Create a Profitable User Conference

What's one way to get people to pay to see you demo your product? Host a user conference.

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Recently Salesforce.com hosted their 9th annual Dreamforce event. Forty five thousand people paid around $1,000 each to embed themselves in the Salesforce community for four days.

That’s a cool $45 million revenue bump for Salesforce but it doesn’t stop with ticket sales. Salesforce also sold 275 exhibitors on taking space in their "Cloud Expo" where a booth started at $10,000 and went up from there.

Not only did Salesforce sell attendees on coming and exhibitors on displaying their wares, they also sold sponsorships. There were ten Platinum sponsorships available at a cost of $400,000 each. Thirty-six opportunities existed to pay $150,000 to be a Gold sponsor, and Silver sponsorship ran $75,000 for 40 spots. Ninety opportunities existed to pay the good folks at Salesforce $25,000 for a Bronze-level sponsorship.

And they didn’t stop there. For an extra $20,000, a Platinum sponsor could provide the Eco-Pavilion Bags–that’s after ponying up for the $400,000 Platinum package. For the rights to ferry participants around on the back of a branded three-wheel bike, you could be the Pedicab sponsor for $20,000. You could even sponsor the coat check for $5,000, but given that the event was in California in August, the foot traffic may have been modest.

All up, and I wouldn’t be surprised (just guessing) if Salesforce grossed close to a hundred million dollars on the event. And here’s the beauty of creating a user conference: you’re making money to sell to your own audience.

Where else is it possible to charge your customers and prospects to learn more about your business? Can you imagine asking your prospects to pay for your next sales visit? Would you pay Proctor and Gamble to watch their next 30-second TV spot for Tide?

A user conference is simply an event where you bring together everyone who has a stake in your company’s success. Software companies popularized the concept but user conferences are profitable across a variety of industries. The analyst firm Forrester brings both the technology companies they cover and the clients who use their research to an annual series of conferences. Gazelles, the consulting company targeting high-growth mid-market firms, hosts the Fortune Growth Summit, which is intended not only for their clients but also for the Gazelles coaching community who are the consultants working directly with growth companies.

The big difference between a simple customer event and a user conference is that with a user conference you invite all of the players in your market and therefore have multiple revenue streams. The reason the Dreamforce event is so lucrative for Salesforce is that they get all three legs of the stool that make up their community to pay. If you’d like to host your own user conference, consider inviting all of the people who have a stake in your success:

1.    Customers and Prospects: This is an obvious group, but just because they are already buying from you doesn’t mean they won’t pay to attend your event. If you pack your event with enough content, a user conference can be another way to generate additional revenue from your existing customers.

2.    Ingredient Companies: Are there people or businesses in your community that create something using your product as an input? Salesforce invites the independent developers who build applications that run on the force.com platform. These “ingredient” attendees are ideal targets to attend and sponsor your user event.

3.    Hangers On: Who are the people or companies that want to get access to your customer base? Provided they’re not your direct competitor, you can sell them the opportunity to be a sponsor in order to reach your customers.

When you get all three groups interested in a meeting of the minds, you have the makings of a wildly successful–and profitable–user conference.

John Warrillow is the founder and CEO of The Sellability Score, a self-assessment questionnaire that lets business owners evaluate the “sellability” of their business. @JohnWarrillow