How to Define Your Tradeshow/Events Strategy as an EdTech Start-Up, Part 1

Industry events are a great way to meet your customers and prospects where they already are. The EdTech industry has a calendar of events throughout the year that can be overwhelming for new and growing start-ups to look at and evaluate.

Events are an expensive marketing activity! And just like any marketing activity you want to be able to effectively measure the ROI for spending time and money investing in attending industry events. So as a growing start-up with a limited budget, you want to be selective and focused on a focused industry event strategy.

In part one of this series, I will focus exclusively on the selection of events to attend.

1.     Be clear on your program goals.

The first step should always be to define success. You should be able to answer the question “What does success look like?” before you start researching and committing to attendance at industry events.

You may have multiple goals for event attendance, including increasing brand awareness and lead generation. These are important to define upfront so you can make decisions with the end goal in mind. We will also use these program goals to determine the metrics we measure to evaluate success. But more on that later. Right now, let's focus on selecting the right events.

2.     Consider both national and regional/local events.

National events draw a national audience, which can be very tempting when you’re looking to increase your branding and generate leads from a wide audience. You may think – at first – that is a better bang for your buck with more volume meaning more leads for less time spent at the event.  However, along with that, they oftentimes draw a wide range of event attendees – including many that may be outside of your ICP (ideal customer profile). With a wide event audience, they can also draw a competitive set of vendor partners, with different size marketing budgets and investments. As a start-up, your budget may not enable you to afford a large booth or sponsorship, which makes it harder to cut through the noise and attract the time and attention from event attendees. 

Regional or local events, while smaller in nature are also typically a less expensive investment and with a more target event audience. These associations typically have a more niche focus and therefore attract a specific audience segment for professional development opportunities. This means that even though you may walk away with a smaller volume of leads, your leads may be a higher quality and produce a larger return on investment.

The size of regional events and the costs associated makes the playing field more level for companies of varying sizes even if larger companies may have a bigger budget. Because of this, it may be easier to stand out and attract the attention of your ideal customer profile (ICP).

3.     Ask your customers what events they’re attending!

Don’t minimize the importance of talking to your customers about the events they attend and/or send team members to attend regularly. You want to make sure your ideal customer profile is in attendance so who better to help with event research than your best customers.

4.     Focus on the event audience.

When researching events to attend, one of the most important steps to evaluate potential is understanding their event audience. Most shows have a prospectus available that lists this information by title and/or decision-making ability. This event audience should match and/or be well aligned with your ideal customer profile (ICP) before you consider investing your time and dollars in attending. For example, if most attendees are teachers, but you are focused on marketing to district administrators, you may want to reconsider whether it is a good use of your time to attend.

If a prospectus is not available, contact the show contact to have a conversation and better understand their event audience. This will help you both evaluate the event and determine the best messages to reach the audience.

Next, in part two of the series, I will highlight the many ways to have a presence at an industry event, outside of the typical investment of purchasing an exhibit booth.

#edtech #events #tradeshows #eventstrategy