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Emergence of Virtual Tradeshows

Emergence of virtual tradeshows
In a previous post, I spoke about the emergence of virtual tradeshows. Since then, I have seen promotions  for many more of these events.  There is definitely a trend or interest to test this method of providing online content for education, branding, or lead generation purposes. I previously mentioned a  company called Unisfair that provides a platform for delivering virtual tradeshows. Another company that has come to my attention is InXpo. I came across a technology focused event called the Data Protection Dilemma, produced by Ziff Davis, which is now available on demand. One of the strengths of a virtual tradeshow is that content can remain on demand and be a  source of further lead generation (after the live event). If you visit InXpo's website, you can see some of the customers they are working with other than Ziff Davis,  including TIBCO and Wall Street Journal.  Ziff Davis has been using this channel extensively, visit virtualtradeshowslive.com, to see their lineup of technology focused events (and past shows on demand). 

Upcoming virtual expo for B2B Marketers
There is an upcoming show of interest for B2B Marketers on March 5, 2008 called B2B-2.0 Expo: What's New in Finding+Keeping Customers. This show focuses on solutions for B2B marketing in the Web 2.0 world. They have a great lineup of speakers, check out the website for full details on the program and presenters. The organizer is MarketingProfs, and there are several sponsors, including some of the marketing "thought leadership" companies I have spoken about in the past, including MarketingExperiments, Eloqua, intouch, and Marketo. It looks like a perfect opportunity to learn more about marketing with Web 2.0 , research new marketing solution providers, and experience a virtual tradeshow environment.

More resources on virtual events

No Travel Required of this Kind of Show, my previous post on virtual tradeshows.

Virtual events and measuring ROI keys (from BtoBonline)

Virtual events' success grows (from BtoBonline)

Also please feel free to comment on your experience on attending, sponsoring, or creating content for a Virtual Tradeshow. Is this a viable channel for B2B Marketers to reach and engage with customers and new prospects? How does this compare with Second Life virtual events? Does this meet the demands of reaching a global market or small-medium size businesses where travel is more difficult?

Update:  Please check out some related posts by other bloggers:

The Value of Tradeshows

Virtual Business Conferences

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!).

Webcast: The Multichannel Marketer

Next BtoB Webcast: The Multichannel Marketer

Date: Thursday, April 5, 2007
Time: 2:00 p.m. ET / 11:00 a.m. PT
Duration: 60 Minutes

The best kept secrets in direct marketing live in customer data. Savvy marketers are embracing search marketing, database marketing, and online research to reach their target audience. But even with their best efforts, a great deal is missing.

To be successful, marketers must optimize the way they collect and qualify sales information and close opportunities. This webcast will help you:

• Enhance your customer database
• Gain market insight and intelligence
• Qualify and rank leads
• Generate new qualified leads

Moderated by BtoB’s editor Ellis Booker and sponsored by DM2-DecisionMaker, this webcast will provide you with the strategies and techniques that will help you gather leads and refine your prospect database.

This webcast will feature presentations by:

• Theresa Kushner, Director of Customer Intelligence, Cisco
• Joan Ritter, SVP Direct and Relationship Marketing, Slack Barshinger
• Parin Mody, Director of Product Marketing , DM2-DecisionMaker

Register

Webinar: Lead Gen - 8 Critical Success Factors

The best webinars I have seen so far on Lead Generation are with Brian Carroll - don't miss the next one:

On Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 1:00 PM CST, Brian Carroll, CEO of
InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale will be
presenting part two of his five part webinar series on lead generation.
Part two focuses on the eight critical success factors that are needed
to develop high quality and high volume lead generation programs. During
the webinar you'll learn:

- How to align sales and marketing to optimize the number of leads
- How to avoid lulls in the sales cycle
- How to develop a universal lead definition and an ideal customer
profile
- How to build, maintain and grow your database

8 Critical Success Factors in Developing High Volume, High Quality Lead
Generation Programs
http://www.startwithalead.com/article.asp?ARTICLEID=284

Webcast: Making the Most of your IT Marketing Dollar

Here's an upcoming BtoB/TechTarget webcast featuring Brian Carroll, author, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and Marilou Barsam, senior vice president of client consulting, TechTarget.

