Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Indiana-based Real Food Blends, which makes pureed food for individuals with feeding tubes, depended on conferences geared toward medical professionals and smaller targeted events to grow its business. Since the pandemic began, all in-person events were canceled, and not all have switched to virtual options. But instead of a sales drop, the company has expanded its customer base by embracing technology opportunities and maintaining its events budget.

“There have been zero regional or national in-person events since mid-March, and there aren’t any plans for them for the rest of the year,” said Real Food Blends president Tony Bombacino, who co-founded the company with his wife, Julie, the CEO. They have a son, AJ, who is fed via a tube. “That’s tens of thousands of interactions that haven’t been happening, education opportunities, relationship-building opportunities. Somehow, our company is growing faster than it was last year.”

Bombacino wouldn’t reveal actual numbers; Real Food Blends is privately held. However, he said growth over its lifespan—it started selling products in early 2014—has been anywhere from 40 percent to 500 percent year over year, and its travel and events budget is “into the six figures toward the seven figures.” He credited his company’s embrace of technology and quick pivot to all virtual events as one potential reason for the recent growth. “Technology is your friend,” he said.

Technology Benefits

One advantage the company had is that it already was versed in using Google Hangouts, Zoom, Webex and GoToMeeting as its staff is spread out across the country, with half working from home pre-pandemic. They began to use those platforms for external-facing meetings. 

“GoToMeeting and Webex have been better for [external events], and Zoom and Google Hangouts are more for our internal chats,” Bombacino said, adding that their costs have not been expensive. The company then started to host more educational webinars with the clinical registered dietitians on staff, and those have attracted up to a few thousand viewers per event. It also replaced its smaller in-person “lunch-and-learn” events with virtual meetings. 

In addition, Real Food Blends will host Instagram and Facebook Live sessions with a registered dietitian and field questions—the company has nearly 120,000 Facebook followers. “Those opportunities with one to many are obviously important especially since our events were canceled,” Bombacino said. 

Regarding larger conferences, at first, most of those virtual events weren’t live. “It was people going in on their own time and checking things out,” he said. But going forward, “the most savvy people are the bigger conferences and they are thinking, ‘We’re charging tens of thousands of dollars for sponsorships, we have to drive value.’ So we are starting to see webcams and [the chance] to be live in a virtual booth, so when people ‘come by,’ we actually have a conversation instead of a follow-up email.”

Still, even the static conferences have brought better insight into return on investment metrics. At a live tradeshow, the staff won’t necessarily know who or how many people picked up a particular piece of marketing material. But in a virtual environment, the company knows exactly how many visitors its “booth” had, who clicked on what, who downloaded which materials, or where visitors were from. “You can see things on a more granular level,” Bombacino said.

Challenges and Suggestions

Of the challenges the company has faced, the biggest has been determining how to reallocate the events budget, which has not been reduced during the pandemic. “Where should we continue with a sponsorship versus do a lesser sponsorship, or, where should we do something bigger [since] we have a captive audience … [and attendees] can log in on their laptops and be more focused on our brand and our product,” he said. 

Another has been the last-minute decisions made by some conference hosts. The company might not know until the day before an event whether it will have a live portion. “The people hosting the conferences are trying to figure this all out in real time, and often you’re getting stuff last-minute,” Bombacino said. 

For small and midsize companies looking to add virtual events, he recommends being flexible and suggests companies try out several tech solutions by using free trials to do so, and then start small.

“Do your homework, do some reading, but start with a small event,” he said. “Put together a dry run with a couple of friends or coworkers in different places. See what is clunky, what isn’t. Try dialing in using your mobile device versus your laptop versus your home phone. Make small mistakes. Don’t test out the new technology when you’ve paid a bunch of money to get 3,000 people on a webinar, and it doesn’t work.”