Traditionally, these business meetings are organized by companies for various reasons. Meetings between suppliers and sales representatives to increase the number of orders. Meetings between employees and partners for brand awareness purposes, etc.
These B2B meetings are ideal for companies looking to expand their network by setting up relevant, qualified appointments at events, trade shows, conferences, or business conventions.
But due to Covid, these meetings became less frequent at the start of the pandemic. Companies were therefore faced with the choice of either stopping these meetings or changing them.
2021 has therefore seen the democratization of business 2.0 meetings. Digital or hybrid formats allow companies to continue to fuel their business and grow—sometimes even better than before!
Accessibility and audience growth: The first important point to note is that online business meetings allow you to bring together more people and therefore generate more leads. Your audience may now be scattered throughout the United States, or even beyond. COVID-19 has also discouraged some people from traveling. The digital format allows you to bring together a wider audience without compromising the safety of your participants.
Clarity and attractiveness of the event: The second advantage concerns your audience, the people who will be able to boost your business! Creating online business meetings allows them to organize themselves in advance, see the list of relevant people attending on the day, and search by filter or area of interest. This optimizes their user experience. And creating personalized meetings with potential business partners boosts your business and commercial exchanges. It's a win-win situation.
Exhibitors also benefit: The question of advantages for exhibitors is less often asked, yet it is perhaps one of the most important. The digital format is a springboard for them! It is a communication platform that they can customize from A to Z, depending on the tools available. A platform dedicated to this type of event has a catalog of exhibitors, with a descriptive page for each one. Presentation of their catalog, highlighting videos/content with high added value, announcements of their latest news, direct contact, etc. Exhibitors can only benefit from this visibility, which is available 24 hours a day.
Data as the key to success: Of course, digital means collecting qualified data. Gone are the days of scanning QR codes from visitors to your physical stands, transferring this unstructured data afterwards (when it is done) and organizing/qualifying it all by your teams. With a "digital booth," it is now possible to collect data easily: how many people visited your page, how many requested an appointment, which content/offers worked best, which keywords they used to find you, etc. All this information can be found directly in your back office, in just one click. Presenting the ROI of your event will be a breeze!
A low-carbon event: Last but not least, digital events allow you to limit your carbon footprint. No crowds to transport (which accounts for 80% of the emissions of a physical event), no food waste, no need to heat rooms, etc. The planet thanks you!
With AppCraft's CRM platform, bring all your tools together in one place and create a seamless event experience for your attendees, guests, and exhibitors. You can seamlessly manage registrations, attendees, and content management.
As this format develops, we have identified several best practices to adopt in order to ensure the success of this type of meeting. We also provide you with the 7 keys to success combined with our action points below to ensure the success of your business meetings.
• Ensure you develop good communication upstream: relevant channels, event visibility, easy registration and customer journey so as not to discourage the most cautious, a promise (to be kept!) to deliver high value-added content, etc.
• The option of pre-event lead qualification before the event : It is possible to pre-qualify your leads ahead of the event so that you only offer 1-to-1 or 1-to-many meetings that are relevant to your audience. This can be done via phone calls by your teams or one of our teams, or via the registration form by asking participants to indicate their preferences and expectations.
• Let your participants personalize their experience: ask them what topics they would like to discuss at the event, and recommend appropriate sessions/workshops/people based on their answers. These recommendations can be made automatically with our solution! Like YouTube, our algorithm recommends the most relevant sessions/content for each of your participants based on the interests they indicated beforehand and/or their content consumption on the day of the event.
• Get your exhibitors involved: A well-stocked exhibitor page promises more visits and therefore more meetings/contracts. To encourage them to fill out their page, you can send them reminders and tutorials ahead of the event from your Back Office. Our team will be happy to provide you with ready-made templates to make this task easier.
• Create short sessions: Don't count on 1-hour live streams! We advise our clients to hold 20-minute sessions, punctuated by relevant interactive activities and breaks to give your audience time to clear their heads between appointments.
• The end of your live sessions does not mean the end of your event: After your event, digital technology makes it easy for you to follow up with your participants. Collect their feedback, follow up with them on potential missed opportunities to meet, and edit your replays so that they include only what is necessary.
Our tool will enable you to organize each stage of your event in a simple and personalized way, thanks to our team who are available to set up your event. This will simplify the event organization process.
The InVivo Group has decided to organize its Live Expo 2021, showcasing three of its brands: Gamm Vert, Jardiland, and Nalod's.
Each brand had its own dedicated platform so that exhibitors (suppliers) and visitors (brand stores) could meet.
This event had two objectives: to increase brand visibility among stores and to create opportunities for business meetings.
All the details and a video of the event can be found here
If you would like to know more about this type of meeting, please feel free to contact us usingthe contact form available here, at hello@appcraft.fr or on 09.72.51.22.90. ☎️
