SalesVPI

10 Reasons Virtual Shows Fall Short

I'm a big fan of virtual shows. Right now, the experience falls far short for vendors and participants.

Here are 10 reasons I think they fall far short of their potential:

1. They're really uber webcasts. On a continuum between a webcast on the low end of user and vendor experience, and a trade show on the high end, the virtual show experience is much closer to a webcast.
2. Still a static experience -- so what is the difference between a webcast, Twitter, and accessing content on a microsite -- something most people do regularly -- and a virtual show?
3. Overly focused on push messaging. Webcasts and access to content are the predominant communications most participants experience. The booth experience is mostly a joke. Look at the various chat windows in your next show, the conversations are ridiculous.
4. No vendor strategy and training to capitalize on the new medium. The uber webcast mindset carries over. I regularly ask vendors how their strategy for virtual shows differs from webcasts, how they prepare and train booth attendees for the show. Most have their hands full getting set up, providing content and learning operational basics. These activities are relegated to the operational staff, not strategic management.
5. Coordinated primarily by publishing and event producers, in collaboration with platform vendors. Publishers are interested in driving their revenue by leveraging their brand and lists. Virtual shows are a replacement for their dwindling live event revenue.
6. Applied using an old paradigm -- the live event. To paraphrase a famous aphorism (given I have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail) -- given our event and technology business models, here's how we can use this "new" medium. When are we going to capitalize on the real potential of the internet for location (virtual) AND time shifts? Does conducting a "virtual show" for one, maybe two days, between 11:30AM eastern and 6:30PM really make sense? Or, is it just convenient for sponsors and presenters.
7. Doesn't accommodate the reality of how people interact online. For live shows in a physical location, we have little option but to carve out a day or two for the event. Online, we interact intermittently. We expect content on demand. We would like to interact the same way. On Twitter, I tweet when it's convenient, and in short spurts.
8. Redundant investments in virtual show platforms. This relates to the paradigm observation. Why do we need a traveling "show" online? Why wouldn't an industry group establish a permanent, online, 24x7 environment where interested participants could regularly and periodically attend webinars, engage vendors online, and network with people investigating similar issues?
9. They don't capture people's imagination, there's no buzz. Virtual shows have been around for years. I regularly encounter people -- yesterday a marketing person for a vendor sponsor, and the person managing their participation -- who have never attended (or heard of) a show.
10. Does a poor job of facilitating conversations and interactions on a one-to-one basis. Business-to-business selling has moved online. But vendors haven't figured out how to do a much better job than to host and present content. This might be ok to fill the front of the funnel, but we've got a long way to go to realize the full potential.

What have been your experiences with virtual shows? What do you think show organizers and vendor sponsors can do to realize better outcomes?

Content Strategy Begins With Purpose

I remember reading about Norman Cousins, who developed a serious illness in the seventies and received a poor recovery prognosis. Convinced of the power of positive emotions, he used humor and laughing to support his recovery by renting funny TV shows and movies. He wrote about it in his book Anatomy of An Illness.

For me today, I think it would be TED Talks because of their incredible inspirational value. All marketers and sales professionals should take 20 minutes and view this insightful as well as inspiring talk:

The insights shared in this talk were reinforced during my drive to work today. WBUR, our local NPR station, presented a story about companies setting up gardens at work for employees. Say what?

You can read the article here. They quoted Judith Frampton, a vice president at Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, saying the company tries to promote healthy eating, and the garden helps do that.

“The main reason we did it was because we are totally serious about trying to figure out how to get people to be healthier before they get sick,” she says.

When messages like this come from a "stand" -- the "Why" of the business -- they resonate and stick far better than those that discuss the "What" or even the "How."

When our content strategy emanates from our core purpose and intent, our language, messages and content become aligned in ways that attract our best customers and partners.

Keeping PowerPoint in Perspective

A recent New York Times article -- We Have Met the Enemy and He is PowerPoint -- is the latest in a (seemingly) never-ending series of articles deriding the tool. This is a good opportunity to move from the "cool" perspective of bashing PowerPoint, to consider it's significant possibilities -- even for content professionals.

For over twelve years we have recommended a different perspective. Rather than view PowerPoint as a bullet-oriented presentation tool -- it's initial purpose -- we suggest viewing it as a business graphic development, and even general communication tool.

Training organizations have long embraced PowerPoint as a foundation for e-learning. Where would marketing webinars be without PowerPoint?

As a production tool for general business people, nothing beats it and that's why it's so pervasive.

But what of more "professional" users?

A Tool for the Content Marketing Professional

Consider the following marketing and sales content requirements facing most business content creators:

• Relevance -- tailor content so it is relevant to viewer's roles, interests, etc.
• Faster development times -- produce and deploy content quickly
• Multi-purpose -- create content that can be used for multiple purposes -- training, marketing, briefings and selling
• Modularity -- create content as modules that can be mixed-and-matched for different versions of end products
• Multimedia -- move beyond static text to rich media documents and multimedia
• Maintenance -- maintain content to extend shelf life and accuracy
• Lower content costs, improve return-on-content -- accomplish the above objectives while driving production costs lower

Years ago, a marketing agency performed an analysis on the use of PowerPoint at HP. One of the (not so) startling findings from discussions with the sales organization was: "if we built PowerPoint the right way, we would never need brochures."

