Five ways to get real value from conferences: stand out visually, present like a headliner, know which attendees matter to your business, ask organizers for unadvertised perks like email blasts, and give out swag people will actually carry home.
Key learnings from conferences is number one, the most important rule in my opinion of conferences is standing out. Be visually disruptive. The number one thing you want to do is figure out like no matter what you can, what you can do, you have to stand out. If you're just like blending into the conference hall, you're probably going to just be lighting your ad dollars on fire. Number two, it's not just about showing up, it is about how you show up. If you show up as the headliner, that is amazing. And I found that the conferences where we like actually show up really, really strong are often even higher ROI than the ones when we're just in the back. And number three, understand where your ROI is going to show up from this conference. So with Rupa, we had doctors, we had patients, and we had laboratory partners, right? So the doctors, our primary person we're trying to acquire, but our laboratory partners also showed up to these conferences. And if a laboratory is spending or doing like tens of millions of dollars with us and we're able to convince that laboratory to pay us 1% more money, the doctors are great. But also there are other partners at the conferences. There's potential like go to market partners. If you're in multi sided market, there might be more than just your initial user that is there. And then number four, the most profitable perks of conferences aren't on the menu. I don't know if anyone here is like a sponsor at this thing, but almost 100% of the time I've seen like the things that will actually drive the most roi, they don't want to give you. It's stuff like I've had. If I can just get them to send out an email to me for me, like a dedicated email to everyone at the event being like, hey, this is our number one sponsor. This is what, what they're all about. I've had events where that was more profitable than like the hundred thousand dollars sponsorship of actually showing up to the thing. Getting like on stage and then like having like a speaker from your company on stage and then able to go back to the booth and like hang out with people afterwards. Like that's usually something that's not on the menu. Do whatever you can to figure out what are the things that you can ask from this organization that they might not be telling you about because they're not giving those things to other people. Which by itself goes back to rule number one is it helps you stand out. And then number five is give them swag that needs to be carried and brought home. There is lots of great swag at this conference, and I can't see any of it right now. You want to give them something that is actually kind of bulky, that you can't just stick in a backpack and hide away. You want to give them something that is going to stand out that you can see across from the conference hall. So action items on this.
