The importance of events in pre-commerce

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When you put yourself in the customers shoes and begin your dialog from there, an immediate connection develops that stems beyond basic commerce and encourages loyalty.

   - Steve Maraboli

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I had the pleasure of attending the Word of Mouth Crash Course yesterday in Austin, Texas, and enjoyed every single session I went to… Truly rare at a conference! While some of the conference logistics could be improved, the content was well curated to provide really sharp speakers with really interesting case studies and points of view. 

The content primarily centered on word of mouth marketing and the social media tools that amplify it, creating customer advocates, and using behavioral analytics to provide better customer experiences.

One of the great sessions I attended was a fireside chat with Bob Pearson, a former colleague at Dell, and author of Pre-Commerce: How Companies and Customers are Transforming Business Together. Did you know that only 1% of a consumer’s time is actually spent purchasing something online? 99% is spent researching, exploring, talking, evaluating, and engaging in other pre-purchase activities. And today, 3 out of 4 people look to their peers before making any purchase decision.

Events are huge part of pre-commerce. By bringing together like-minded customers and potential customers, you give them the opportunity to research, explore, touch and feel your brand, products, and solutions, and provide an outlet for them to talk to their peers about their options.

It’s important that your brand advocates are at your events to provide the customer voice that your prospects are seeking. While you probably already provide comp passes to your potential customers, be sure to keep some comps for your great retention accounts, too. The more you can have customer brand ambassadors speaking at your events and networking with your potential customers, the more word of mouth can influence purchase decisions on that coveted peer-to-peer level. 

 

Why Social helps remote attendees

"Events are the original Social Media."
  - Liz Lathan

It's my mantra. :-) And on days like yesterday and today, I'm really living by it! South by Southwest 2012 (know as SXSW) is taking place in Austin, Texas, and my husband is attending live and in person. I, however, am home with our 4-year-old and our dogs who just had surgery. I'll get to join in the fun tomorrow, but in the meantime, I'm keeping up with the scene via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and the various live blogs going on.

The social pipe from SXSW is insane. Every refresh of my social tool Hootsuite brings up like 400 new posts. Every picture I see of sessions has 80% of the attendees looking down at their digital device (presumably taking notes or posting about the speakers' thoughts).

Tips that I'm picking up from being a remote attendee this weekend are:

Ensure that your hashtags are available to remote folks. I can find the hashtags of the sessions I like on the sxsw.com website, so I can filter the feeds for the sessions I want to follow. Yesterday, I spent an hour following #sxswi #whedon to keep up with the Joss Whedon session I so desperately wanted to be at.

Enlist in live blogging or live tweeting help. Thanks to the good folks at Snarkmarket, I was able to watch live blogging of the aforementioned Joss Whedon session of the conference. The blogger was a guy from NPR who did a great job of paraphrasing the fireside chat, the audience questions, and Joss's responses. Pairing that with the Twitter feed made me feel like I was there! I was privy to the floor seating outside of the session because it was so packed. And I even was privy to the high five that Joss gave an attendee on his SuperBetter quest!

Have a Pinterest board. Here's one I'm not seeing yet from SXSW. I search for SXSW and I just get a few results. I heard that some brands were doing Pinterest boards, but I haven't found them yet. From the Tweet stream, I know Pinterest is the hot topic at SXSW, so now we have to go figure out how to make it work, how to make it work for events...and how to monetize it!

Check the stats. The social pipe from SXSW is insane. I can't keep up. But the SXSW organizers must be loving it! Make sure your company has a Social Media Listening Center - doesn't have to be as sophisticated as Dell's (http://twitpic.com/8t7804), but someone should monitor the feed, the statistics, and the tone of the conversations happening at and around your event.

More posts to come after I actually get my chance to BE at SXSW tomorrow!

Rethinking QR codes

Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted. 

  - George Kneller

In response to my recent post about my frustration with the uselessness of QR codes, a dear friend introduced me to a friend of hers who is an expert on the subject. So today I had a great chat with Andy Meadows at a company called 44Doors.

Andy's task today was to convince me that QR codes are not, in fact, useless. He began with real use-cases (albeit in a consumer setting) of nightclubs who seek to better serve their customers. In a loud, crowded place, it can be hard to get your waitstaff to come to your table, but with a QR code, and a socially enabled waitstaff, you can let them know that you need another bottle of bubbly at table 10. 

Clever. Didn't really fit into my event needs, beyond the really cool exciting thing we're planning at Dell World this October (which I will tell you all about afterwards!). 

My biggest complaints about QR codes are as follows:

1. Less than half of attendees have a QR reader on their phone. 
2. The half that don't have them, don't know how to get them. 
3. The half that do have them, spend a laughable amount of time trying to get them to work at varying distances from the source QR code image. 
4. When you do get them to work, they tend to either take you to a contact form (which most of us are highly unlikely to complete on our phones), or they take you to a generic website, that we're certainly not going to sit around and read right then and there in the middle of an expo floor. Sometimes they open a pdf... and on my Android phone, opening a .pdf is such a hassle that I give up.
5. From an event manager perspective, I get no metrics beyond the number of hits, potentially the type of device that hit the URL, and the IP address it came from. 

