In the Age of AI Slop, Face-to-Face Events Are Still the Top Converting Channel | David Cardiel

Face-to-face events remain B2B marketing's best converting channel

NetVendor sells vendor management and compliance software into commercial and residential real estate, and its best channel to closed business is still meeting buyers in person at the industry's large conferences, dinners and happy hours. Real estate turns over slowly and AI-written outreach has flooded inboxes, so attention has moved back to rooms. Cardiel's task is to build the company's first repeatable marketing engine around that motion, with blog content and search visibility feeding a funnel his SDRs qualify.

Takeaways

• Face-to-face events are NetVendor's top converting channel. NetVendor sponsors large property technology conferences whose attendees match its ideal customer profile, then hosts dinners and happy hours and arranges on-site meetings with key accounts. Paid and account-based marketing keep the conversations going. Cardiel wishes the answer were newer.
• He is building NetVendor's first scalable marketing engine. NetVendor, a Five Arrows portfolio company of 65 to 70 people, had a strong outbound engine and little inbound. Cardiel added field and event marketing, answer engine optimization, content, paid programmes and webinars, growing marketing from three or four people to six.
• Blog content drives visibility across language models. Beefing up NetVendor's blog has been the biggest driver of measurable visibility across LLMs, backed by a measurement platform and a strong content strategist. The largest gains came on queries about property technology and property compliance.
• AI slop fails for want of human editing. Cardiel has embraced go-to-market AI as one tool in the bag, especially as a first marketer. AI-written outreach often fails only for want of a little time spent adding a human element. Figuera argues AI cannot replace human taste and curation.