Events still in demand
The Proof: Events channels such as trade shows/exhibitions, industry association events, vendor events and analyst events appear to still have impact, despite the current economic situation, faring well in terms of usefulness to many buyers.
Question: How useful are events channels in keeping up-to-date on IT industry developments including general news from vendors? (% rating ‘useful’ and ‘very useful’)
The Point:
Vendors need to continue to include events channels as part of their overall content marketing plans and perhaps need to consider ways in which their content and messages can be consistently exposed across multiple events channels including those organised by analyst firms or independent industry associations.These results represent a very reasonable proportion of buyers given the current economic climate as naturally many businesses will typically cancel plans to attend events as part of cost cutting measures. Less surprisingly perhaps, over half of financial services buyers find all of these events channels useful to them and notably more of them find analyst events useful.
Interestingly our research also shows that buyers who find one event channel useful or very useful for keeping up-to-date with industry developments are more likely to find other types of events useful clearly indicating many buyers still have a clear preference to receive information via personal interaction.
Source: Vanson Bourne “Getting Past Irrelevant†Channels & Content Study
