Digital Marketing Muse

I had an opportunity to visit Oracle OpenWorld (compliments of Oracle and CEMA). As I walked around the partner pavilions I noticed one of the hottest technologies for exhibitors was the interactive touchscreen LCD panel. The interactive LCD panels ran a wide variety of sizes from 3-ft. tall to a 8’x15′ wall.

Interactive touchscreens give marketers another way to engage with their audiences and attract attention at their booth. Here are some highlights and lowlights on how some of the companies used their touchscreen monitors.

1. Connected Marketing – Some of the better touchscreen experiences integrated their other marketing efforts from the show. Intel handed out some cards with different messages on it and you placed the cards on a scanner which allowed you to interact with the LCD display. Emerson created a large interactive LCD which mirrored an experience on their iPad app.
   
2. Lead Generation – Make it easy for attendees to profile themselves by scanning attendee badges or using a card scanner.
   
3. Tell a story – Some of the displays told an interactive story. The story branched out depending on the user’s interest. The graphics were dynamic and simple to keep the attendees attention.
   
4. Have fun – Many of the better interactive displays were fun to use. One booth used it as a slot machine but you don’t need a touch-enabled LCD for that. Intel had a game which involved understanding their solutions – you got to learn something and have fun at the same time.
   

There were a few examples where I didn’t think the touchscreens were put to the best use:

1. Electronic Brochures – One company scanned in their brochures and posted it on their interactive display. Seriously? Do you want me to read through pages of 12-point font while I stand at your booth? To their credit, there was an option for me to include my e-mail address and have the brochures e-mailed to me. But this should be an interactive experience – engage me, amuse me, educate me. I hope their website has more interactivity.
   

1. Another company used the LCD touchscreens to solicit customer feedback. The problem is, these touchscreens are poor data input devices. A laptop with a keyboard is much better for entering text. Entering text into a big electronic keyboard is awkward and difficult when it’s positioned vertically. The attendee’s comment as I took this photo, “Oh, I hate typing like this.” If you want feedback – why not add a webcam and let them record their feedback more naturally? I had a feeling the team was looking for something cool to do with their new technology but didn’t consider if the old school alternatives would be better for engaging their audience.
   

As an event marketer, I’m very excited about what interactive touchscreen LCDs can bring to the booth. But we have to think through our objectives for using the technology and make sure it enhances the attendee experience. Few considerations:

1. Does the new technology enhance the attendee experience over your other event options? Does it do a better job of attracting attention, communicating your message, entertaining the attendee, etc.?
   
2. Can you use it to connect with your other marketing efforts at the show? Is there a way to connect the touchscreen environment with your web experiences, mobile or tablet apps so that users have a connected experience?
3. Make it seamless to capture leads – many touchscreen environments required users to manually enter their e-mail using the electronic keyboard. A better option was to have a booth attendee scan the attendee’s card with their wand but the best option is to have a card reader so the attendees can do it themselves without having an employee hover over them while they explore.

Up next, I’ll look at some of my favorite uses of interactive touchscreen LCDs at OpenWorld. Have you seen other great examples of interactive LCD screens at events? What worked and didn’t work for you?

Note: Scott Lum is an employee of Microsoft Corp. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer.

I was watching a keynote from a digital event and during the presentation this survey pops up. There were 3 or 4 questions all with the same options. What’s wrong with this picture?

1. There’s 5 ways to say Good and 1 way to say Bad – how does that help you?
2. If I have no comment – I have to select Bad.

Seriously?

If you want honest feedback from your event attendees spend a little time architecting your survey questions so that they yield the results you’re looking for.

Here are some tips:

1. Pick a handful of questions that you most want to get feedback on. Wordsmith the content so that it’s clear to the respondent.
2. Make sure you answers match your question. In this example, “Excellent” and “Very Good” are not answers to the question. I would have used “Agree”/”Disagree.”
3. Select a spectrum of options give you the proper feedback you want (I didn’t realize that “Fair” was incrementally better than “OK”).
4. Have a few people review and try out the survey. Those extra eyes would have caught that “Bad” and “No Comment” are not the same thing.
5. If you’re running the survey online, try it out a few times before it goes live. Make sure the flow of the survey works well and the data is flowing properly. It may also help catch formats that look good on paper but are cumbersome online.
6. During this live streamed event, the survey popped while the speaker was still talking. You want the survey to pop up as close to the end of the session as possible to increase the number of people taking the survey but don’t overlay it while the person is still talking. It’s rude and I want to listen to the speaker.

Surveys are an important part of getting feedback from your digital event attendees. Spend some time to create a survey that will be valuable to you. Do you have any other best practices for survey creation?

If you’re a Microsoft partner, the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference will be the place to be next week. There’s usually big announcements, big speakers (Sir Richard Branson), great technology showcases, tons of informative breakout sessions and loads of passionate technorati.

When I attend a conference like this I challenge myself to come up with at least one big disruptive idea. Not just a good idea (I can have lots of these), a disruptive one. Something that will challenge and rattle the beliefs of myself, my team, my company or my industry to the core. An idea that’s so far outside the box that box no longer exists.

What the heck am I talking about? Think about your industry, the products and services you provide, the team that you’re on and the job that you do. What if you came up with an idea that would revolutionize everything you did? While at the conference listen for ideas, watch what others are doing (or not doing), pay attention to trends, look for opportunities. A good idea will change things, a disruptive one will transform it.

