Not long ago, I wrote about a new marketing opportunity from Unisfair in a piece I called Second Life Meets WebEx. The concept looked promising, but now Unisfair has contacted me with a preview of a study they comissioned to show the business value of their offering. The results are very interesting.
Before looking at the study results, we need to keep in mind that Unisfair has an obvious vested interest in showing studies that support what it is doing—they might not have tipped me off to a negative study. But the study, conducted by research and consulting firm The FactPoint Group based on 200 Unisfair events, fits with what I would have expected, because Unisfair’s offering looks like a very promising way to reach target markets.
Trade shows and other in-person events make up the lion’s share of many B2B marketing budgets, but the study shows why you might want to consider a virtual event. While costing a fraction of what live events do, they deliver nearly 350 qualified leads (on average) from events averaging over 1,500 attendees.
The news is not all good—about half the folks that register for virtual events do not show up when the time comes. This would be appalling for an in-person event, but the low cost and far greater capacity of virtual events makes this much less important. It’s no different than how appalled we were when we found out how many people abandoned their online shopping carts. It’s OK if huge numbers are no-shows as long as you get the return on your investment you need. Virtual events’ low costs make that nearly a certainty.
If you haven’t checked out how a virtual event can drive strong leads at a fraction of the cost, maybe this study will give you the impetus to check it out.
