How you can leverage virtual communities to successfully execute your “live” event strategy.
Tough economic times and industry-wide budget cuts, have forced marketing
executives to cut a significant number of marketing programs. Not surprisingly,
the first programs to be cut are those that require more complex analysis to
quantify their return. Therefore, we see organizations keeping only those
programs that have an easily “measurable, and quantifiable” outcome.
As the owner of the Marketing Executive Group, a virtual community of over 10,500 marketing executives (with presence on LinkedIn as well as off-line), I feel privileged to have the opportunity to collaborate with some of the most brilliant marketing minds around the world. These individuals share with me their ideas, their challenges, and their visions.
Over the past several months, I have asked dozens of B2B marketing executives to share with me which programs they were forced to cut first. The most strikingly common answer was event-based marketing. So the meet and greets, where the objective is to try-to-fill the room with prospects and customers, have been one of the first program to be perceived as lacking a quantifiable and measurable outcome. Moreover, I asked these executives to elaborate further on the reaction to these cuts by their sales team - “not too great” was the unanimous response. Ask any sales person, and they will tell you that face-to-face time with a prospect will accomplish more in terms of relationship building, than any other marketing effort aimed at engaging prospects to close a sale.
Yet, those marketing executives with whom I spoke were candid enough to share that, irrespective of how the sales people feel, it costs too much to run these events and it is too hard to recruit prospects to participate. On the other hand, I just completed a survey where 91% of respondents (91% of 1200 individuals) indicated that they would be willing to attend a live event if they have the opportunity to network and collaborate with their peers in person, and solve common professional related challenges. So why are marketing executives cutting the same events they are so willing to participate in?
This willingness to meet in person is not unique to marketing executives. Another survey, directed at CIOs, revealed similar results - 96% indicated that if given the chance, they would like to network in person, to address professional challenges. Other surveys, currently in progress, which are targeting professional virtual communities, hint at similar results, with members of these communities expressing their willingness to meet in person. Most individuals develop stronger relationships through personal face time. As much as technology and virtualization of the workplace has contributed to financial efficiencies, human beings will always have a stronger propensity to build relationships and establish a sense of trust though face-to-face time. This cannot be replaced by virtual collaboration tools, video conferencing, or remote office technologies.
B2B companies can leverage virtual communities to gather the right intelligence to develop an event marketing environment, which can address the growing need for face-to-face interaction, while serving their revenue generation objectives. A successfully executed community building strategy can provide you with direct insight into your prospects’ and clients’ complex needs, facilitating the identification of business opportunities, and driving an event strategy that will help you increase the probability of closing new business and retaining existing clients. No other method provides such a powerful source of business information about your clients and prospects alike.
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU:
We help Business To Business Companies to build social networking communities that deliver on-going value, marketing intelligence and revenue opportunities, by providing them with creative strategies, tactical support and systems designed to engage, communicate and build lasting one-to-one relationships.
We help you accelerate the acquisition of intelligence and information that your organization will need to develop new products and services, to drive your marketing and sales strategies, and to accomplish many of your marketing objectives. We do this by implementing highly specialized social networking marketing processes that integrate old school proven marketing methods, market research, behavior analysis, and group dynamics with new media and technology that produces breakthrough results.
Barnard Crespi
Datatel Marketing
President and Chief Community Strategist
www.datatelmarketing.com
800-831-6660 x 251
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Datatel does not represent having any interest or affiliation with LinkedIn or its trade marks.
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