Blog Archives
Using social media to market events
Once upon a time it was all so simple…
Providing you owned, could access or buy, good data and had the budget to hit your target universe five times on average with your message you could more or less guarantee an audience for your event. For exhibition marketers, preregistration was a very clear indicator of footfall on the day, with conversion rates of between 60 and 75 per cent. In the conference market a twelve week cycle of marketing would, possibly with the input of some telemarketing, produce enough registrations to cover costs and deliver that all important margin.
And then life got a whole lot more complicated…
The advent of online and email marketing brought with it a more instantateous way to talk to audiences. Unfortunately though, like a child gorging on the pick-and-mix, many marketers have abused the latter, flooding their database’s inboxes with messages on a far too regular basis. Others have treated their web presence as an online brochure, asking visitors to sign up for updates and news when in reality there would be none because noone factored in the time or resource for either the marketing or the main event team to curate such things.
Into this already crowded, and rowdy, room marches social media…
It’s like a toddlers tea-party. You want to make yourself heard above the cacophony: so you shout louder; you run hither and thither until it seems you are everywhere at once; you wear the gaudiest outfit because you think it will make you stand out; and you try everything, briefly. But when you leave you are hoarse, tired and, if the truth be told, you didn’t actually get very much done or make much of an impression because you were just one of a group of over-excited, slightly out of control children in inappropriate clothing.
For event marketers, the biggest problem is that the promotional cycle for an exhibition, conference, awards etc. is actually very short; very rarely does the campaign last for more than four months. This really doesn’t lend itself very well to social media because relationships in places such as LinkedIn and Facebook, and long lists of followers in Twitter aren’t built overnight, and if you want to establish a well-read blog then there is no point starting it ten weeks out from your show. And if you stop talking to your audience, they lose interest and go somewhere else.
Let’s look at two examples, both expos with conferences and seminar programmes attached and a technology bias, though not IT events as such, and with similar attendance figures at their live days:
Our first event takes place annually in February. They have a LinkedIn group which was established in January 2008 – a month before that year’s event. It’s growth profile looks like this:
While the group shows a steady growth in membership over the last four years, it is interesting to note that there are identifiable spikes in the number of new memberships in February of each year., i.e. when the event happens. Just three weeks later both increase in membership and activity, as shown in the chart below have fallen dramatically.
In contrast, the second team have created a LinkedIn group which began life based around their event (which takes place in March) but has been nurtured and developed to deliver to the expo’s existing and potential audience all year around. The group was established in December 2007, four months before the event was scheduled and their growth and activity profiles look like this:
As with all statistics you can look at these two sets of information in a number of different ways, but at face value the contrast is clear. One team started earlier and kept the momentum going whereas another only focusses their effort in the final push towards the event. The groups have been around for approximately the same amount of time, yet one has nearly six times the number of members as the other and is showing a positive growth pattern. One team is clearly putting the time and effort into creating a community that isn’t abandoned as soon as the last speaker has left the building…
Utilities like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. aren’t just another medium into which information can be lobbed out to the target audience in the same old way. Think about it: you strive for coverage in relevant magazines and industry journals because you want your product to appear in an environment that has kudos and stature. This is delivered by the editorial content created by the teams that manage those media. If you want to do the same thing via LinkedIn etc. then you have to create an editorial and community environment that makes your potential audience want to interact with you.
To deliver real ROI and marketing with impact for your event you can’t just dip in and out of social media, ignoring your audience for 11 months of the year and then shouting at them for four weeks before you want them to attend. You need to spend time getting to know them, finding out how to work with the community you have created via your exhibition, conference or roadshow. Remember, they sought you out and it is up to you to make them stay.
missioncontrol @purerocketscience
p.s. If you want to find out more about creating social media strategies that work for events, our colleague Hellen Beveridge will be teaching a series of courses over the next few months. Visit www.gallusevents.co.uk/our-events/ for more information.
You’ve got to deliver what the audience wants
It seems like the technology has finally been toppled from its place at the top of the virtual events debate and we are, at last, getting back to the basics of looking at the needs of the client. We are once again talking about the multi-faceted communications approach that engages all sectors of an audience. There is no sense in trying to shoehorn all comms activity into a one-size-fits-all solution, when every other sector of business is constantly trying to find new niches to occupy.
