1) How did figure out if a given event's audience would have a high concentration of your target audience? Was this based on asking your customers/community, doing research on the event website (e.g. name of conference contains "devops"), or a combination of both?
2) The 2 metrics appear to be geared towards events your community already attends. How do you approach new conferences where you are still building awareness? Or perhaps these type of "awareness-building" conferences don't score high so you wouldn't sponsor in the first place?
1) Figuring out the audience has kind of been an artsy science. Some of it was looking at their website, reviewing the event prospectus materials (a lot of conferences show you the breakdown of their attendees), and asking people who have attended/spoken there/sponsored.
2) Because our events aren't primarily to build awareness, you're correct, the metrics are more geared to events where our community already is. We don't sponsor many events just 'to be seen' and really place a lot of value on interacting with our users for our specific events. That being said, there are other departments within our company that go to events with different goals, and brand awareness can totally be on their radar, but for this year 'awareness-building' is not too high on ours, but something to think about in the future.
Thanks for the article, Amanda. Two questions:
1) How did figure out if a given event's audience would have a high concentration of your target audience? Was this based on asking your customers/community, doing research on the event website (e.g. name of conference contains "devops"), or a combination of both?
2) The 2 metrics appear to be geared towards events your community already attends. How do you approach new conferences where you are still building awareness? Or perhaps these type of "awareness-building" conferences don't score high so you wouldn't sponsor in the first place?
Hi Al - thanks for reading.
1) Figuring out the audience has kind of been an artsy science. Some of it was looking at their website, reviewing the event prospectus materials (a lot of conferences show you the breakdown of their attendees), and asking people who have attended/spoken there/sponsored.
2) Because our events aren't primarily to build awareness, you're correct, the metrics are more geared to events where our community already is. We don't sponsor many events just 'to be seen' and really place a lot of value on interacting with our users for our specific events. That being said, there are other departments within our company that go to events with different goals, and brand awareness can totally be on their radar, but for this year 'awareness-building' is not too high on ours, but something to think about in the future.
Cheers,
Amanda
Thanks Amanda, appreciate the detailed response!