Healthcare Marketing

Healthcare Tradeshow Marketing and PR – #HITMC Twitter Chat Topics

This month’s #HITMC Twitter chat is hosted by Colin Hung.

Can you believe it’s already August? Where has the year gone?

For me, August has always been “prep & planning month”. It is the last month of calm before the craziness of the fall conference season hits. Symplur is already tracking 182 healthcare conferences scheduled between September 1st and October 31st of this year. That’s about 4 conferences for each business day over those two months! (Note: You might find Healthcare Scene’s take on some of the top Healthcare IT Conferences useful)

If you assume that on average there are 20 exhibitors at each conference and that the cost to exhibit is approximately $10,000 (exhibit fee, travel, accommodations, marketing materials, etc) that means $36.4M will be spent conferences this fall. The actual number is likely much higher, especially when you consider that one of the fall conferences is the mega-sized RSNA (with over 2,000 exhibitors filling the entire McCormick Center in Chicago IL) and that Symplur does not track every single healthcare conference that is happening.

With this amount of spending, it is clear that conferences are still an important part of the marketing mix for healthcare vendors. But should they be? It is well documented that email marketing, content marketing and SEO/SEM have much lower cost of acquisition compared with conferences, so should marketers not be investing more in these channels? Is this already happening with fewer and fewer new companies exhibiting?

Over the past couple of years, I have noticed a growing trend of companies attending conferences rather than exhibiting at them. When I ask, it seems there are two primary reasons driving this choice. First, is cost. Attending a conference means no booth costs (shipping, setup, staffing, giveaways) which can be as much as 50% of the cost of a conference. Second is ease of networking. At most conferences, exhibitors get a special colored badge. Unfortunately, when attendees see someone approaching with a badge of that color, they usually run the other way out of fear of getting a sales pitch. Many company representatives find it much easier to have conversations when you are seen as a fellow attendee.

On this month’s #HITMC tweetchat we will be discussing healthcare tradeshows and conferences. Are they still worth it? Is it better to go as an attendee?  When does it make since to sponsor and exhibit? How can marketers get more value from conferences?

Join us Tuesday, August 8th at Noon ET (9AM PT) for the hour-long TweetChat.  These questions will serve as the framework for the chat.

T1. Do you think healthcare conferences still hold value as a marketing investment?

T2. Exhibit Hall? or Attendee only? Which offers the better return for each dollar invested?

T3. What tactics have you used to increase the value of attending/exhibiting at healthcare conferences?

T4. What is the worst mistake you have seen an exhibitor make at a healthcare conference?

T5. As an attendee, what, if anything, would attract you to a vendor’s booth? What would turn you away?

BONUS What is the best and worst giveaway that you have seen at a healthcare conference?

Just hop on Twitter and search for #HITMC on Tuesday, August 8th at Noon ET (9AM PT) and you can join in.  We look forward to connecting with you and hearing your thoughts on this important subject!

Here’s a look at the upcoming schedule of Healthcare IT Marketing and PR Community Twitter Chats:

10/3 – Webinars or No Webinars – Which Path Is the Right One for You
Hosted by Lea Chatham (@LeaChatham)

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Editor and Founder of the nationally renowned blog network HealthcareScene.com. The Healthcare Scene network currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 7000 articles. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 13 million times. Plus, Healthcare Scene recently added Health IT focused career resources HealthcareITCentral.com and HealthcareITToday.com to the network.
 
John also co-founded two companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. Plus, John is the Founder of 10 other blogs including the Pure TV Network and Vegas Startups. John’s 25+ blogs have published over 15,000 blog posts, garnered over 30 million views and had over 122,000 comments. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Add Comment

Click here to post a comment

Learn Together

Whether you’re looking to for coverage of important healthcare marketing news or sharing a best practice so that others can learn from your experience, we’d love to have you as part of the community.

Subscribe >