Why use a conference research consultant

If you have a feeling there could be better conferences and events to attend, you’re probably right.

There are thousands of events in the financial and investment industry, covering every geographic region, attendee type and subject focus.

Given the size and complexity of the events industry, it’s difficult for professionals at investment firms to devote the time needed to find and evaluate the full range of opportunities.

That’s where FiLists comes in – we perform customized research to find conferences and events that help you reach specific audiences and achieve goals like raising capital, selling services and building brand awareness.

Our events research consulting can pay for itself through a higher return on your events investment, more efficient use of your time and better event selection decisions.

1. Higher Return Events

Imagine if a portfolio manager running a US equities strategy could only see 20% of the S&P 500?  This would be unthinkable – to select the best stocks the PM needs to see the fullest range of options. Yet if you are selecting conferences and don’t know the universe of choices, you’re in the same boat.

The most effective set of events to achieve your business goals isn’t an absolute choice, it’s a relative choice. You can only choose the best events from the set of opportunities you are aware of.

Customized research expands your opportunity set by uncovering additional, potentially more effective events.

By knowing about a larger group of relevant events, you can make more effective choices. So even if your conference and event spending stays the same, choosing the "best" events from a larger opportunity set should upgrade the effectiveness of your events strategy and increase the return on your events investment.

2. Lower Cost Events

Without actively researching events, one's knowledge tends to center on two types of events. First are the “mega” conferences that everyone knows about. Second are events held by conference organizers that heavily market their events (meaning you are seeing ads, emails and social media posts for the event and getting contacted by the event’s sales staff).

Both of these event types tend to be the highest cost. Mega events are well-established and command premium prices. And conferences with intense marketing efforts usually have higher price points as well, since the organizer is devoting substantial resources to maximizing the event’s revenue.

These higher cost events do have value and may be among your best choices. However, there is a range of other events that are less expensive. They include conferences and events run by non-profit associations, events which aren’t as heavily marketed, regional and niche events, and newer, emerging events.

We don’t recommend choosing events based on price alone. Instead, we encourage clients to evaluate the cost of an event and its benefits, and then select events that have the highest potential return on the cost and time investment. By knowing about events at lower price points, you have more options to maximize this return vs. cost ratio.

In addition, for firms that aren’t ready to commit to six-figure event budgets, lower cost options allow them to start participating in events to reach business goals.

3. Efficient Use of Resources

It takes substantial time to conduct thorough research on conferences and events. One must find and sift through large numbers of events, review event materials, request additional information and speak to organizers for more details.

Plus, given the complex and diverse investment industry, this research requires someone with the knowledge and experience to understand the industry's nuances and properly identify relevant events.

At investment managers and related service providers, sales and marketing positions are demanding roles. Diverting large portions of their time to events research comes at a substantial financial cost. It takes their focus away from crucial activities related to serving existing clients and cultivating new ones.

It’s more cost effective to hire FiLists to perform this research. It's also more efficient, since we bring an existing base of knowledge from our time researching financial and investment events and building a database of these opportunities.

4. Better Selection Process

Participating in higher return conferences and events isn’t just about finding a more comprehensive range of choices. It's also about making better decisions when choosing events. To increase your "hit rate" in selecting successful events, we help you institute a better selection process.

The first step is clarifying your firm's specific goals and the different ways events can help meet those goals. For example, is the goal to find opportunities to sell directly? Or do you need to create greater brand awareness? And/or are you trying to encourage a change in thinking among target audiences that creates new buyers for your product or strategy?

Once the goals are established, we search for events that reach the target audience and look for specific event types that facilitate the goals. (We sort events into nine categories, based in part on the four distinct benefits events offer participants.)

For events that look like potential matches, we try to gather all key details. Such as what's the history and purpose of the event? Who will be there? What are the options for attending or participating, and the costs and benefits of each? What is the business model of the event and where does the client fit on the event's food chain? What specific activities take place? Who are the sponsors and key participants?

In our report we summarize this information in concise profiles that are written in a consistent format, so that you can easily review multiple events and their organizers and compare and contrast key information. We also talk through each event with you to "pressure test" the shortlist and clarify our collective thinking.

By having a quality shortlist of events and a report containing key information that can be easily reviewed and digested, the review and selection process becomes clearer and more straightforward. It becomes easier to identify events that best match the goals and objectives we clarified at the beginning of the process.

5. Ability to Experiment and Improve

Even with the most thorough research and thoughtful evaluation process, you won’t know for sure how effective an event will be until you actually participate.

Every firm will have a unique experience at an event, because each event interacts in slightly different ways with a firm’s blend of product characteristics, reputation, and sales and marketing approach. This explains why two firms in the same sector can go to the same conference, but come back with different takes on the event’s value.

If your universe of event choices is static and limited, you’ll find yourself attending the same events year after year, regardless of their value. Instead, by having a larger pool of high quality options, you can experiment and replace events that have low value with more promising ones.

Also, events that work for your firm today may not work in the future. Over time, value from an event can diminish once you establish relationships with recurring attendees. By including a selection of new events in your annual program, you give yourself the opportunity to meet new contacts, hear new ideas and create larger opportunity sets.

Conclusion

We've designed our events research and consulting process to be fast and efficient, so that in about a month we'll have helped a client clarify its goals, researched and delivered the range of event options, and identified the most promising events to target.

With this base of knowledge, you can create an events participation strategy or enhance or upgrade your current strategy. Following the research, we're available as needed to help with work required to participate in events and maximize their value.

As we've written, we believe that event participation is one of the best marketing strategies for investment managers and related service providers. We want to help firms gain more value from event participation and accelerate their product and business growth.