Your Ultimate Conference Strategy Checklist

Conference planning can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. By taking early steps, your company can arrive at a conference ready to make an impact and leave with prospects ready to buy. 

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The secret to a successful event return on investment? Starting early. 

It takes a minimum of 120 days to be fully prepared for a conference and WireBuzz is here to be your best friend for growth. Use our ultimate conference strategy checklist to help your team easily align the tools and resources needed to successfully navigate your next event for a maximum ROI. 

Pre-Conference Strategy:

The pre-conference planning phase is essential for building resources for your conference prospects to eventually interact with during and after the event. Ignoring the importance of pre-event planning means losing ROI. If you aren't strategizing how to optimize your results from the event’s investment, you’ll fail to generate real results.

Here are some helpful tips and considerations for preparing your pre-conference strategy:

• Tasks 120 days before the conference:
• Prepare:
• Map out conference goals
• Determine the specific amount of leads needed to prove positive ROI
• Figure out how many days you and your team have before the conference
• Assemble your conference booth team
• Schedule for KOL interviews
• Arrange and prepare booth assets with QR codes for landing pages 
• Optimized and organized sales database for new leads
• Research:
• Specific persona groups
• Pain and frustrations points for each personas
• Attendance expectations
• Virtual attendance expectations
• Core demographic changes
• Content topics that need to be captured
• Key opinion leaders in attendance
• Life science conference production crews for KOL interviews
• Lectures, speakers, and significant announcements anticipated for the event
• Benefits of a WireBuzz Strategy Session
• Create:
• Accountability chart to optimize lead generating goal by conference hours 
• Personalized journey pages for each persona group
• Hyper-relevant and personalized email drip sequences (5) for immediate use
• Booth demo video
• Booth loop video

Conference Strategy:

During the event, it’s about working smarter, not harder to generate leads. Divide up your team into two groups for meeting prospects and nurturing leads as well as for capturing content at the event. 

Conferences can be exciting, so use these strategies during your next conference to stay focused and prove ROI:

• Tasks During Conference:
• Dispatch Conference Teams:
• Lead Nurturing Team:
• Engage with prospects and leads
• Actively enter prospects into your sales database by persona group
• Gauge and determine interest levels for each prospect
• Use badge scanner to get leads into your follow up process (1 for 2 people)
• Establish lead generation contest to inspire your booth team
• Content Capture Team:
• Utilize accountability chart to optimize conference content capturing 
• Identify speakers, data, product theaters, or lectures to film
• Schedule as many KOL interviews as possible
• Capture conference news for email follow up sequences
• Hire a production crew to assist during the event
• Distribute Email Sequences
• Direct leads and prospects to correct journey pages
• Focus on being hyper-relevant to maximize prospect attention

Thanks to the efforts of your team, you can walk out of the conference with a solid list of prospects as well as content that can be leveraged for the rest of the year.

Post-Conference Strategy:

Conferences aren’t just an investment for your events team; your sales and marketing teams can also run these plays on a daily basis. Consider these tips to maintain momentum after a conference ends:

• Post-Conference Tasks:
• Review Persona Information:
• Determine how accurate your persona research was
• Analyze changes to your persona group or audience demographic
• Update messaging
• Discuss whether there was anything you saw at the conference to introduce into your next strategy
• Determine the value of the data discussed 
• Decide whether the audience found the event to be valuable
• Send out hyper-relevant email sequences
• Optimize Email Sequences:
• Ensure your emails are directing prospects to appropriate journey pages
• Include video content
• Incorporate information and content from the conference into the design 
• Communicate data with sales reps
• Continuously tracking your results and engagements

• Utilize:
• Pre-conference assets to target prospects

• Backend analytics to evaluate prospect interest levels
• Insights to identify prospects with immediate purchasing attention
• Flag interested buyers to sales team follow up
• Determine how many leads converted compared to event  investment
• Did you prove-out ROI?

• Prepare for the next conference:
• What could you have done better with your last event?
• Analyze results against your pre-conference goals set in your accountability chart
• Identify areas of success and improvement
• Repeat steps listed in the pre-conference stage
• Schedule a strategy session with WireBuzz

By developing a playbook of your own post-event marketing tactics, you can provide valuable prospect information to your sales reps while also building relevant content for your marketing teams.

Remember that it takes 120 days to be fully prepared for a conference and we’re here as your go-to lead-generating experts.

Make an Impact and Start Prepping Today

We know what it takes to truly get the most out of your event. Using this checklist, you’ll be able to make an impact at your next medical or life sciences conference and prove a successful ROI. The trick is starting early, and WireBuzz can be your best friend for growth.  

Prepare to make your events ROI positive by scheduling your WireBuzz Strategy Session today!

Like what you’re learning? Download the ultimate conference checklist here to make an impact at your next event.