This email came out last week and I thought it would be a good point of discussion for us. I would like to be in the position they say they are – getting more leads via their blog than actually at a trade show. Not many companies can say that, or I have not heard about them. If you are a company like Hubspot and get more leads via your blog, please let me know.
Here is their email. I would appreciate you all weighing in on this.
As of January 2010, The HubSpot marketing team is eliminating exhibitor booths and sponsor tables from all its lead generation initiatives.
It’s true; we enjoy chatting with folks and meeting fellow marketers at trade shows, but as a marketing channel it’s incredibly ineffective.
Here’s why HubSpot won’t be exhibiting anymore:
Problem #1: Event marketing yields the the highest cost per lead of all of our marketing. That fact alone is enough to stop exhibiting cold turkey. For comparison, the HubSpot Marketing blog in a single day yields more leads than a two-day trade show, and the costs associated with blogging are much, much less.
Problem #2: It requires a lot of dedicated man-hours for little return. It doesn’t make sense to pull a marketing person and a couple sales folks from their regular responsibilities for a handful of leads. Out-of-state events? Add two days for travel. That’s a lot of lost time that could be used for better marketing channels.
So what will we do instead?
Speak at events. We believe developing thought leadership through speaking at events is much more valuable than showing off your logo. Our executives and the majority of the marketing team present at conferences and workshops all the time. We want to share knowledge instead of barking our mission statement.
Create more content. Our blog brings us 20% of all our organic leads. Thousands of new people visit our website after viewing our webinars. These are low-cost initiatives that touch more people.
Hold our own events. We still think it’s very important to get to know the marketing community face-to-face, and to lose that completely would be a shame. That’s why we hold meet-ups at our offices and invite the public to be a part of HubSpot.tv.
Attend events to mingle and learn. Going to events is a great way to keep your knowledge fresh and meet new people. Why not represent your company as an attendee to also get the benefit of the sessions and speakers?
So what do you think? Have other marketing efforts replaced your trade shows?
Soooo what do you think about their new positioning? Let me know.
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With only the information they’ve shown on their e-mail I would agree with their decision. Trade shows are just one part of the marketing bag of tricks and if it’s not working for you, or if something works so overwhelmingly better that’s where I’d be putting my money if it were me.
But as with everything it’s not one size fits all. Perhaps they were not good at working the booth. They may not have had proper training on booth sales. They may have not sent the right people. Their whole strategy could be at fault or even missing completely where the shows were concerned.
Or, here’s a thought. They sell internet marketing solutions. This letter could just be a sales pitch for spending more money on your internet marketing. Where are you going to get the extra money? Why not pull out of your tradeshows…that should give you enough.
I’ve heard Brian Halligan of Hubspot speak before and he was never a trade show advocate. However, he makes some good points and I believe (like Traci) that trade shows (especially those living in the past) might not be the best fit for everyone. That said, trade shows are transitioning quickly. Organizers and contractors are experimenting with new formulas, new practices and new tools every day. If exhibiting isn’t the best path, sponsorship and customized face-to-face opportunities in cooperation with show organizers could be an option. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water Brian. If you’ve got something that works, show us how to use it in our industry so we can continue to do what we do best.
I agree with Michelle. Trade shows are evolving. They may not be changing as fast as the tech world – right now – but they are much different than they used to be. I don’t believe I have ever heard a (valid) argument against the power of face-to-face marketing. Instead of putting up our dukes to fight this out, let’s find the most strategic ways to integrate our solutions to ensure success for everyone.
When I read the post on the Hubspot blog, I respect their ROI motivation, but thought perhaps that as internet marketers they did not fully understand how to work the trade show to create better ROI. In that vein, I shared some ideas about how they could remain true to their “inbound” marketing mission and still get a lot more results from trade shows. No response from them in comments about whether they had tried those methods already, or if that would perhaps help them.
Later I saw that this is not the first time Hubspot has disparaged trade shows…they even had that cartoon made (like the one above), and others similar to it, that don’t reflect the positive experience of so many exhibitors (think of the roughly 120,000 attendees at CES 2010 swarming exhibitors, more attendees than last year). So I’m a little cynical about their motives, and was thinking the same thing Traci said — the money for B2B marketing that pays them has to come from somewhere, why not the trade show budget?
That said, I do think Hubspot has fantastic content.