After attending WAVE Winter in Orlando, Stephen Ellison, technical sales for The Light Source, shared with us his experience. He was able to articulate how The Light Source experienced ROI, value, and success at the WAVE conference. Overall, he found WAVE to be valuable and helpful in achieving his educational and sales goals by both teaching a session and exhibiting to reach new church customers.
What are some reasons why the WAVE conference was more successful for your company than some of the other church tech conferences?
The WAVE Conference is smaller and more niche. It also draws more of a local crowd around the conference site. We recently attended FILO and noted that WAVE feels like a tradeshow with classes, which we liked. For us, the ROI from WAVE was more valuable.
Our marketing efforts were more targeted because WAVE is smaller and more local. Some conferences focus on the educational piece and tack on the vendor space. WAVE is more of a commercial tradeshow with lots of information classes, speakers, and worship. FILO is more of a conference with vendors having space. WAVE is a tradeshow that has classes. We didn’t have the same return from FILO.
In your opinion, how were the speakers and teachers during WAVE? Did you feel like the breakouts were valuable to your potential buyers?
Lighting doesn’t usually get a full-blown crowd, however, I taught a class and had a good response from the class. I will teach on the same lighting topic at WAVE Fall that is relevant and repeatable. Understanding color, perception of color, and measurement of color from fixtures helps overall color rendering.
Were you able to have engaging conversations with church leaders, production managers, and others who might turn into potential clients?
We’re a niche market with just a few lighting options of interest to the church, and we had enough interest from people to make it worthwhile to be there. Our products of interest to the church are our downlights.
Did you find that attendees were interested in purchasing in the next six months and readily offered contact information?
We did find that many churches were willing to give us their contact information, and referred them back to their local integrator. A lot of the AVL companies specialize in working with churches and work with most of these service providers.
What were some other valuable attributes of attending and exhibiting at the WAVE conference?
Wave is trying to stay true to the marketplace – it’s a niche tradeshow for the church market. It isn’t trying to become overly commercialized, which our company appreciates. Overall, WAVE is an affordable and effective conference for the church tech market.
Lauren Hunter
Lauren Hunter assists organizations in reaching their goals through her unique blend of freelance writing, content marketing, SEO, and public relations consulting and coaching. She founded ChurchTechToday.com in 2007 and has many years of expertise in the church tech and software space. She is also a musician and self-published author of two books. She loves exploring the big picture of the journey we are all on together. Lauren is married to her high school sweetheart, and they live in Northern California with their four teens. She can be found online at https://laurenhunter.net.
