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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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
About The Author
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and
marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, a results-driven
marketing services company providing proprietary services to
clients encompassing startups to public companies.
Lee@intelective.com
Lee@intelective.com
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