Here are just a few ways to think disruptively:

1. Connect unrelated ideas. Creativity is not necessarily coming up with something out of the blue but frequently connecting two or more unrelated ideas in a way that you hadn’t done before. Maybe you see a cool app for a phone and then think of ways your company can transform your distribution channel using mobile devices.
2. Extending the thought. If a speaker were laying out a roadmap of ideas what would happen if you were to go beyond what they presented? How can you make it your own for your company?
3. Flipping an idea. I like brainstorm scenarios I’m trying to brainstorm for that are so terrible that it allows me to get to the core of the issue and then flip it. If a presenter was talking about an awful case study and warning people what not to do – I’d push the scenario to the extreme badness to find out why it mattered and then flip it and brainstorm positive solutions.

While attending a WPC you’ll have lots of opportunity to play with new ideas. As technology advances there will be opportunities for new products and services and distribution to support it. Find those opportunities and when you do push them to their extreme so that your good ideas become transformative ones.

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference is a great place to interact with a wide variety of Microsoft partners of all different sizes. If you’re exhibiting at WPC here are a few ideas on how you may get more from your participation at the conference.

1. Define your event objectives.  Some goals may be measurable – number of leads captured, sales closed, etc. Others may be less tangible – increasing awareness for your product or service, networking with attendees, building relationships, joining the WPC social media conversation, etc. Look at the goals in context with your company’s greater marketing strategy and think about how you can integrate the event’s various touch points with your other marketing efforts. Your event marketing efforts should not be done in a silo from your other programs.
   • How does your event activities fit into your sales efforts? Are the leads followed up once after the show and then discarded or do you have a CRM system to nurture potential leads over a longer period of time?
   • What are you doing for your existing customers at the event? The sales cycle does not end when your customer make the purchase. What can you do to extend the lifetime value of your customers at conferences like this?
2. Develop a mobile strategy.As Web-enabled smartphones have become commonplace, the question should not be, “Do you have a mobile strategy?” but “Why are you not building your participation around your mobile strategy?” Almost everyone coming to your booth at WPC will have a smartphone – how can you get them to engage with you?
   • Mobile engagement is much different than PC engagement. Attention spans are even shorter. Few keys for mobile offers:
     • Valuable in their mind – a 10% discount may not be a big incentive but a free white paper that resonates with their business needs may be.
     • Make it brief – don’t make them jump through a ton of hurdles to get the offer, keep it simple
     • Make it immediate – the user needs to take action right now.
   • Does your company have a mobile strategy that you can leverage at the show? Can you build an in-person event mobile process that plugs into your greater marketing efforts?
3. Be efficient at working your booth.Go back through your primary objectives for exhibiting at the show. Make sure your booth is setup well to accomplish your objectives.
   • Develop an elevator pitch. You’ve got one or two sentences to capture the attendee’s attention and pull them in your booth so you can engage with them deeper. What are your customers’ business pains? What does your product or service do to solve these pains.
   • Nurture your hot leads. When you have a great conversation with a hot lead grab their business card, write notes on the card about what you spoke about and stick it in your pocket to follow up. Don’t leave your hot leads to chance with all the bulk of leads you may capture via electronic systems or fish bowl giveaways.
   • Consider following up with your leads while still at the show. Thank them and summarize your discussion. How many vendors will do that?
4. Network with a purpose.Have a plan for your show team for networking so that it’s something that’s at the top if their mind.
   • Conquer and divide. How many times do you see a group of people with the same colored shirts sitting together at lunch or on the shuttle. Your business does not end when the booth closes or when your staff is on break. Have them break up and sit with others at meals. Shuttles are great times to strike up conversations.
   • Networking is not about selling. I’ve heard that networking is like going on a first date – if you want them to be interested in you,  you have to let them talk about themselves. It’s about getting to know them and their business. If you spend more time talking about yourself and your business they can spot a sales pitch a mile away.
   • Treat your networking leads differently than your booth leads. If you had a great conversation you’re on your way to building a relationship if there’s mutual benefit. Lots of times the person may not be an obvious prospect for your business but if you pay attention they can tell you things that may help your business in other ways. Creativity is about connecting dots that may not have been obvious and I get some of my most valuable ideas while chatting with others.
   • Check out the WPC networking resources like WPC Connect to help you connect with other partners.
5. Leverage the social fire hose.There will probably be tens of thousands of tweets coming from WPC. Come up with a plan to join the conversation. It’s not just about telling people to come to your booth – that’s advertising not social marketing.
   • Add value to the stream. Provide interesting and entertaining tidbits of information. Become a SME. If your company provides Exchange services – what value can you provide the the Exchange community to position yourself as a subject matter expert?
   • Find ways to link your company’s social media and community efforts with the WPC efforts. How can your communities benefit from your attendance at the conference?
   • If your company has a blog make a post every day providing highlights from the event. If prospects come to your site during the conference they can see that you’re providing rich content that may be valuable to them.
   • Provide unique points of view. It’s easy to tweet or retweet something that someone said but what is your POV on the topic? Do you have a unique twist on a topic that can spark different ways of viewing things?
   • Participate where the community is. Are there forums from the event site or 3rd part sites? Is there a vibrant LinkedIn community that you can share breaking news from WPC?

How we market at trade shows have been changing with the popularity of mobile, digital and social marketing tools. Start integrating these new tools with your event plans and other marketing efforts.

Do you have any other tips that have been helpful for you at events?