Virtual Trade Shows

It is just a matter of time before virtual fairs become as popular as social networks. Social networks are limited to people who know each other through a certain degree of separation. Virtual Trade Shows, on the other hand, make chance encounters possible. Therein lies their power and potential.

Virtual Trade Shows might connect businesses
1. Virtual Trade Shows might connect businesses, but they fail to connect emotionally with business professionals. It is more interesting to hear of a real-life romance that grew out of an online dating site than to hear of a successful business deal through a lead found at a Virtual Trade Shows. Ever heard of two businesses falling in love with one another at an online matchmaker, and wanting to do business together? Even if we hear of them, there are perhaps very few scenarios in which they could become human-interest stories.

transparent Virtual trade

3. Virtual Trade Shows are too transparent. Every click of the mouse can be tracked in a virtual trade show. Trade show organizers are more easily held accountable for the return on tradeshow that they deliver to exhibitors. The return on investment in a Virtual Tade Shows is easy to identify and analyze in absolute terms. In a real-world trade show, there are several subjective aspects that factor into a participants' perception of whether they consider a trade show a success or not.


virtual trade shows to marketers and exhibitors

4. Virtual trade show is an underdog with no cheerleaders. Without exception, whenever I have mentioned Virtual Trade Shows to marketers and exhibitors they have always expressed tremendous enthusiasm for its value. However, when perceived as a replacement to in-person trade shows it has evoked strong mixed reactions. Often a trade show gig is an escape from the cubicle. It is the time when one can combine a trip to exotic locales along with the family and have a mini-vacation. Virtual Trade Shows are not merely fighting misconceptions about what they can do for a business, but they actually compete with a marketing executive's leisure time. Virtual Trade Shows shoot themselves in the foot when they try to position themselves as helping a business executive spend time with her or his family. Asking someone to give up in-person trade shows and do only Virtual Trade Shows is like asking a connoisseur of chocolates to give up chocolate. Highly unlikely.

online events tradeshow

6. The trade show metaphor is being carried too far. When we began in the late 90's it made sense to borrow the trade show metaphor for these online events. Making a virtual booth look and feel like a real-world trade show booth helped users scale the learning curve rather well. However, the demographics of the workforce has changed significantly in the past decade. The new entrants to the workforce view the web as an extension of their universe. There is no need for a real-world metaphor to explain what one is trying to do with a virtual trade show. Why then should a virtual booth look like a real-world trade show booth. Why should one have Virtual Trade Shows that have a panoramic 2-dimensional view of an exhibition hall with meaningless human-like figures gliding by aimlessly? Why are Virtual Trade Shows not defining themselves to really provide an extra dimension to the entire marketing experience of a business. Why provide a metaphor when the virtual trade show can never replace the in-person trade show and is not designed to replace it?

what an ideal virtual trade show

7. Absence of standards on what an ideal virtual trade show should do is a major obstacle. We get inquiries for different kinds of online environments. It is not possible to describe them accurately with the term Virtual Trade Shows. They serve various purposes. They always have a business objective. They aim to solve one or more problems. They often have nothing to do with in-person trade shows. However, the absence of standards for Virtual Trade Shows means that it is open to anybody's interpretation. When one looks at publicly accessible Virtual Trade Shows, whether they be of HGTV or of the EPA, one never knows what to expect. The concept of same-time, different-place interaction as my co-founder aptly puts it, is missing most of the time. Making users go through meaningless convoluted pages of navigation only go to reveal that the virtual trade show suffered from lack of a clear direction, purpose or sense of ownership.

Online Exhibitions

One of the most important marketing objectives of any business is the need to identify and generate qualified leads that will eventually be converted into sales. Sales after all are the lifeblood of any successful business.

At the same time it is just as important that you achieve high visibility for your company in the marketplace to support your lead generation campaign, this is so your customers can distinguish your company's products and services amongst the many competitors.

Conventional Online Trade Shows and exhibitions up until now represented the most attractive means to reach a targeted group of people and serve a specific industry or audience. Recent research shows that conventional trade shows are in the Top 5 of 'must do' activities within the B2B marketing mix for marketers and their companies.

However, the expense of the conventional trade show accounts for a huge percentage of a company's marketing budget and from a cost per contact basis, these trade shows represent the most expensive form of marketing for lead generation and brand awareness.

So why is it that trade shows are considered so important for so many companies yet most businesses cannot give a value that they have got in return from a conventional trade show in terms of pure sales?

Well research has also shown that more often than not businesses and marketers avoid thinking strategically about the trade show and thus their presence results in a sub-optimised event execution.

Think about it, event promotion, in particular conventional trade shows require a huge investment of marketing spend and time to generate leads, there is the cost to attend, design and manufacture a booth, print materials, train and pay staff to sell not to mention an advertising campaign to drive visitors to your stand, all this for just 3 days of the 365 available.

