As budgets decrease and workloads increase, online events are becoming an increasingly popular option for B2B businesses. Claire Weekes reports
The past couple of years have been pretty tough for businesses. But for one sector in particular, the exact opposite is true. Organisers of online webinars, webcasts and virtual events have seen business rocket – as companies look for more cost and time effective ways to organise meetings, conferences and roadshows.
Events have always been key to B2B marketers, and more B2B brands are now seeking out opportunities in the online space. There are so many solutions to choose from that no matter what your requirements, the chances are these days you can easily reformat a real-world event for use online.
Webinar and webcast technology have both been around for a number of years, yet confusion remains as to their differences. A webinar is usually intended for a specific audience and number of people. A webcast, on the other hand, is generally a broadcast, made available to large numbers of people who choose to watch it. The distinction between webcasts and webinars, however, is not universally recognised and often the terminology is interchangeable.
Webinars are more often used by companies to facilitate business meetings, or as a platform to deliver inhouse training to staff who may geographically be widely dispersed. Webcasts, however, can offer more exciting opportunities for B2B marketers. “Brands typically use them to generate mass, global or even niche content that caters to a specific audience. Generally it is a ‘one-to-many’ form of communication – a broadcast,” says David Pitta, demand generation marketing manager at webcast provider BrightTalk. He adds, “At first, brands were using them primarily as a demand generation tool, but now we’re starting to see some use it to generate general brand awareness too.”
Online meetings
AppSense, a provider of user environment management solutions, is using webinars both to boost its sales efforts and engage with its own IT departments worldwide. It says by using a bespoke platform created by webinar provider Citrix, that it has achieved cost savings of 40 per cent.
AppSense uses Citrix Online’s GoToWebinar technology to present its product portfolio to prospects and hold briefings with existing customers and partners. The online meeting tool lets AppSense host demonstrations of its tech solutions and hold sessions with multiple participants, regardless of location.
“We spend a lot of time interacting with our prospects, customers and partners, and being able to visually demonstrate new products and technologies is so much more effective than explaining it in words,” says Angela Cunvin, marketing manager at AppSense. “Webinars allow us to quickly and easily jump on to impromptu web meetings to talk through more technical aspects of our products, which makes the job of our staff a lot easier and their time more productive.”
In a presentation to potential clients, AppSense might use annotation tools to highlight and point to items of interest on the screen, or audio capability that lets participants join in a meeting via VoIP or a landline telephone. As part of an ongoing focus on global expansion, AppSense has also rolled out webinar technology to its travelling employees who need to collaborate with each other while they are on the road.
As Cunvin explains, “Real-time communication is key for our staff to work productively and effectively with an increasingly global customer base. GoToMeeting offers us the instant connectivity of email or a messaging service, but with the richness of collaboration achieved through face-to-face meetings.”
“As life becomes busier and budgets become more pressurised, we’ve seen people really take this kind of interaction on board,” says Andrew Millard, director of ecommerce, EMEA at Citrix Online. “A webinar provides a great way to communicate with your key audience on a small budget.”
Beyond the webinar
Some brands are going a step further than webcasts and webinars, and are facilitating their own online events. Unisfair is a US-based provider of online environments and works with big brands including IBM. In May, it released research announcing virtual engagement is “the new normal in marketing, training and collaboration.” Based on responses from more than 550 marketers across the US, the second annual Unisfair survey revealed that 60 per cent of respondents plan to increase spend on virtual events and environments this year, adding that if budgets were not an issue, 67 per cent would host 10 or more virtual events in the next 12 months.
“Virtual events are a good way to reach time poor people who are high up on the corporate ladder,” says Joerg Rathenberg, marketing executive at Unisfair.
Brands use Unisfair events to achieve anything from brand advocacy and awareness to acquisition. IBM, for example, recently ran a mass online forum called Start Jam – an event whereby business and industry thought leaders could collaborate and debate ideas around sustainable businesses for the future.
A virtual business world
According to Rathenberg, an online event can offer benefits that a real-time event can’t. “The nice thing about online events is the fact that people feel they are in a secure environment,” says Rathenberg. “Event attendees are in a secure environment and can control what they do. At a trade show, people have badges so that you can see who they are, but a lot of the time it can feel rude to just go up and start talking to them. In an online environment, people tend to feel more secure, and less inhibited about making contact with other people.”
At Unisfair events, brands can facilitate networking buttons – so if an online participant wants to connect with another person, they can literally click on their business card – and then that person can decide whether to connect or decline. “Attendees can decide that if they want to engage with someone, they will,” says Rathenberg.
Some virtual events, such as those run by Unisfair, can also include pop-up sessions, so attendees ‘browsing’ within an event can receive pop-up reminders about certain sessions or presentations. This can be a good way to attract event sponsors – because you can offer your ‘gold’ sponsors this kind of in-event advertising.
If, by the way, online events sound a lot like Second Life events, you may be wondering where the difference lies. ‘Second Life’ was a phrase bandied around a lot a few years ago, yet the buzz seems to have died more recently. In B2B terms, the concept certainly doesn’t seem to have legs these days.
Stephanie de Labriolle, marketing consultant at SIMalliance, explains, “In Second Life you can be anyone, you can create your character. But at a virtual event you are yourself and want people to be confident of who you are before they engage with you.” In this sense, Second Life platforms are seen as being more B2C than B2B.
Online events set to thrive
So what are some of the overall advantages of running an online event versus a real-life one?
“You increase the size of your audience, and you can also draw in new visitors who may not have automatically attended your offline event but attend your online one – because it’s easier to do so – which makes them more willing to interact with your brand further down the line,” says Rathenberg.
In the B2B space, online events look set to thrive. “Online events are rapidly becoming a much more accepted way of doing business,” says Pitta. “The audiences that we engage, continue to come back and watch content frequently.”
Hosting a webcast?
Mark Farnell, marketing manager at NewVoiceMedia, gives this advice
• Pick the right time. Be aware of different time zones and preferred timings if you are going for an international audience. Our experience suggests that events scheduled at lunchtime work well in the UK, but early morning is better for other European countries.
• Prepare thoroughly. Make sure everyone involved knows their material and how long they should speak for. Set a target of how long the webcast should run, and stick with this timing. Acknowledge that other people’s time is precious.
• Check your equipment. Check the technology beforehand and have a back-up plan for Internet access. Seamless technology is vital for successful, easy and low cost webcasts.
• Make it interactive. Include polls to keep the audience engaged and base your webcast around topical subjects of broad audience appeal. Encourage the audience to ask questions that can be answered during the session by the speakers.
• Record the webcasts. Make them accessible at any time by other individuals. This is also a good tool to help speakers review their presentations and improve for future webcasts.
