Marketing Events: What is useful?

Put yourself in my shoes for a moment. You are a fledgling agency with a limited budget for travel and events. If you spend money to attend a high-profile national event for marketers you need to be able to guarantee two types of return on the investment:

a) Education. The event has to offer  practical, detailed information in individual sessions that you can apply immediately on behalf of your clients. The big picture stuff is fun but the bottom line consists of increasing your skills and expertise.

b) Networking. Who else will attend the show? Potential clients? Partners? Employees? You need to be able to walk away from the show with useful new contacts. [Of course if you are me you may be too introverted to hobnob with the in-crowd, but there's always virtual networking with the people you've met or heard speak in person. I'm pretty good at that.]

Having said that, here are three shows I'm considering attending. If you happen to have attended any of them or have any thoughts to toss my way on this topic, please email me.

• OMMA Online Media, Marketing, and Advertising Expo (Hollywood) March 19-20, 2007. Attendance cost: $1,195 [I've never attended.]
• Search Engine Strategies, NYC. April 10-13, 2007. Attendance cost: $1,745 [I attended two years ago and found useful, but did very little networking.]
• Search Marketing Expo (Seattle). June 4-5, 2007.  Attendance cost: $995. [Worth noting that this is a new conference being launched by Danny Sullivan, the founder and former chairman of SES (above). The NYC show will be the last of the SES shows that Danny will program.]

Comments

[Mason]

We're in the same boat my friend. I've recently come to realize the power of networking but these seminars are crazy expensive. I haven't been to any of these events before but I will be at OMMA this year.