Conferences and marketing

 

For whatever personal growth and pleasure attending a professional conference may bring, it is not entirely clear to what degree they justify investing time and money in them. In terms of professional education, conferences provide the most efficient way to learn and renew. On the other hand, it is often quite difficult to ascertain how much actual business, either in terms of volume or client numbers, they create. My experience of more than 10 years of conference hopping is that it is possible to maximize the economic benefit of participation and justify the expense.

To begin, the term conference refers to any industry event bringing together professionals whether it is for those in your field or those of your target customer. It is also necessary to define participation in today’s hybrid environment. At minimum, it means paying a small fee and watching the lectures through Teams, Zoom or any other Internet streaming tool. Physically attending involves a larger investment of time and effort in traveling to a city and possibly staying there for several days. Once there, participating in a panel raises a person’s status with relatively little preparation time while making a presentation generally involves a significant time investment, far greater than the discount or fee that conferences compensate their speakers. The cost of attending a conference can vary from minimal to highly significant, especially to freelancers with low income.

In compensation, conferences provide a fast track to knowledge and an opportunity to frame a business vision. Especially for newcomers but also for experienced practitioners, the speakers and workshops provide practical advice for solving common as well as not-so-common issues in the profession. In translator conferences, these matters generally include marketing, pricing, software and, especially in the last few years, AI. There is no need to find time to watch videos as the lectures occur in real time. Moreover, experts make these presentations and are available for questions. Beyond immediate needs, conferences provide a wider perspective of industry trends and trigger contemplation on how any given freelancer can leverage them in the future. Daily life leaves little time for longer term planning while conferences encourage it by providing a wide-angle view of the industry and its practitioners. Thus, the educational value of conferences is without question, even for the most experienced.

Yet, many freelancers question its direct business justification. To understand this issue, it is vital to understand the difference between advertising and marketing. The former involves providing an immediate incentive to buy, generally some level of discount. Its results are measured by comparing short terms sales as compared to the previous month or the same month last year as is relevant. By contrast, the purpose of marketing is to create a brand, a name that customers will remember when they need that product. To give an example, Huggies advertises to all customers, even those that do not have any children yet, knowing that a day may come when the person has to buy diapers for the first time and has to decide which is the “best” product. For service businesses, a business may not need to outsource it on a weekly or even monthly basis. However, decision makers or colleagues may remember someone that they had met at a conference and impressed them. In marketing, the economic return is not generally immediate and difficult to identify among other factors. Therefore, it is far from simple to calculate whether attending a conference was worth the cost in terms of new customers.

I have attended many conferences and directly benefited from the contacts I made. In one case, a fellow participant on a panel asked for my services as she remembered that I specialized in financial translation. On many occasions, colleagues I met at conferences recommended me to translation buyers, having heard that I translate from Hebrew to English. Just recently, a translator with whom I had spoken in the hallway at some conference several years ago gave my name to a potential customer. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the only worse than being remembered is not being remembered. Without being able to quantify the number of new customers or resulting business volume, conferences have increased my visibility especially in places where I have no direct presence.

Five ways to increase this exposure and, consequently, the economic benefit of attending a conference, are to attend physically, mingle with others, focus on one niche, raise your status by speaking and follow up. First, while virtual events are far less expensive and more convenient, they do not allow proper face-to-face communication, severely limiting the ability to create a memory. In simple terms, on-line conversations do not create the same level of human impact as actually sitting with someone. To attain this benefit to the maximum, spend as much time as possible, aside from quiet breaks and possibly a short nap to charge the battery midday, reaching out to people, whether in before and after lectures or in the halls when none of the lecture offerings are attractive. Conventions are work and hard work at that. Marketing requires effort but the rewards come to those that make that effort. Since most conversations are short and conference participants may engage in hundreds of conversations over the conference, it is vital to focus on your best and most unique niche, some area that the person will remember after the conference. Since conference chats tend to be short, use words efficiently and effectively. Furthermore, investing time in proposing, preparing and making presentations creates value by raising your status and getting people to approach you either directly after your lecture or years afterwards. The speaker stands out above the others, making it the best marketing position. Finally, upon return to reality, i.e., going home, professional follow-up by contacting serious contacts in writing reinforces the connection. By going, mingling, concentrating, speaking and following up, conference participants maximize their marketing efforts.

In my opinion, the choice to attend conferences, whether those focusing on the service provider's profession or in the potential customer’s field, is sound both in terms of the opportunity to learn and update knowledge as well as create strategic vision. Furthermore, when participants maximize their personal investment and effort, they also can receive their money back with interest. When I return from a conference. I am exhausted but invigorated, a seeming contradiction in terms. I am tired from the effort but more focused on bettering my business bolstered with additional knowledge on how to. I know that I will harvest the fruits of my labor sometime in the future if not immediately. Thus, attending conferences is a solid investment in the future.