You Ask, I Answer: Conference Alternatives for Lead Generation?

In today's episode, Jason asks, we've traditionally relied on trade shows and conferences to generate brand awareness and leads, even though our conferences are gone. We still need to do lead gen. What is your plan now? Virtual conferences or webinars? So the role of the conference really is about establishing brand and credibility in front of a crowd, in front of a group of people, in such a way that they can interact with each other and they can interact with you.

So where are the crowds now? Where are people spending their time online? And are those places accessible to you? Part of the role of a conference also is to introduce you to crowds that you have not been in front of previously. It's one thing, one of the challenges that people have with webinars is that they hit their email list, which is great.

You should absolutely. Structural perspective for lead generation. There are things like podcasts, for example, that can get you in front of a new audience, uh, guesting on a podcast, if a podcast accepts guests, sponsoring a podcast. Um, think about how much you spend on a trade show booth, right? Where uh there's the ten by ten space, you know, that's gonna be five or ten or even twenty thousand dollars, depending on the show, and then you're gonna spend X amount of dollars on having you know, two or three or four sales BDRs there, plus having a speaker there, uh, and having those dinners and the meals and all that stuff that you do at a conference, tally up that budget, and you know for the next six months you're not gonna be using those planned expenditures.

What can you go out and sponsor that looks like a conference but allows you to have that access? So sponsor a podcast for the next six months with what you would have spent on one show, on one on one conference. Uh look at video shows, particularly uh regular serials on on YouTube, on Vimeo, on all these different uh sites that are out there that other people have gathered audiences for you. Can you sponsor one of those? Can you be uh the season sponsor of uh a video show?

Webinars, yes, co-branded webinars are essential. So again, look for companies to partner with that are not competitive to you, but have your audience. One of the most important things you can do is look at your audience and and ask them where else they spend the time, but also what else do they buy? And there are services that um that will allow you to get data out of uh a lead list about that company, its website and the technologies it uses, uh, for example. What are the other things in common um that you could use to identify?

Like, yes, this is a company I want to do a co-branded piece of research with, um, and then you share the lead generation. You you you you have you sort of double up and both can access it. Are there email newsletters that you can uh sponsor that you can get in front of and go out and grab uh a whole new audience, you know? Um daily newsletters, weekly newsletters. There's there's somebody out there that's got an audience that you can get access to.

What else looks like a conference? There are discussion forums, right? Where you can put into conversations if you have a relevant perspective and you're not uh salesy about it. There are uh different communities like Slack communities, uh Discord communities, even places like Twitch, depending on your company's products and services. Uh, there may be events, virtual events that you can join that are like hackathons and code shares and all these things.

So think less about the physical conference and more about what in your industry exists that functions like the conference that offers networking, that offers a new audience and offers an audience in bulk that you can address all at once. That's the secret to what's going on. I would say again, for simplicity's sake and to get up and running sooner rather than later, go the sponsorship route. Um, and not just because I have properties of my own that can be sponsored, but because it gets you up and running fast. You don't have to build an audience if you can go rent someone else's audience.

Other things that can function similarly are advertising using lookalike audiences. So if you have your audience, you can load it into an ad system of your choice, you know, social media, paid paid click per click ads, etc. And get access to an audience that's very similar to yours, but not the one that you already have. Because again, we want to get in front of those new people. Be aware that during this crisis, a lot of businesses will not be looking to necessarily buy things, but they will definitely people are always looking to learn things, and people are always looking to be a part of something that is meaningful to them.

So to the extent that you can try to grow your audience as much as you can. Grow your list, grow your your leader prospect pipeline. Just don't expect it to close real soon. So the webinar route, yes, do a webinar, do co-hosted webinars. Again, partner up, find somebody who's got an audience.

Uh that's going to be really important because again, you don't have access to a list that's not yours. You shouldn't, it's illegal. Um so try and find those those things. And also look at uh advertisers. There are some companies that will let you not they won't give you their list, but they will let you rent their audience.

Uh you can uh, like for example, in Facebook ads, you can be given uh ad agency access to somebody else's audience and then run a campaign for a defined amount of time, and you pay for that and then and you pay for the ads on top of that, and then when the campaign's over, your access is removed from that audience, but you've been able to show ads to that audience. So something to think about there as well. There are so many ways and so many uh approaches you can take to this challenge of reaching new audiences. Try any of the ones that we've listed here because there's there's something out there that is a good fit for your company, but keep in mind you're not going to be spending that money on conferences, spend it on grabbing new communities and being a part of them. Uh good question.

Follow up questions, uh, leave them in the comments box below. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and the newsletter. I'll talk to you soon. Take care. Want help solving your company's data analytics and digital marketing problems?

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