Planning a virtual event determines its success. Knowing what to do and when to do it can greatly affect the success of your event. I have identified five areas that you should think about while planning your next virtual event. If you have others please share them.
A few weeks ago our marketing team put on a virtual event. We had some great successes in this project and there were some things which I would do much differently next time around. I want to share my thoughts and hear from you on your experiences with this medium as well.
1. Planning. These events take tons of planning and doing it yourself will require lots of effort so partner with others if you can; events teams, PR, and marcom all are good partners to look for when putting on a virtual event. Also, if you are less than 90 days away from your event and haven't started planning you may be behind. Planning and executing your promotional activities will take time. Promotional items like banners, newsletter links and industry calendars can take a while for placement. Not to mention the fact that you will need to have an idea of who will be presenting and what they will talk about to do your promotions. A six month head start is the best case scenario. You can definitely do it in a shorter timeframe but you will probably need to set other projects aside.
2. Content. Timely and relavent content is another key factor. If you can get a well known speaker in a field, do it. Next to promotion, key speakers and topics are some of the most important items to get for an event. Review your event goals with the speakers so they understand what you are trying to accomplish with the event. They can help you with your event goal if they know what it is. Plan ahead with content templates and style guidelines so you can share them with the speakers prior to them creating their presentation. Meet with the speakers prior to the event to make sure you can answer their questions and make them feel more comfortable about what will happen on the day of the event.
3. After the event. Plan for what you want to attendees to do after the event; is it visit a landing page or have attendees contacted by sales teams, etc... Don't wait till after the event to figure this out. Warm leads aren't warm for long. Custom landing pages on your website can be a great tool for keeping the interaction going with event attendees. You can provide additional information, host videos by the speakers, present flash demos, etc... all are good ways to engage attendees after your event. The point here is don't let all your hard work go to waste by not thinking about what you want attendees to do after the event.
4. Send invitations out to people who will care. Inviting large numbers of potential attendees is important but make sure the attendees you invite are your target audience. If you have buy or rent a list it can be expensive so make sure you have a very specific audience identified for your event. Click through rates can be less than 2-3% for invitations so plan accordingly. To some degree the success of your event will be driven by identifying your audience or target market prior to the event and then using that information to drive who you invite, where you promote and how you promote your event.
5. Do a postmortem on your event. Make sure you plan to review all aspects of your event after it has taken place. This helps ensure that you set up ways to measure each step along the way. For example did all the lists you used perform equally towards your goal? Did attendees stay to the end of each session or did some speakers turn the audience off completely? How many attendees visited your landing page? Did the web page serve its purpose? These are just a sample of the items you might track. Having the measurement tools in place prior to the event is critical as some metrics cannot be gather after the fact.
Planning is critical for any virtual event. Knowing what and when do certain things can help you plan a successful event. What types of things do you use to plan your virtual events?
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
It is Time for Marketing to Fully Embrace Analytics
More and more marketing efforts are applying metrics to gauge their success or failure. This trend is not stopping and metrics will become a critical requirement in ensuring marketing has a seat at the key decision maker's table.
Forrester recently published a paper on Lead to Revenue Management for Tech Marketing that takes a look into making revenue the focal point of marketing activities. In my opinion, this has been too long in coming. Many marketing efforts are content to focus on merely getting leads; regardless of the quality. This type of measurement usually leads to a lead quantity game. Sales organization typically despise these types of activities as they have little time to track down poor quality leads. The Forrester paper mentions that marketing should be more responsible for nurturing leads as well. This would definitely keep marketing organizations focused on attaining quality leads. By having marketing teams focus on revenue as opposed to merely lead gathering their strategies and approaches to marketing efforts should become more outcome driven. However, tying marketing to close to sales is not without its own issues.
These issues include marketing focusing on more short term goals and not thinking about the lifetime value of a customer. All too often sale teams are focused on their quarterly numbers and it is marketing who represents the long term view of the market and customer. It is critical that marketing not lose that view. In addition, measuring revenue against marketing activities can be difficult. This is an issue that the Forrester report doesn't cover that much. Tying revenue to marketing activities is difficult in that marketing efforts often move potential customers through different stages of the sales cycle and this process takes time.
