Why attending conferences is critical for startup success
In todays world where there is a million startups emerging from every corner of the world, getting your product validated has been harder than ever. That’s where conferences come in — a true validator of your idea. Let’s explore why we think they are a must.
The power of real feedback
The real value of attending in conferences is the opportunity to receive immediate, direct feedback from industry professionals.
Sure, one might consider paid advertising campaigns or direct cold outreach as simpler alternatives but the authenticity and relevance of that feedback can be questionable.
Unlike the superficial insights from generic audiences, feedback at conferences comes from seasoned experts who deeply understand the what the market wants.
Investing in a conference ticket, in comparison to running a campaign, buying a lead list or hiring a media buyer, can often lead to a much better outcome, feedback-wise.
Talking to like-minded individuals in such an environment makes you think in a different way than you are used to which can often lead to innovative insights. You will get bombarded with opinions and criticism unparalleled by any marketing campaign.
Last but definitely not least is the variety and creativity of the questions you will get asked. They can be eye-opening, often mentioning aspects of your product or service that you may not have perviously thought of.
That leads us to our next topic.
Engaging questions lead to insightful answers
Interactions with people at conferences lead to an exchange of ideas and insights, especially regarding your product/service. When you are presenting your startup at such an event, you’re not presenting to a non-interested audience.
You are presenting it to a community of professionals and fellow entrepreneurs. All of these individuals bring different perspectives and experiences to the table, making their questions very specific.
While having a conversation with someone, their questions can range from general inquiries about the functionalities of your product/service to more complex ones about your market viability, unique selling points and potential for scalability.
You might be asked how your product/service differs from existing solutions or its integrations with other technologies. These questions might be hard to answer on the spot but they reflect genuine interest and concerns.
They can often reveal gaps in your market research and give you ideas for new features or the simplification of existing ones.
Conference interactions offer a testing ground in real-time for your product/service. The direct feedback is crucial in understanding market needs.
Networking and building meaningful connections
Everyone always says that having a good network can make or break a startup and that’s for a reason.
The connections you make with individuals at conferences are often stronger than ones you make over the internet.
Those connections lead to stronger, more qualified leads and potentially valuable partnerships. Relationships that come out of a conference can open doors to very interesting new opportunities.
Leads from conferences can have significantly higher conversion rates and and greater lifetime values but trust us, it’s not about the quantity but the quality of those leads.
A single connection made at a conference can link you to an entire network of relevant contacts, offering insights, resources and collaboration opportunities.
If we didn’t attend the WebSummit we never would’ve met Heroic Rankings, which we are very glad we did.
You can read about that here:
Our Experience and Future Plans
We were initially skeptical our potential success at WebSummit, but it turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant experience, which inspired us to write this article
Our product and team got completely validated and we scored some strategic partnerships as well as a lot of leads.
We’re looking forward to attending more of them, so much that we’ve set aside a conference budget.
Who knows maybe we will meet you there.
In the meantime if you want to take the next step towards more profitable decision making check us out:
