Lead Generation Conference

Phase 3: Event Delivery

Tuesday, April 20, 2010 by Peter Muir

The day of the event (DOE) represents a major influx of responsibility for both the organizer and the attendees. Organizers have to manage a myriad of variables to ensure a successful event from catering coordination to registration to setting up tech requirements, wrangling presenters and more. Attendees have fewer responsibilities but ideally they’re coming into the DOE with the desire to learn, network and/or do business. The multi channel marketing strategy focuses on distributing the traditional pressure of event days through the entire pre & post event campaign. Using the multi-channel approach can help make the DOE far less stressful and chaotic for all involved. Of course, planning & organization are both central to executing a successful event; here are some suggestions for managing the day of the event.

Begin at the very beginning. Before you plan or schedule the pre-event efforts consider what items you anticipate having on your “to do” list on the DOE. Then look at how you can distribute management of them in the pre-event stages so when you get to the day of the event there is less to worry about.

Examples

Make sure you’ve set up a series of informational emails or a website for support staff and presenters. They should know what is expected of them; where to be at what time on the day of event, deadline for submitting, tech requirements for laptops and presentations, etc.
If it is a large event like a conference, let attendees set their schedules early to establish presentation expectations and to cut down on people asking questions.
Delegate the compartmentalized or smaller tasks, like catering and registration, to someone with fewer things to worry about on the DOE.
Delegate the updates of social network applications during the event such as Twitter, blogging and Facebook updates.

Identify three main goals you have for the DOE. They should be tied to the larger goals of the full multi-channel campaign but focused particularly on the day’s events. Then make these three things your mantra. It will keep you focused and make decision making a little easier when you have already identified your priorities.

Examples

To ensure attendees walk away with the information/material they came looking for.
Make sure messages, observations and news from the event are captured for post-event newsletter/follow-up or to share with those who could not attend.
Facilitate smooth running presentations to ensure everyone gets to present and/or learn.
Help make networking as easy as possible for attendees and vendors alike. Assign a QR code to every attendee so they can simply scan to exchange information. Or, offer team with a local print shop to offer discounts on business cards so they have something exchange.

Maximize the multi-channel opportunity. Using new channels for communicating is just as relevant on the DOE as it is to support the pre & post-event variables. Keep in mind ways you can use them to create a more accessible and effective event

Examples

Use SMS to send attendees a link to their event schedule on the morning of the event.
Consider a live webcast or recorded podcast to share the event with those who weren’t able to attend. Webinar replays can be used as a review for those who attended as well as a customer acquisition process in your grand lead generation conference strategy.
Place QR codes or Microsoft tags on presentations, collateral or exhibition displays to enhance attendee’s interaction with content.

To find out more about how to better use the multi-channel approach to events on the actual day of the event, tune into the June edition of Webinar Wednesdays, June 9th from 1:00-2:00 p.m. CDT. Visit events.webinarresources.com/WebinarWednesdays to save the date and receive a reminder for the June 9th event.

And don't forget the May edition of Webinar Wednesdays on May 12th from 1:00-2:00 p.m. CDT. We will cover Phase 2: Pre-Event Efforts of Successful Event Planning. Visit events.webinarresources.com/WebinarWednesdays to register for our May 12th Webinar Wednesday session. You can view replays of past webinars at our Webinar Resources replay portal.

Peter Muir, president Bizucate Inc.
www.bizucate.com

Looking for Retention and Lead Generation Ideas, Have an Event! Part 1

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Peter Muir

A basic marketing premise looks at how to retain good customers and how to acquire new ones. Acquisition and retention are a cornerstone in any business venture.

In an effort to show your existing customers how they can be more successful and show new customers new places they can go enabled by your ideas, products and services consider hosting an educational event.

I'd like you to consider 4 Planning Phases of Successful Events.
1. Planning
2. Pre-Event Efforts
3. Event Delivery
4. Post-Event Efforts and Outcomes

Below is the beginning of an Educational Event Planning Guide to Increased Sales. Whether your goal is to create an effective lead generation program, re-develop your customer acquisition process, salvage lost customers with a retention campaign or you just want to say no more to cold calls. Developing your objectives is part of the process. It may seem like the guide is a series of questions, but it's in the process of answering the questions that will help you create an event that fits your organization, your needs and the needs of your current and future customers.

