We once spent £XX,000 sponsoring a virtual cybersecurity summit.
The result?
A spreadsheet of four hundred “leads” 90% of whom never opened our follow up emails.
That was the wake up call.
Since then, we refined our approach to virtual shows, focusing on what actually creates engagement and qualified conversations, not vanity numbers.
The first shift was accepting a hard truth. Virtual events are not booths.
Nobody “walks past” your logo and suddenly wants a demo.
Attention is earned, not captured.
So instead of chasing traffic, we started designing for participation.
Before the event even starts, the work begins.
We no longer promote a product. We promote a question.
Something specific enough that only the right people care.
Not “How to improve security posture” but “Why DNS blind spots keep surviving Zero Trust rollouts”.
When someone registers for that, they self qualify before we ever speak to them.
During the event, we avoid gated downloads and long forms.
If someone has to stop listening to type, you already lost them.
We give them something live. A short poll. A decision moment. A simple yes or no question that reflects their reality. Participation beats passivity every time.
The biggest change came after the session.
We stopped blasting follow up emails. Instead, we follow the signal. Who asked a question. Who stayed until the end. Who answered the poll in a way that shows pain. Those people get a human message that references what they actually did. Everyone else gets left alone.
One more thing changed everything.
We stopped measuring leads and started measuring conversations.
If a virtual event produces five real follow ups where someone wants to talk about their environment, that is a win. Four hundred empty rows in a spreadsheet is not.
Virtual events can work in cybersecurity. But only if you stop treating them like digital trade shows and start treating them like controlled conversations.
Less noise. More intent.
That is where the real leads live.