

It depends.
A conference, summit, trade show (whatever you want to call it) offers many direct and indirect benefits for the companies that attend them. It allows your team to find industry experts to learn from, a place to share experiences with peers, and the opportunity to build relationships, prospects, and customers.
But is the investment always worth the outcome? Is this exchange of business cards and handshakes really worth the time and money required?
Some will argue these events are worth every penny. Others will vehemently disagree. The rest simply do not know. This is a fact.
Many of the prospects we engage with at Brand Buddha spend a great deal of money in conference marketing. It’s what they do. It’s what they’ve been doing and how they operate business. They take their marketing dollars and throw it at these events like it’s supposed to turn coal into gold. Sometimes it works. Other times it does not. When asked what the ROI from these events is, the majority do not have a solid answer.
“Not sure about the dollar amount but it seems to be working”
“We get leads from events all the time but I have no idea what the actual cost per lead boils down to”
When asked how leads from these events are recorded, managed, and nurtured, the answers become more nebulous.
“Our sales team will add them manually to a spreadsheet.”
“Sales will follow up with the prospect, just not sure the process.”
These types of answers leave much to the imagination. There’s no definable information or data to prove these events are worth the time, manpower, or price tag.
And attending a conference is not cheap. The many associated costs include:
So how can companies ensure they’re recouping their investment? This is a question our clients have asked us — many times.
To really know if conference participation is worth it, a company needs to first answer the following questions:
The last question is especially important. This is because many of the companies that participate in conferences do not have effective lead management tools in place—and generally speaking, that’s a CRM system.
CRM stands for customer relationship management. It’s a software solution that manages customer relationships and the data and information associated with them. It provides a centralized location to not only create, deploy, and analyze all of your pre-and-post event activities, but obtain valuable and actionable data for your sales team. In fact, a CRM can increase revenue by 41% per salesperson, according to Trackvia.
A CRM system is advantageous in several ways for event prospecting, sales, and lead nurturing, such as:
The true value of conference marketing cannot be answered until you have the tools to track, manage, and analyze the outcomes from these events. A CRM is the core component of marketing and sales success, but none more important than with conference marketing.
Do you agree? Is your company utilizing a CRM software system?