Depending on how long the sales cycle is can determine how marketing efforts to revenue should be measured. But for organizations that don't have the sales process from lead to conversion completely mapped out measuring marketing to revenue is almost impossible. Marketo has written a number white papers which address this issue of marketing to revenue and time. I recommend this one as a good read before starting a measurement program.
Ultimately, measuring the impact to sales of marketing efforts can help with forecasts. Predictive models can help sales, manufacturing and even CMOs work together to help drive the business. The time for marketing efforts to be better to tied to sales is now. The fun really begins in choosing a model that takes into account both the time of sale funnel and the methods of nurturing customers through the process. It may be a long journey to get to a predictive marketing model but it is a journey we should start now.
What are your thoughts?
Forrester recently published a paper on Lead to Revenue Management for Tech Marketing that takes a look into making revenue the focal point of marketing activities. In my opinion, this has been too long in coming. Many marketing efforts are content to focus on merely getting leads; regardless of the quality. This type of measurement usually leads to a lead quantity game. Sales organization typically despise these types of activities as they have little time to track down poor quality leads. The Forrester paper mentions that marketing should be more responsible for nurturing leads as well. This would definitely keep marketing organizations focused on attaining quality leads. By having marketing teams focus on revenue as opposed to merely lead gathering their strategies and approaches to marketing efforts should become more outcome driven. However, tying marketing to close to sales is not without its own issues.
These issues include marketing focusing on more short term goals and not thinking about the lifetime value of a customer. All too often sale teams are focused on their quarterly numbers and it is marketing who represents the long term view of the market and customer. It is critical that marketing not lose that view. In addition, measuring revenue against marketing activities can be difficult. This is an issue that the Forrester report doesn't cover that much. Tying revenue to marketing activities is difficult in that marketing efforts often move potential customers through different stages of the sales cycle and this process takes time.
Ultimately, measuring the impact to sales of marketing efforts can help with forecasts. Predictive models can help sales, manufacturing and even CMOs work together to help drive the business. The time for marketing efforts to be better to tied to sales is now. The fun really begins in choosing a model that takes into account both the time of sale funnel and the methods of nurturing customers through the process. It may be a long journey to get to a predictive marketing model but it is a journey we should start now.
What are your thoughts?
Friday, December 31, 2010
Reputation Management for Small Business
I was catching up on Website magazines this week and happened across an issue that had a story on Reputation Management. I hadn’t read too much on this subject before but had often wondered if companies were working on solutions for small businesses for Reputation Management. It looks like there are a few solutions out there but they are mostly focused on Enterprise size companies. Best Buy has a well known program for customers with questions or issues on social media. With the number of small businesses starting Yelp and Facebook pages Reputation Management is something that they should definitely look into. The only thing worse than not being visible on these types of sites is to have a presence but never monitor it. Customers with both good things to say and not so good things to say will just feel like they are ignored.
I recently used Yelp to help me find an electrician for a small job. I poured over the reviews and eventually decided on one that seemed to have great reviews. Unfortunately my experience wasn’t that great and I promptly wrote a review summarizing my poor experience. However, the company never responded; either directly to me or commenting on Yelp. This was a missed opportunity by the company to show that they both monitored the entries and cared about maintaining a consistently good customer experience. This is a good example of “being out there” but not having a complete social media strategy that included monitoring and responding to customers.
For small businesses sites like Yelp are critical to their success. Few of the folks I know use only the Yellow Pages these days; most are turning sites like Yelp and Facebook to maintain contact with their customers and as a way to passively prospect for other customers. Few small businesses monitor these sites to see how things are going and actively respond to entries. The article in Website Magazine offers a number of tasks that small businesses can perform on their own to conduct their own Reputation Management efforts. All of them seem reasonable and small businesses should be able to execute them without taking up much time. Items like monitoring your competitors’ entries on these sites and tracking prolific contributors. These contributors could be potential leads in the future. If you have considered starting a Facebook page or talking up your Yelp page don’t forget to do some planning for your Reputation Management.
