Events and field marketing

Events are the most expensive marketing channel per contact and the easiest to spend badly on, because the outputs — booth traffic, badge scans, attendance — feel like results and are not.

Decide before you sponsor

The question is never "should we be at this event" but "what specifically do we expect, and what is that worth." Answer three things first:

• Who is actually there. Attendee seniority and function, not the headline number. A ten-thousand-person event where forty of your buyers attend is a forty-person event.
• What the goal is, and pick one: pipeline from new accounts, advancing deals already open, customer retention and advocacy, or category presence. These need different booths, different staff, and different follow-up, and an event asked to do all four does none.
• Total cost. Sponsorship is often under half. Add booth build, shipping, travel, staff time out of the field, and the content produced for it. The fully loaded figure changes decisions.