While it might pain my CEO to hear this, I’ll be the first to admit that physical events will never go away. The once-a-year, face-to-face interaction and a handshake goes a long way in business and marketing. But what about the other 364 days a year?
Unisfair does a mix of physical events and virtual events. While it is good to see old friends and wine and dine a lucrative prospect at a physical event, the truth is we generate more demand at a better cost per lead with the virtual events we sponsor than any of the physical events we attend.
We have several case studies in the Unisfair Virtual Events Showcase that share the details on increased reach, lower cost per lead etc., but what I noticed from two recent events we just attended—one virtual and one physical—is the drain the physical event put on my marketing and sales teams.
A Comparison
AdTech San Francisco April 08 – This was an outstanding event. AdTech did a great job and I haven’t seen a show floor packed like that since the dotcom days. We generated about 20 “in the pocket leads” (warm to hot) and another 150 fish bowl leads (got a card but didn’t talk to anyone). I can see a definite deal or two coming from this event and possibly another two.
As marketers we all know the costs of physical events, but it was the downtime of my sales and marketing team that really caught my attention. All the preshow logistics my team had to deal with, printing collateral, ordering give-aways, shipping, 10 hours of employee time setting up the booth (carpet and crates weren’t there on time), about 50 hours of staff working the booth, 6 hours tearing down the booth and another 36 hours of staff travel time (and this was a local show, imagine if we had to fly to the opposite coast!).
It took a lot of resources to pull off this show, which means we weren’t doing other marketing or sales efforts. But it was a great physical event, and you will see us there again.
Marketing Profs B2B Virtual Event March 08 – Marketing Profs pulled off another outstanding virtual event. My marketing manager spent a total of about 2 hours customizing our virtual booth with designs and extensive collateral.
The day of the virtual event we staffed the virtual booth live with one marketing person who was simultaneously working a physical show in New York, sales people from Boston, New York, San Diego and San Francisco—who were able to also handle their daily sales calls—and another marketing person who was home in bed with the flu. A total of about 24 hours booth time. Absolutely no travel involved.
We had over 800 people come into the booth (the equivalent of the fish bowl leads at the physical event), we had almost 150 direct interaction with booth visitors (the “in the pocket leads”) and a dozen of these are already in our pipeline.
The cost of sponsorship was comparable to the physical event, but eliminating all of the physical logistics (shipping, printing, travel, etc.) makes the virtual event exactly 50% cheaper.
But for me it is the literally hundreds of staff hours that we saved-putting these resources towards other marketing initiatives and sales people closing deals—that was the most valuable savings.
See you at AdTech and at Marketing Profs next year!
