Virtual Events 101: Common Use Cases For Virtual Events

April 28, 2010

Some event planners just know that they want to produce a virtual event.  Others take a circuitous route to a virtual event, considering other options first.  For those of you “on the fence” – you’re interested in virtual, but not sure if a virtual event makes sense right now, read further about common use cases of virtual events.  Based on what others have already done, perhaps you’ll find a similar use case for your business need.

Corporate University, Virtually

Consider a conventional corporate training program – employees travel to the training site and receive instruction.  Training is often in the form of long and elaborate PowerPoint-based presentations, with some intra-class interaction mixed in.  Some training programs may incorporate hands-on learning (e.g. in a lab or in the field, where the company’s products are used).

Now consider virtual training or virtual university.  First, employees (and instructors) skip the flight and hotel – instead, they all participate from their office or their home.  Next, each student enters a virtual university environment, with a customized learning program created by the instructor(s).  In a virtual university (like in a virtual trade show), the attendees’ actions are tracked.  The result – heightened accountability for the students.

Sure, students are still able to view their BlackBerry or iPhone while an instructor is speaking – in virtual, however, learning effectiveness can be measured with precision.  For example: number of sessions attended, average session stay (or, “non-idle time” during the session, if the platform tracks that), number of questions asked per session, number of polling questions answered, number of “engagements” with other students, etc.

Quizzes (e.g. certification) can be given, with automated grading provided by the platform.  In addition, a variety of learning formats and learning tactics can be employed online: live presentations with “pass the baton” (students take turn as presenters), on-demand presentations, interactive games, online quizzes, user-generated content, Q&A sessions facilitated in a group chat room, etc.  Relative to a physical classroom setting, the possibilities are nearly endless, with tracking on a per student, per activity basis – powerful.

Test The Waters in a New Market

Event planners need to consider the creation of new events and new event franchises in order to generate revenue growth and explore new markets.  Consider the commitments required for a physical event vs. a virtual event.  For a physical event, you’ll need to find and secure an event site and pay a deposit to lock in your event date(s).  Then, delegates, exhibitors, presenters and the event staff make travel arrangements to the event site.  Finally, exhibitors and the event staff make arrangements to ship booths, printed paper, computers and related gear to the site.

For a virtual event, there’s a commitment (to secure the virtual event platform), but no physical site, no travel and no shipping.  In other words, the upfront cost commitment and “overhead” is significantly reduced.  This means that you’re more free to test the waters in a new market and evaluate attendee response and sponsorship sell-through rates.  If you discover that the market is not right for an event (virtual or physical), you can move on to the next opportunity.

If, instead, you determine that the market is ripe for ongoing events, you may choose to continue the virtual event – or, create a physical event around the footprint you’ve created virtually.  If you managed to create a loyal community around your virtual events (i.e. attendees are visiting the environment and engaging with others outside of scheduled events), then you have a natural outlet for promoting your corresponding physical event.

Cancellation of Physical Event

The economic downturn of 2008-2009 caused many physical events to be canceled due to budgetary factors.  Despite the cancellations, events planners were left with a mandate from management that “the show must go on” – it was not an option to cancel the annual customer conference or the sales kick-off meeting.

What resulted in 2008-2009 was a lot of virtual event innovation, stemming from savvy event planners who migrated their legacy on-site event or conference into the virtual world.  The result for these planners?  A larger and wider audience (virtually) that appreciated the opportunity to connect and interact – you can’t replace the handshake or the post-event cocktails, but connecting virtually was better than not connecting at all.

As economic conditions improve and budgets for the on-site conference come back around, event planners are not abandoning virtual to return 100% to physical.  Instead, they’re leaving the virtual component in place (in some cases, the virtual component grew into a vibrant online community) and pairing virtual with physical to create a hybrid experience.

Real Products, Virtual Launches

Microsoft made a big splash with its product launch for Windows 95 (in 1995) – the product was ushered in by the Rolling Stones’  “Start Me Up”.  These days, you’re more likely to see Microsoft produce a virtual product launch, rather than a multi-city, on-site road show.  A virtual product launch allows for effective and efficient dissemination of product information to a global audience.

