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Jan 08 2011

Selling at a Virtual Event is Just Like/is Not at All Like Selling at a Physical Event

Whether you are an exhibitor trying to navigate the new medium of virtual trade shows or a corporation using virtual platforms to enlarge the opening to your sales funnel, Dennis Shiao’s new book, “Generate Sales Leads with Virtual Events” and his upcoming presentation at the Virtual Edge Summit can help. As with any new environment—the Antarctic, third world countries, and the Moon—you have to take the surroundings into account. Much of what Shiao advocates is straightforward advice that will work in any scenario. However, paying respect, as he does, to the disruption in normalcy that occurs in a virtual setting is the key to having success with it.

In the book, Shiao, director of product marketing at INXPO, outlines a five-step plan (hint: if you just skim the subtitles, it sounds like selling in any other environment, so read on):

1.     Define your mission statement—get your entire team on the same page by quantifying exactly what it is you want to get out of the virtual event. Because of the rich metrics available, your mission statement can be highly targeted such as, “100 leads from a specific vertical,” Shiao says.

2.     Assemble an all-star team—select a diverse mix of people from sales to product experts to staff the virtual booth or corporate meeting. This is where virtual might even trump physical events. Folks from all over the organization can chime in to address customer needs. You don’t have to rely on the people in the room. Nevertheless, you will need to assess their online fluency and train them on how to behave in a virtual world.

3.     Build and promote your presence—get out the online bullhorn and let customers, prospects, and ordinary citizens know about your virtual booth or meeting. That’s the beauty of all things digital. The audience can grow itself and they can attend with little effort. Plus, those on social channels will be the most comfortable in a virtual setting. “Use all the tools at your disposal to generate awareness and attract visitors,” Shiao advises.

4.     Engage with prospects—Have your engagement protocols ready to go.  The window of engagement is both a tremendous weakness in the virtual environment and an exhibitor’s greatest opportunity.  If you have 60 seconds to make eye contact and acknowledge someone who has entered your physical booth (or meeting room), how much time do you have in a virtual booth when you can’t see his or her eyes?  Shiao advises exhibitors and meeting hosts to develop a set of tactics from immediate responses and V cards to rich media that let visitors know you are there and keep them engaged longer.

5.     Qualify and follow up with prospects—go back to the rich virtual metrics (which you don’t often obtain from a physical trade show or meeting), drill down to determine what stage of the buying process the visitors are in, and follow up accordingly. “Virtual events have built-in RFID. You have access to the entire trail of activity and you have the benefit of a pile of data you don’t have with face-to-face events,” Shiao explains. In other words, don’t treat prospects like you don’t know what they want when their virtual behavior offers so many clues.

Much of the misunderstanding and even fear of virtual platforms comes from tossing virtual and physical events into the same features and benefits bucket. In reality, virtual events emulate physical events—a clear attempt on the part of platform providers to aid comprehension—but the value propositions are different. During this exploration and experimentation phase, Shiao is on target with his book and his advice. For the moment, exhibitors and meeting hosts can still aim for the low-hanging fruit by tweaking their existing sales processes to accommodate the virtual differences until the platform reaches its full potential and an entirely new way of selling emerges.

Written by Michelle · Categorized: Archives, Strategy · Tagged: Conference, Featured, Michelle Bruno, Virtual Edge Summit, Virtual Trade Show

Jan 04 2011

Using Hybrid Events to (Try to) Please All of the People All of the Time

It’s true.  If you’re a professional membership association, your best bet in the pleasure dispensing department is to try to please most of the people at least some of the time. Kevin Novak is working hard to do better than that by using hybrid events to hit the educational and member benefit sweet spot that most association executives dream about. At the Virtual Edge Summit next week in Las Vegas, Novak, vice president integrated web strategy and technology of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), will talk about how a false sense of security led to a “shellacking” in his virtual attendance numbers and how his team regrouped after the dip.

Two years ago when the economy took a turn for the worse, AIA took a very hard look at how to bolster its live national convention in anticipation of the coming storm. The event typically generated 24,000 attendees (including exhibitors) and generated $8.5 million in revenue for the association. An analysis of the attendee demographics indicated that most visitors came from within a 300-mile radius of the host city.  Further, the meeting was being held in San Francisco—one of the more expensive host cities—and the financial burden on members who were either struggling to keep their jobs or keep their projects moving was expected to be too much for a good portion of the attendee base.

Enter Novak, his AIA team, Blue Sky Broadcast, INXPO, and Freeman. In six weeks, a virtual conference and trade show was born to complement the live event and extend some of the highly valuable education (some of it a requirement for AIA’s certification programs). The results were impressive. AIA’s online event featured 75 exhibitors, 12 conference sessions, and 17,000 virtual attendees. After the fact, 40,000 people viewed the on demand content. “There were times when we had 50-1,000 people [physically] in a room and 2,000 online in the companion virtual session,” Novak says.

