Marketing Green has an interesting perspective on how social media and “Web 2.0″ technologies can help companies move their green agendas forward. I’m pretty excited to see the dots being connected between corporate responsibility and the opportunities the interwebs provide for engaging customers.
Web 2.0 enable consumers to participate, share and collaborate online like never before. And whether you are a B2B or B2C marketer, you probably have noticed that consumers are embracing these technologies not only to participate but to control and dictate when, where and how they want to be communicated to.
For companies that host large meetings and events, this trend presents a few good opportunities to be a bit greener.
- Attendee management and registration systems are already commonplace. Use them.
- Build a portal that provides content for attendees to prepare for specific discussions and topics.
- Bring invited attendees into the agenda planning process.
- Discontinue pre-show mailers and ask sponsors/suppliers to create web-based email blasts or advertisements that can be placed on your portal/registration site.
- Create a place on the portal that is restricted to your crew – keep updated run-of-show docs, agendas, inventories, menus etc – so everyone always has the latest and greatest – kind of like that big-arse binder you carry around all the time – but lighter.
- This is a tough one – discourage presenters from bringing handouts – instead post soft versions online.
- Do your post-show surveys online instead of handing out paper in every breakout and general session. Internet kiosks onsite are a great way to do this – enable your attendees to access their emails, etc – but force them through a welcome page that asks a few questions about your event before they can get to their stuff.
Realizing that change is difficult for some (most) – get comfortable with the idea that most people in the corporate world are using social media and web services in both their professional and personal lives. It’s probably going to be harder on you than on them to get used a different way of doing things, but worth it!
As always, there’s a lot to think about and a lot of opportunities to capture more information AND be green. Thoughts?
Great ideas for moving with the Greening of Tradeshows. Here is the story of a show manager taking one of your ideas and making it better.
“This is a tough one – discourage presenters from bringing handouts – instead post soft versions online. ”
Last week a client came to us with a great idea. She wanted to discourage EXHIBITORS from bringing handouts. WOW! So instead of simply telling them that the earth would be a better place if they put thier handouts (literature) online she asked us to help her create a page where exhibitors could post a digital version of their literature. A link to this page would be sent to all attendees scanned in the booth (my company rents lead retrieval equipment to exhibitors) so whenever the attendee wants to view a piece of literature from an exhibitor they just click through a link we send them and they see the name of the exhibitor and the pdf of the handout. Cool idea for a show coming up in November, I’ll let you know how is works out!
Thanks Michael! Definitely let us know how it works out. Change is always difficult – especially for sales – where so many people put faith in the idea that a brochure will be handed up the buying food chain and make a big difference in the sales process. I believe that truly interested buyers will go the extra mile to download information – and will appreciate something in digital form. Guess we’ll see!