"Live Virtual Events, I've heard of them, what exactly are they?"
I heard that several times when I shared with people that my company powers virtual events for media and enterprise companies at two non-virtual events I attended on opposite coasts last month. Initially I was a bit surprised at the question since Unisfair clients have organized over 200 virtual events attended by close to half a million people and sponsored by about 2,000 companies.
While we have been at this business for a while, it was a bit of an eye opener for me that many people, while having heard of virtual events, don't have a good grasp of what they really are. Nor do they realize the benefits a virtual event delivers for the organizer, the sponsors and the attendees.
Consequently, I thought it would be worthwhile for me to shed some light on today's Virtual Events and some statistics about them.
Profiting from virtual events
Before defining exactly what a virtual event is, it is important to know who is organizing virtual events and why. Our clients include media companies and the marketing departments of enterprise companies.
Media companies have traditionally made significant revenue from organizing physical events, and are now generating additional revenue with virtual events. Our media clients are generally business-to-business oriented, although interest from enthusiast publications has picked up this year. For the media companies with a specific niche it is easy for them to leverage existing assets to put on a virtual event in the form of a tradeshow or job fair.
One group publisher started last year with two tradeshows and a job fair for three of their publications. One tradeshow focused on a specific vertical industry and the other event focused on a specific occupation. The job fair centered on a specific industry. The Group publisher showed enough profit from these three events that they have signed to do twenty this year for their various publications.
Enterprise Marketing departments (who are also the sponsors of the media-organized virtual tradeshow) use virtual events primarily for lead generation and demand creation, but also for sales training, users groups, etc. The biggest names in telecommunications, software, and technology have used virtual events for one of these reasons in the past six months.
Virtual events defined
Live Virtual Events today are multi-faceted, easy-to-use, highly interactive, have a realistic look and feel and deliver incredible marketing intelligence.
Multi-faceted means a virtual event has conference halls, exhibition halls, networking lounges and resource centers. The conference hall can have multiple tracks and multiple sessions delivered in a variety of rich media.
Exhibition halls feature vendor booths staffed by live representatives who can communicate in real-time with attendees. These attendees can see product demos, add collateral to their virtual briefcase, and even exchange business cards. Networking lounges provide a place where attendees can meet, communicate and share information with others that share similar interests. This concept of professional networking is available throughout the virtual event.
Ease of use has been critical to the increase of the number of virtual events. A web browser and a mouse is all every participant needs. The organizer customizes their event through a web-based admin console, exhibitors design, brand and fill their booth with collateral, demos and other marketing material in as little as an hour. And attendees have instant access to the virtual event by simply logging onto the environment, nothing to download and no commands to learn.
Live interaction takes place through IM, chat and VoIP technologies. Presenters do live Q&A, exhibitors have live communication with attendees and the attendees use professional networking capabilities to meet with other attendees.
While not critical to the execution of a virtual event, 3-D look and feel of all the facilities give everyone the feeling they are actually at a convention center, from the grand entranceway to the conference hall and the exhibitor booths. This realistic look and feel also delivers a bit of "WOW" factor for everyone.
When it is all said and done, most all events (virtual or physical) are organized to produce leads and business for either the organizer or the sponsors. Today the marketing data that comes from a virtual event is the richest available. Everything the attendee does can be tracked, and since there is so much to do, see and say at a virtual event, the depth of the marketing data is much greater than any other marketing vehicle I can think of.
Next: The supporting data
