Leverage Twitter for Virtual Tradeshow Outreach

December 15, 2008

When Sarah Lacy interviewed Mark Zuckerberg on-stage at South by Southwest Interactive this past March, rumblings spread throughout the audience regarding Lacy’s interview style.  A few in the audience extended the rumblings online via Twitter – and from there, Twitter’s network effect quickly spread the commentary across the globe.  The power of Twitter (and related social networks) can be a real boon to B-to-B events, precisely because of the network effect:

So let’s imagine I’m logged in to a Live Virtual Tradeshow (VTS).  I’m visiting exhibitor booths, viewing Live Webcasts and interacting with peers.  All in all, I’m enjoying myself.  I want to spread the word to friends and colleagues.  One quick (and efficient) way to do that is to post a message to Twitter.

Twitter home page

Twitter home page

I can “tweet” about the Virtual Tradeshow and pass along a URL to my 141 followers.  If any of those followers likes the recommendation, they can “retweet” my message to their followers.  If 5 of my followers spread the word and they each have an average of 100 followers, then my message had a potential audience of 141 + (5 * 100) = 641.  And that doesn’t even count any downstream distribution via my followers’ followers.  If my tweet happens to be picked up by a Twitter power user, my message could be seen by her 10,000 followers!

You can see how quickly and efficiently information is published.  And that’s the beauty of the network effect.  As I amass more followers – and, as more users sign up with Twitter – the potential audience of my “tweets” grows exponentially.  The result is a powerful tool for B-to-B marketers and publishers, if used right.  Publishers need to grow their audience in order to grow their revenue – new audience results in more page views, more ad impressions delivered, more online sales leads.  Where can you find that audience?  On social networks like Twitter.

VTS platform providers may want to consider:

  1. A “post to Twitter” utility within the VTS – make it convenient for VTS attendees to post a message to Twitter, including an auto-shortened URL (so their followers can access the event)
  2. A “Twitter reflector” that takes selected chat messages from the VTS and posts them to Twitter.  Imagine a user engaged in a “group chat” area who wants to share her insight simultaneously to the VTS attendees and her Twitter followers.  Allow her an easy way to do that.  Again, include a shortened URL that points back to the event

Of course, Twitter is not the only social network out there (I haven’t even mentioned Facebook and its 130MM users).  So while I’ve outlined a few ideas that are specific to Twitter, the bigger picture concept is about integrating the VTS platform with an assortment of networks.  The trick will be to pick the right ones.

You can follow me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/dshiao

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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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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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