Are Conferences Worth It?
It is frustrating for cybersecurity vendors when conferences attain the status of “must attend.” They are extremely expensive to exhibit at and the ROI is often difficult to measure. In my experience you can expect to scan 3,000 badges at a big conference with 20,000+ attendees. But, in these challenging times companies are starting to scrutinize their spending on conferences. What kind of message does it send if you have a 20% RIF but still spend $250K+ on a booth and parties at RSAC or BlackHat?
For the most part exhibitors at the twenty conferences we include in the IT-Harvest platform for cybersecurity industry research are healthy and growing. But sometimes vendors pull out at the last minute. Famously, Check Point Software pulled out of RSAC for several years. The CEO, Gil Shwed, took a close look at the ROI and made the call it was not worth the expense. Yet Check Point came back. Here are a few of the 302 vendor exhibitors planning to be at RSAC 2023:
There are many reasons to exhibit/sponsor at conferences beyond filling a sales funnel.
Brand awareness.
You cannot discount the value of your presence alone. Industry analysts, customers, investors, and journalists are prowling the show floor looking for your booth.
Partnering.
Many vendors discover or cement partner arrangements on the show floor.
Hiring.
Job seekers looking for their next position are also attending. If you don’t have a booth, you don’t get to meet them.
Investors.
All the major VCs and Wall Street analyst firms send people to the big conferences. It is a good idea to be there.
Not having a presence can have significant negative consequences. But the financial quandary is hard to refute. It is almost impossible to measure the above justifications.
One alternative is the Phillipe Courtot method. As CEO of Qualys he boycotted exhibiting at RSAC. Instead, he hired out a venue in San Francisco and hosted a great party. He probably captured all of the value listed above. Qualys is still not exhibiting this year.
The worst case scenario is pulling out after paying for the booth. The contracts are explicit. Pay in full or you don’t reserve a booth. Pulling out means walking away from the $75-100K investment already made. But you save on booth design and construction costs and all the travel and hotel expenses for the team required to populate the booth. You can still send your CEO to talk to investors, Wall Street, and analysts.
The worst possible outcome is the negative buzz that could surround a dramatic pull-out. The spectacular collapse of Norse comes to mind. Norse had built a reputation of having the biggest booths and the best chotchkies. They sponsored the lanyards for RSAC 2016 so their name was everywhere. But their floor space was just a piece of carpet and social media ensured that everyone saw pictures of the hole in the show floor.
My advice:
Never justify conference presence by leads generated. Any savvy CFO will ask you to show sales generated, not number of leads. Instead, highlight the other benefits listed above. This works best if you are not an established brand.
If you are an established brand then emphasize the negative consequences of pulling out.
Also, encourage the CFO to attend, even spend some time in the booth. They will most likely enjoy meeting customers and investors and perhaps learn the importance of presence.
Here at IT-Harvest we have decided to exhibit at our first conference ever, InfoSec Europe in London. I have my own ability to pull people into our (tiny) booth. Security Yearbook 2023 will be hot off the presses and I will be signing copies! One quarter of our subscribers are in the UK so it will be worth the investment just to meet them face to face.