Audience segments can be conveniently managed, with hosting of analysts, media, customers, prospects and partners in areas that are virtually “walled off” from one another.  This event model is analogous to “computing virtualization” – whereby logical “sub events” can ride over a single event platform.  So rather than separate analyst day, media day and partner summit meetings, your analyst relations, PR, product marketing and partner marketing organizations can leverage a single platform to engage with all of their constituents simultaneously.

Virtual Events as Listening Platforms

In my mind, we (as marketers) speak too much and listen too little.  In a challenging economic environment, it can be easier to grow existing accounts than convert new prospects.  To do so, you need to listen more to your customers and become more in tune to solving their business needs.  This is where a virtual events platform can help.

Today, we have the virtual customer conference and the virtual partner summit – those formats, however, are largely focused around “vendor to the customer” content, rather than “customer tells vendor what they need” content.  I think a “virtual focus group” should become a part of most virtual customer conferences, where the given “focus group” can be as small as a single customer to as many as 20.

Virtual event platforms can effectively provide listening tools (e.g. chat rooms, webcasts with “pass the baton”, etc.) – to enable better listening, the platforms may need to build better interpretation and analysis tools.  For instance, the ability to parse all of the chat room content, summarize the key points made and generate a sentiment rating.  Without such tools, event organizers are forced to read through reams of chat transcripts themselves.

Conclusion

I’ve covered a few of the use cases of virtual events – there are many more.  What interesting use cases would you like to share with us?  Leave your thoughts via the comments section below.

Related Links

  1. Browse the Virtual Events 101 Index Page
  2. Download the eBook, “Virtual Events: Ready, Set, Go“

Note: I invite you to connect with me on .

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Virtual Events 101: Tips For Selecting A Virtual Event Platform

April 22, 2010

Disclosure: I work for a virtual event platform vendor (InXpo).

The increase in demand for virtual events brings with it a common question: “Which virtual event platform should I select?“.  Some clients find a vendor and stick with them – others will end up doing business with all the major platform vendors.  My preference would be to find a long-term partner and stick with them, as changing vendors can be painful for all involved.

For me, selecting a virtual event platform comes down to six P’s: People, Platform, Production, Price, Process and Partners

People

While virtual events encompass a wide range of innovative technologies, we’re very much a services industry today.  This is never more true than on a client’s very first virtual event on a given platform – that first event is all about the platform vendor’s team working closely with the client to jointly achieve the client’s overall goals (and produce a great show, event or community).

In this model (in which that platform vendor handles 75-100% of the production activities), the customer experience is entirely defined by the services (and service level) provided by the vendor.  Providing an extraordinary level of customer care requires that the vendors’ company culture be built around servicing the customer – in a manner similar to how Nordstrom, Disney and Zappos have done it.

Of course, a great customer experience is ultimately delivered by individuals, which means that vendors with the right people, the right knowledge and the right experience really make a difference.  And that spans the entire spectrum, from Client Services to Development to Marketing to Finance to Legal – all departments in a company end up “touching” the customer in some way.

When considering a particular platform, I suggest you request a profile of the team (i.e. the individuals) behind the vendor’s services – and if you’re far enough in the sales pipeline, information on the specific individuals who will be assigned to your account.  Similarly, when speaking to other clients of the vendor, be sure to ask about the type of customer experience they received.

Platform

Now that we’ve covered the services piece, the underlying technology comes next.  The evolution of our industry will see a shift from 80% vendor-producing events (today) to 80% client-self-producing events in a few years.  As that shift unfolds, the industry will move away a bit from its services focus – technology then becomes a critical factor, with nothing more important that the technology to enable the self-servicing itself.

The first challenge you’ll face is that platform comparison is entirely qualitative today – there are no quantitative measurements on the technology (yet), like you have with computer hardware (e.g. megahertz, FLOPS, etc.).  While there are key quantitative metrics (e.g. %-availability, peak simultaneous users supported, etc.) – today, the claims are just that – with no independent, third party verification.

