Come Mingle At The Virtual Town Hall

When you hear the words “Town Hall”, you may think of a space that is dedicated for local citizens to discuss and vote on issues of importance to their communities. In the physical sense, Town Halls are typically used for meetings, community events, recreational activities, and even minor offenses court. If the town has representative government, the town council will meet in the building. Other officials may be located there as well.

If you work in a large enterprise, you know how hard it can be to engage the right supplier for just about anything – from a design agency who understands your brand to an approved recruiter for your line of business.  If you happen to be in procurement, you know how tough it can be to manage a process that keeps both vendors and internal stakeholders on point.

While it’s possible to invite select suppliers to meet with specific internal teams, it’s quite challenging to provide broad access that keeps everyone informed.  And it’s often hard to create a central directory that’s both easy to access and easy to navigate.

The Dodo was a flightless bird living on the island of Mauritius, but is long extinct. In this blog post we are reviewing why a particular Virtual Event Platform never took off (much like the Dodo)…

Digital Dodo – Second Life for Businesses

Second Life was a once-hailed platform where businesses would conduct meeting and meet their stakeholders. Large blue-ship companies spent large budgets on building campus, meeting places and holding meetings inside the 3D world.

An association’s ability to thrive is dependent on the community it creates. Any organization knows that advertising key events and providing members with supreme content, is worth its weight in gold. So wouldn’t it be great to be able to reach the most influential group of industry leaders and decision-makers and share important information with those members without having to invest an extraordinary amount of money in travel costs? Virtual Event solutions provide just that – an online destination for association members to connect with industry experts. In addition, they receive training while association executives spread awareness about their organization and gain potential sponsorships.

Field marketing for many enterprise organizations aims to support field sales reps in directly connecting with prospects and customers.  If you know sales reps, you know they are not always the easiest audience to please.  They continually want new tools, new contacts, new ideas.

If you’re successful in capturing the attention of prospects, however, you’re on the right track to making your reps happy.  Help those same reps become advisors and resources for customers, and you’re on the way to a win.  Of course it’s always about the content, whether that’s face-to-face or online.  Connect the dots and enhance your value in all directions with a virtual hub for field marketing.

Many enterprise organizations rely heavily on a partner network for sales, service and support.  These channel partners are a critical extension of the organization and as such, they need comprehensive training and education, along with regular communication and oftentimes lots of “personal touch.”

If you manage a channel program of any size, you know how tough it can be to stand out among all the choices your partners may have in their portfolio.  Capturing mindshare is key, and you’re constantly pushed to innovate while you motivate.

Any event planner knows that foot traffic is the big draw when it comes to physical trade shows, conferences and other similar events. But are the attendees that show up at these events really connecting with your company? There’s a lot of valuable time, effort and potential cost put into motion when it comes to creating a memorable event, whether it’s a physical or a virtual one. With technology being so readily available and portable, companies are finding it hard to quantify the costs of coordinating a physical environment and users are reaping the benefits of not having to travel or lose valuable work time. So the question is – How is an online user’s experience different than that of a physical event attendee? And does one produce better results than the other?

Virtual Job Fairs are a win-win for job seekers and companies. While it’s an inexpensive way for employers to meet potential employees, you can share your LinkedIn profile and resume with companies that are hiring. You might be able to have an initial, albeit brief, interview with a hiring manager — without having to leave the comfort of home. But this is not a casual browsing event. Take it as seriously as you would an in-person interview. Here’s how you can make the most of a virtual job fair.

Last week I shared six initial ideas for adding more value to virtual event or virtual conference sponsorships, and specifically to sponsor virtual booths.  This week, I have a couple more ideas around booths, as well as a few ideas to help extend the sponsorships throughout your virtual conference.  Here we go:

1 – Preparation is key.  Sales reps may be the last ones to show up for training, but they are crucial to sponsorship success.  While you don’t want reps stalking attendees during the keynote, you do want reps who know how to use the virtual event platform and who are prepared with appropriate outreach and appropriate answers to common questions – even questions about the general session agenda.  Make sure reps know how to leverage experts for small group conversations, and encourage them to think about a next step, whether that’s a whitepaper download, a scheduled demo or an invitation to next week’s webinar.

It’s already the third week of August, time to say goodbye to summer break and get back to business.  For many, that means diving into the weeds of a virtual event or virtual conference program.  If you’re working on a virtual event that involves sponsors or partners, we thought it might be a great time to talk about how to make those sponsorships a little richer.