We're just scratching the surface here with Phase 1 Planning. Three future posts will discuss Phase 2, 3 and 4.

Phase 1 Planning
The planning phase has two major parts. The planning process of how the event fits into the larger needs of the organization and the actual planning steps to the event itself.

Planning within the Big Picture

Why have an event, what are your goals? What do you want to get for your efforts? Develop objectives that are SMART (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Based) and align with the current or future needs of the organization.
Having an educational event provides a reason to talk to customers and prospects. It gives you something to buzz about beyond your capabilities and need for business. It could give your customers reasons to invest in new ideas and new products and services to help them grow.

Planning the Event

Content: strategic, operational, sales, business processes? The content is what will be advertised and why people will attend. Theming your event and tying it to actionable outcomes changes an informative event to a results event. Types of businesses and the role of the attendee will be influenced by the content you choose.
Type of Event: Face to Face or Webinar. Each presents its own benefits and shortcomings. Consider your content and audience along with your budget and resources as part of your thought process.
Timing: Early in the quarter? At the beginning, middle or late in the week? Morning, afternoon or all day? What time works best for those you are looking to reach?
Location: If face to face do you host it at your company, at a local hotel, a customers business? To feed or not to feed? Is the location part of your message? If you choose to have a web conference what are the needs of the solution? Browser, OS, phone, voice over IP, Presentation technology, presentation style, ability to interact with attendees.

Use the event itself to help you retain existing customers and acquire new ones. Use a multi channel approach to solicit input to your educational event. Post it on your blog, have sales reps call on the phone, visit face to face, Tweet about it, email it, provide a web page where people can influence the outcome. Use the multi channel mix to help you connect with people!

Let existing customers know you are hosting an educational event and you would like to invite them to "participate" early on and be part of the planning committee. Ask them what they would like to learn more about and why? What challenges are they facing, their industry, their customers facing? What opportunities would they like to go after but can't seem to get started. Why? All of these questions can apply to new customers you'd like to acquire too.

It's not really about the event itself. The event is an indirect approach to help you grow your relationship with existing customers and knock on new doors and acquire new ones. Deliver on what they ask for and you're on a new road to showing your customer why they could be doing business with you and your organization.

Stay tuned for information on Phase 2: Pre-event Efforts, Phase 3: Event Delivery and Phase 4: Post-Event Efforts and Outcomes.

If you have additional planning ideas you'd like to share or have a question about anything we've posted, just let me know!

Attend Your Customer Events

Saturday, February 28, 2009 by Mark Rice

I just had the great opportunity this past week to attend one of my customer's events onsite in NY. My events team spent a great deal of time setting up online tools to support customer acquisition including the use of a Brainshark presentation for customers.

Through specially designed personalized marketing campaigns, we were able to draw a record crowd of customers in less than three weeks. The event also had a "pirate-theme" and we produced personalized pirate maps with the customer's names on them.

I attended the event and was able to participate in the festivities which included wine, grog, spirited networking and the opportunity to meet my customers and their customers. I also repurposed one of my old pirate tunes from college and added new lyrics to fit the event. I will share the song in a future post.

What I didn't expect was that I would run into other contacts from my customer's account that I have been trying to meet for over two years. The success of the customer event established my company's credibility for building lead generation conferences like this one and our dialogue was both positive and productive.

So next time you put a lot of effort into setting up an event or campaign for your customer. make sure you participate in the event as well. You will learn more about your customer's business, their customer's business and you may just meet that key contact/decision maker that will influence additional business in your customer's account. You also will be considered more of a partner than a vendor and your business relationship will continue to grow.

Blogging and Google Alert

Monday, December 8, 2008 by Mark Rice

It is amazing to witness how quickly blogging can drive activity.   One of my team recently blogged about the Discovery Light project that we supported at a recent trade show.   Using our webinar service, we posted a Brainshark presentation about how we marketed the show and our lead generation conference exhibit.

As we were using a combination of email and personalized landing pages to drive customer acquisition, our reference to the words "landing page" triggered a Google Alert for another company, ExactTarget.   Within one week of posting our blog, ExactTarget contacted us after visiting our post.   They had set up a Google alert for the words "landing page".   ExactTarget recently released their Landing Page feature and we have been putting it to good use for our demand generation marketing programs.   Make sure you opt-in to receive our next newsletter to see a great example of a personalized image marketing campaign.