In 2010, the annual convention was held in Miami. “Because of the size of our convention, few cities are large enough,” Novak explains. On the heels of the prior year’s hybrid success and the assumption that live attendance would again be anemic, AIA tripled the online offerings. Hoping to cover the cost of the virtual platform, they trimmed down the size of the online trade show and charged a $165 fee for virtual access to the conference programming. The outcome was less than stellar compared to the year before.

Virtual attendance at the 2010 hybrid conference dropped to 1,000 paid individuals. Post-event feedback indicated that although the content was high quality, the price point was too high especially in light of the $500 to $1,000 membership dues to join the association and the ongoing turmoil on the job front. “We tried to get feedback on the fee structure and looked into some other models. We realized that we should have been in the $125 range,” Novak admits.

Going forward, Novak anticipates changes in the hybrid event they have developed over the past two years.  Realizing that the educational benefits to members who are unable to attend the live event are critical to their professional development, the archived material from 2009 and 2010 is online and accessible as a member benefit. The convention budget and the virtual event budget have been separated. “We started with idea that [the virtual event] was convention-related, but now looking back, we see that there is more to it and it is better to mature the hybrid event as a separate objective,” he says. AIA is also planning to extend its 2010 experiment of simultaneously streaming content to multiple cities where chapter members are gathered offline.

Pleasing all of the people all of the time is a noble objective for an association. Next week, Kevin Novak will tell his organization’s story to online and offline listeners in a panel discussion titled, “Virtual Event Models That Work: Delivering Revenue, Reach and Repeat Participation.” For him, the logistics of launching a hybrid conference and trade show is the easy part. It’s helping his members find their happy place—value, education, and networking—that keeps him up at night.

Written by Michelle · Categorized: Archives, Strategy · Tagged: Conference, Featured, hybrid events, Michelle Bruno, trade shows, Virtual Edge Summit, Virtual Trade Show

Dec 10 2010

Open Source Event Websites and Apps: Same Functionality, Lower Cost

It’s no secret that advances in technology have rocked the event world. From mobile apps to virtual trade shows to social networks—not to mention gaming, geo-location, and cloud computing—tech is driving major innovation. But somewhere in the bowels of this business, there is another movement afoot. Open source platforms—free applications that are built by an individual but evolved communally by sharing the source code with other programmers and enthusiasts —could be the next big thing in trade shows, conferences, and meetings.

Pros and cons

After years of development, group experimentation, and refinement, open source platforms are stable, full-featured, easy to maintain, and less expensive than prefabricated applications. The communities that support the tools provide 24/7 tech support. And according to Pat Pathade of Fantail Consulting, open source tools now exist to power Websites, CMS (content managements systems), ecommerce, CRM (customer relationship management), conference management, (floor plans, education, speaker coordination, registration) and computer operating systems.

“One of the main advantages of open source is that you have a choice. You can make changes or customize your applications and Websites and you don’t have to depend on a vendor. If you build a house, anyone can fix it for you. You don’t have to go back to the original builder,” says Pathade. Plus, he adds, “You don’t have to be a programmer to work with open source tools.”

The perceived downside of open source tools is the issue of support. Some event organizers could be concerned with a solution that no one really owns. However, commercial companies are available to provide the support if organizations are squeamish at first and plenty of large corporations including General Dynamics and Lockheed are using open source platforms to run their businesses.

Who’s using open source

Fantail recently completed a new Web site for TSEA. The site was built using several modules of the flexible, open source, Drupal content management system without requiring any custom programming. The new no-code website runs on Rackspace Cloud Hosting, and includes on-demand videos, blog/twitter feeds, a buyer’s guide, several large and small lead and data capture forms, and automatically creates user accounts in their new Salesforce.com CRM.

Programmer and environmentalist, Stephen Cataldo is launching a new company called Verdant Event that will build Websites for conferences incorporating technology, social sharing, and green values into the design. He is also using Drupal to build sites that will integrate green education, matchmaking, speaker management, and resource (especially paper) conservation into the fabric of typical conference Websites.

SEMI, the association for the microelectronic, display, and photovoltaic industries is switching to Drupal to address slashed staff, budgets and reduced internal resources. They have contracted an outside vendor to build and manage the sites. Semi’s local regional offices will upload content in their native languages and manage their own pages. According to Thomas Viano, director, interactive services, Drupal will minimize the marketing department’s reliance on IT.

“We chose Drupal because of it’s low cost, because it’s open source, and because of the available vendors to build our new sites and manage the sites over time. We chose Drupal, then we chose the agency. We plan to build 24 sites in multiple languages on Drupal,” Viano says.

Open source platforms have come a long way over the last decade. Much of the Internet is powered by open source. “Now things move so fast that you are forced to move faster with open source. Drupal is ready for prime time. Using an average skilled programmer you can quickly set things up for a conference. It’s a great tool. It’s there and it’s got a community behind it,” Says Verdant Event’s Stephen Cataldo.

The Takeaway: More and more event Websites and applications will be built using open source tools in the future. They provide event organizers with significant advantages including a lower cost to build and maintain. A move toward DIY content management, customization, and experimentation is the next logical step for our industry. Open Source is a less painless way to get there.