If you or your company are spending anywhere from 15% to 25% of the marketing budget on conventional trade shows then you need to demonstrate the Return on Investment. Or maybe you or your company would like to exhibit but your budget cannot stretch to make a large presence amongst your competitors?

Online Exhibitions and trade shows can offer marketers and businesses an affordable solution to get the most value out of an exhibition. Your businesses presence at an online event is part of an end-to-end campaign, online events can bring you qualified leads that you sales team can track and finally lead to closure, delivering results.

So forget about paying for expensive travel, stands, glossy literature. Instead focus on the key issue - the effectiveness of your products and services.

An Online Exhibitions can be seen as the most cost-effective lead generation programme that will sit perfectly with your company's overall marketing mix. Your business will be positioned within oneof our exhibition halls that will be part of a highly targeted PPC click ad campaign to drive pre-qualified leads to your stand.

Lead capture is automatically done for you and stored in a database that you can download direct into your CRM to boost your sales performance. Reporting tools such as online statistics of the number of visitors to your stand and brochure downloads are also inclusive so you can monitor and demonstrate campaign success.

Online Exhibitions also offer businesses a cost effective and targeted way of creating brand awareness in your industry.

Users access Online Exhibitions to discover new products, services, and solutions.

Virtual Exhibitions

Almost all of us would have visited a traditional gallery or museum containing art exhibits at one time or another. But have you ever visited a modern art gallery? Now you might be wondering what that is! Different people might have different interpretations for it, but I wish to use that term to refer to a virtual museum or gallery. A traditional museum is where real, physical exhibits are displayed in physical space. On the other hand, a modern gallery is one in which Virtual Exhibitions are displayed in a virtual world that exists in cyberspace. You cannot touch and feel the exhibits, but you can still get a pretty good feel of how they would look in the real world.

The real convenience of a modern art gallery is the ease with which you can set it up. If you are an artist and would like to set up a display to showcase your art, you can just photograph your work and create a virtual gallery within a couple of minutes. What would probably cost you thousands of dollars to set up using traditional methods would hardly cost you a few dollars, using the virtual approach. You do not have to pay for expensive floor space, maintenance costs, electricity and other expenses normally associated with maintaining a real art museum.

You might however want to keep a few things in mind while conceptualizing and designing your modern art gallery. Since the viewers cannot touch and feel the exhibits, you need to enhance the virtual experience using various methods.

For instance, you can display each exhibit in different resolutions so that they can view it in different sizes and get a feel of how the art work would look up close as well as when viewed from a distance. A good write up describing the piece of work would also go a long way in helping them know more about the exhibit. Probably the most attractive feature of a modern art museum is the fact that visitors can observe your work from the comfort of their living room and still have the satisfaction of viewing good art.

Online Seminars

Getting up in facade of a cluster of projection with the occasion to show your information and know-how is one of the finest lead alteration occasions, for many industries, particularly service oriented industries. Workshops and live seminar has been an effectual tool. The internet formulates these tools even more commanding and more lucrative as it permit you to perform online versions of seminars. An online seminar is a collection of assets from a live event, and can include Power point presentations, video demonstrations, online and downloadable white papers, tools, and other resources. Online seminars are also known as webinars.
Online seminars are the key component of the marketing tool kit of every successful business organization. Online seminars generate and qualify leads more rapidly and at lower purchase expenses. Online seminars are cost- effectual and powerful medium for reaching targeted audiences across the world with powerful community building tools. Online seminars capture actionable marketing intelligence in real-time to support immediate ROI (Return on Investment) requirements. So every organization should consider Online Seminars as their marketing tool. For making your Online Seminars effective, you should consider following points.
• Before you go too far down the seminar path consider getting sponsors to join you. This doesn’t have to be some big name corporate deal, give strategic partners the opportunity to join you in promoting your educational sessions for the right to call themselves a sponsor.
• Round-up gifts from associated businesses that would like to experience their gifts attain in your promotion. Free stuff drives enrollment.
• If you construct Online Seminars that are essentially roundabout sales presentations, you won’t garner the reimbursement and advantages of this knowledge cooperate and people won’t come back or tell friends regarding your immense Online Seminars.
• Believe in generating a sequence of events and promoting them jointly. This can lend a hand to build momentum and permit you to build a loyal subsequent.
• Free Online Seminars may not be the finest choice if you are using this approach to exhibit how professional your business is. Go for a tool that advocates some interaction tools such as polling, questions, chat, even video along with Online Seminars be sure of that you are capable of handling the persons you plan to join.
• It is for eternity a first-class scheme to acquire queries and problems from the audiences or attendees, it is a fine approach to end Online Seminars to get feedback from the audience.