How to Fill a Conference With a Digital Campaign

“I can’t believe you came. I can’t believe you bought tickets, made a reservation, put it in your calendar, got ready, got in the car, drove, parked, and made it all the way here to watch me perform. It’s unbelievable.” That’s how comedian Jerry Seinfeld opened his show in Israel. And you know what? Jerry was right. Getting people to leave their house or office and show up at a specific place at a specific time is, without question, a challenge.

Try convincing someone from a younger generation (someone who might not even know who Jerry Seinfeld is) to leave the house, and you’ll usually get a pretty cold response: who leaves the house these days? Why wouldn’t I just watch it on YouTube? The conference site posts all the slides anyway – why not just download them from there?

When we market conferences and events, it’s crucial to understand this reality and build a campaign designed to break through existing habits and barriers. Careful planning and sticking to the right guidelines are essential if we want to actually fill the conference or event we worked so hard on. How? Good thing you asked!

Know your event

Is the event about fashion? Home design? Tech? You need to know the arena inside out, understand whether you’re dealing with a consumer or a business audience, and drill all the way down to the persona, the role, the actual person. We make a point of knowing down to the smallest detail – what do I get out of this conference, what will I learn, who’s this relevant to, what does the audience gain from attending, who’s speaking? If the conference targets businesses, it’s critical to know exactly which roles within the organization you’re speaking to: HR people? Security officers? Maybe only Angular developers?

Once we know the conference inside and out, we know how to build the right visual communication, the right messaging, and later in the campaign, target the exact audience the conference is relevant to with precision. Today, thanks to tools like LinkedIn and Twitter/X, there are excellent options for smart targeting by role and interest. After marketing dozens of large conferences and events, we can say with confidence: smart tactics are what actually fill the room.

Free or paid? Pros and cons

It’s easier to generate registrations for free conferences. Visitors don’t hesitate, they just sign up – but there’s a price to that: your attendance rate can end up low. Paid conferences are harder to market and often require a bigger marketing budget, because visitors think twice before buying. Still, we believe paying for a conference is actually a kind of commitment fee that guarantees a higher show-up rate. We’ve tested this with symbolic entry fees – even as low as ₪40 – just to secure attendance. We’re in favor.

Another thing worth considering carefully is the type of registrant. Broadly, you can split them into two: people who consume the field (customers), and people who market and sell products (vendors). Just like you’d want a bar to have a mix of men and women, not just one or the other (unless it’s a gay bar, which is great too), you don’t want your conference filled only with vendors trying to sell to the handful of actual customers in the room, who end up besieged. It’s worth constantly filtering and checking who’s registering, to stay focused on that process.

If you’re running a conference with a significant price tag, it needs to be a high-quality, professional event, and it requires careful planning of marketing budgets, content, and catering. You don’t want to charge a high price for a conference and end up with unhappy attendees. It’s also important to gather feedback and reviews to understand end-attendee satisfaction with the conference.

Location is a critical factor too. We’ve heard more than once the typical Tel Avivian response: “If I can’t get there on a scooter, I’m not coming.” And that’s their prerogative. We live in a changing world, and not everyone owns a car or is willing to take one out just for a conference (remember Jerry, from the start of this article?). It’s important to know your audience and choose the right location specifically for them.

Physical or digital?

These days, digital conferences, Zoom sessions, and webinars have become part of everyday routine. We’ve noticed there’s a real challenge in filling registration quotas for a Zoom conference – visitors tend to assume it holds less value upfront, and commitment to actually attending drops. If you’ve chosen a digital conference, we recommend investing – bringing in draws, personalities, and pulling a few rabbits out of the hat to make it attractive and maximize turnout on the day.

Choose your date very, very carefully

It’s worth consulting with a professional and a promotion agency about the date. Certain dates, like holidays and major events, are devastating for a marketing period. There are stretches of the year when you simply can’t market effectively. The business market is buzzing in certain months and dormant in others. Picking a bad date – even a small sporting event like the World Cup – can tank registration for a conference. Choosing a low-risk date that allows for comfortable execution is important and critical. Plenty of clients argue they can’t predict wars, storms, and various other acts of nature; we’d say you can predict a lot of events, and there are tools and methods to plan ahead and avoid 95% of the factors that could disrupt your date. We don’t control everything, but we can try to control more of it.

Splitting the campaign into stages

In our view, marketing a conference should be split into 3 main stages:

The announcement – Save the date. Make as much noise as possible during the announcement phase. A big bang: we’re here. This is the stage to lean on PR, content, buzz, and as many mentions and shares as possible to declare that the conference is happening, and that it matters. The announcement stage has strong selling power with the more spontaneous audience, and it’s important to execute it well, on the right date, free of distractions. It’s also worth offering an early-bird discount here – it helps this stage take off. If, say, we’ve already hit 40% of our target during the announcement stage, that lets us manage budgets comfortably through the rest of the campaign without running short.

Full exposure – usually needs a fresh jolt of excitement after the announcement. Once the announcement buzz settles, we reveal more details about the conference – a major performer, a great speaker we brought in specially from the other side of the world, a new product launch, and so on. This is the stage where we recommend telling visitors: “Here it is – this is the full conference, here’s all the info, come register.” It’s worth settling into a steady routine of remarketing that borders on persistent (gently, of course, not aggressively) to remind people to register. This stage targets a slightly cooler audience, not the impulsive ones who already signed up during the announcement.

Last chance – even if the conference looks emptier than you’d hoped, you always need to project “last chance.” Of course, we’ll do everything to fill the conference, and if you’ve followed the stages so far and the digital promotion has been sharp and smart, the conference should enjoy a full, strong turnout. But regardless, as we approach the finish line we start signaling last chance, and if possible, report on remaining tickets, projecting urgency to buy and commit.

The ultimate goal of any conference, event, or show always comes down to two words. Two words that should always stay top of mind when planning and marketing an event: SOLD OUT.

Good luck! See you at the next conference.