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Growing Your Meeting In CyberSpace
As increasing numbers of people
search for information on
the Internet, it becomes more imperative to have a
compelling Website to promote
and support your meetings.
Here is my list of “The Seven
Most Important Things You can
do Online”:
1.
Identify all your Online
Markets
It’s a common mistake to focus
your attention on the
obvious target audience for your meetings site – the
potential attendees.
But many other types of visitor
may find your site, and
it’s important to consider whether they’re important
to you, how you want to
engage them, and what outcomes you’d like to achieve
with them.
Visitors to your meetings
Website might include:
- past / potential attendees
- suppliers / vendors / exhibitors / sponsors / insurers
- Board members / employees / volunteers
- content seekers
- media
- job seekers
- competition
“Content seekers” is the term I
use for members of the
public who may not be regular customers or members of
your organization, but who
find you through a keyword search because they’re
interested in the content of
your meeting. If you admit the public to your
events, this is an important
audience who might require different communications
from your regular
participants.
If you’re looking for publicity,
don’t forget the
importance of a press center. This should be
very easy to find, and should
contain all the information that a reporter would
need to cover your event –
they’re usually under tight deadlines and will really
appreciate this.
I include “competition” in this
list because many people
have asked me whether it’s dangerous to put too much
good information on your
Website “in case the competition sees it”. My
(somewhat obvious) answer? “If
your competition can’t see it, neither can the people
you’re looking to
attract!”
2.
Set your Goals
This sounds self-evident, but is
often overlooked. You
can’t evaluate your return on investment (see #7
later) if you don’t know what
you want to achieve. What will be your measures
of success for this site in
terms of your meeting? What are the key
outcomes that you want – registrations,
exhibitors, media attention, ongoing discussion
forums, etc.
Also consider the expenses of
the site against any
potential savings – for instance, if you’re
implementing online registration,
you want to be satisfied that your system can replace
(and hopefully improve on)
your real-world processes in a cost-effective
manner.
3.
Make it About Them, not
You
Your site should be
written from your visitors’ point of view, not
yours. Does your meeting
description page clearly recognize why the reader
might be there – what’s in it
for them to attend your event, and why they should
care? What are the problems
or issues that they might have, and how will
participating in this meeting
address them?
Include some testimonials from
previous attendees giving
clear examples of how they’ve benefited from this
event in the past. Third
party endorsements are worth far more than your own
promotional text. They
should be spread throughout your site, not relegated
to a separate page (because
few visitors will go to it).
4. Make it Easy to do Business With You
It’s all too easy to throw
online roadblocks into the paths
of your visitors, perhaps without even realizing
it. A couple of my favorite
examples of this are:
- Site search engines that return “no results found”, making the visitor feel foolish. Clearly they’re looking for something, so offer to have a representative call them – or provide further help with your search process.
- Asking for registration details prematurely, before you’ve created enough trust with a new visitor. Privacy issues and concern about spam are major barriers to volunteering personal information.
5.
Every Page of your Site should Have a
Strategy
Whatever the outcomes that you
want from your site, you
need to ask for them. Too many Web pages end
weakly, with no clear calls to
action. Don’t make your visitors have to work
to decide what to do next – they
won’t! Every page on your site should have a
strategy – invite the visitor to
interact with you, or go to the next page, but make
it easy and obvious.
So, at the appropriate place in
each page (or at several
points in the page), include a link to the
appropriate form - “register for this
meeting”, “ask for an exhibitor packet” – or whatever
invitation may be
relevant.
6.
Practice Multi-Channel Integrated Marketing
Offline marketing activities,
such as postcard campaigns
can be extremely useful in driving traffic to your
Website. Think of all your
marketing tactics as inter-related, and not as
separate.
Don’t rely on search engines to
bring traffic to you –
there are many other ways to create online
buzz:
- paid advertising – e-zine sponsorship / banners / pay-per-click searches
- public relations and coverage on other sites
- social networking sites
- placing articles by your experts and speakers on sites and in publications read by your target audiences
- and of course, targeted e-mail marketing to your existing mailing lists
7.
Measure your Success
The keys to evaluating the
return on investment in your
site, to improving it, and often to further business
development ideas can be
found in your Web traffic reports. These show
what visitors are looking for,
how long they spend on the site, where they go, where
they leave, and what rate
of response you get to the various calls to
action.
These reports can be daunting –
a mass of figures, graphs
and URL’s. But I’d strongly suggest that
someone in your organization should
understand them. Otherwise, you’re shooting in
the dark with your Web
investment.
© Philippa Gamse. All rights reserved.
Byline
Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is a Web strategy
consultant and professional
speaker. Check out her free tipsheet for 23 ideas to
promote your Website at http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html.
Philippa can be reached at (831) 325-3307.
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