So Andy had some big objections to overcome.  Here's what he said (...basically - I'm totally paraphrasing our hour-long conversation):

First of all, you're thinking about QR codes all wrong. You don't just create a code and link it to a generic, non-mobility-enabled URL. You work with a company (maybe a company like 44Doors!) to create all of the QR codes for you. 

1. You can have a QR reader embedded into your mobile event app, so when attendees download the app for their agenda, they get the QR reader, too. 
2. Now they have one. 
3. By staffing your expo area with trained company folks who know the proper technique, scanning a QR code can be a conversation engagement opportunity between staff and attendees. 
4. The QR reader from the app can be attached to their profile from the app and their registration so they never have to go to a long contact form that they would skip. At most, they would enter their email address to connect it - not a huge obstacle for smartphone users. 
5. By using a QR code programmed into the app, you capture all of the information about every QR code scanned, what kind of device was used, timestamp, and all contact information for the person using it. You can even do timed URLs on the QR codes so that if it is scanned at noon, they get a special lunch coupon, but scanned at 5pm gets them a drink ticket. 

Touche, Andy. You have made me reconsider QR codes. Perhaps there is potential for them yet. 

Answer First

In choosing a hypothesis there is no virtue in being timid. I clearly would have been burned at the stake in another age.

  - Thomas Gold

The other day, I had the pleasure of participating in an "Answer First" training course offered by a Bain consultant and put on by our Vice President. 

After Googling the premise, I asked my husband if he'd heard of it, and his response was, "Yeah, it's some methodology around putting the answer as the first slide in your presentation because people at our company are too busy to listen to a whole story."

Actually, that's the third pillar of the concept. The first pillar is what they call "Answer First" thinking. The premise (not unlike the article I published 6 years ago!) is that when faced with a problem, you should develop a hypothesis shortly after doing a quick evaluation of the situation. 

By creating a hypothesis,  you draw a line in the sand and create a rally point for your stakeholders and managers to either agree with or disagree with, allowing you to proceed with planning or start over. 

If everyone agrees with the hypothesis, you can create an assertion-based workplan to galvanize all of the disparate areas of the organization and help them understand the interconnections between the teams. Then the teams can create their task-oriented workplans around them. 

For example: Say your executive wants you to create the "best booth we've ever had at TradeShowWorld 2011." You might hypothesize that this means, "We will create a booth that garners us more than 30% share of voice and more sales-ready leads than we've ever achieved at this event in the past." If your executive agrees with this interpretation, you have a clear direction to begin the process. If your executive tells you that's not at all what s/he meant, you can then refine the hypothesis until it gives you the answer s/he actually wanted. 

From that hypothesis, you build out the supporting facts or ideas that need to be created in order to achieve the stated result. So you need something really buzzworthy and practically viral to gain the share of voice you need to reach. You also need ground-breaking content that has attendees clamoring to give you their email address to learn more. 

Now you have two paths to follow - buzzworthy "thing," killer content or offering. You can now create the workplans around these activities and not be trapped into the timelines of standard events ... driven by print deadlines. 


Finally, there is the Answer First Communication portion of the concept. This is close to what my husband described: Know your audience. Know how they like to receive information. If you are in front of them to present a solution, then present it first and show your supporting materials behind it. If you are you in the room to teach or inform, then you might need to put the answer at the end after you have completely told the story. 


It's yet another Consulting Company Brilliant Nugget: Obvious advice, but restated in a way that makes you realize not enough people work this way. I like it. I will use it. I kinda think I already did, but now I will be sure to!


For an overview of Bain and their Answer First philosophy, open this .pdf.

What's the latest in meeting formats for 2011?

Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity - not a threat.
 - Steve Jobs

I read this article a while back from Elite Meetings on "What's Next for Meeting Formats" and have a few thoughts of my own for 2011.

While the Unconference format has been around for many years, I see it gaining strength this year. Birds of a feather learning from each other with a keynote or panel to kick off and close the day is a great way to extend the concept of user-generated content.

Hybrid meetings that extend the face-to-face to the audiences who can't be there will get more sophisticated. Take Event Camp Twin Cities as a great example. Not only was the onsite conference heralded as a great success, many online participants were able to have productive inclusion and conversations due a dedicated event manager and facilitator for the online participants.

Continuity between general sessions, breakout sessions, expo experiences, and evening events will really get beefed up in 2011. Event organizers are beginning to truly understand how integrated marketing concepts can make the attendee experience more immersive and reinforce key messages.

Social media will part of the experience, not just a promotional tool.  VMWorld 2010 was a great example of how attendees used social media to share their learnings and experiences with their friends and colleagues, making those of us who weren't there in person enjoy the experience as if we were there, too.

Low quality, almost user-generated, video clips of keynotes and breakouts will be able to extend the event experience to those who could not attend. Word of Mouth Supergenius and BlogWell do this phenomenally well and have allowed me to enjoy great learnings despite my inability to be there in person. In addition to video, these conferences - much like TED - share rich content in short bursts; usually in under 20 minutes. Gone are the days of the 1.5-hour keynote. Welcome the moments of short brilliance, followed by opportunities to discuss the concepts with your peers.

