According to the Convention Industry Council ( pdf ), in 2012 there were over 1.8 million business meetings, events and conferences held in the US attended by 225 million participants generating over $280 billion in spending. The volume of participants has grown 10% since 2009. Clearly, the business conference industry is booming. The number of marketing and communications conferences alone is overwhelming compared to when I started attending and speaking at conferences in 2005. Attending and speaking at business, marketing and client user conferences is a big part of our marketing and while there are changes with so many new, niche events popping up, I don’t think our conference participation will change
Are you optimizing your conference experience? TopRank receives a lot of value from having me speak at conferences but you don’t have to be a speaker to realize a positive return from events.
Attending and speaking at conferences can be a goldmine for content , networking, publicity and lead generation. While many companies might rate a “B” on achieving these outcomes, the speakers could do a lot better by effectively promoting their presentations