Title: Making the Most of your IT Marketing Dollar
Date: Thursday, March 15, 2007
Time: 2:00 p.m. ET / 11:00 a.m. PT
Duration: 60 Minutes

With more pressure on marketers to prove the ROI of their marketing dollar, many marketers are achieving measurable results in innovative ways. These marketers are employing e-mail campaigns, online media buys, webcasts, social media, blogs, and other strategies to attract prospects and convert them into sales.

Focusing on information technology, we will present examples of innovative ideas and how savvy IT marketers are using them to create dynamic campaigns that get results. What’s more, we will show you how to nurture the customers you have, and identify those prospects who have the potential to become profitable.  Register

Register for other upcoming B2B webcasts at  On24

Who is responsible for lead generation - Marketing or Sales?

One of my main responsibilities in the past few years was to increase marketing activities. My company wanted to focus on business seminars to improve customer relationships.  So over the years I have been concentrating on this. Working in a small company, resources are scarce, and putting on seminars takes a good amount of time. I  have some support from my vendor partners, and have learned how to leverage them as best as possible. The part that helped me the most though in raising the level of activity was planning and process. I was able to plan quarters ahead (instead of scrambling to get something on the calendar for next month). I was able to avoid a lot of stress and unplanned activities by being on schedule and having a documented process.  As well I had a plan that I could always go back to for improvement.

A new problem emerged. Suddenly I had a lot of inquiries and I was passing them on to sales.  We were calling them leads, but they were really "unqualified leads".  I started to ask  a lot of questions like were my leads any good, and was sales following up on my leads, and hang on, what exactly is a lead, when and how do I pass leads off, how could I track these things, and why am I not tracking this!!. (if you are wondering, yes, I started to lose sleep over this).

I started researching these issues, and came to recognize my dilemma as a major "disconnect" between sales and marketing. I realized that I was not alone and that a lot of organizations were having the same issue. The question remained however: whose job is it to create and manage leads? I was creating  more than enough "leads" and passing them along, wasn't that enough? 

I found quite a few good resources, but nothing sank in or put it all together the way Brian Carroll did in his book "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale". In future posts I want to talk more about his strategy, the book, and what I've implemented so far. For now, for those of you that are struggling with these issues, I recommend following Brian's blog - B2B Lead Generation Blog. Also, here are some other resources that have shaped my thinking:

• AMA: A Multimodal Approach to Lead Nurturing for Complex Sales
  This webcast will introduce you to some of Brian's strategies and cover high level ideas from his book

• Duct Tape Marketing: Sales vs. Marketing Podcast
  This podcast illustrates the difference in how sales and marketing thinks!


• MarketingSherpa: Lead Scoring & Management Roundtable
  This is a special report where 6 experts  (one of which is Brian Carrol) share their views on lead qualification.  You must be a member to read, or you can sign up for a trial membership.  BTW, MarketingSherpa is an excellent resource, especially their B2b newsletter. They have  real-life case studies,  practical  know-how articles, and benchmark data.  Last year I purchased a report called Business Technology Benchmark Guide. It was worth every cent.


• KnowledgeStorm: The Fine Art of Lead Qualification
  Great statistics and best practices (leans towards online leads, but can apply to offline).  If you want prove of how important timing is when following up with an inquiry,  you'll find data to support this. You may need to register for this whitepaper (well worth it).

There are a lot of resources, insights and information on the subject of lead generation and I can't hope to document them all. The most important thing is to recognize and understand the problem in your organization, and find a way to tackle the issue.

And for those of you that have lead generation and nurturing programs in place already --- boy do I envy you. Especially if you played a part in starting one up, or improving one.  Please tell me it looked like Mount Everest at one time (looking up), and let me know what it feels like at the top :)