Notes for owners · Digital marketing
Webinars and events for technology firms: choosing between them
How a small technology firm decides between a hosted webinar, a small roundtable and a booth at an exhibition, using one test: who must be in the room, and what you do with them afterwards.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
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The quote for a stall at the big exhibition has arrived, and the founder is asking whether a webinar would do the same job for less. Choose by the room, not the format. If you can name the twenty people you need to talk to, host a small session just for them, online or at a hotel table. If you cannot, and need a crowd to find them, an exhibition fits. Build that list first. What matters is who is on it and what you do the following morning.
Who has to be in the room?
Start with the buyer, not the event. Write down the job titles that sign or strongly influence a purchase of what you sell. For an ERP provider, that is the finance head and the plant manager. For a managed IT provider, the owner of a 60-person firm who has no in-house IT person.
Then ask a blunt question: can you list at least twenty named people with those titles, at companies that fit? If yes, you have a target list, and a session built around it will fill with the right people. If no, build the list first, because no event fixes that; demand and lead generation is the subject there.
How do the three formats compare?
| Format | Room it suits | What you give up | Works when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Webinar on one buyer problem | A named list of 20 to 60 prospects across several cities | The handshake; attention drifts | The problem is specific and you follow up personally |
| Small roundtable, 8 to 12 seats | Buyers in one city who would like to hear their peers | Reach; you must host and travel | You have a customer or an outside speaker to anchor it |
| Booth at an exhibition | Buyers you cannot yet name, in a trade you want to enter | Cost and a lot of idle standing | Meetings are booked before the show and a follow-up plan exists |
The deciding line is the middle column. A webinar loses the handshake but gains reach across cities cheaply. A booth gives you faces but charges for the footfall that mostly is not yours.
When does a booth still make sense?
A booth earns its money when it sits inside someone else's gathering that your buyer already attends. A firm selling industrial automation to packaging plants is better placed at a packaging-industry exhibition than at a general IT show, because the buyers are on the floor for their own reasons.
Even then, do not stand and wait. Book meetings by email and LinkedIn before the show, and treat walk-ins as a bonus, not the plan. If you cannot book some meetings in advance, you are paying for a hope. Preparing the whole stall is covered under event and trade show marketing.
How do you run a webinar a buyer actually joins?
Three decisions decide whether the right people turn up.
Pick a problem, not a product. "Why your month-end close takes nine days" gets a finance head. "Introducing our new module" gets nobody.
Invite by name. Send each person on your list a short note, from a human, saying why this one is for them. Open registration is fine as an extra, not as the plan. Topic, invitations and follow-up belong together, which is the subject of webinar content and promotion.
Plan the follow-up before the date. Decide who calls whom, with what question, soon after the session. A webinar without a call list is a lecture. If you are weighing it against email or articles, this comparison of webinars, email and educational content helps you choose.
Case: an ERP reseller in Kolhapur
Take an invented ERP reseller in Kolhapur that sells to foundries and machine shops around the city. The founder is ready to book a stall at a large machinery exhibition. The cost is big, the visitors are mixed, and there is no list.
Instead the founder writes down thirty owners and finance heads of local foundries and hosts a two-hour lunch for ten of them at a hotel, built on one problem: pattern and casting stock that exists in the yard but not in the books at quarter end. A customer's finance manager speaks for ten minutes. The reseller shows no feature slides.
Afterwards the founder sends one thank-you message to the group and waits. Three of the ten reply, and none books a meeting. The lunch had been treated as the sale. The next morning the founder rings each attendee with one question tied to something said in the room, such as: "You mentioned the second yard, how do you reconcile it today?" Four of the ten agree to a plant visit and one asks for a quote, which the reseller may well lose on price. The numbers are illustrative, and the pattern is what to copy.
What should you track to decide whether it worked?
Count conversations, not registrations. After any session, record four things in a sheet:
- Named target accounts that attended, out of those invited.
- Follow-up calls that connected, and what each person said was their problem.
- Meetings or site visits booked.
- Quotes asked for in the following quarter, with the source marked.
If a session produced attendees but no meetings, the topic or the follow-up was wrong, not the format. Change one and run it again before you conclude that webinars do not work for you. And skip the whole exercise if no one on your team will make the follow-up calls; a recorded session sitting on a drive sells nothing.
Before you pay for anything, write down twenty named people with the right titles. Other work for software and IT firms is under technology. If you cannot tell which format fits your list and your team's time, tell us what you need.