Written by Michelle · Categorized: Archives, Tools · Tagged: Conference, Events, Featured, Michelle Bruno, open source, Tools, tradeshows

Nov 17 2010

Green, Mobile, and Social: Triqle’s “What’s On” hits the App Attribute Trifecta

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Of all of the urges, predilections, and addictions that social media has spawned, the most obvious is the “need for speed.” Where information is concerned, we want it now, we want it continuously updated, and we want to get it wherever we are. Trade show and conference attendees are no different than regular folk—the info consuming public. In fact, their time is at a premium on the trade show floor and the printed show/conference schedule is going the way of the dodo. What to do? Enter start up company, Triqle Event Intelligence, based in Amsterdam.

Triqle’s first product, “What’s On?” allows event organizers—from conference planners to film festival producers—to distribute constantly updated event information to attendees. The schedule is viewable across multiple devices including kiosks, mobile phones, and tablets. Each program item has a detail page with more information and useful links. Visitors can add items to their personal schedule and use a like/dislike button to show their preferences.

In addition to being a centralized information resource (event organizers can post messages or warnings such as a session room is full, for example), the information is searchable by location or theme (and other criteria determined by the event organizer), and can be shared on social networks. “By sharing their program on Twitter or Facebook, a visitor increases the chance of having interesting encounters at the event,” says Gerrit Heijkoop, partner at Triqle Event Intelligence.

Triqle’s (the company name comes from a South Ugaban word that describes the experience of time and means something like “unexpected”) solution helps event organizers control their events and communicate with visitors over multiple channels in real time. Plus, visitors’ interaction with the program provides relevant feedback. “We have become accustomed to getting immediate answers to every question, sharing our activities with friends, and relying on our mobile phones for everything. ‘What’s On?’ brings all of that together,” Heijkoop adds.

When you throw in the environmental benefits, “What’s On?” hits the trifecta of app attributes—green, mobile, and social. To imagine events going forward without a product like “What’s On?” or something similar, picture yourself in an airport with no arrival or departure screens on the walls. To confirm your gate number, you would have to a) look at your printed boarding pass and hope the correct gate number is listed, b) ask someone, c) go to the gate printed on your boarding pass and hope it hasn’t been changed. How does that sound?

The Take-Away: Attendees, like everyone, have the attention span of a gnat. If you want them to stay on your show floor or in your conference room, let them know what’s going on all the time. Then, let them share it with friends.


Written by Michelle · Categorized: Tools · Tagged: Conference, Featured, Michelle Bruno, social networking platforms

May 04 2010

Thought Leaders Explore How to Change the Status Quo at MTO Summit – Part II

March’s MTO Summit in Chicago still has me thinking about some of the interesting perspectives that were shared during the conference. Here are some of the ideas that made me sit up a little straighter in my chair.

Mobile Apps

  • Event organizers aren’t necessarily interested in the new sponsorship opportunities (too many already) available with mobile apps.
  • Organizers prefer to work with trusted advisors (their registration contractor or general contractor) even if those advisors know little about the application they are selling.
  • Organizers want technology providers to partner with each other to come up with a combined solution (instead of the one-off apps and devices that do separate things).

Attendee acquisition

Taking a cue from affiliate marketers, organizers can leverage existing exhibitors and attendees using badges or contextual links (with promo codes) embedded in emails specially-designed for them to send to their clients and colleagues. When the codes are used, the exhibitor or attendee (affiliate) gets credit/cash/incentives.

In a wrap-up session on attendee acquisition, R.D. Whitney of Tarsus Online Media summarized our breakout group’s findings (from an unusual camera angle because I was trapped by other group members). Check out the video where he discusses the use of complex search streams, Webinars, affiliate programs, guest passes, requiring speakers to participate in community discussions, public relations SEM, contests with flip video, Twitter, and virtual events as attendee acquisition tools.

Data mining

Mark Ragan sparked a lively (somewhat controversial discussion) about mining the Internet for prospects. Using software from Broadlook, event organizers can “scrape” (not my metaphor) the Internet for contacts and email addresses and then feed prospects with daily e-newsletters (which they can opt out of). Such a practice creates brand awareness and a level of familiarity with the prospect that opens the door for future “offers.”

The data mining controversy stemmed from the idea of “pushing” information (one man’s info is another man’s spam) out rather than the social media principal of attracting interest with cool content and then creating a two-way conversation based on mutual interests.

Distributed Events

With discussion about large events shrinking to bring a more personalized experience to the trade show and conference floor, the idea of a distributed event was intriguing. Social Media Week debuted in New York in February 2009. It is a global platform for connectivity, collaboration and learning about emerging trends and interesting social media topics, says Toby Daniels, the conference founder. Venues were spread all over the city (and later, all over the globe), with each host creating a different “experience” for attendees. Daniels explains how it worked in this clip.

The next MTO Summit is scheduled for November 9-10, 2010 in Washington, DC. Now that MTO Summit has merged with TSNN, I am hoping the content and the brainpower will be as good or better than ever.

Written by Michelle · Categorized: Archives, Strategy, Tools · Tagged: Conference, Event Technology, Featured, Michelle Bruno, MTO Summit, trade show

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