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Published Article
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| Redefining
Distance to Market your Company |
The recent terrorist
attacks here in the US have caused many companies and individuals
to rethink how they want to market to and work with others.
As a result, web-enabled presentations and or collaborations
are finally coming of age – the technology works with a
minimum of hassle, it’s an efficient way to give marketing
presentations, hold meetings, provide training and do product
demonstrations. The cost savings can be significant, especially
when contrasted with all of the burdened costs of holding conventional
meetings; i.e. travel, hotel, transportation, facilities and
“time out of the office issues.” Here is a quick primer
on some baseline issues to consider when weighing the effectiveness
of virtual marketing presentations and meetings.
| 1. |
There are
a broad number of vendors, although the “virtual
presentation and meeting” market segment has undergone
consolidation in the last few years. I’d recommend
assessing these four market leaders: www.webex.com
(well established with diversified terms of services),
www.placeware.com
(corporate focused), www.centra.com
(provides a good client plug in that enables Voice over
IP (“VOIP”) communications, www.raindance.com
(emphasizes teleconferencing).
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| 2. |
PC configuration, Internet
access and firewall issues all need to be considered when
your assessing the effectiveness of this process and technology.
Port settings need to be “tuned” or optimized,
the PC must have multimedia capabilities if your using
VOIP, just about any speed of internet connection will
work, but the experience for the attendee can vary depending
on the connection speeds and how “heavy” your
presentation is with graphics.
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| 3. |
Web presentations
offer a lower cost model versus traditional presentations
or meetings, but there are burdened costs for web-enabled
marketing – phone conferencing can be anywhere from
$.15-35 per minute per user, presentation uploads for
a standard power point presentation (which is the defacto
app for virtual presentations), can cost $10-30. per presentation,
costs per attendee can vary tremendously but average $50-500.
per session, depending upon the number of users.
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| 4. |
One of the
most expensive parts of virtual meetings is always the
teleconferencing component. All of the market leaders
have some VOIP component (voice over IP) but most are
not publicizing this technology or service, as they don’t
want to cannibalize a significant contribution to their
revenue streams. One exception is Centra – they are
offering VOIP integrated services with their standard
web presentations or meetings. The audio quality is good,
analogous to voice quality of a standard cell phone call
– but there is a client download (small under 250K)
to deal with and you must have a multi-media enabled PC.
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| 5. |
Some
web-enabled presentation challenges include the need to
keep people involved – you can do this easily by
leveraging the chat capabilities, dynamic polling, and
standard Q&A components built into the application.
The higher their interest level (as in real world meetings)
the better your meeting or presentation will be.
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| 6. |
Marketing
presentations can be easily archived and made available
to others on a 24/7 basis – this archiving can include
the standard presentation, enhanced with video or audio
components, depending on the sophistication of your presentation.
Be prepared to pay an extra charge for this – but
the marketing ROI can be significant, especially when
you factor in how little most companies charge for an
archiving service versus your front end costs.
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| 7. |
Virtual marketing
enables a whole set of web-enabled processes – you
will have the ability to easily capture your prospect/customer’s
e-mail address and standard contact points via a registration
process, involve them and capture preferences via polling
in your presentations and “push” follow up communications
during your presentation/meeting or later. But, it’s
very important to include standard “privacy”
statements in your materials and adhere to them as you
move forward through your business processes.
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| 8. |
How does
video conferencing impact your assessments of web-enabled
presentations or collaborations? This depends on your
budget, number of people attending the presentation, presenter
and attendee locations and other intangible that are specific
to your business. In general, video conferencing works
better for very small (under five people) presentations
or meetings, due to some of the inherent challenges of
this medium.
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Lee Traupel has
20 plus years of marketing experience. He is the co-founder
of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based, privately
held, Marketing Services and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com.
Intelective focuses exclusively on providing services
to small-to-medium-sized companies that need strategic
and tactical marketing services. He can be reached at
Lee@intelective.com.
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