Business Model


Four Primary Reasons People Will Not Register For Your Event

Your supervisor walks into your office and closes the door. She sits down and says, “We’ve set a new goal for you for our annual meeting. We need an increase of 10% in full registrations.” “As the point person for our meetings and events, you need to make this happen,” she exclaims as she exits … [Read more…]

Are You Attracting The Right Customer For Your Conference?

Who are the customers for your conference? Yes, I said customers – plural. You have more than one customer. Most of us think of our conference customers as the paid registrants. Instead, we need to think of our customers as anyone who can say no. Who’s Your Daddy Customer? So who are the customers of … [Read more…]

Four Conference Model Options

Once upon a time, many, many moons ago, in the days of old, in the rooms of the Inn, in the city of yonder, the time-honored, habitually-replicated, customary conference experience was basically always the same. It was one-directional, from organizers to attendees. Today, meeting professionals can select from a variety of conference models to customize … [Read more…]

Identifying Conference Targets Of Opportunity For Growth

Often “it” occurs after several years of success. Your conference attendance, exhibitors and revenues reach a plateau. Or they start to decline. Why does “it” haunt and hunt your once-successful conference? You have never learned how to acquire new business. Or you’ve depended on repeat business. Or you’ve expected new registrants to arrive at your … [Read more…]

Co-Locating Your Conference Can Be Risky And Rewarding

Co-locating your conference can be a high-risk, high-reward proposition. Before you decide to co-locate your conference with another conference, you need to view the decision through a strategic long-term lens. Defining Co-Location At the basic level, co-locating a conference is placing two or more conferences at the same location, at the same time. Some organizers … [Read more…]

Who Is Competing For Your Member’s Wallets And Time?

Who’s competing for your member’s professional development share of wallet and time? Where is community forming around industry issues? Who are the thought leaders and influencers in your industry? Are they friend or foe? These are the questions that keep me up at night. The rise of content marketing and the ease of forming online … [Read more…]

What Is The Right Mix? Face-to-Face, Digital, Hybrid Events

Your meeting’s reach no longer stops at the conference room walls. Now technology makes it possible to reach people you never had access to before.  The question is: How much should be live-only and how much shared with a remote audience?  How do you create an environment that makes your remote attendees feel they are … [Read more…]

Virtual Trade Show Business Plans

Tradeshow organizers and exhibitors are leveraging virtual technologies for their benefit. Virtual events are helping them reduce costs, increase lead generation, improve ROI for the exhibitor and attract future buyers. At IAEE’s 2010 Expo! Expo! Nicole Buraglio and I presented a sesson on Virtual Trade Show Business Plans. We explored several business and go-to-market strategies for leveraging … [Read more…]

Why Do Conferences Offer Education Sessions?

Breakouts, concurrent sessions, forums, general sessions, Ignite, lectures, Open Space, panels, Pecha Kucha, peer to peer, plenary sessions, round tables, seminars, workshops. Conference education. No matter what we call them, they all have one thing in common: sharing of information with the goal of education and learning. What Is The Goal Of Conference Education? So … [Read more…]

Four Ways To Flip Your Tradeshow Buying And Selling Model

“People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy!” Jeff Gitomer. That’s one of my favorite truth quotes, from Gitomer, a speaker, sales trainer and author of The Sales Bible, Little Red Book of Selling and many others. This truth is playing out in the way buyers are changing how they attack and … [Read more…]