How to Exhibit at B-to-B Virtual Tradeshows

December 14, 2008

Planning to be an exhibitor at a B-to-B Virtual Tradeshow (VTS)?  Here’s how to become a VTS All-Star:

  1. The right people – to attain All-Star status, first find your own team of all-stars from within your company.  You’ll want a good mix of product folks (product managers and/or product marketers), sales folks (direct sales reps or Inside sales reps) and technical folks (engineers or sales engineers).  Prepare your team for the event by bringing them up to speed on VTS (if this is their first time) and give each member clear goals of what you’d like them to do and accomplish.  For instance, the sales folks proactively connect with attendees; the product marketers participate in the public forums; the sales engineers are “on call” to the product marketer in case a really tough technical question is asked.
  2. The right content – place content in your virtual booth that is directly applicable to the theme of the event.  Take the time to carefully select your White Papers, Case Studies, podcasts, videos, etc.  Don’t simply repeat what you used at an unrelated event.  Attendees will be on the look-out for useful content, so if you’re selections are on the mark, you’ll generate more views and downloads.  Think of it as a form of search engine optimization – where the “spider” is the visitor to your booth.
  3. The right actions – train your booth reps to proactively connect with your booth visitors.  Thank them for their visit, send them a virtual business card, invite them to review your booth’s content.  Ask them about specific challenges they face and have your product marketers suggest solutions.  You’ll come out ahead if you help the attendees, rather than doing a hard sell on your products and services.  Attendees at B-to-B virtual events are not shy about seeking you out, which means they’ll come asking for pricing and product information.  When they do, make sure you have answers – or, be able to find an answer within an hour.  There’s no greater shame than getting hot leads at a VTS and then making them wait for the info they’ve asked for.
  4. The right prizes – that’s right, everyone loves the giveaway, even if it’s as small as a $25 gas card or coffee card.  A “big prize” (e.g. Nintendo Wii or HDTV) always attracts attention, but I like doing a large number of smaller prizes – reason being, attendees like the immediate gratification of winning a small prize, instead of receiving a chance to win the big prize.  So whether  it’s 100 USB drives or 50 Starbucks gift cards, you’ll get the attendees’ attention.  The most effective prize I’ve seen – copies of a book (by an expert) whose name was known by all attendees.

So there you go.  Do the “right” thing to secure your spot on the VTS All-Star Team.  Good luck and have fun.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Breakdown: Exhibitors of Virtual Tradeshows

December 13, 2008

I’ve had the privilege of working with dozens of Virtual Tradeshow (VTS) exhibitors, ranging from scrappy start-up technology vendors to Fortune 100 giants.  I’ve found that each exhibitor, independent of the type of company represented, approaches VTS differently, with a wide range of knowledge, experience and plain old know-how.  Here is my breakdown of VTS exhibitors:

  1. The savvy elite (1%) – they know how to best leverage the VTS experience – they understand that a Live VTS embodies characteristics of social media, conventional online lead generation and face-to-face events.  They’re active and proactive.  They utilize tactics to drive interest to their brand and traffic to their booth.  They leverage tricks of the trade from physical events and translate them well to the online world.  Some gain this status from experience at past virtual events – others “get it” during their very first VTS.  The savvy elite excel not only on the front end, but also on the back end – in their ability to extract the valuable engagements they’ve generated and place that data in their CRM system.  By perfecting the back-end, the savvy elite hand their salesforce focused and prequalified leads.  Here, the VTS accomplishes the two-step process of lead generation and lead qualification.  The savvy elite can re-use their telesales staff on other programs, where more rigorous qualification is necessary.
  2. The group with good intentions (15%).  This group understands the potential of a virtual event.  For the most part, they do an effective job at interacting with attendees/prospects.  Some could use a little fine-tuning in their approach.  Where this group ultimately falls short is on the back-end.   They are sending Sales a mix of hot and cold leads, leaving Sales to pursue nine or ten  (or more) leads before they find one that’s worthy.
  3. Needs significant assistance (79%).  Here’s your bulk of VTS exhibitors today.  They need help on the front end and the back end.  On the front end, they tend to sit back and wait for attendees to contact them.  Imagine doing that at a physical tradeshow – you’d end up speaking to very few people.  This group requires a little more handholding on what works and what doesn’t – things that the savvy elite know instinctually.  On the back end, this group tends to throw all generated leads “over the wall” to telesales.  And the result is phone calls or emails to leads with no explicit association with the virtual event (quite a shame).  So here’s the opportunity to B-toB publishers and VTS platform providers: provide the necessary tools, utilities and reports (to this oversized constituency) to highlight the “best” leads to the exhibitors, based on automated analysis of the attendee engagement data.  If I had 57 private chat sessions with prospects, tell me which ones I should care about.  By doing this, all parties will derive more ROI from these events – you take a pre-existing set of leads – and instantly make them better.
  4. List buyers (5%).  They sponsor VTS’s in order to buy themselves a list of sales prospects.  They tend not to staff their booth.  They place little to no content in their booth.  They send the entire list of leads over to telesales and hope for the best.  On the back-end, this group sees significantly lower sales conversions compared to the savvy elite.

