No Place Like Home

Rising costs and dwindling budgets are making it hard for business marketers to attend and run events. So instead of going on the road, many companies are getting on the Web. Direct talked with Don Best, marketing director for virtual events provider Unisfair, about the pros and cons of hosting online gatherings.

DIRECT: Are clients turning to virtual events mainly because of the cost factor?

BEST: Cost does play a big part. One of our clients completely eliminated doing road shows in favor of one virtual event. They said it was 50% to 80% less expensive. Another client is in the process of doing a 15-city road show. They took some of the poorer-performing cities out [of the schedule] and augmented [their coverage] with a virtual event. They’ll still have the intimacy with the 100 or 200 people in those cities, but another 500 or 1,000 people who couldn’t attend in those areas can now attend virtually. Another large client had a corporate mandate to reduce event spending by 20% this year and 50% next, so now they do sales and marketing training virtually.

DIRECT: What virtual events are most popular with particular clients?

BEST: For media clients, going into the virtual events business is a natural extension. That was our sweet spot up until two years ago. And now the enterprise companies that sponsored those events are starting to do events on their own. Media clients love to do trade shows and job fairs, while enterprise clients use us for demand generation and partner showcases, as well as internal training.

DIRECT: Are there certain virtual events that work better than others?

BEST: It really depends. The technology is there to make it work. It’s not really the type of event but more the effort that goes into the event. In the physical world you can rent a convention center for three days. But if you don’t dress up the hall and have the content and the speakers, you won’t have a good event. Out of the 500 events we’ve run, sure