No Travel Required for this Kind of Trade Show

You may have heard of the term "Virtual Tradeshow" and been interested to learn more.

I visited Unisfair, a provider of virtual tradeshow environments, and had a look around their virtual showcase. It had an exhibition hall, where I found virtual exhibitor booths. In the booths there were flash presentations, webcasts, pdfs, and even live chat (and soon to be internet phone capabilities). The conference hall also had presentations. During a live show, there might be live video presentations. A virtual trade show usually takes place live on a certain day, but can remain on-demand for weeks (or months) after the live event.

Unisfair says that they have registered up to 3000 people for an event, and that the average visitor stayed for two hours. They say that there are two main reasons that people go to the virtual tradeshows (similar to real trade shows), one is for researching, the other for networking. They have built certain features to facilitate both. For networking, they have a networking lounge where you can chat and meet people. You can also create a profile, and browse others.

It seems like an interesting concept. Some of the unique benefits of a virtual tradeshow vs. a real-life one include:

· people don't have to leave their desk (that includes participants, speakers, and exhibitors)

· everything is track-able – this is very interesting for lead generation, you can track who visits your booth, how long they stay, what they view or download, you can rank the leads based on behavior, and send them directly to sales

· event can remain on-demand - so that you can continue to drive leads from it

Now don’t expect virtual graphics or entertainment sophistication like Second Life. But I think they have tried to make it an exciting and fun environment. Again, I only saw the on-demand showcase, which is more like a sample. I’m sure a live event will be much more interesting. You can also read a bit more about this in a NY Times article, “Cyberspace Trade Shows Bring Action to the Desktop”.

 I registered for a live virtual trade show that runs on November 8^th called “Selling to the Mid-Market”, by CMP Channel (Unisfair is hosting it).  I can kill two birds with one stone, experience a virtual trade show, and do some learning and research on the mid-market. And I think I can live without scoring any real-life chachkas…I wonder what virtual chachka might be….perhaps a free screen saver or desktop (hmmm), or maybe if you are qualified, online credit for something (yay!).

Comments

[Mark]

I agree virtual trade shows have serious potential but unfortunately, the industry expected several years ago to have much more of an impact by now. Personally, I see virtual trade shows as the perfect partner for traditional brick and mortar events. I think they can help one another tremendously as a single event for all virtual visitors and participants that arrive in person. I have attended a number of industrial trade shows over the years and I think the 2 types of events held together could be very popular.

[Mou]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the comment. I actually have some updates, because I did attend the virtual channelweb tradeshow that I mentioned in my post. Though I thought the content of the show was great..and in fact I got to see a presenter that I am always interested in seeing, I got disrupted many times throughout the day. I had blocked off a couple of hours just to attend the virtual show, but that is one of the setbacks of working from your desk in a busy office. The other issue is that true networking wasn't really possible. I visited the virtual lounge, but didn't feel like chatting with virtual "strangers". I just got back from a traditional event today, it wasn't exactly a tradeshow, it was vendor neutral education seminar, with tabletops for vendors during breaks and lunch. It enforced how important F2F interaction is, if you are at the right show with right audience. Nothing can be beat in terms of meeting several customers and prospects at once and starting conversations and relationships, and accelerating sales cycles. There are certain prospects that are difficult to meet any other way, and catching them on the phone is hard, but once you have the initial contact, it is a lot easier to pursue and develop the relationship.

You are right, virtual tradeshows haven''t reached potential yet. I think you have an interesting idea, a combination of a traditional and virtual event that ties in, so that more people can participate and attend, and those that can't attend in person can still get the information they need. Scheduling both together under the same branded event, might be a very effective strategy.

Thanks again for stopping by.

Mou

[Syven]

When Nikola Tesla was demonstrating his vision of free power with his Wardencliffe Tower idea to J.P.Morgan, Morgan replied "Where can I put the meter?".

Unisfair run with a tagline which reads "Powering the World's Virtual Events" but when I went to the website, apart from a job fair example, my thought was "Where is my interest?"

If one does not give people an unregistered and open taste of the product, then the familiarity with this space is not going to scale and without this circulation - some numbers you can give to a marketer as to what the traffic in the prototypes are or even real showcases, then one does not get the synergy between marketers who are ready to try out a new channel and the engagement that get people interested in these spaces.

Without some kind of traction, one can end up being a Nikola Tesla claiming that the idea was fantastic but miss the real needs. I don't call registering to go into a virtual space "interactivity", that is still the same old marketing.

How about Unisafe opening its doors to bloggers to have a New Media trade show, and see how going through the trade floor would be different to navigating the internet with hyperlinks.

So make it more interactive, make it more interesting, cater to early adopters and create some buzz - the online meter is active engagement that has visible flow. The engagement loop is completely missing here IMHO unless the miracle transformation of radical marketers becomes the new marketing reality - hint: marketers are still pretty much conservative (if not slightly more confused) about their choices...

BTW Great blog here Mou, my thoughts above are in respect to my observations as to how I perceived Unisfair as a personal visceral first impression reaction.

M.