For the team, the visit to Lisbon was not just a trip, but an opportunity to present the newly developed functionality to the audience, get feedback, find potential customers, and communicate with the media.
Web Summit is behind us… We are ready to share all the intricacies of preparing for a global conference — from expanding your network of contacts and creating a company stand to designing souvenirs.
We promise that you will find useful and practical advice in the material
Content
Clearly define the goals you are going to the conference with
Schedule meetings before the conference starts
Think about a compelling company description and work on the stand design
Take care of feedback
Don't miss the opportunity to talk to the media - visit the media lounge
Don't ignore informal social gatherings
Present your product, but remain human
Attend lectures to keep up with trends
Prepare merch for event attendees
Take the initiative and make friends with event participants on social networks.
10 tips to make conference preparation easier
Preparing for conferences is a demanding task that requires attention to detail, passion, team cohesion, and a strategic approach. Especially when it comes to large-scale events like Web Summit.
To successfully present both your company and your product, we have prepared 10 tips that will help your team prepare for the conference.
Clearly define the goals you are australia phone number list going to the conference with
Agree that attending a conference just for the sake of it is a bad idea. Especially when an event of such a scale as Web Summit is attended by thousands of startups, invited investors, and experts from all over the world.
Don't be lazy and think in advance about why and for what your company decided to participate in the conference, what results you want to achieve. For example, if your goal is to find investors, then you can't do without a short, convincing and structured product presentation.
Be where your target audience lives
If you want to attract potential customers, go to the event app, view the list of participants, set the necessary filters, and thus find your target audience. Write to them, offer to meet at the event and get to know them in person.
Treat this task as homework, which will determine the further course of action at the conference and its outcome.
Schedule meetings before the conference starts
Plan your schedule in advance. Make a list of partners, investors, media representatives you want to meet with, and schedule the times for your meetings. Such thorough preparation will help you avoid wasting time making decisions on the spot. You won’t catch your interlocutor by surprise. Both you and he/she will be ready for the conversation.
Moreover, at a conference with 75,000 participants, each attendee has their own tasks and goals. In fact, meeting the person you need can be almost impossible. Without pre-planned meetings, you risk wasting time and money.
When we booked meetings, we first downloaded the official Web Summit app, filtered people based on criteria that matched our potential client profile, and then prepared different messages for each of them to increase the chances of receiving a positive response.
When selecting potential clients, we focused on several segments:
Startups to offer them our special program;
Existing companies that we believe would benefit from migrating from another system to NetHunt CRM.
We also sent out emails to our clients informing them of the opportunity to meet us in person at a conference. Since the NetHunt CRM team rarely sees clients face-to-face, this was a great opportunity to meet some of them.
Think about a compelling company description and work on the stand design
A company’s stand is a kind of business card that should interest the audience and leave a positive impression, a pleasant aftertaste, so to speak. However, at Web Summit, we noticed that most descriptions contained general phrases such as: “Advanced company”, “Innovative solutions”, “Revolutionary product”.
If you really want to stand out from the crowd, avoid clichés. Speak and write simply so that both beginners and seasoned experts can understand you. Focus on specific achievements, unique benefits of the product or service, and business values.
For example, on our sign we wrote: “Gmail CRM for full-cycle outbound sales: lead generation, contact enrichment with multichannel data, sales engagement and automation.” Event attendees approached us and asked about the specific functionality we listed in our description.