Quite often we receive a Google alert after posting a blog as we also monitor keywords.    We have heard Chris Baggott, of Compendium Blogware, a number of times comment on how Google likes old content, recent content and frequent content.   We produce Webinar for ONE replays of their webinars and we hear these words in every presentaiton.

Chris is right on target.   You can drive effective lead generation through frequent and relevant blogging.    We are witnesses to the process and we are becoming evangelists for compended blogging.    The combination of blogging and Google Alerts is another step to helping you achieve that "virtual knock" on the door and another step away from no more cold calls.

Other people are watching and waiting for their Google Alerts to trigger a message about keywords they monitor.   The more you blog about a particular subject, the more chances you have of driving effective lead generation.

Social Media in Business - Part of 3 of 4: OFFERING A PREFERENCE OF AVAILABILITY

Friday, November 14, 2008 by Carolyn Hasenfratz

In my last post I talked about how social media gives your audience more ways to receive your content. They can choose many different ways to send you information as well. In addition to calling you or filling out a form on your web site, depending on what services you make available to them, they can for example leave a comment on your blog, or write on your wall in Facebook. Effective lead generation includes giving more choices to your audience so that they can have the kind of relationship with you that suits them.

Other than the natural instinct to make it as easy to contact you as possible, what other reasons might there be for making the effort to branch out into social media? At the Connections '08 conference, I took lots of notes. Here are some excerpts from those notes:

"Relationships with customers are one thing that competitors can't copy."
"79% of customers buy from companies that they are in a relationship with, rather than just on price."
"About 30% of email addresses go bad every year."
"22% of Internet users are using social media instead of email."
"Facebook - must be on it to understand what is going on."

Those random notations lead me to some ideas about why businesses might want to have a social media presence to help with customer acquisition. If about 30% of email addresses go bad every year, then you can't count on email alone to keep in touch with your customers. It makes sense to have other channels available.

Relationships with customers and personalized marketing campaigns are clearly important - how can social media help to build those relationships? Blogs can help a great deal by humanizing your company through informal communication that allows transparent feedback. Blogs are also a great way to possibly get on social networking and bookmarking sites without you having to do anything - for example on our Webinar Resources Blog, at the bottom of each post is a Share This chicklet. If you click it, you will see dozens of chicklets that a visitor to this blog can use to share our posts using the service of their choice. This is just one of many ways that the people who really like what you're producing can do some of your marketing for you by their own free will.

If 22% of Internet users are using social media instead of email, as effective as email is, it's clear you are going to have to reach those particular customers some other way. If your customers are looking for you, it's important to be where they are. If you are using a social networking service, are fellow users on that service manifesting their relationships with different causes, organizations, brand names or products? Can you get any ideas from how they are doing it?

Will YOUR Event be a Shot in the Arm?

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 by joanna hamilton

Our customer acquisition team landed in Indianpolis for the Exact Target Connections 08 Agency and User conference. Our management attended last year's event and found the sessions so valuable that additional investment was made to send three of us to the conference this year.

Little did we know what we were in for. I have to say we were all a bit weary and war-torn getting there, as the end of 3rd Quarter has resulted in quite the rush to crank out events for 4th quarter.

What a shot in the arm we received from this conference! They got it right on so many levels.

Exact Target used their own technology for effective lead generation for months prior to the event. They launced their own personalized marketing campaign to first get us there, and then, once registered, to get us to the break-out sessions they had carefully planned.

And it didn't stop there. Once we were there, we continued to get cues from all angles as to what not to miss and how we would be "rewarded" by making it to certain meetings. (Amazing what grown adults will do for a free beach towel or oversized foam finger).

Yes, we went to the conference tired, and weary. However, we left energized and ready to take on not just the day's challenges, but new horizons, as well.

Good job Exact Target!

Any suggestions? Yes!

I think ALL event/conference organizers could use some Vontoo in their back pocket. While everyone is rushing around with their cell phones in their pockets--send them a voice reminder that "The keynote speaker will begin in 10 minutes."

AND---Include in your follow-up an email-embedded brainshark presentation or email flash movie to remind your folks of the best points in that keynote, or the funniest jokes at the last-night-reward dinner.

