The Producer’ s Room
What SaaS knows about exhibitor growth that we don’ t( yet)
Con Bridgeman, CEO, Event Producer Pro and founder of The Producer’ s Room, examines the smart shows’ playbook
e’ re all busy chasing big
W exhibitor targets( rightly so). Meanwhile our conference delegate strategy designed to drive visitors looks nothing like the sophisticated approach our cousins in conferences take.
But, SaaS has figured out something we haven’ t: your‘ product’ can do the selling for you. Which, in our world, means the conference content.
It’ s not magic and it’ s not sales led growth. It’ s product-led growth( or we could call it programme-led growth).
Here’ s the shift: SaaS products are designed to acquire and convert users through the experience itself. Think Slack, Notion, Calendly – tools that grow because using them is the marketing.
In exhibitions, the closest equivalent to that‘ product experience’ is the conference agenda. And, too often, it’ s built around the sponsor’ s needs.
We’ ve seen smart shows do better. They see their conference programme and delegate lists work really hard to convert exhibitors. They have a playbook that looks like this:
• Start with the delegate( not the theme)
Above: Con Bridgeman
“ In exhibitions, the closest equivalent to that‘ product experience’ is the conference agenda. And, too often, it’ s built around the sponsor’ s needs”
• Decide the ICP – highest value buyers( not the sponsor)
• Qualify the pipeline and score the leads – budget authority, recent engagement( a list of 1,000 past attendees isn’ t a pipeline – it’ s a haystack).
• Discover what is urgent to them now and design the agenda around that
• Release sessions incrementally to test buyer interest early( ditch dead ones fast)
• Use deep research calls as conversion bait( AI will do all the work for you now)
• Frame every session around the problem it solves( for the buyer)
• Use clear session tagging to guide different buyer types to what’ s most relevant
• Surface‘ You might also like’ sessions to extend dwell time and increase basket size
• Add speaker credibility signals like company logos or‘ ex-Spotify’ style bios to drive trust
• And – crucially – track who’ s engaging with what, and feed that back into targeted outreach.
The result? Delegates who discover the value of the agenda before being sold to.
You’ re not pushing them to register – you’ re making the act of browsing sessions so useful, they register themselves. Just like SaaS. Ready to go product-led? Want to turn your conference agenda into a delegate acquisition engine – one that works 24 / 7 to convert, upsell, and segment your audience based on real-time engagement? The Producers Room free community is sharing real-world strategies for implementing SaaS methodologies in conference production. Join the conversation on LinkedIn or WhatsApp where producers are already transforming their registration strategies with proven frameworks. EW
50 Issue 4 2025 www. exhibitionworld. co. uk