No Place Like Home

Rising costs and dwindling budgets are making it hard for business marketers to attend and run events. So instead of going on the road, many companies are getting on the Web. Direct talked with Don Best, marketing director for virtual events provider Unisfair, about the pros and cons of hosting online gatherings.

DIRECT: Are clients turning to virtual events mainly because of the cost factor?

BEST: Cost does play a big part. One of our clients completely eliminated doing road shows in favor of one virtual event. They said it was 50% to 80% less expensive. Another client is in the process of doing a 15-city road show. They took some of the poorer-performing cities out [of the schedule] and augmented [their coverage] with a virtual event. They'll still have the intimacy with the 100 or 200 people in those cities, but another 500 or 1,000 people who couldn't attend in those areas can now attend virtually. Another large client had a corporate mandate to reduce event spending by 20% this year and 50% next, so now they do sales and marketing training virtually.

DIRECT: What virtual events are most popular with particular clients?

BEST: For media clients, going into the virtual events business is a natural extension. That was our sweet spot up until two years ago. And now the enterprise companies that sponsored those events are starting to do events on their own. Media clients love to do trade shows and job fairs, while enterprise clients use us for demand generation and partner showcases, as well as internal training.

DIRECT: Are there certain virtual events that work better than others?

BEST: It really depends. The technology is there to make it work. It's not really the type of event but more the effort that goes into the event. In the physical world you can rent a convention center for three days. But if you don't dress up the hall and have the content and the speakers, you won't have a good event. Out of the 500 events we've run, sure — some have been duds. We've developed best practices and shared them with our clients.

DIRECT: What do you advise clients not to do?

BEST: Don't [fail to] put any effort into it. Because it's virtual doesn't mean it's easy. There are three components to any event, real-world or virtual. You've got to generate compelling content; you've got to promote it to generate an audience; and if you want to have sponsors, you need to recruit them. Those three parts take similar efforts, as in the physical world. But here you're eliminating the physical logistics.

DIRECT: How are clients tracking their virtual events' ROI?

BEST: For demand generation, it's the number of people who registered and then attended. When you come into an event, the organizer knows everything the attendees are doing. If they watch four conference sessions on CRM and if they go into the CRM booth and download five pieces of [related] collateral, if they speak with the rep in the CRM booth, the organizer can see they're really interested in CRM. At the end of the day, attendees can be ranked by interest.

DIRECT: How long do the virtual events typically run?

BEST: Generally you see a one-day event as a promotional focal point, with prize giveaways and live interaction. There's a virtual buzz around it. Then the event is available on demand for a while. Take Cisco, [the computer networking firm,] for example — it's building an ongoing environment called Cisco Partner Space. It wants its partners to collaborate and create synergy. This is open all the time. Cisco holds periodic live events, but the rest of the time the partners and the public can come and go and gather information as they need. It's not like Second Life where they want you to go live. It's a B-to-B professional atmosphere — Cisco knows its clients have real lives. In the physical world you might rent a convention center for a week. In this environment you can rent it for a year, and do what you want with it.