Given this, you’ll have to rely on other companies who have been clients of the platforms – try to find a company if your industry (even a competitor) who has produced an event similar in scope to your’s.  For instance, if you’re doing a virtual product launch in the pharmaceutical industry, try to find similar customer references – you’ll receive better and more direct insights than if you speak to a technology company who did a virtual sales kick-off meeting on the same platform.

I base my platform criteria around the following:

Flexibility – You want the ability to shape and mold the platform in a way that suits your unique requirements – this may include seamless integration of third party technologies or it may mean customization of features or layout that suit your unique needs.

Reliability – The platform must be available when you need it – and that includes everything from the event environment itself, to the registration system, to the reporting system, to the email system.

Scalability – The ability to scale up to tens of thousands of simultaneous users (if your event requires it).

Production

As you become a steady producer of virtual events (e.g. 1-2 events per year to start, growing to 5-10+ events per year), you’ll likely want to shift production from the vendor’s team to your’s.  In doing so, you’ll take on more control over the timing and delivery – and, save on cost (to the vendor – obviously, you need to staff appropriately to make this shift occur).

Keeping this eventual path in mind, you’ll want to select a vendor with strong “self service” capabilities.  The capabilities should allow you to create unique experiences – with the growth of virtual events, it serves you no good if your event looks identical to your competitors’ events. The platform should allow you the highest level of customization directly without custom development.

Any virtual event platform can create a highly unique experience – but if that’s accomplished via custom development, then the model is not scalable and repeatable – and you’ll end up paying the vendor dearly (on the custom development costs).

Price

As with all purchasing decisions, price is always a key factor – you likely have a budget in place (either set by yourself or your management) and ultimately, the vendor’s price needs to fit your budget.  However, pricing should be a secondary focus – first make sure you have the right vendor on people, platform, production, etc. – then, for those who “make the cut”, determine which ones fit into your budget.

If you’re willing to make an investment beyond a single event, most vendors are open to negotiating volume discounts, based on the size of your commitment.  Be sure to ask the vendor about event costs if/when you shift production to your own team.  You may be pleasantly surprised.  Lastly, think twice if your selected vendor has a price that’s significantly lower than the rest of the pack.  Sure, they may be very incented to get your business, just make sure you don’t “get what you pay for” – use those customer references to ensure the vendor can meet your key requirements capably.

Process

“Process” goes back to my first point about “People” and the production of your very first event.  It’s critical that the vendor have an established process for getting you from the starting line to the finish line – it should be based around project management best practices, while being flexible enough to adapt to unexpected developments or changes.  In fact, the vendor ought to show you a project planning template or timeline, so ask them for a sample to see their “execution lifecycle”.

In addition, give higher marks to those vendors who have successfully produced virtual events in your market – they’ll be able to take their learnings from the prior events and apply them to your’s – the process will be based on prior learnings and the vendor already has a sense for how the event execution process will unfold.

Partners

Most virtual event platform vendors provide a somewhat specialized offering: the virtual event technology (and production) itself.  The vendors then rely on a set of partner companies to fill in the gaps (e.g. A/V, streaming, experiential marketing, strategy consulting, etc.).  Do you need an “agency” to manage your overall event experience creation and execution?  Or, are you planning to do hundreds of on-site video captures and want the resulting footage streamed within your virtual event?

Determine your entire set of needs, then review the vendors for their own capabilities – along with whom they’ve partnered with.  Chances are that by combining the vendor and its partners, you’ll have a comprehensive solution to suit all of your needs.  Find out from the vendor whether all the “books” run through them (e.g. general contractor model) or whether you should make separate arrangements with the individual partners.

Conclusion

Like any other major purchasing decision, selecting a virtual event platform vendor (and partner) can be a daunting task.  A vendor with strong grades on the six P’s will serve you well.  What other selection criteria have you used?

Related Links

  1. Browse the Virtual Events 101 Index Page
  2. Download the eBook, “Virtual Events: Ready, Set, Go“

Note: I invite you to connect with me on .

