How Meeting Planners Can Get Their Hands Around the Internet - Article by Larry Chase - Internet Publisher, Speaker, Author and Consultant.

Larry Chase - Internet Marketing Consulting

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How Meeting Planners Can Get Their Hands Around the Internet

Think of the Internet as a tool, just like a hammer or drill. Only, in this case, this Internet tool will help you manage, promote, and control your show budget, all at the same time. In my seminars I liken the Net to a Swiss Army Knife, because it has that "all in one" feel about it.

In this second installment of articles on the Internet for Meeting and Exposition Planners [MNE] I'll pull out and show you some of the nifty tools of the Net and how you can use them in the planning of a meeting, conference, or exposition. The Net and conference planning have many things in common. So I'll begin by showing you some of the Net tools that will help you accomplish on the Net what you already do "in the real world." I'll then show you what goes into marketing an event online. How is it similar? How is it different? From there, you'll take a brief spin on the Web to visit some Web sites that are right up your alley. We'll end this installment with a peak at what the future holds for the MNE business on the Net.

Adhoc work groups on the Net
Planning an event is similar to a Hollywood production. A group of people come together for the project in a certain configuration and then disband when it's over. If you all work in one office you can simply have everyone come together in the conference room. But it is more often the case that the participants are distributed around the country or world. This is where lists come in handy. I call them loops, as in "know what's happening by getting in the loop." It's simply a group of people on a shared project who are all on the same email list. So when I send out a message to the loop, everyone is notified simultaneously and can feed back information as well. Now, some loops are one way, while others are two way and accept traffic in both directions.

Email Notifications
This tool is sort of like a broadcast fax service, except without the overhead. I have one for all the people who have visited my Web Digest For Marketers site who have asked me to notify them when that site has been updated. It costs me virtually nothing to send this list out to the nearly 2,000 people who have requested this reminder service.

Instant Focus Groups
If you have a two-way list where your recipients can send you mail, you have the makings of a virtual learning lab. With their permission (you might even offer them something) you can query them on what topics they would like covered, what speakers and exhibits they would like to see, and so forth. I sometimes think of the Net as a huge petri dish. I've tested publications and product ideas this way. In fact, that's how my Web Digest For Marketers was born. I tested the concept first online. It was a success. I then took that success to Ad Age and DM News. The result is that you can now read WDFM in both print and online. It would have been prohibitively expensive for me to first test wdfm in print. The irony is that more people read WDFM off-line then online.

Sending Files Digitally
It's usually much less expensive and many times faster if you can send your production materials over the Net rather then via Overnight Express. Of course this means that your writers, artists, production people and service bureaus have to be "wired". If they're not, they should be, because moving and manipulating those files digitally will save and you money.

Producing Materials
It's also a good idea to try to produce your web site material in tandem with your hard copy pieces. You'll realize savings if you can collapse two or three production assembly lines for print, online, and CD ROM, into say 1.4 assembly lines. The print version should offer higher resolution graphics, while the online version should serve up something that other media can't do as well, such as a searchable database, or instant updates.

Promoting an Event Site
I recently had the pleasure of promoting the first undersea web site for EDS. The live pictures and video feeds were only available for nine days since the cost of the connection was enormous. With pinpoint accuracy, we had posted to those interested groups and sites on the Net as the site was just coming online. The site stayed around for a while thereafter serving up the highlights of the experience in a photo and video album. A conference site shares some similarities in that it is probably an "event site". It should naturally be up for a considerable amount of time prior to the event (with promotional campaigns designed to bring in traffic), and then stay up after the event has happened. In fact, some event sites stay up all year as they prepare for the next event, or they may have multiple events around the world using the same basic agenda. It varies from industry to industry.

Aside from offering content to draw in your target audience, you should consider taking online registration at a discount. Why? For starters, it's certainly a way to build traffic and interest in your event. Furthermore, you save on printing and handling costs every time someone uses your site instead of the traditional promotion package. With your cost of sale lower, you're able to afford an incentive that gives the attendee a break on the price of admission.

