For anyone who's been to a real trade show, virtual trade shows look much the same. The speakers are there, the booths, the sponsors—it's just missing the three dimensions that come with an in-person event. That's the premise that Forbes is working on. And the New York-based media empire is finding that, indeed, its iConferences are working.
Matt Schifrin, vice president and investments editor of Forbes Media says the company started with an investor-oriented conference in May 2008 and found it to be such a success that in fall 2008, Forbes hired Chicago-based, privately-branded virtual event provider InXpo to host and has stepped up its event production. Three investor-oriented iConferences have brought in more than 34,000 registrants and the first event targeting advisors, held June 29 and 30, saw 2,000 invitation-only conferees.
Schifrin spoke with Publishing Executive Inbox on why virtual shows make such a good fit for Forbes.
INBOX: The iConferences work as lead-generation tactics for sponsors; do they work the same way for Forbes?
MATT SCHIFRIN: They work in many different ways for Forbes. Certainly lead generation is part of it, and it's not just for subscription prospects. But I think that these iConferences show our readers, customers, sponsors that Forbes is on the leading edge of technology and that we are very innovative in the ways we interact with our customers and constituents. ...
INBOX: Does Forbes use the iConference as a point-of-sale, both for itself and for its sponsors?
SCHIFRIN: Yeah, absolutely. When we do our retail iConferences, we mostly market investment advisories, investment newsletters, and it was very much a point-of-sale. Typically, we'd offer free trials of our newsletters. And, certainly, for our sponsors, they want to engage the attendees who come to these iConferences. And for many of them, it's about lead generation and, ultimately, that can become a customer down the road. ...
INBOX: What prompted Forbes to believe that iConferences were necessary?
SCHIFRIN: We had gone to a lot of physical investor conferences in places like Orlando and Las Vegas and San Francisco. And it was always a significant expense; not only in dollars, but also in man hours. And the way I looked at it is that oftentimes, we would participate in conferences and we'd lend our brand to the conference promoter. We would help them gain access to our audience. ... And I never felt like there was a huge ROI. ... We have a very small staff that conducts these iConferences. And so now, all of the sudden, I could get much more benefit and much more return on my investment by holding these iConferences myself. ...
INBOX: How does Forbes promote the iConferences?
SCHIFRIN: Mostly, we do it all ourselves. We do it through lots of e-mail marketing to our constituent list. Whoever is a speaker or a partner or a sponsor will tend to promote it to their audiences. We also put display ads up on Forbes.com, and we had an advertisement in Forbes magazine for the last one. ...
INBOX: How does Forbes follow up with registrants and attendees?
SCHIFRIN: We do a survey almost immediately after it's over. ... We want to get that user feedback right away in terms of what we did right, what we could do better and what our audience would like to see in the next iConference. ... Obviously, if somebody's opted in for marketing, we will send them relevant promotions after the event. Lots of people who come to Forbes events are entitled to certain special subscriptions to some of our special investment advisories that we offer to anyone who attends. So we definitely keep our touchpoints on with our audience.
INBOX: How do the iConferences enable Forbes to promote and augment its content?
SCHIFRIN: Well, it's a nice, exclusive way to showcase our expertise and our innovation in presenting content. So what will typically happen is we'll have some people come to our show, they'll love the interaction and, by the way, we typically keep our shows up, on demand, for two months after the event. ... And then, oftentimes, we will excerpt some of our iConference content and showcase it on Forbes.com, which has a huge audience, much wider than any one iConference. So we'll do a video interview for an iConference that will last a half hour [to] 40 minutes, and we'll excerpt a few four-minute or five-minute segments and put them on Forbes.com as a video interview. ... These events are so well-liked by attendees; they're so sticky. ... And by sticky, I mean people spend hours at these things. And, if you know anything about the Web and Web content, if you can get somebody to stay on your page for five minutes, that's a huge thing. I mean, people spend hours at these conferences, online. And that is very attractive, not only to the content presenters, but to the sponsors ... This last one was two days. And while you don't have to spend every minute glued to the screen, people still spend hours and hours on our events. ... These are tough times and you can't send five people down to Atlanta for that conference anymore. ... And so this is great; you can have your booth at the Forbes virtual conference and everyone's still in the office. And, frankly, you can multi-task while you're at the conference, if you're a booth rep.
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