Free is the new black
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The horrible economic trends as well as the impressive movement of user generated events is challenging the traditional scheme of paid events.
If you charge for your events you may soon be in real trouble. If you charge a lot for your events you are probably already facing tough challenges.
The Economy
Pretty straight forward. There are not enough money to be spent on events as before. Companies buying tickets for your conferences are now hesitating on such expenditure. There is simply not the disposable income there used to be. As simple as that.
The Technology
Online meetings are now preferred to conferences. Linkedin/Xing is now preferred to your 3000£/$/€ networking event.
User Generated Events
Meetups, BarCamps, unconferences and the like are now offering free alternatives to your paid events. Getting together a location and asking people to pay for their drinks is now accepted. Nobody wants to mix any more with sponsors, stalls, banners and so forth. Meetups are run by users and most of them are not sponsored. The conventional infrastructure around events is shaking.
You cannot rely any more on scarcity.
I don’t have to wait for big exhibitions to come along in order to network with top professionals. It’s all coming to my city and for free, possibly on a monthly basis.
Now, how do you deal with that? How do you compete with free, zero, nada, niet, niente?
Innovate
You will soon realize that if you manage events conventionally, the demand will drop sensibly.
Few tips.
If you use social media and social networks, if you know what twitter is, if you integrate sponsors gently and wisely, you will definitely find new ways to engage and make a profit.
If you think this is not going to happen and you feel safe where you are, start reading another blog!
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I couldn’t agree more. I just put up a similarly spirited blog post at
http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/about-me/
In a nutshell: as there are fewer dollars out there, you’re going to have to start competing for them more aggressively. That means understanding what your attendees want and making sure you give it to them.
What do I think most attendees want out of an in-person conference / event. They want to meet people, otherwise, as you note, they can just use LinkedIn / Xing.
This is why services like Pathable (www.pathable.com) are so timely right now. They provide the social networking tools targeted at in-person conferences and events.
@Jordan -
Thanks for the comment, although a bit self promoting, we’ll have a look at it anyway! Although you may have lost a chance for a review!
great insight. I agree most people can’t spend much on events right now. NOw I’m thinking how to do your tips here in our country.
These are good tips, thank you. I also like your blog a lot.
Your first argument is unbeatable. However, I still think that many people believe in the power of face to face contact vs. LinkedIn. We are an on-line company (a web-based project management software provider) and we have to do a lot of virtual promotion. Still we find that people, especially business people prefer personal or phone contact over online communications. I totally agree that LinkedIn is a great supporting tool though.
@Ryza -
Free is international. Just manage to get sponsors on board and you’ll do great!
@Daria -
Thanks for the compliments, I am flattered. I had a look at your blog and looks very interesting.
I completely agree that a lot of people prefer face to face. The aim of the Linkedin Events Group I manage is to bring all the online network live and local.
I truly believe that online is cool but offline is definitely better. I don’t like vicious circles and being just online sounds like one.
Said that, I believe that a great number of meetings are just useless CO2 emissions and technology is crucial. Plus I am very impressed with virtual trade shows and the potentiality of those.
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