Other things you might wish to have on your site would be anything that helps the prospect make up their mind whether they want to go to your event. In addition to the speakers and their topics, information on exhibitors and their wares is helpful. A layout of the exhibit area is always a good idea, as well as information on how much it costs to purchase space in this area. I've noticed many event sites include hyperlinks to the exhibitors home page which is a good idea that is strangely executed. If I'm interested in IBM's booth and I get a link to the IBM homepage, I'm back to square one. It's a better idea to maintain a seperate page that is expressly aimed at this audience. It doesn't take much effort to do this, just some forethought. In fact you might tell exhibitors to put a loss leader in there that can be claimed when the prospect visits the booth at the show. Why not?

If you decide that your site will only be up for a limited period you'll want to map out your strategy for posting to the search engines as many of them don't wish to handle sites that will be up for short periods of time. This is a good reason for putting the site up sooner rather than later and leaving it live for longer. If the search engines go out and verify that your site does in fact, exist, and it isn't there, they will not post your announcement. I advise my clients to plan on having the site live for two weeks prior to postings so they can iron out all the kinks.

I also advise clients to think of "newspegs" for their site so when they go around the Net putting up posts, they have an array of reasons for readers to visit. It may be a request for speakers, white papers, discounts on registration, or what have you. The fact that a site goes up nowadays is no longer a big deal. You need to "Bait the Cyberhook" in order to lure in prospects. For more tips on how to promote your site in cyberspace, you can visit my site at the address given at the end of this article.

Online Resources for MNE People: Two months ago I entered the words "meeting planners" into the AltaVista search engine and came up with very few useful sites. ASAE's site was one of the few that served this market back then. I did that very same search in preparation for this article and found over 1,000 sites. Many of them were Meeting and Convention Bureaus or local Chambers of Commerce sites that wanted you to hold your event in their respective cities.

I found Exhibitor Magazine offering what seemed to be re-purposed information from their print publication. A searchable archive would be a handy tool on that site. KWEB had some whimsical humor on trade shows and a modest database of events. I heard that they also sell passes for a percentage of the sale, but could not find this. Nevertheless, it strikes me as a good idea. The most comprehensive database on trade shows is TradeShow Central with over 9,000 trade shows on file. Highly targeted advertising to tightly defined audiences was also available. So if I wanted to advertise to only pharmaceutical trade show attendees, I could do so. ASAE's web site is pretty substantial in its own right. Among other things, it offers a large database of convention centers. Do a lookup on one of these and you'll get info on the plant and facility, and contact information. Another database offers you a list of technical support service companies for various locations.

Another site I saw that pertains to this readership is InterAct96, which billed itself as the first online conference. It was held in May. It utilized many chat areas that addressed different topics surrounding issues of a computer-mediated environment. It's an interesting concept, though it will never take the place of real-time conferences. Rather, it will serve as a supplement to them, I think. It used online chat as a way for speakers and panelists to present themselves to hundreds or thousands of onlookers. The chat technology does allow for questions from the audience that are usually filtered through the moderator. Each of these chat sessions are archived so that you can catch up on the session if you missed it. I find it's more productive reading the archive than attending the live chats as they tend to sometimes be stilted and awkward when two people talk at the same time. This often happens due to the lack of visual cues. Still, it's one of those interesting tools that has its place in this field.

The Future
The Interact96 site is a landmark site despite its drawbacks. I'm sure there will be hundreds of these conferences offered weekly on the Net. Along with those conferences will be very low fees to attend and indexes that will point you to the ones of specific interest.

In a recent issue of CIO/WEBMaster I read about Holiday Inn's plans to offer online rooms that you can rent for as long as you want. In such a cyber-room you can hold adhoc press events. As the bandwidth increases and you're able to receive more information faster, you'll eventually have video conferences. Actually you have them now by way of a technology called CU SeeMe. This is a tool that's still being perfected, but I've used it mostly for amusement, not for business. I have heard of people using CU SeeMe for visuals and the telephone for audio (the audio quality of CU SeeMe is poor due to limited bandwidth). You can think of this configuration as a sort of poor man's video conferencing system.

While it's intellectually stimulating to ponder what the future of the Net holds for us all, I urge my clients to use the tools at hand today. Java and video streaming are technically feasible, but I don't know many people who use it on a day-in-day-out basis.

The Net is a magnificent tool that has been made available to us all at a remarkably low cost. To not take advantage of it is dangerous because your competitors surely will.