With 2009 being the year of virtual events, I’m hoping that the savvy elite grow from 1% to 10% share.  That growth won’t happen magically – the publishers and the platform providers will need to do their part.  If they do, it only serves to make virtual event marketing all the more compelling.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

2009: The Year We Go Virtual

December 12, 2008

Year of the Ox

Year of the Ox

The Chinese will celebrate 2009 as the Year of the Ox.  For B-to-B marketers, I’m convinced that 2009 is the Year of the Virtual Event.  While virtual events have already taken shape – in the IT space, 2007 was a growth year and 2008 was even stronger – I believe we’re facing a watershed moment when a “perfect storm” of factors will lead to a phenomenal surge in virtual events.

I believe that companies who provide products and services around virtual events will experience 50%, 100%, 200% and higher annual revenue growth in 2009.  On the flip side, companies whose primary business is around supporting B-to-B face-to-face events will experience diminishing demand and all but the top 5-10% will struggle to survive.

Here are the factors I see contributing to this watershed moment:

  1. Attendee demand – let’s consider the IT Pro.   Those who survived a layoff are facing significant internal cost controls.  It’s likely that all travel has been cut, which means that Joe IT Pro will not be attending a face-to-face event, even if it’s in the nearest major city.  This is one factor driving B-to-B event marketers to scale back their 2009 event plans.
  2. Exhibitors’ requirement for cost efficiency – if you’re lucky enough to have marketing budget for 2009, you don’t want to spend it on a high-end hotel (with their elevated food and beverage costs), along with the travel and lodging costs for your colleagues.  Instead, you could pay less for an online event.  Today, more than 50% of a virtual event’s cost is associated with the headcount required by the platform provider to configure the event.  The virtual event platforms, however, are moving to a full-blown  SaaS model, where the exhibitor becomes a mere tenant on the multi-tenant platform – and configures the event 100% on her own.  This means that the costs will trend downward over time (imagine that).
  3. The Green Movement – who hasn’t been encouraged lately to think and act Green?  A virtual event is virtually carbon-free.  Exhibitors stay at home (or in the office); attendees stay at home (or in the office).
  4. Measurability – with a virtual event, exhibitors can track and analyze all of the discrete actions taken by an attendee.  In addition, with tools like text chat (the equivalent of instant messaging), exhibitors can interact with attendees and have all the chat transcripts available for later review.  Other tools, like search, allow exhibitors to identify (and connect with) target attendees who are online in the event right now.  What this means is that exhibitors can measure and calculate their Return on Investment with higher precision and accuracy.
  5. The human touch – event marketers will tell you that nothing beats a face-to-face, in-person meeting.  2009 is a year where virtual events will merge with telepresence – with early adoption most likely in closed/private event spaces.  There are cost factors with telepresence – but, imagine virtual events combined with high fidelity video and it’s  like you’re in the same room as the person half way around the world.  With telepresence costs bound to come down over the long term, I see virtual events + telepresence being a killer combination.

All in all, I look forward to 2009 with great excitement.  For folks in the virtual events space, the Year of the Ox may be better labeled the Year of the Racehorse – as it’s off to the races we go.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

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