Tradeshow thermometer check

The future of tech tradeshows is suddenly in the spotlight. Apple announced it was pulling out of Macworld after January’s event, but Apple wasn’t the only one to pull the plug on plans to exhibit: Adobe, Google and Belkin also followed suit. CES, one of the industry’s largest, is experiencing a dip in registered exhibitors as well. The reality is that tech conventions and tradeshows are costly Marketing endeavors. While established companies have more financial resources to afford tech events, tech startups need to be much more judicious with their spending and marketing dollars—particularly during the ongoing economic recession. To weather the economic storm, new Web 2.0 tools and services are serving as an affordable option for tech startups and larger companies; (online video, podcasts, screencasts, blogging, micro-blogging, social networks, etc.) to use for launching new companies and their product/services. One of our clients, for instance, has chosen to cut back on tradeshows and sponsorships, preferring to apply a branded webinar as one ongoing tool to get in front of a more targeted audience. This example lends weight to Robert Scoble’s argument that social media tools are impacting tradeshows.

However, while not an absolute requirement, tech conventions and events can help maximize the marketing and PR efforts behind the launch of a company, new product, service, or a big announcement, because it provides a venue for the company’s spokespeople to meet face-to-face with select reporters, bloggers, and analysts to articulate their story, show off their product or service, and begin building relationships with select opinion leaders. Additionally, tech events provide an opportunity for company executives to meet in-person with prospective customers and investors as well as network with potential partners. For the companies that do decide to invest in exhibiting at one of the bigger shows (i.e.: CES, GSMA, CTIA Wireless, etc.), they also need to plan months in advance and execute flawlessly in order to maximize their ability to rise above the noise. So how should you assess the value in tradeshows? Many of our clients are re-examining the audience fit, attendee interest and ROI. Is the audience qualified and interested in the technologies and solutions being offered?

Tech tradeshows are not dying and should remain on the table for companies to consider as part of their overall Marketing plan. However, just like anything these days, companies have to be highly selective in how they are investing their marketing dollars for every tech tradeshow they are considering exhibiting at or sponsoring. Tradeshow organizers would be wise to consider narrowing the scope of their event in order to attract a more highly targeted audience and appeal to tech companies that must pick and choose carefully for the foreseeable future.

Amazon makes smart PR move with crowdsourcing of holiday product reviews

Amazon issued this press release announcing its new “holiday customer review team.” The idea from Amazon is simple: appoint holiday product reviewers from its very own customers to compile lists of their favorite items in order to help other shoppers pick out that perfect gift.  The team is comprised of Amazon’s top reviewers selected for their expertise and interests based on the number and breadth of products each reviewed.  In addition to reviewing personally-selected items, Amazon’s review team were given early access to test some of the top Black Friday products for free in exchange for their reviews. 

It’s a clever idea overall; crowdsourcing that taps customers to create user-generated content in the form of product reviews to help shoppers decide on their purchases.  Some Web 2.0 startups have done phenomenally well applying this concept, including Yelp, Digg and Wikipedia.  Consumers are increasingly comfortable researching and shopping online and having access to straightforward, unbiased product reviews helps guide their selection process.  It’s also a great PR move by Amazon to recognize their most active customers who post reviews and involve them at a deeper level within their business. Amazon is building and leveraging a grassroots program to effectively connect with and expand its online community. 

Yet Amazon still needs to be mindful that it doesn’t try to sanitize or unduly influence the reviewers for any group of products, brand or manufacturer. Candy-coated reviews won’t work for consumers who have honed their screening capabilities to spot biases or questionable reviews wherever they may be (ie: TripAdvisor). If Amazon can proactively require its reviewers to make any full disclosures this will help keep the quality of these reviews in check.  Kudos to Amazon for its crowdsourcing product reviews initiative. It’s forward-thinking as well as a smart PR move to boot.

Early and often -- focus on new features or customers?

For any startup looking to gain a strong foothold in the market, customer traction is the name of the game.  All too often though, many Web 2.0 startups focus instead on pushing a product or service to market that they built without involving beta customers beforehand.

Innovative ideas need to incorporate early user feedback and testing and that shouldn’t mean just before the product or service is “baked.” Working with beta customers should start at the onset in order to really understand what customers’ needs are and reiterating the product or service to win their nod of approval. Since early stage, tech startups have such limited resources, the startups early version of their product/service should focus on solving the most critical customer pain points: the product/service has to be “a must have” and not — “a nice to have.”  This can be best achieved by focusing on beta customers — early and often.  Happy customers will become referenceable customers and your biggest champions.  In their words, they can best articulate why the product/service solved their problems and why it was of value.  Other prospective customers will self-select by identifiying with the same problem/pain points and move to seek out the solution.

Being on the PR side of things, we still see far too many Web 2.0 companies, as well as established companies, not involving their customers soon enough or often enough before they roll out some “beta” offering (or even worse launch a new product).  From the PR side, the best advice we can offer is not to push out new whiz bang features early and often but instead to work closely with customers, early and often, in order to build that better mousetrap.

Being a great moderator

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Over the weekend the blogsphere was on fire with the unfortunate story about a disaster of an interview between Sarah Lacy and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Train wreck seems to be how many have described it. We do feel for the interviewer and the public lambasting that she's received. In case you missed it, Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine and Dave McClure of 500hats blog weigh in with good summaries. One of the team at Ignite was the event chair at the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab's (VLAB) February panel on Multi-Platform Social networks that featured a fantastic panel including representatives from RockYou, Social Media, Google's OpenSocial, Bebo & Mogenthaler Venture Partners. The moderator of this panel was Jeremiah Owyang, Managing Director, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, and blogger of Web Strategist, who did an absolutely stellar job. The moderator came well prepared, was extremely knowledgeable about the space and very adeptly engaged the panel and audience of about 350 people with solid questions, interjecting humor from time to time. Jeremiah did a great thing that we haven't seen too many moderators do; he took the extra step of surveying his readers in advance of the event on what they wanted to hear from these panelists. What a great move! In fact, Jeff Jarvis' piece echoes the very recommendation that is part of Jeremiah's standard practice.

For those of you out there planning to moderate a panel or do a one-on-one interview with an industry heavyweight, say Steve Jobs :-), take heart in Jeremiah's best practices on how to be a great moderator. Earlier this year, Jeremiah wrote a comprehensive piece on this which should be a helpful best practices guide for moderating. www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/01/30/how-to-successfully-moderate-a-conference-panel-a-comprehensive-guide/

I 'm sure by closely following his guidelines, one can avert the unfortunate situation that might have been prevented if the focus was more on the attendees and keeping their interests first and foremost at hand.