Monday, December 20, 2010
No Predictions for 2011 Just Suggestions
It is that time of year when folks in the press and analyst community either talk about what was hot in 2010 or what they predict will be the upcoming hot item for 2011. Yeah, yeah, it happens every year. I am not sure how many readers follow up on these predictions and call these folks on them at a later point; I doubt any.
What I think is more important is to use this time of year to summarize what worked or didn't work for your web marketing efforts. I have always been a huge fan of web metrics and the benefits good metrics can provide as to the effectiveness of on-line marketing efforts. This time of year is perfect for running those metrics reports and looking over key project results and trends; at least for the last quarter or two.
I don't usually try to get to complicated here. I limit my scope to where were visitors going, where did they come from and what did they do or view while I had their attention. This information helps me determine a lot about their intent and if they were successful when they came to my site or sites. It always amazes me that there are marketers out there who spend more time on their next project than to take a moment to determine what if anything about their last on-line campaign worked. I guess it is easier to just ask for more budget for their next project.
The results of reviewing these metrics typically guides me to make small changes in my web pages and campaign tactics. Things like better cross linking between key areas of my web pages, placing searched information above the fold on key pages, and continuing to understand what my visitor's task is when they visit are just a few examples. These small changes help make my web pages more effective and provide increased qualified traffic and please my users.
So instead of using this time of year to make predictions on markets that are always changing, spend a little time reviewing what worked and how you can make relevant changes based on metrics.
What I think is more important is to use this time of year to summarize what worked or didn't work for your web marketing efforts. I have always been a huge fan of web metrics and the benefits good metrics can provide as to the effectiveness of on-line marketing efforts. This time of year is perfect for running those metrics reports and looking over key project results and trends; at least for the last quarter or two.
I don't usually try to get to complicated here. I limit my scope to where were visitors going, where did they come from and what did they do or view while I had their attention. This information helps me determine a lot about their intent and if they were successful when they came to my site or sites. It always amazes me that there are marketers out there who spend more time on their next project than to take a moment to determine what if anything about their last on-line campaign worked. I guess it is easier to just ask for more budget for their next project.
The results of reviewing these metrics typically guides me to make small changes in my web pages and campaign tactics. Things like better cross linking between key areas of my web pages, placing searched information above the fold on key pages, and continuing to understand what my visitor's task is when they visit are just a few examples. These small changes help make my web pages more effective and provide increased qualified traffic and please my users.
So instead of using this time of year to make predictions on markets that are always changing, spend a little time reviewing what worked and how you can make relevant changes based on metrics.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Graphics are nice but content is King
The marketing teams were having a discussion the other day about including graphic heros at the top of documents; i.e. data sheets, specification sheets, etc... These graphics were often times in no way related to what the document was about. They were just pretty pictures of pretty people sitting around a computer screen.
This discussion reminded of an article by Gerry McGovern in which he talked about the use of graphics in this gratuitous way.
For me it comes back to understanding what the customer wants and what their mission is when deciding about the look and feel of the document. If I am a customer who is interested in the size, shape and performance of a product I probably don't want to download documents or look at web pages with large graphics at the top of each page. I will most likely do a search within the document for the spec I need and then move on. In other words, focus on the content. Headlines are more important than a gratuitous graphic on a page or doc. Headlines grab a visitors attention, focus them in on the topic and start the visitor reading and solving their problem.
What experiences have you had where content takes a back seat to graphics?
This discussion reminded of an article by Gerry McGovern in which he talked about the use of graphics in this gratuitous way.
For me it comes back to understanding what the customer wants and what their mission is when deciding about the look and feel of the document. If I am a customer who is interested in the size, shape and performance of a product I probably don't want to download documents or look at web pages with large graphics at the top of each page. I will most likely do a search within the document for the spec I need and then move on. In other words, focus on the content. Headlines are more important than a gratuitous graphic on a page or doc. Headlines grab a visitors attention, focus them in on the topic and start the visitor reading and solving their problem.
