The events industry has enjoyed the type of incredible comeback that few of us could have predicted back in 2020-21. Who will ever forget the post-pandemic euphoria of being able to meet in person when we finally had our live shows back? But, a bubble inflated by the rolled-over marketing budgets of technology vendors and ‘revenge attendance’ seemed likely to deflate eventually. 
The signs from the industry at large show that we’ve now returned to the pre-pandemic normal while the threat of an economic downturn has squeezed marketing budgets tighter, with exhibitors and sponsors typically signing very late into the event run-up process. But that’s not all; the sectors we serve with our shows also seem busier than ever, meaning that our attendees are becoming more discerning when planning their spend and time investment.
All of this means that we’re beginning to see a flight to quality, i.e. investment in events which truly meet customer needs and alleviate pain points. If what we are offering does not help customers do their jobs better, it is not worth their time and investment.  

The flight to quality

Most of us know how hard it can be to stay on the hamster wheel of event delivery. Therefore, creating a best-in-class show feels challenging. But our industry is at an inflection point where the best will sharpen up their offering, scale and dominate the market. 
To become best-in-class, events businesses need to:
  • Facilitate connections between hard-to-reach people and markets
  • Produce content which is not easily accessible elsewhere 
  • Deliver an excellent experience which will inspire, delight and leave customers wanting to come back for more.
In particular, in an industry which has often relied upon enabling serendipitous networking - and one where we look to create numerous opportunities within the ecosystem of buy / sell and everyone in between - we need to do better to facilitate meaningful connections. Our participants want to connect with the right people, grow their networks and find solutions, and they want us to make it easy for them to do so. 
If someone who meets your ideal customer profile (ICP) goes to just one or two events per year, it is important that yours is the market leading event they will choose. However, putting steps in place in order to dominate a market and scale a show requires a significant amount of focus and effort. As such, the reality is that we cannot scale everything at once, and we need to assess where to put the effort to maximise the impact. 

Where to invest your efforts

If our time has been spent launching shows and spreading risk thinly across our event portfolios, we are unlikely to be able to find the investment and resources needed for scaling and growing a flagship, industry-defining ‘lighthouse’ event that has a large share of market and a large share of wallet. 
Finding the time and focus to do this means taking a cold, hard look at underperforming events in our portfolio. 

Optimising your portfolio

A portfolio optimisation project drives decision-making around which events to scale and which to retire. Such projects often comprise key steps that help an events organisation to decide where to focus their efforts. 

1. Start with a brainstorm

 
To begin, a good brainstorming exercise (using the Boston Matrix, for example) can help to quickly review your portfolio, and later act as a tool via which to update your thoughts on your winning and losing events as your work progresses. Brainstorm to identify the events that the business thinks are the most and least valuable and go from there. 

2. Look outside your company 

 
After being part of an industry ecosystem for years, an organisation may think that it knows the market well enough to decide what it needs, but most companies will believe at least a few myths that need to be busted. 
It can help to take a step back and use a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to build a fresh perspective by comparing your events to the competition. This can start as an internal exercise but should be informed by the later work at this stage of the process.
Next, understanding your customer base even more deeply will help tailor the right solution to their needs, enhancing customer satisfaction and quality of earnings as a result. A great place to start here is to divide the markets served into segments. These may be defined by firmographics like company size or location and / or demographics like departments, job titles, need and / or behaviours. Doing this means that the business will be in a better position to develop targeted content and features to meet these needs. 
Finally in this stage, more thorough customer and market analysis should identify current trends, clarify needs, and allow you to better understand competitive dynamics, all of which are vital in deciding what to invest in and what to stop. Undertake desk research as a minimum, i.e. learn what you can from published sources of information, but ideally undertake primary market research to generate highly specific and fully up-to-date insight into what your industry needs, now.
It can be tempting to skip this step as it can be time-consuming and tricky to conduct good market research, but understanding what customers need is vital in portfolio optimisation. Unless you are clear about which events are producing content which visitors really value and truly can’t access anywhere else, deciding where to invest or cut-back is a high-risk endeavour. Appoint a reliable third-party to help.

3. Evaluate performance

 
There is also plenty of insight to be drawn from your own internal data. Exploring KPIs such as revenue, profit margins, market share, and customer satisfaction will show which events are thriving and which are underperforming in the most basic terms. Products that consistently underperform against these KPIs will likely need to be reimagined, repositioned or retired. 
This reimagining may mean converting an event to a simple webinar on a specific technical or regulatory area rather than a whole event, or - at the other end of the spectrum - building an additional offering within an existing event. Figuring out which way to go will of course be much easier if you have market and customer insight to inform your decision. KPI analysis alone is unlikely to give you the answer. 

4. Benefit from technology 

 
Optimisation also means exploring the opportunities available to you in improving your events. In particular with technology rapidly evolving, we need to ask ourselves: how can we use tech to innovate and stay relevant? 
At the same time, we are starting to see technology play a pivotal role in the portfolio optimisation process itself. Advanced data analytics, AI and machine learning can provide us with deeper insights into customer behaviour and market trends and these will help us better understand our portfolios. This might be through tracking event performance data in real time, enhancing our customer data, or improving our research and production processes. 

5. Identify adjacencies 

 
Tech isn’t the only way to innovate, of course. Our industry has been great at launching events to help spread risk, but to build the lighthouse event that event organisers are constantly seeking, consider scaling by accommodating adjacencies in existing events. This could mean expanding your offer to attract new company types, departments, job functions, or categories of solution provider. It could mean catering for new ‘jobs to be done’ (i.e. customer needs). And it could of course be moving into a new region, but this is often the costliest way to expand. 

6. Get your pricing right

 
Finally, optimising your portfolio means maximising the sales you are making now. This is where pricing and packaging strategies come in. Pricing must reflect the value that the solution provides to customers. How valuable is the opportunity that your show is creating for the payer (be they the delegate or the exhibitor)? Regularly reviewing and adjusting pricing based on market conditions and customer feedback is crucial.

The key to success

The shifting dynamics in business events means that attendees and sponsors will make choices about where to put their time and money and therefore, building market-leading events where the strongest thrive is key to success. 
Whilst it might feel counterintuitive to grow by doing less, the value of focus should not be underestimated. Those that optimise their portfolio and create a growth-oriented operating model will be in a better position to scale and deliver market-leading events, which will increase market-share and ultimately improve quality of earnings for your business.
Pauline Coulter is Collingwood’s Principal Adviser for Events, and leads scaleup projects which include portfolio optimisation, sales strategy and product development. Pauline has a long career in leading B2B events to growth and scale, and is an experienced consultant. Get in touch to hear more about portfolio optimisation: pauline.coulter@collingwood.group.