One of the questions I get asked frequently about the work we do at cred is, “When is your busy season?” That’s usually my cue to laugh because, well, when isn’t our busy season?! 

While we do work year-round to build speaking platforms and plan events for clients, there are times of the year when we’re more likely to be engaged in trends related to the seasonality of the events industry overall. 

We track thousands of conferences across multiple industries, including social impact, fintech, and health. Now that we’ve hit our 4-year milestone as a company, we’ve been able to look back and identify trends year over year to determine which months are the busiest for events and how we can forecast the processes to get speakers on stage.

When is the busiest events season?

The below graph displays the total amount of events in our Airtable database, revealing September, October and November are the busiest months for events, followed by May and June. 

Just this past September, our event management team put together the MIT AI Conference and will be on-site at Datavant’s Future of Health Data Summit and Greenbrier’s CrisisCon on Oct. 10.

In contrast, January and August have consistently been the slowest months for when events occur.

When do events start considering speakers?

Next, we took a look at trends in deadlines for event speaker submissions. Some events have rolling deadlines or informal ways putting forth a speaker for consideration, but many have an online submission process and strict deadlines for submitting speakers. 

We saw more changes year over year here, with the three peaks for the most deadlines in March, July, and November. Again, August is much quieter in comparison—not only are less events taking place, but event organizers aren’t soliciting for as many suggestions during this time.

Going into a new year with this knowledge helps us better allocate resources for pitching and plan for time to focus on internal initiatives like recruitment and goal-setting.

When do events begin inviting speakers? 

We also looked at when we’re most likely to hear back from events. If we know which months we’re likely to be submitting for events, when can we expect to receive invitations and responses for our speakers?

In 2018, the highest months for this were March through May. Knowing this allows us to anticipate which months are more ideal for kicking off with new clients and how many months it might take to start seeing success after that kick off. 

Seeing these trends have helped us greatly with forecasting and visualizing our year. We hope you’ll be able to use these insights as well to help plan your speaking strategy, determine when to host your event, or budget for sending employees to conferences. 

Interested in working with cred on your speaking program? Get in touch at speak@credpr.com!