The evolution of virtual events is being driven by one major factor: as more virtual events happen, more people are participating in them and the better we can measure their behaviour. So rather than making assumptions and creating technology in a vaccuum, we are delivering the goods the customer ordered.
Two research studies* have been released recently which serve to confirm just how quickly behaviour is changing in the physical and virtual meeting industry; their core findings make for interesting reading, not least because of the gulf of expectation between event organisers and their audiences:
- Live content, be it video or webcasts, is the most popular on a virtual site, and yet only 43% of physical events capture any of their content to post online, and where they do it is often less than 10%.
- There is as yet little commercialisation of virtual events, whether this is a conscious business decision, a resistance from the marketplace or the resource issue below is as yet unknown.
- Organisations worry about the additional staff time needed to execute a virtual event to the cost, the quality of the experiencefor the visitor and the complexity of technology.
The benefits for the organiser though are seen quite clearly; more than 82% of past users of virtual events and 84 %of future users questioned in the Tagoras study mentioned the potential increase in audience numbers, an important consideration where physical events were only enabling them to reach a fraction of their total target audience.
So why are event organisers still so reluctant to embrace virtual technologies.
Meanwhile, the potential audience shows no such reticence:
While organisers of physical events continually state that people want to do business with real people, the Business Motivations and Social Behaviors for In-Person and Online Events study found that:
- 80 percent of respondents are comfortable connecting and networking with strangers.
- 70 percent are comfortable using a video/webcam to chat and meet others.
- 33 percent share information by instant messaging at online events, while 28 percent do so at in-person events.
- 41 percent use Twitter at online events, while 51 percent do so at in-person events.
Another objection often raised by physical event organisers is that online attendees are easily distracted. But attendees in real time also check their emails, text, tweet, phone and message while sitting in an auditorium. The only difference is that the virtual attendees can come back to it later.
Respondents seek similar information from exhibitors whether booths are live or virtual: more than half want to see what a company does and how it can help them, and nearly half of respondents want to get company, product or solution information for review or want to see a demonstration or the product itself.
Where virtual events really begin to draw in the attendees though is in accessibility:
- the environment’s ease-of-access;
- the ability to ask questions and participate actively;
- reduced travel costs and hassles
- reduced time away from family and office
Given the solid evidence, it is hard to see why so many event organisations continue to find more reasons not to embrace virtual technologies than to explore the possibilities. Perhaps it will take some new entrants into the marketplace to steal a march on the naysayers, establishing great virtual events that morph into fantastic physical ones that take the old-guard by surprise.
Remember: if you don’t listen to your customers, and give them what they want, you are giving them every excuse to go somewhere else.
* The two studies quoted are:
Virtual Event Study, done in collaboration with the Center for Exhibition Industry Research, Relate Content & Community Solutions and Tagoras, and funded by the International Association of Exhibitions and Events:
The Business Motivations and Social Behaviors for In-Person and Online Events, a study sponsored by the Professional Convention Management Association, UBM Studios and Virtual Edge Institute:
Educating exhibitors in the etiquette of virtual events
The Death to the Booth debate rumbles on and is unlikely to be resolved any time soon as the closest we have managed to get to an alternative title for this universally understood term is meeting point and that doesn’t quite fit the bill.
But another important theme has emerged, one which chimes very closely with the experience of live event organisers – that of educating your exhibitors to ensure that they get the very best out of their investment and meet the goals they have set themselves for attending.
Goals… now there’s a concept that some organisations haven’t grasped right from the start. Motivations for being at an event are many and varied: from “my major competitors are going to be there, so must I” to “I want to tell everyone of your visitors what a big player in the market I am” (generally said by someone with a 2x3m stand, no display graphics and no literature to hand out). For some organisations, the concept of using an exhibition as the hub of an integrated marketing approach is a complete anathema: there is no dedicated sales message; inappropriate or old literature is taken to the event; there are no experts on hand to talk visitors through very specific issues; there is no pre- or post-event marketing efforts planned.