What experiences have you had where content takes a back seat to graphics?
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Web Marketing Team or Workgroup
Is your web marketing team functioning like a team or a workgroup?
When I was in business school we studied both workgroups and teams. The differences in the quality of output could be dramatic.
Here is a short refresher;
Workgroups have a strong individual focus. They typically exist with minimal supervision and do more coordination with each other than collective works. An example would be that within a group of product marketing professionals each member is assigned separate products to bring to market and each team member works and is concerned only about his particular products or tasks.
Teams typically produce collective works comprised of contributions from team members. Accountability is shared and products are the result of group efforts not just individual parts. Teams share a common purpose and set of performance goals. Team members are mutually accountable.
My experience working in both product marketing and centralized web marketing organizations is that workgroups are much more common than true teams. But it seems that the benefit of teams could really enhance the work product for both product marketing and web marketing groups. Either because of limited people resources or different levels of experience most groups seem to default into workgroups. In some cases I wonder if groups have even considered functioning as teams. Teams where multiple product marketing or web marketing individuals work together on a launch or a pilot project. A team where each member provides a different viewpoint and skills that enhances the project. In addition, breaking out of the siloed work tasks and really working with your peers just seems like it could be more fun.
Here is a great HBR article on teams.
What have you seen more commonly used workgroups or teams? Is it possible for managers to make a shift towards teams or are resources to constrained these days?
When I was in business school we studied both workgroups and teams. The differences in the quality of output could be dramatic.
Here is a short refresher;
Workgroups have a strong individual focus. They typically exist with minimal supervision and do more coordination with each other than collective works. An example would be that within a group of product marketing professionals each member is assigned separate products to bring to market and each team member works and is concerned only about his particular products or tasks.
Teams typically produce collective works comprised of contributions from team members. Accountability is shared and products are the result of group efforts not just individual parts. Teams share a common purpose and set of performance goals. Team members are mutually accountable.
My experience working in both product marketing and centralized web marketing organizations is that workgroups are much more common than true teams. But it seems that the benefit of teams could really enhance the work product for both product marketing and web marketing groups. Either because of limited people resources or different levels of experience most groups seem to default into workgroups. In some cases I wonder if groups have even considered functioning as teams. Teams where multiple product marketing or web marketing individuals work together on a launch or a pilot project. A team where each member provides a different viewpoint and skills that enhances the project. In addition, breaking out of the siloed work tasks and really working with your peers just seems like it could be more fun.
Here is a great HBR article on teams.
What have you seen more commonly used workgroups or teams? Is it possible for managers to make a shift towards teams or are resources to constrained these days?
Saturday, November 27, 2010
SEO - The basics still work
While SEO has evolved over the last five years sometimes the basics still provide the best "bang for the buck". Our marketing team recently launched a number of new web pages. Unfortunately none were optimized for search at the outset. However, this provided a perfect opportunity to take one page and perform SEO steps in base groupings to see when we finally ranked. Much to my surprise after completing a few of the more basic steps we were able to get the page to rank. These basic steps included changing the title tag, modifying the meta information to reflect the keyword and creating a few back links from our own site. (we did make sure the hyperlinks from the back link pages used our keyword). By performing these simple steps we moved our ranking from the third page to the first page second link. Simply amazing.
With all the fancy back link solutions out there today it pays to remember the basics. Covering the basics first may prove the fastest way for you to get your pages ranking in Google. Sometimes the most simple solution is truly the best.
Good luck with your latest web marketing activity and take some time to ponder on the basics.
With all the fancy back link solutions out there today it pays to remember the basics. Covering the basics first may prove the fastest way for you to get your pages ranking in Google. Sometimes the most simple solution is truly the best.
Good luck with your latest web marketing activity and take some time to ponder on the basics.
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