Virtual Trade Shows and Conferences – A Brief Review

The following is a brief perspective of some of the highlights and not-so-great-things of using virtual trade shows and events as part of your overall business marketing and sales programs.  I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

The move toward remote everything has us using the power of the computer and network in even new and more powerful ways for marketing and connecting with our customers.  While not everyone may be in total agreement about using virtual events, it’s another way of connecting that has established its place in distributing information and collecting feedback in the sales and marketing cycle.

What is a Virtual Event

First, if you haven’t signed up for a virtual trade show, event or conference yet or are new to the term, virtual conferencing serves as a surrogate for those live, in-person conferences in Orlando or Las Vegas or somewhere else that so many of us attend in this industry. It’s a step up from a webcast, since a virtual trade show, like an in-person trade show or conference, tends to last a full day and may have more than one presentation going on at the same time. In addition, there are lots of ways to navigate around the virtual trade show floor – just like a real trade show - so that if you are bored with one topic you can visit a vendor booth on the virtual show floor and strike up a conversation in real-time chat mode. Of course the coffee, drinks and lunch aren’t free, and no giveaways that you can walk away with immediately – although there are prize drawings just like in the real thing.   Some of these virtual conferences even try to simulate the sounds and noise of the a real conference by using fake background audio that sounds like you’re at a live a conference. Pretty cool so far!

I started to  use this medium on a regular basis last year when I attended several of these virtual conferences. One of them was focused on the topic of virtualization for the computing environment (servers, desktops, data storage) – a true virtual event so to speak. The company VMware, a leader in virtualization software, was one of the primary sponsors of the event. It made sense that VMware might tap into this world of virtual conferencing as a means to communicate to their constituencies. You can still visit this event – they keep it running all the time. I’ve also attended a few more, most of them sponsored or focused on a technology topic, as the tech world for now are the top candidates for using this medium. (no surprise).

So what do I think so far?

First, some of the pro’s:

• Cost Savings – well that’s pretty obvious. It costs less to both hold and attend one of these. It makes it as easy for someone in Asia to attend as it is in NY (assuming you don’t care about the time differences). Virtual Events may be particularly cost-effective for events that are held for less than a day or day and half.
• Fast Exposure – Along with cost savings, it’s a quick way to get up to speed on a subject without a lot of time and travel expense. It may even help you make the one you attend in reality that much more productive.
• Continuous Looping – Once you complete it, you can keep it up on your website for as long as you like. It could be a long term marketing asset.
• Auto-Correction – since some of the presentations are canned, you can better manage the content, its flow and presentation style (potentially)
• Inexpensive Feedback – Vendors can get a quick read on what’s interesting and appealing before they invest in the real thing, which everyone has to eventually do. If you know how to use market segmentation techniques within the web environment, this indeed can potentially tell you a lot the about demographics and psychographics of your audience

Con’s

• Is It Live Or Is It ?? – You can never replace live people contact, interaction and body language. No question about this.
• Too Scripted – In some cases, the presentations can be a little too canned, where you know the presenter is reading from  a prepared piece (but that can happen in webinars too)
• Subtracts From The Real Thing – Well I suppose you could make a case for this, since this an excuse for not spending the money on the real thing or not attending one at all
• Graphics Don’t Make It Yet – Look at the graphics and audio used by some of these early virtual events. Given the state of the art of audio and video medium in gaming for example, there is a lot to be desired in how well the use of audio and visual are used in this context – at least as much as I’ve seen so far
•  Lacks Stickiness – If I am in Orlando spending the time and money on attending a real conference, I probably am attending most or all of the sessions that I set out on. Not necessarily so with virtual conferencing – it can be too easy to start multi-tasking, walk away or lose focus.

In summary, it ’s likely that this will be yet another tool in the marketing and sales arsenal to attract client, partner and employee participation, and to get feedback on products and services in the making. However, there is quite a lot of room for improvement and I think we are just beginning to exploit this medium’s potential.

It’s possible that we will see event hybrids, some of which may be broadcast and attended virtually, other parts of which require in-person attendance. Most conferences already audio tape the event and then sell the tapes at discount, so these alternatives may naturally blend after a while.

Here’s some more info for those interested.

At the annual Gartner Predicts 2009 last week, the item topping the list of forecasts called for a significant decrease in physical traveling as virtual conferencing options offer an alternative. Specifically, Gartner is looking at high-definition based video meeting solutions to replace 2.1 million airline seats annually by 2012, costing the travel and hospitality industry US$3.5 billion per year.There is still room for virtual worlds, though, according to the company.

Caleb Booker has done a great job recently of breaking down the basic benefits of virtual worlds for meetings.