That's what I see on the horizon for this year. What do you think events and meetings will evolve into in 2011?

The Truth About Event Marketing

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.


- Galileo

“Because I love people.” “Because I love to travel.” “I’ve always been really good at planning parties.” These are common responses I hear when I ask people why they are interested in events. While these are fabulous attributes to have in an event planner, the responses have prompted me to spend a little time on The Truth About Event Marketing. In a truly well-planned and integrated marketing program, events can play a pivotal role in the sales funnel.

An industry tradeshow like VMWorld or Oracle Open World can drive basic brand awareness, can generate targeted leads, and/or can be used to capture dedicated time with a particular target account. Not only can they provide a hands-on demonstration of technology, they can also drive thought leadership through keynote session opportunities. The objectives for participation should be determined based on the timing of the event and the message that needs to hit the marketing at that time.

A customer advisory council can not only allow customers to feel engaged in the product or marketing strategies of one of their key strategic business partners, but it can provide valuable insight into real concerns and opportunities in our customers’ environments. It can foster trust and even turn around a strained customer relationship.

A user group or user conference can unite IT operators who manage datacenters with Dell and partner solutions. It can create an ongoing community of advisors, content generators, and advocates for Dell in the IT and business world.

Executive hospitality events (golf, wine tastings, sporting events) provide dedicated time with targeted accounts, their account teams and partners, but also allow for the free-flow of information among colleagues and general relationship building for future business meetings. Trite but true, sometimes more work gets done on the golf course than in a week’s worth of meetings.

As business units create their marketing plans and campaign timelines, industry events with set dates can be used as launch pads for products or solution sets or marketing message initiatives.

As assets become ready for market and you move to a demand generation phase, webinars, roadshows and lunch and learns become part of the marketing mix.

When we need to shift perception and convey thought leadership, we strategically target keynote speaking opportunities and executive-level forum and networking events.

I want to stress that event strategies should not be stand-alone creations. They should be part of the annual planning process when mapping out a truly integrated marketing plan.

I also want to stress that everyone loves events. Everyone thinks they can plan events (and maybe they can!). But not everyone can create a truly great brand immersion experience. That's the key.

Social Media: just another kind of experiential marketing

Wisdom begins in wonder.
- Socrates

Nice post (though 6 months old) on the Jack Morton blog about social media as experiential marketing. Sad that I just found it. :-)

Events and Social Media

Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.
- Gen. George Patton

I just read an article in Corporate Event magazine about an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that was played at the CEMA conference in 2006 (unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an online version of this article). Funny thing is that I was at that conference and I participated in the ARG, but I only made it a little way down the path. The parts that I made it through were way cool, though, and showcase how my buddy jmacofearth keeps referring to events as "the ultimate social media."

Basically, CEMA used nTag electronic name tags and planted a mole among the attendees who, when "zapped" as a connection, tagged the attendee as having moved to the next level of the game. The next morning, those tagged attendees received a token under their hotel room door for a free coffee in the hotel coffee shop. When redeemed, those attendees were given coffee wraps around the cups that congratulated them and gave them a URL to move to the next level. Attendees could use the AOL cybercafe to go to the URL and answer a few short questions like their favorite vacation spot (beach, snow), favorite flavor (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry), and a couple of others. Certain partipants were chosen to go even further and were given new clues, and eventually one was deemed the winner and given a set of luxury luggage on the last day of the conference.

It was a social media and live interaction scavenger hunt that got the whole conference buzzing. I love this idea and I hope more conferences come up with really cool new ways for sponsors to participate in fresh marketing opportunities like this!

Remember: Events ARE Marketing

“When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.”
- Chinese Proverb

Seth Godin has a great post today about event/meeting planning. I think he's accurate on everything except the 30 x 80 meeting room setup - and I get his point, but I disagree with it.

Appreciate Out Loud

“Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.”
- G.B. Stern

Thank you notes have always been touted as the most sincere way to personally thank someone for something they did for you. Today, this is still true, but why not go above and beyond? Follow Andy's lead. I always include about $50-100 in my event budget to use for appreciation gifts. Maybe its an Edible Arrangement to the housing bureau manager who miraculously found me 5 extra rooms the day before the deadline. Maybe its a bottle of chocolate dipped wine to the hotel event manager who found me two meeting rooms even though the conference is less than a week away and the hotel truly had no space left (I still don't know how she did that)! Even a couple of restaurant.com gift certificates to the event planners on my team who have bent over backwards to deal with ambiguity and get an amazing event planned. In the grand scheme of a $120k+ event, $100 to thank some folks is so very worth it.

Chit-Chatters Unite!

Word-of-mouth is not created, it is co-created. People will only spread your virus if there’s something in it for them.
-Hugh MacLeod

The hottest (and most cost-effective?) trend in marketing is Word of Mouth marketing. Always on the hunt for inexpensive demand generation tactics, Word of Mouth programs are ideal for events. According to Andy Sernovitz's blog, the National Restaurant Association knows how to use WoM quite well to promote their show, and we should all take notes!