There can be many business reasons why a company should consider having a conference, and events are an important part of the marketing mix. Listed below are some marketing reasons for holding a conference or seminar that a company or organisation may use to promote.
Reasons for a conference could be:
- A medium for passing on information, specifically for new products and services
- Internal communication to employees regarding internal information, such as training, boosting morale, making announcements, launch a new culture
- Used by associations to network and educate their members
- Yearly or quarterly way to communicate with their sales force, partners or distributors
- A forum for discussing world issues or topical subjects
An example of benefits for the business client to attend a software companies conference or seminar
- Excellent communication forum for the end user, ability to meet senior managers from the corporation, to get advise, discuss business propositions, get answers straight from the software engineers, product developers
- Ability to fast track communications to the highest level
- Good for the client to feel that they are having an impact on the future direction of the company and its products in relation to their requirements
- Excellent for networking and meeting other users and hearing their business experiences, share ideas, solutions to problems
- Good for education and increasing knowledge of the products and business environment
- The event enables the attendee to build up a picture of the quality of the company products or services
Benefits from the Companies perspective
- One of the marketing vehicles for increasing regular communications with both current, new and potential customer
- A platform enabling the company to know the client better and understand their business needs for the portfolio of products and services that they are developing
- Make the customer feel that they are being listened to and giving the company first hand research into the future product direction
- Excellent PR opportunity to made customer feel important and build on loyalty and customer relationship by sponsoring a drinks reception and dinner
- Good opportunity to get the TPV/Resellers involved promoting the companies products and making them more involved with the clients, as well as strengthening the business alliance
- Opportunity to increase sales of products with users through workshops demonstrations
- Event feedback should be measured against the objectives to understand the bench mark for the next event. All events should be reviewed and measured to see if it has been a good marketing vehicle for ROI, and how to improve on future events.
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