Event Marketing (aka in-person conferences) in healthcare have always been an integral part of every B2B healthcare marketing strategy. Even as marketing becomes increasingly digital, conferences remain one of the best ways to engage existing prospects in their buying journey.
2024 Conference Attendance Surprisingly Strong
Late in 2023, there was concern amongst Health IT companies. We spoke to many who were worried that tighter budgets in 2024 would result in poorly attendance at conferences in the spring.
That has proven not to be true.
ViVE2024, HIMSS24, HMPS24, ElevatePX and a dozen other conferences that Swaay.Health and Healthcare IT Today have attended have felt “full”. In fact, at HIMSS24 and ViVE2024 in particular, the exhibit hall felt more crowded than any conference post COVID. (Check out our ViVE2024 recap and HIMSS24 recap – Part I and Part II for more details).
The consensus of the exhibitors and Health IT companies who attended the spring conferences, was cautiously optimistic. This was much better than the same time last year when sentiment was decidedly negative.
One Noticeable Change to Healthcare Conferences
There has, however, been one noticeable change to in-person events in 2024 versus prior years. Healthcare conferences are no longer the primary source of new leads. This is not a new development. Even before the pandemic, attendees from provider organizations were spending less time in the exhibit hall cruising for new solutions.
Instead, attendees at conferences would make a beeline to the specific exhibitors they wanted to meet with (usually someone they had already met with) and bypass everyone else.
Healthcare conferences are now the place to nurture existing prospect through the funnel rather than where you add new leads to your funnel.
Strategic Conference Spending
Alexandra Ferraro, Head of Marketing at Intelligencia AI had this to say when asked about their healthcare conference strategy:
Our event strategy has been focused on attending smaller, niche events where most attendees are our target customers. We’ve invested in sponsored speaking opportunities not to pitch our product but rather to showcase industry challenges, poll the audience, and highlight use cases and proof points leveraging our data and solution. Right now, having a tiny booth on a huge exhibit floor isn’t the right investment — and that’s ok! Prioritize events where your ideal customers are and where you can reach a captive audience in the right setting.
Karen Philip, Executive Director at epocrates echoed Ferraro’s sentiment of being more strategic with investing in events:
During the pandemic, epocrates – like all companies – was forced to shift our strategy from in-person to virtual events. While these events were initially very successful for audience engagement, we recognized a decline in participation as virtual conference fatigue set in. In-person events continued to face challenges in regaining their former traction as the world came out of quarantine but still feared large crowds. The exciting news for 2024? Our audiences are now embracing both virtual and in-person events. Webinars are now providing excellent reach for brand amplification and shared learnings, and in-person interaction cannot be beat for building one-to-one relationships. We’re experimenting with various event formats – both in person and virtual – to find the right balance to deliver both the information our clinicians and partners need and objectives our business aspires to achieve. There is no right or wrong; it’s about finding the right mix to maximize impact.
Capture Feedback While Still Onsite
Sarah McGuckin, Event and Operations Coordinator at Genzeon shared a great suggestion for capturing feedback from fellow team members that can help with continuous improvement of events:
One of the best tactics I’ve found as an event planner is to have post-event debriefs as soon as possible. If you’re at a multi-day conference, having a team sync, even as short as 15 minutes, at the end of each day is INVALUABLE. Yes, the team is tired, but by not having those syncs it’s easy to miss key information and opportunities. Most individuals can’t remember what they had for breakfast let alone can be expected to remember items from an event a week later. End of day debriefs, and end of conference debriefs are imperative and aid in maximizing ROI.
The Swaay.Health team uses this tactic, and we find it very effective. When we review our notes several weeks later, it is always surprising the insights that we wrote down but have since forgotten. Capturing thoughts in-the-moment is worth the mental energy at the end of a long conference day.
What are your thoughts on the spring 2024 conference season so far?
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