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Job Posting: Virtual Event Contractor (SF Bay Area)

April 21, 2010

Position: Virtual Event Contractor

Focus (focus.com) is looking for a contractor to act as a Project Manager for a major virtual event scheduled for the end of June.  The event will be a virtual trade show with multiple vendor sponsors and a attendee goal of 5,000.

The Project Manager will be in charge of producing the entire event (with support).

Responsibilities

  1. Create speaking agenda – organizing 5-7 expert web presentations
  2. Audience Development – work with the Focus email and partner network teams to ensure maximum registrations and attendees
  3. Work cross-functionally with audience development, content and expert presenters
  4. Onboarding sponsors
  5. Produce and coordinate event

Requirements:

  1. Virtual event experience
  2. Strong product management skills
  3. Media background

Candidates local to the San Francisco Bay Area (US) are preferred.

Please submit resumes to: Craig Rosenberg (crosenberg@focus.com)

About Focus

Source: http://www.focus.com/about/

Focus is a private venture-funded company in San Francisco that was founded in August 2005 by a team committed to making world-class business expertise universally available.

Today, Focus is the world’s fastest-growing business research and media company. Focus.com features high-quality research, 1:1 briefings with analysts, and a thriving community of business and technology professionals. Whether it’s data-driven product research, topical briefs, or expert answers to your questions, the information on Focus is sourced from real experts in their fields – professionals like you. Best of all, it’s free and available to everyone who needs help making better business decisions. That’s why millions of professionals continue to rely on Focus.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Virtual Events In Europe: Best Practices, Learnings And Observations

April 19, 2010

The following is a guest post from Miguel Arias of IMASTE.

In the past months we have delivered a virtual career fair in partnership with Monster.com in various European countries. After a number of successful events in France, United Kingdom, Ireland and Italy (and with the imminent launch of the German version and preparations underway for the Polish and Czech versions), it is time to evaluate the project.

With a reach of over 400,000 unique attendees and more than 200 participating exhibitors to date, the Monster European virtual job fairs have become a very relevant case study about the way virtual events and tradeshows are being hold in Europe.

There are a few issues that I would like to point out:

Market differences within Europe

The fact that each of those markets has a different language is a known fact, which demands a certain level of customisation capabilities in the virtual event platform. This affects not only the code language but also all the 3D environments, interfaces size, fonts, etc.

And some of the countries have many official languages; therefore virtual event platforms need to have “real time” Multilanguage capabilities.

But, there are some other subtle differences that may have a big impact for virtual event production and development. For instance, legal differences lead to changes in the résumé data model and in different levels of integration with the partner´s databases.

Different customer expectations

The penetration and market awareness of virtual events is different in the UK, France and Italy. This leads to relevant gaps in terms of pricing, willingness to pay or expected features for the potential customers in each of those countries. Live interaction seems to be more relevant in UK or France, while an immersive user experience ranks higher in the Italian market.

We have also observed that French companies are keener to virtual stand customisations than British companies. It is difficult to generalise, but there seem to be some trends there.

Different marketing approach

In line with the last idea, the effectiveness of some marketing tools is quite diverse. The use of social media to promote the event has proven more successful in our French events than in other countries, while the effect of SEO/SEM strategies have worked better in UK. There is a need of knowing which are the best specific web traffic drivers of each country, to ensure high quality attendees in each event.

Vendor – client relationship

Since virtual events are “live” events, there is a need of a common trust between the event producer and the virtual event vendor. In order to build this relationship, factors like distance, time zone sharing and face-to-face trainings, meetings and follow up are very relevant.

We hired native country managers in Imaste for the French and British market, and will be doing the same with the Italian and German market in the following weeks.

To summarise, I would say that, the Monster Virtual Career fairs, in spite of being delivered for the same company and being the same type of event, implied an important percentage of adaptation and flexibility in each country. And the personal relations that go with a good level of service, involve a cultural understanding of country related particularities.

