I didn’t expect to land here.
For most of my career, I’ve defended events.
I’ve justified the spend. Backed the strategy. Told clients “this is where deals happen.”
But after my latest run of industry events — including Enterprise Connect — I’m done pretending.
Because when you actually run the numbers (not the badge scans, not the “great conversations”, but the real numbers), the conclusion is unavoidable:
Event marketing doesn’t just underperform content marketing. The economics barely work at all.
Let’s break it down.
The maths nobody wants to talk about
A senior marketing leader I spoke to recently shared some rough costings for exhibiting at a major industry event.
Nothing extreme. Pretty typical.
- Small booth: ~$210k all-in
- Medium booth: ~$520k all-in
- Large booth: ~$840k all-in
Now apply a standard expectation:
You need ~10x pipeline coverage to justify marketing spend.
That means:
- Small booth → $2.1M pipeline required
- Medium booth → $5.2M pipeline required
- Large booth → $8.4M pipeline required
So far, so normal.
Now it starts to fall apart.
Let’s assume:
- Average deal size = $10k ARR
→ You need 840 opportunities
Or:
- Average deal size = $100k ARR
→ You still need 84 opportunities
From one event.
Now layer in reality:
- Only ~5–10% of your market is actively buying at any given time
- You’d need 1,000 to 8,000 relevant companies attending to make those numbers even remotely plausible
At Enterprise Connect?
There were, generously, around 150 non-vendor companies in attendance.
Even in a best-case scenario, the gap isn’t 10x. It’s closer to 10–50x.
The numbers don’t just look bad.
They fundamentally don’t work.
“But it’s about brand…”
This is where the argument usually pivots.
“It’s not about leads.”
“It’s about brand awareness.”
“It’s about relationships.”
Fine.
But if you’re spending £200k–£800k for “brand”, you have to ask:
Compared to what?
Because that same budget in content marketing gets you:
- A year+ of high-quality, search-led content
- Distribution across LinkedIn, email, and owned channels
- Compounding traffic and inbound demand
- Sales assets that actually get used post-event
- Measurable attribution over time
And crucially:
It doesn’t disappear after three days in a convention centre.
The illusion of productivity
Events feel productive.
You’re busy. Your team’s busy. Conversations everywhere.
It looks like marketing.
But activity ≠ outcomes.
Steve Key, Global Marketing Manager at Code Software, summed it up perfectly:
“We’ve cut back on spend relating to exhibiting at events this year… we just don’t get leads from the current events we attend regularly.”
That’s not an isolated view.
That’s where more teams are quietly landing.
The real problem: nobody owns the ROI
Events persist because:
- Vendors sell access
- Marketing teams are measured on presence
- Sales teams enjoy the theatre
- Leadership likes seeing the logo on the stand
But nobody is truly accountable for:
Pipeline efficiency per £ spent.
If they were, most event strategies would be cut overnight.
Content does what events pretend to do
Let’s be honest about what events are meant to deliver:
- Access to buyers
- Thought leadership
- Brand visibility
- Relationship building
Now compare that to content:
- Access to buyers (when they’re actively researching)
- Thought leadership (that scales beyond a room of 50 people)
- Brand visibility (that compounds over time)
- Relationship building (before sales ever gets involved)
And it does it:
- Asynchronously
- Globally
- Measurably
- Repeatedly
No flights. No booths. No guesswork.
“But we’ve always done events”
That’s the real reason most companies are still spending.
Not performance.
Not ROI.
Habit.
Events are one of the last channels in B2B where:
“This is how it’s always been done” still passes as strategy.
Where events do still make sense
This isn’t “never do events.”
It’s:
Stop pretending they’re a primary demand gen channel.
Events can work when:
- You’re going deep with existing customers
- You’re supporting partner-led activity
- You’re hosting your own controlled environment
- You’re using them to capture content
But as a standalone pipeline engine?
The maths just doesn’t support it.
If you’re going to shift budget, do it properly
Most teams reading this will agree with the argument.
Fewer will actually change anything.
Because moving budget out of events and into content sounds simple — but this is where most companies get it wrong:
- They underinvest
- They treat content as a side project
- They focus on output, not distribution
- They give up before it compounds
If you’re going to do this, it has to be intentional.
That means:
- Clear positioning
- Content tied to real buying journeys
- Proper distribution (not “post and hope”)
- Alignment with pipeline, not vanity metrics
That’s exactly what I help B2B teams build.
I work with a small number of companies each quarter to:
- Replace underperforming event spend
- Build content engines that generate pipeline
- Create assets sales teams actually use
I’ve got limited capacity heading into Q3.
So before you sign off your next event budget — if you’re already thinking “this isn’t working” — we should talk.
Because the opportunity cost of getting this wrong isn’t small.
It’s hundreds of thousands in wasted spend.
Every quarter.
Final thought
After Enterprise Connect, I wrote that I hated what we’ve turned events into.
Not because events are inherently bad.
But because we’ve convinced ourselves they’re something they’re not.
The reality is simple:
If you redirected even half your event budget into content, you’d outperform it — comfortably — within 6–12 months.
Not marginal gains.
Not incremental improvement.
10x. Minimum.
And deep down, most marketing teams already know it.
Want to work on content marketing together in Q3/Q4? Fill out my contact form with your requirements and I’ll get back to you in 24 hours.
