Marketing Seminars and Conferences – Should You Go or Just Say No?

Almost every day, we receive emails announcing new seminars covering the latest marketing topics. Many times the quality and results are not in line with the investment in time or cost. Cost seems to have more to do with the newness and buzz around the topic, cost of the location and big name speakers and may be less correlated to the quality and resulting benefit to improvement in performance and skills.


Social Media, Innovation, and Measuring Marketing ROI are very popular topics now.  While marketers must have this knowledge, the material can also be found online or in any number of books.  Seminars and workshops can be a great way to gain this information, but consider the price being charged.

Here’s an easy approach to looking at value and evaluating your investment in seminar attendance (from lowest value to highest)

1. Gaining information – low value – even if it is great new information. Information is available, inexpensively somewhere else or even after a conference.  It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t attend; just don’t pay a lot.
2. Learning a new skill – medium value -- typically skill building needs focused learning, then real world application, to be effective.
3. Changing behavior – high value -- If a seminar can effect a change in how a group or an individual performs a job, even small improvements can yield big results.
4. Improving results – very high value. Seminars that can improve performance results are few and far between. They require learning objectives to be set and agreed upon, new material to be learned, skill building, coaching, and follow up. This can cost a lot, but the value is easily calculated if the results outweigh the costs.

When evaluating seminar participation, make the best use of your time and resources.