I believe that Europe can’t be considered a homogeneous market as the US is. American vendors should take this into account when entering the continental Europe market.

About Miguel Arias

Miguel Arias founded IMASTE in 2003 in hopes of building a bridge between companies and university graduates via live career fairs. Over the years, IMASTE has evolved to become one of the major agents in the virtual trade shows and events market, with successful projects in various European and South American countries

IMASTE is a Spanish company, European leading provider of virtual events, 3D online environments and online trade-shows, which connect, inform and engage visitors and exhibitors. IMASTE´s customized solutions reduce travel costs and are environmentally friendly, while our customers are able to generate leads, networking, increase online sales chances and communicate projects or services globally.

IMASTE has delivered more than 100 successful virtual events for global clients across the globe. You may find more info in http://www.imaste-ips.com

Miguel holds a MEng in Civil Engineering from Universidad Politecnica de Madrid and a Professional MBA from the Instituto de Empresa Business School.

Related links:

http://www.monster-edays.fr/2010/printemps/

http://www.monstervirtualjobfair.com/DEMO/

http://www.fieralavoromonster.it/

http://blog.imaste-ips.com

http://www.imaste-ips.com

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Virtual Events 101: Tips For Building Your Virtual Booth

April 13, 2010

Your company is exhibiting at a virtual event and you’ve been assigned the responsibility of building your company’s virtual booth.  You’ve had plenty of experience assembling a physical booth, but never before have you built one virtually.  What’s your first step?  To immediately resist the urge to start the virtual build.

Set/Confirm Objectives & Goals

The objectives and goals for your virtual booth should align with the goals for your company’s participation in the virtual event. If you do not set the direction yourself, be sure to round up the necessary decision makers and have a documented set of goals – publish them internally and be sure that all stakeholders have a copy.  Sample goals include:

  1. Obtain contact information from “X” number of prospects
  2. Generate “Y” number of meaningful prospect engagements in-booth
  3. Yield “Z” number of qualified sales opportunities
  4. Generate “X%” of brand uplift, as measured by “Y”

It’s absolutely critical that goal definition be your first step, as it drives the decisions you make regarding the build-out of your virtual booth.

Content is King

The main elements of a virtual booth are (1) content [e.g. images, signage, videos, documents, links, etc.] and (2) virtual booth staffers.  Your first job is “content curator” – review all content available and be selective about which content you’ll place in your booth.  It all goes back to the defined goals – the content you select should align with the goals.

So if your goal is demand generation, find the same White Papers that your marketing team is using to generate sales leads across the web.  If your goal is driving awareness around a product launch, grab that 2 minute video of your product manager and have it auto-play when visitors enter your booth.  Besides documents in your marketing library, be sure to cobble together useful links on your web site, along with third party articles, blog postings and product reviews that reinforce your objectives.

Booth Labels Are Like Headlines

Content in a booth is typically housed behind a set of “booth labels”.  Your next job is one of headline writer – you’ll want to craft captivating “headlines” for the booth label, along with attention-grabbing titles (and descriptions) for the underlying content items.  You’re like the home page editor for your favorite content site – you need to figure out how to write headlines (titles) that will grab your visitors’ attention.

While you certainly want to avoid the “bait and switch” (e.g. writing a label/title that intentionally deceives), your labels need not literally reflect the underlying content. For example, if you assemble a set of blog postings from your company’s blog, you need not label these “Blog Postings”. Instead, organize the blog postings into themes – a set of postings on best practices could simply be labeled “Best Practices” in your booth.

While I suggest you do not change booth labels while the event is live (that would significantly confuse your booth’s repeat visitors), you’ll want to review the activity reports from your booth to learn from the labeling decisions that you made.  You’ll begin to figure out what worked and what didn’t – and can use those learnings for your next event to more effectively use labels/headlines to achieve your goals.

Use A Call To Action – Not A Declaration

For signage within the virtual booth, I prefer to use a call to action (e.g. “Ask Us Why 2010 is The Year of The Hybrid” above) over a declaration. So instead of declaring, “The world’s leading producer of plastic widgets”, try a call to action, “Ask us why plastic widgets are the new metal widgets”.  The call to action initiates a conversation with your visitors, rather than telling them what they should know.  If visitors enter your booth’s group chat and proactively ask the question stated in your call to action, then give yourself a pat on the back.