A presence on a booth in a virtual environment is no different. During the live days visitors expect to be able to communicate with representatives in real time; to find a wide variety of documentation that is clearly targetted at them; perhaps some instructional videos; or even an opportunity to join in a chat session with the CEO.
With no print costs, and an almost unlimited array of media that can be taken advantage of there really is no excuse for not grasping the opportunity to really engage with virtual visitors in all areas of the virtual environment. And as organisers of virtual events it is up to us to educate our partners to do this, and do it well.
But then there’s no excuse for sitting on an exhibition stand that represents £50K of company investment reading a newspaper, and yet people still do it…
The Booth is dead. Long live the Booth*
Humans, if nothing else, are creatures of habit. Which goes a long way to explaining why it can take a seemingly inordinate amount of time to introduce a new business practice or why the first reaction to change is often resistance.
The development of the Virtual Experience Platform has followed a path that has taken this need for security in acquaintance into account. The first iterations of the technology frequently been labelled Virtual Event Platforms: two-thirds of which are clearly understood by the majority of the business population and one-third which requires but a little explanation.
By creating an environment online which replicates much of what we would experience (except the transport delays, bad coffee and lack of seating) at a live event, early pioneers of virtual events have been able to cross that line from innovation to familiarity in a very short period of time. With an inherent understanding, participants know that to view a presentation they must navigate to the auditorium, to participate in a moderated chat they must go to a meeting room and that in the exhibition halls they will find organisations and their representatives promoting their products and services on digital booths.
And therein lies the difficulty. To many, the term Booth just doesn’t cut the mustard. It says static and without innovation, like the Grandma at a teenager’s party.
The discussion Are trade show booths in a virtual event really relevant any more? was started on LinkedIn by Richard Feldman in the Virtual Events and Meeting Technology group and has already managed to traverse into other virtual events related groups on the site. Amongst the comments about the unsatisfactory nature of the Booth in the virtual environments are some that would be awfully familiar to a live event producer: lack of information and content from the booth owner; and the need to illustrate real ROI, particularly where the booth has been paid for as part of a sponsorship package. A number of individuals comment that sponsoring companies should be scattered around the virtual environment for best exposure rather than having a single site presence (aka a Booth) – but why can’t they have both?
Which brings us to another conundrum… if you aren’t going to have Booths at your virtual event, what are you going to have to push your delegates to part of the site that the sponsor owns, you can’t have lists and links need to go somewhere… You need to create an area that the sponsor owns and can create as their own. Ideally you should be using a platform like 6Connex that allows this creative and design flexibility so that Booths don’t necessarily have to look like… well Booths.
Perhaps this is one of those chicken and egg discussions, where we pretty sure that we aren’t happy with the status quo, but there doesn’t seem to be a suitable, more effective or as easily understood alternative. Rather than concentrating our energies on trying to find a ‘booth-alternative’ shouldn’t we be focusing on getting clients and participants enthused and engaged in the concept of creating great, relevant content for the virtual audiences?
*Booth = Stand
Getting to grips with hybrid events
Still a bit confused by what this Hybrid Event is that everyone is talking about? Let us bring you up to speed…
Hybrid events are physical events—tradeshows, conferences, product demonstrations, executive showcases—augmented by virtual technology marketing. They unite the best of both technology and offline environments to create a more powerful and profitable experience. They bring together the most compelling aspects of onscreen, in person and online dynamics.
Participants who can’t get to your event can join in from afar, interacting with exhibitors and attendees, and accessing presentations and content. Visitors who do make it to the physical event can view, download, and forward content from booth kiosks and displays on laptops and mobile devices (at last a proper use for that Internet Cafe you’ve been building for years).
There are three types of hybrid events —Concurrent, Inclusive, and Successive.
A concurrent hybrid event is a physical show launched in tandem with an online virtual counterpart that can be accessed anywhere in the world.
An inclusive hybrid event integrates key virtual elements inside an established physical environment such as an Executive Briefing Centre, sales facility or event specific “command centre” headquarters.
A successive hybrid event is essentially a two-part marketing experience. At the conclusion of a physical event, a virtual version is launched and made available to previous attendees, as well as new customers and prospects.
Want to read more? Read the complete White Paper which is available online now.