Connections '08 - ExactTarget Users Conference

Friday, September 26, 2008 by Carolyn Hasenfratz

Mark, JoAnna and I just got back from the ExactTarget users conference, Connections '08, which was held in Indianapolis earlier this week. We brought back a lot of new information and inspiration about email marketing, lead generation, social media, customer acquisition, and more. I'll be blogging about some of the topics that inspired me soon. In the meantime, here is a link to some photos of the conference. Enjoy!

Web Video Conferencing

Tuesday, May 27, 2008 by joanna hamilton

Having just recently re-entered the job market at Webinar Resources after a 7-year maternity leave, I have been entertained by many advances in the world of telecommunications and conferencing. Nothing has amazed me more than the advancement of video technology. I remember PictureTel pioneer and President, Norman Gaut, telling us that video would become synonymous with the telephone call, and that the day would arrive in which the technology would resemble a tv broadcast.

Well, he was correct on one front. The technology is astounding. We use interactive web conferencing on our team all the time, and it does look just like a TV broadcast. It's a simple click of the mouse, and there's Mark and Carolyn in St. Louis, while I sip my coffee in Simsbury, CT. Our team meeting is underway, and though I've never met them, I'm part of the team.

Years ago, I always loved the "sell" for videoconferencing, because the technology was so much fun, and it truly helped the customer conduct business. Now, the technology of video is just a given, and the aid to business is the way that Webinar Resources is able to drive customer acquisition by getting hundreds to attend a seminar that is webcast right to their laptop. Technology aside, the sheer logistics of assembling a crowd that large, virtual or not, is amazing, but we do it all the time.

Also amazing is how that web conference crowd is a bit fluent through time. Those who can't attend, live, at the scheduled time, are invited to attend the "webinar for one"--in which they view a video replay from their laptop, at their leisure.

We've come a long way, and who knows, in another 7 years, video may be synonymous with the phone call, but for now, I'm really stoked by the volume of people we can touch with a web presentation because of the effective lead generation we perform weeks before the event. Seven years ago I thought it was a great time to be working with the technology. Now, the technology is proven, and it's a great time to share it so easily with so many.

Customer conversion begins with a Call to Action

Thursday, May 1, 2008 by Mark Rice

Every touch point with a customer or prospect should include a "call to action". A Call to Action or CTA, as some call it, invites interaction from your visitor and promotes lead generation. A CTA can be as simple as a form posted on your website, in a blog, and email or in an on demand presentation like a Webinar for ONE.

We always include a call to action in our Webinar newsletters. The simplest example is to invite your reader to subscribe to your newsletter by completing a simple online form. You are more likely to have a customer or prospect return to your cross-media communications if you invite them to take an action. Every customer acquisition program should promote interactivity.

A common error by many who produce web conferences is to post a webcast or webinar replay that does not contain some form of a call to action. Many web conferencing marketeers do not realize that there are tracking tools that can inform them when a viewer is watching a presentation. Views of your presentations can take place at any time of the day and in almost any location where online content is available - which is about anywhere in the world.

The goal of any effective customer acquisition process is to connect with your customer or prospect and move them to an action where conversion takes place. Conversion can be as simple as the completion of a subscription form or as in-depth as completing a live poll embedded in a Webinar for ONE.

As you create your personalized marketing campaigns, make sure you include several types of call to action best practices and techniques People like to give their input and like to be involved. Give your customers, prospects and partners an opportunity to interact with you online and you will produce effective lead generation results.

Feel free to post your comments and/or complete our live online poll

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Make your Webinars Alive again!

Friday, April 18, 2008 by Mark Rice

You spend a lot of time, money and resources in planning and producing your webinars. However, once the web conference is over, so is the interactivity between you and your prospects. Many web conferencing solutions provide archival capabilities for replaying the webinar content. However, the interactivity is lost and the viewer has little, if any opportunity to participate.

Our "Webinar for One" is a unique replay, lead generation solution that engages the viewer provides participation through live polling and surveys and directs the viewer to encapsulated rich media that could include software demonstrations, flash media and live web site tours. The viewer becomes a participant in a Webinar for One. Your webinar becomes "alive" again while you gather valuable viewing and polling data from prospects that can view and interact with your presentation at any hour of the day.

You can visit our Webinar for ONE landing page and participate in some of our partner "Webinar for ONE" presentations.