Trade shows, conferences, webinars – tech companies invest in all of these events to grow relationships and acquire new ones. Since sales processes are often six months or longer, strategies that can accelerate them are quite valuable – and the conventional wisdom is that events play a key role in speeding up sales cycles. Given this, events are a core component of many companies’ go-to-market strategies, and organizations worldwide spend hundreds of billions of dollars in this area alone. Further, hosting, attending, and exhibiting at events can comprise up to 21 percent of corporate marketing budgets.

However, it is extremely difficult to understand an event’s true ROI. Tech companies face a major challenge in determining not just which events are worth big investments, but how much marketing budget to allocate to each event. Complex sales processes with many sales and marketing touchpoints pose an obstacle to isolating the direct impact of any individual action, such as inviting a prospect to an event.

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