Expos Don’t Work Well in a Virtual Environment October 14, 2020 by Dave Lutz Virtual Expo Truths Nearly every conference and trade show professional is searching for that perfect virtual platform or pricing model for replacing lost expo revenue. I’ve got bad news for you. Virtual expos will never be able to come close to replacing the revenue generated from your face-to-face expo. Here’s some of our learnings: 1. … [Read more…] Filed Under: Hybrid & Virtual, Sponsorship & Exhibits
Event Recovery Food Chain August 27, 2020 by Dave Lutz The harsh reality of an elongated recovery for the live events industry has settled in, as we wrote about back in March when we crafted the Event Recovery Food Chain. At the time, we stated, “Hotels and the entire events supply chain need to understand that we won’t fully recover until we help conference and show … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model, Hybrid & Virtual Tagged With: , ADR, COVID-19, event recovery food chain, group business, hotels, hybrid meetings, live events recovery, supply chain, virtual meetings
Monetizing Your Virtual Conference When Competing with Free April 30, 2020 by Dave Lutz 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 … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model, Conference Education, Hybrid & Virtual Tagged With: , emerging models, freemium, monetization, online conference, online event, virtual event
Steps You Should Be Taking Now for Your Fall Conference April 21, 2020 by Dave Lutz 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. … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning, Experience Design, Hybrid & Virtual Tagged With: , COVID-19, leadership, negotiations, pandemic, social distancing, virtual events
Renegotiating Live Event Agreements When All Parties Are Innocent Victims April 13, 2020 by Dave Lutz 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. … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning, Hybrid & Virtual Tagged With: , buyer's market, commissions, contracts, COVID-19, negotiation, renegotiation, seller's market
Conference Go/No-Go Decisions in a Pandemic April 9, 2020 by Dave Lutz 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. … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model, Event Planning, Hybrid & Virtual Tagged With: , coronavirus, COVID-19, FAQs, lead time, pandemic, refunds, scenario planning, transparency
Will Work for Goodwill March 18, 2020 by Dave Lutz 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 … [Read more…] Filed Under: Ramblings
Top Tips for Preparing Your Presenters January 14, 2020 by Dave Lutz 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 … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education, Speaker Coaching Tagged With: , presenter prep, speaker coaching, speaker preparation, speaker training, spearker prep
Sponsorship Needs to Be More Than Banners and Clings December 17, 2019 by Dave Lutz 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 … [Read more…] Filed Under: Sponsorship & Exhibits Tagged With: , banners, booths, clings, emotional connection, exhibits, sponsorship
How to Turn Around Your Sponsorship Revenue December 11, 2019 by Dave Lutz 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 … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model, Sponsorship & Exhibits Tagged With: , education champion, packages, revenue, revenue ratio, sponsorship, tiers, VIP experience
