Hire a full-time content creator instead of paying for conferences—permanent content beats one-time events
When James calculated that a single conference cost £25,000 for one week (booth, travel, team time), he realized he could hire a full-time videographer for the same price and produce permanent content year-round instead. He pulled out of all events and went all-in on content. Twelve months later, the pandemic hit—competitors who relied on events lost their entire distribution strategy overnight, while GoProposal had years of evergreen content and dominated online. Conferences give you one week of exposure to a subset of your market. A full-time content creator gives you 52 weeks of exposure to your entire market, and the content lives forever. In hindsight, the pandemic proved this, but the economics made sense even without a pandemic.
When to use
Use this when you're tempted to spend $10K+ on a conference or event. Calculate what that budget could buy in permanent content creation instead—whether it's a full-time hire, a contractor for 3 months, or professional video production for a year. Unless the event provides specific partnership or customer opportunities you can't get elsewhere, the content investment almost always has better ROI.
Don't do this
Spending $10K-$50K on conferences 'because that's where our customers are' without calculating the opportunity cost of permanent content. Or assuming you have to choose between content and events—often the answer is to do fewer, more strategic events and invest the rest in content.
1 Founder Who Did This
Calculated that one conference cost 25,000 GBP for one week of exposure. Hired full-time videographer for same price, pulled out of all events, and created permanent evergreen content instead.