Managing Face to Face Events to Maximize ROI

Many marketers view live events as either purely networking events or social opportunities. While this has an element of truth, it doesn’t tell the full story. Live events can be a vital tool for qualifying prospects and nurturing leads. In fact, they can have an excellent return on investment if you keep in mind a few key tactics to scale them to the potential of prospects and customers.

Events should be a critical component to converting your prospects into customers. Before launching one, however, you should rank and score your potential attendees based on several factors including: how close they are to purchasing, their individual purchase authorities, the size of their budgets and other technical and product factors unique to your market or industry.

Once leads are in your pipeline, a content-rich live happening is a great way to move them along the buying process.

Considering that in many markets products are very similar, a high-affinity, trusted relationship with your customer can be a real differentiator. You can start building this relationship at an event sponsored and/or produced by your company. However, when setting event budgets, you should get an honest assessment from your sales team regarding prospects’ potential profitability.

If you sell an expensive, high-margin product or service, a high-end affair may be a great tool to cement your relationship and drive incremental revenue. If you are in a low-margin business, it may make more sense to be part of an existing event or trade show.

You should consider your budget as an investment. Events are only worth doing if you can show that new and incremental business will cover their cost. They are not branding opportunities, as you are not reaching a large enough group of prospects to make them worthwhile.

Running your own event is more efficient than piggybacking onto someone else’s. Doing so also allows you total control over the content and audience development efforts. If you don’t have internal coordinators, there are many experienced consultants, meeting planners, and full-service event companies that can provide turnkey services for you. Never host something that is not professionally produced and executed; an amateur event speaks volumes about your company, and what it says isn’t very good.

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