Conference Marketing: Know Your Audience

When you attend a conference with the goal of marketing your business, you need to know your audience. Who are the attendees? What are their occupations? Their interests? Their income level? You must know who you are talking to before you step out.

As I mentioned, I was at a blogging conference over the weekend. There were about 1400 attendees, most of them women who blog. A large number of them are moms. But there were single women, married women, foodies, crafters, and even a handful of men. And a lot of the marketing was aimed at moms.

Moms are a hot commodity in the marketing community. They control a large part of household incomes and companies really want to get their products to them. In fact, they want moms to talk about their products because other moms will probably care what real moms have to say.

But by catering to the moms, they risk offending the other consumers. It is always best to ask a potential client if they have kids if you are going to show them a mom-centric product. For instance, when I was in one of the general sessions, a woman walked by and was giving out toys and a coupon to shop her store. But she stopped to ask me if I had kids, and then asked how old they were. She left and came back with an age-appropriate toy for my son. That was effective marketing to me.

What if she’d just dropped toys or flyers on the table without engaging? I wouldn’t have noticed or cared what she had to sell. But because she stopped for a moment to talk to me, she gave me something useful and I will check out her online store.

It’s a little harder to find the smaller audiences at such a conference, but if you take the time to seek out your target consumers and really talk to them, it can pay off. You might just find a woman who is a passionate food blogger who just might be interested in your kitchen implements. Or she might be able to connect you with women who are. But if you just shove a card in her face without saying much more than hello, she’ll toss that card and move on to a company that is willing to have a deeper dialogue with bloggers.

It’s your choice. Will you get to know your audience, or just toss cards and products randomly, hoping something sticks?

image: sxc.hu