I believe this is even more true today.

For non-website content, companies must adopt a new approach to creating content. We've called this thinking and creating like a publisher.

PowerPoint is a true multi-media content creation tool. Over the last few versions, functionality has matured significantly. It enables professionals to quickly build highly modular content which facilitates dynamic content assembly. Front line business communicators can easily tailor and personalize finished content so it is relevant for intended audiences.

What other software tool provides a universal standard with usable functionality for "mere mortals" to work with text, images, graphics, animation, audio and video in a single application that costs virtually nothing?

Repurpose Content, Important, Not a Panacea

The topic of repurposing content is a hot topic right now among marketers as they look to reduce content development time, effort and costs.

Our company has repurposed content for customers for over fifteen years, and developed several techniques. But first, a warning. Repurposing content is not a panacea to creating the right content the right way the first time.

This is why a content strategy that develops a content engine to continuously create content like publishers is so important.

If content is not relevant, remarkable or compelling, repurposing won't necessarily make it so. If content is all about the vendor and their products, it can be difficult to repurpose into effective customer educational content that is high demand today.

Think of house renovations. This works well when it's a room or two. Most contractors will tell you there is a point -- major re-work -- when it's cheaper to tear down and start over.

But some of the practices we've developed to repurpose content are worth noting. They even apply to creating content like publishers:

Acquire subject expert insights and ideas in audio.

Subject experts show up continuously. They are our market and product experts, customers and third party contacts -- even key sales and sales support people. They can be found creating content for product launches, events and webinars.

By recording these insights and messages in audio you can edit and repurpose content created as internal or external briefings, training or marketing content, into content for other purposes. By transcribing audio into text you have great source content for writing blogs, articles, or small lead nurturing content pieces.

This technique applies especially well to live training programs, webinars, user and partner conferences, customer reference programs, and any time (expensive) third party analysts or experts are employed.

Extract content from existing training and video productions

For years we have heard sales people observe: "some of our best content is in our learning programs, but it's not in a form that is suitable for delivery to customers." This content is in a training "voice" and physically built in learning technologies, packaged for delivery as training programs, not as customer ready content.

Existing videos are another example. I may want to send a ninety second segment to a customer, but it's contained within a five minute video, most of which isn't relevant to the customer.

The publishing approach would be to create this content for multiple purposes in the first place. It would keep source content in a highly modular form that is suitable for assembly and delivery to meet marketing, sales and customer purpose. But extracting and editing this content can make it useful for other purposes.

Convert white papers to multimedia vignettes

Over the last several years many companies have invested heavily in white papers. Excellent, extensive work resulted in a "point production" -- a white paper. Repurposing involves leveraging this work to take the content and edit into scripts for other purposes, such as a:

• Ninety second promotion vignette
• Eight minute executive summary vignette
• Stakeholder, issue, industry specific version
• Segment for a marketing webinar
• Sales prospecting tool

Repurposing content is the first cousin to thinking like a publisher. It's a great way to optimize the use of subject expert insights contained in existing content. But learning how to create like publishers is the best long term way to achieve an organization's content objectives.

Content Strategy for the Web

If you're accountable for creating content for marketing and sales I encourage you to immediately get copies of Kristina Halvorson's Content Strategy for the Web for everyone on your team.

There are many parallels and insights that apply to building non-website content. The core premise, that organizations must take a strategic approach to building content and think of content as important business assets, applies to content created for lead generation and nurturing programs, sales enablement and customer communications.

The following are a few key excerpts from the book:

"Only when we embrace our identities as publishers will we be able to commit to the necessary infrastructure to care for our content as a strategic business asset.

For years, we've been spending millions of dollars on strategy and research, user experience design, visual design, and technical platforms. In other words, we've invested in everything we need to build the online vehicles for our content.

And yet, strangely, it's the content that gets left until the last minute. It's the main reason projects are delayed or even abandoned. It's an afterthought, a nuisance.

Why? Because most of us haven't yet realized that we're actually in the publishing business.

Publishers plan far in advance which content they will create. They have established, measurable processes in place. They invest in teams of professionals to create and care for content.

Creating useful, usable content requires user research, strategic planning, meaningful metadata, web writing skills, and editorial oversight. It requires people. With experience. And insights. And judgment. It requires planning. And input. And time. And money.

It will not happen automatically.

Content strategy is the practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content. A strategy is a carefully considered, well-articulated plan of action, achievable and executable. It's a roadmap that gets us from where we are now to where we want to be.

Until we commit to treating content as a critical asset worthy of strategic planning and meaningful spend, we'll continue to churn out worthless content in reaction to unmeasured requests. We'll keep signing up for online content initiatives without pausing to ask why. Our customers still won't find what they're looking for. And we'll keep failing to deliver useful, usable content that people actually care about.

Content strategy will help you deliver content that inspires trust. Drives action. Builds loyalty. On time. On budget."

