Joining James for this week’s podcast was Ravi Chalaka. Ravi is a marketing and business development expert and is currently the chief marketing officer for Jifflenow, a meeting automation platform. Ravi has spent the last 25 years working in the events industry, 15 of which he spent as a vice president. This has allowed him to participate in events as a marketer, attendee and sponsor for more than two decades. Drawing upon his vast experience, Ravi discussed ROI when exhibiting at live events and how it can possibly be measured and turned into value for companies. Gone are the days where company bosses are satisfied with event feedback in the form of statistics on attendees. Exhibitors are now expected to produce information on how well an event panned out in relation to how much revenue it generated. However, meetings, business connections and new contacts that are generated as a result of exhibiting cannot be defined straight away in terms of pounds and pence: they may lead to revenue later down the line or otherwise result in new contacts that then lead to revenue. This makes the ROI difficult to monitor. Meetings are a crucial element of creating these new business contacts – people are habitually more inclined to conduct business if they are within a formal meetings area. Appreciating this, more and more organisers now dedicate specific areas within their events for such meetings. Traditionally, businesses would continue their meetings elsewhere after an event. However, this is time-consuming and costly and excludes businesses with smaller budgets. Dedicated areas within the actual event venue allow meetings to take place there and then and without businesses breaking their budgets. “Customers who use a meeting automation platform at events are able to increase the number of face-to-face meetings by 40%-100%,” Ravi stated. Founded 10 years ago, Jifflenow was created through a collaboration with event professionals to ensure major event concerns can be solved. If you would like to partake in one of our weekly podcasts, get in touch at [email protected]

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.