extreme, conference education systems need increased accountability, which in turn leads to a competitive advantage. We all need improved systems for: Programming thought-provoking and relevant content. Recruiting or selecting industry presenters who will draw a … [Read more...]
Sponsorship Needs to Be More Than Banners and Clings
Sponsorship is the most powerful form of marketing. When done well, it can change participants’ attitudes and behaviors about a brand. Banners, ads, signs and enhanced listings shouldn’t be lumped into the same category — they don’t make that emotional connection. Recently I’ve received invitations to attend webinars and download industry research reports and articles all aimed to help conference and show organizers grow sponsorship revenue. Problem is, when you dig into these resources, you … [Read more...]
How to Turn Around Your Sponsorship Revenue
If your conference is like most, sponsorship revenue is underperforming. There are two benchmarks we like to use to identify healthy conference revenue business models: Industry revenue — 30 percent or more of a conference’s total revenue should come from the combination of sponsor, exhibit and advertising revenue. Expo/sponsor revenue ratio — for every $3 in expo revenue, a thriving sponsor program will generate $1 of revenue or more (a 3-to-1 or better ratio). If your conference … [Read more...]
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