Elements of strategy include:

• Online messaging and branding
• Information architecture
• Editorial strategy
• Web writing
• Search engine optimization
• Metadata strategy
• Content management strategy
• Content channel distribution strategy

Three steps to content strategy

1. Content audit
2. Analysis
3. Strategy

Content Strategy Deliverables

• Message map
• Content inventory
• Gap analysis
• Site map
• Page tables
• Content template map
• Editorial strategy
• Content style guide
• Editorial workflow diagram
• Content management system architecture
• Metadata framework
• Taxonomy
• Content flow schematic
• Content model
• Content quality assurance tools
• Content production schedule
• Competitor content audit
• Content migration plan
• Content licensing evaluation report

My company, Avitage, is developing content strategy for content marketing initiatives, especially for rich media and video content.

Over the next few week's I'll delve into the application of a strategic framework for publishing content that is not targeted for website delivery.

Focus on the Conversation

Scott Santucci of Forrester's Technology Sales Enablement Group has an important blog post regarding sales conversations. (The Key To Sales Enablement Success Is To Focus On The Conversation)

"A B2B sale is really the synthesis of many discrete conversations, and value is best communicated when they are focused on a common goal: solving the client's problem. What most organizations fail to address is how complex a task it is to corral many discrete conversations into a consistent value communications strategy.

To make matters even more complex, most companies have solutions that can address multiple different problems, so this set of questions must be answered for each opportunity. We all know that good conversations are dynamic, reciprocal and most effective where there is trust between the people involved in the dialog.

To accomplish this, the salesperson must communicate information that is:

• Relevant: to the specific circumstances and realities of a given company


• In context: to the roles and responsibilities of the individual with whom you are having the conversation


• Timely: in concert with where the customer is in its problem-solving process and to the relative importance of that issue to others that could gain investment."

Key Role for Marketing

If you're in marketing, where is "helping to drive better sales conversations" on your priority list?

As important as lead generation and lead nurturing are -- they're a key component of sales enablement -- sales needs marketing to help them design the selling conversation.

For any organization that is involved in, or desiring to move to, a complex, consultative or "solution oriented" sale, this has always been a requirement.

Fortunately for those of us in sales, this requirement now aligns with the newly discovered marketing requirement of creating "relevant" content to support lead nurturing initiatives.

My observation is, marketing organizations lack methodologies and frameworks to simplify and support the task of designing customer relevant conversations at different stages of the buying/selling process.

In much the way sales organizations have struggled to define, implement and embrace a formal sales process, marketing organizations continue to employ an ad hoc, almost artistic approach, to messaging and content development.

If you don't have a documented messaging and content strategy and creation process, that is accepted by all message and content creators, and managed as a formal process, it doesn't really exist.

Help Sales Become Thought Leaders to Customers

Adding to the complexity is the fact that MOST conversations don't take place face-to-face anymore, especially in the critical early stages of the customer engagement. Telephone and email are relatively weak conversation tools.

I'd like to see marketing organizations deploy more content through sales people rather than in direct campaigns to customers. Help us become "thought leaders" in our customer's eyes. Give us something of value to talk about -- and to deliver.

Marketing sends blasts to customers -- despite new technologies. Sales people, if they know their customer, are in the best position to define relevance, create context and select the right timing for delivering valuable information to customers.

But they are not the creators and originators of the information. Communication (conversation) is a function of message, content and delivery. Companies need to rethink their marketing and sales communication and content strategies.

Twitter -- What do you read at breakfast?

I've had several colleages ask me lately, "how do you use Twitter for your selling activities?"

Twitter is becomming a primary resource for me for listening, learning and research.

Listening

“It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.”-- Clay Shirky

Using Twitter to listen to topic specific conversations is a skill we really need to develop. I don't have time to listen to everything. By selecting and cultivating people who share my interests, I leverage their research, insights, ideas and conversations.

I pick up themes, topics and keywords that help me further my listening, but in an efficient way.

Learning

The people I follow regularly tweet and post links to articles, reference sources and tools that provide an efficient way to learn new ideas. I've developed the habit of replacing my morning newspaper with Twitter. Using Hootsuite, or even on my Blackberry with Ubertwitter,I'm able to categorize the primary topics I'm interested in learning about. Using #hastags and Twittersearch I'm able to quickly retrieve conversations and their related links.

Research

Before working on a specific account, I search Twitter to find conversations about the company,their news and events, topics of issues and competitive landscape. Often this as uncovered new people I need to contact but who were not readily available to me. Contacting these people through Twiter has prove a much more effective technique than phone or email.

If I find people at the company who work in functions that are relevan to me, and they are on Twitter, I follow them. It's a great first step, and the next best thing, to being in direct relationship. How else can you "listen in" to what they are thinking and saying.

My Process

At breakfast, I open Ubertwitter on my Blackberry and start to review my tweets. I typically keep the application open so the app has been accumulating tweets long before I long on. As I find tweets that interest me or people in my organization, especially those with links to great resources, I simply email the tweet to myself or my colleagues.

When I have time I can review, print, or post those tweets to our wiki. I can access the resources referenced. It's a fast, easy and interesting way to expand my listening, learning and research. I'm addicted.