October 10th, Will Bailey, Head of Partnerships
We’ve been spending lots of time talking to industry leaders about what’s front of mind for them as they look towards the final few months of 2024. From this, a few key themes, all quite different, have arisen which reflect the breadth of challenges in our sector at the moment. Let’s dive in.
Leveraging physical event data
In-person events have certainly had a comeback post covid and continue to show signs of growing – according to CMI the global B2B events market is projected to record a CAGR of 7.2% from 2023 to 2033*. But forward-thinking companies are thinking beyond the events themselves to uncover ways they can leverage the data they create to augment the experience, enrich or even launch digital product offerings, and maximise the value this opportunity will bring.
This might be as futuristic sounding as digital sensors on doors capturing how many attendees are in each session or perhaps connecting brands to the right people by showing dynamic ads to attendees as they walk past. The opportunity with physical events is connecting the right people with the right opportunities, and this is where data-driven brands can shine.
Beyond that, companies might want to start with the basics of supplementing year-round content with insights captured and repurposed from flagship events. How many brands are guilty of ending one event and focusing solely on the next, losing all that fantastic knowledge and innovation generated by bringing together a whole community in one place? I’d guess a lot.
For our part, as long as the data is captured we can make sure it is integrated with your offerings – it’s part of our experience as content and data experts.
Scaling AI prototypes into real-world products
Much of the early conversations around leveraging AI have been (rightly) around launching experiments to quickly find examples where it could provide real value to customers, or reduce operational inefficiencies. But nearly two years after the public launch of ChatGPT many publishers are now looking to the next steps – taking these ideas from being data science projects and creating something tangible and sellable.
This is no easy task. Ensuring a new product idea or workflow improvement is properly integrated within existing infrastructure, getting internal teams ready to utilise the change or sell a new service, feature or full product – all of this requires careful planning. Many companies feel the benefit of bringing in specialists (like us!) to reduce the risk of delivering on these projects and maximise the value generated by them faster. In fact, we’ve been doing just that recently with a leading standards agency in order to take an in-house AI project and turn it into something they can go to market with quickly and confidently.
Creating new value from archival content
We’ve spoken to plenty of companies whose original business models were based on revenue from commercial sponsorship, who now feel they need to look elsewhere both to find growth and to reduce future risk. Plenty are sitting on a mountain of archival content which could be a profitable asset if delivered to customers in a useful way. Beyond selling access, historical data can be used to power predictions and provide deeper context to existing insights – all things which customers can use to make better decisions and justify those decisions to their own boards and leadership.
Whenever we have delivered this for a client, the first step has always been to get the archival content in a usable format. Whether it’s currently stored in pdfs, in excel sheets or even words on a website page, we can bring it together, enrich it, and put it to work for you.
Strengthening foundations
A recurrent theme – whether from newly appointed CEOs or those who are trying to pivot existing businesses in a new direction – is that properly auditing their current structures and technologies before embarking on drastic business changes is time well spent.
While we think this is always good advice, it seems particularly impactful at a time when many publishers are trying to diversify revenue. While often the attention can be focused on the end result – the new product, service, or segment – having issues with basic architecture can lead to these new opportunities being limited in their success, or increase the time it takes to get them to market. The quote, oft attributed to Ben Franklin, ‘If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail’ may be cheesy, but it is certainly applicable here.
Luckily, you can speed up the time it takes to get this phase done, and done properly, with an expert tech audit. Get in touch to find out how fast we can check your foundations for the future.
What about you?
Do any of these topics resonate with you and your business? I’d be interested to hear from you, even if it’s just to discuss your own challenges as we move towards the new year.