Stand Out From The Crowd

You’ll likely have competitors exhibiting in their own virtual booths, which means that a key part of your job is to figure out how to separate your booth (and company) from the crowd.  Greenscreen video (aka an embedded video greeter) has been used at enough virtual booths that it won’t make your booth any different.

Instead, try an offbeat video that’s not yet made its way to YouTube.  Or, how about an avatar of your CEO whose mouth movements are synchronized to the words s/he is speaking.  Perhaps an animated avatar is the new greenscreen.  Thinking further outside the box, how about bringing one of your products to life – personalizing that product to the point where it speaks and delivers a message to visitors.  A good example (in general – not in a virtual event) is the DCX Man character created by Brocade:

Source: Brocade (dcxman.com)

Further information can be found here: http://www.dcxman.com/whois_dcxman.html

Optimize Your Content For Search

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not the sole domain of your web site or blog – it applies to virtual events as well.  How can this be?  Well, most virtual event platforms provide basic and advance search capabilities – they index all content in the event (e.g. documents, links, Webcasts, etc.) and some platforms even index the contents of uploaded documents.

As a result, keep SEO in mind for selecting documents to include in your booth, along with the labels, titles and abstracts that you use to catalog your booth content.  Taking a step back, be sure to write an SEO-optimized description for your company and booth – if attendees search for a key term and your booth is at the top of the search results, then all is good in the world.

Subject Matter Experts as Booth Staffers

While you’ll certainly want sales reps and sales engineers as booth staffers, it’s critical to work subject matter experts into the staffing schedule.  A visitor who asks specific product or service questions is a hot prospect – and telling that prospect “let me get back to you with an answer to your question” becomes a lost opportunity.  Even worse, that opportunity could fall into the lap of your competitor, whose booth is only one click away.

If you’re a technology vendor, try to have your product manager, chief engineer or event your CTO available within the booth.  While some technology folks may not be comfortable face-to-face with a customer, most feel quite at home in a text chat session.

Optimizing For: Demand Generation

If you’re looking to generate sales leads, cobble up all your best lead gen content – the latest White Papers, Case Studies, product sheets, videos, podcasts, customer testimonials, etc.  Be liberal and selective at the same time – that is, ensure there is a good mix of content choices, but be religious in making sure the content you select aligns with your goals – and relates to the theme of the virtual event.  The beauty of a virtual event is that registration occurs once – but all activity with your content is tracked.  So you’ll have rich activity profiles at your disposal to help you separate the cream of the crop leads from the visitors who came simply to enter your prize drawing.

Optimizing For: Thought Leadership

Are some of your co-workers experts or luminaries within your industry?  If yes, then have them be staffers within your booth!  Visitors will have a natural inclination to engage with them – and they’ll be able to funnel the ripest opportunities to sales reps within your booth.  If your employees have not achieved rock star status within your industry, leverage some of the luminaries to produce content on your behalf.

Perhaps it’s a research report authored by an industry expert – or, a video interview (hosted by the expert) with your CEO.  Better yet, a Webcast within the virtual event that features the expert(s) who provide a presentation prior to your own speakers.  If the experts are available to attend the virtual event, invite them to provide Q&A within your booth, as they’ll serve to draw interest and engagement from visitors.

Conclusion

While much of the logistics occur “online”, building a virtual booth will take longer than you think (if done right).  Be sure to clearly define your goals first – then, make sure your booth achieves those goals.  Take planned breaks from the virtual build to assess whether your booth aligns with the stated goals.  Finally, be sure to study activity data from the live event so you can make improvements for your next event!

Related Links

  1. Browse the Virtual Events 101 Index Page
  2. Download the eBook, “Virtual Events: Ready, Set, Go“

Note: I invite you to connect with me on .

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Posted by Dennis Shiao