Redefining Distance to Market Products or Services

The recent terrorist attacks here in the US have caused many
companies and individuals to rethink how they want to market to and
work with others. As a result, web-enabled presentations and or
collaborations are finally coming of age – the technology works with
a minimum of hassle, it's an efficient way to give marketing
presentations, hold meetings, provide training and do product
demonstrations. The cost savings can be significant, especially when
contrasted with all of the burdened costs of holding conventional
meetings; i.e. travel, hotel, transportation, facilities and "time
out of the office issues." Here is a quick primer on some baseline
issues to consider when weighing the effectiveness of virtual
marketing presentations and meetings.

1)There are a broad number of vendors, although the "virtual
presentation and meeting" market segment has undergone consolidation
in the last few years. I'd recommend assessing these four market
leaders: www.webex.com (well established with diversified terms of
services), www.placeware.com (corporate focused), www.centra.com
(provides a good client plug in that enables Voice over IP ("VOIP")
communications, www.raindance.com (emphasizes teleconferencing).

2)PC configuration, Internet access and firewall issues all need to
be considered when your assessing the effectiveness of this process
and technology. Port settings need to be "tuned" or optimized, the PC
must have multimedia capabilities if your using VOIP, just about any
speed of internet connection will work, but the experience for the
attendee can vary depending on the connection speeds and how "heavy"
your presentation is with graphics.

3)Web presentations offer a lower cost model versus traditional
presentations or meetings, but there are burdened costs for web-
enabled marketing – phone conferencing can be anywhere from $.15-35
per minute per user, presentation uploads for a standard power point
presentation (which is the defacto app for virtual presentations),
can cost $10-30. per presentation, costs per attendee can vary
tremendously but average $50-500. per session, depending upon the
number of users.

4)One of the most expensive parts of virtual meetings is always the
teleconferencing component. All of the market leaders have some VOIP
component (voice over IP) but most are not publicizing this
technology or service, as they don't want to cannibalize a
significant contribution to their revenue streams. One exception is
Centra – they are offering VOIP integrated services with their
standard web presentations or meetings. The audio quality is good,
analogous to voice quality of a standard cell phone call – but there
is a client download (small under 250K) to deal with and you must
have a multi-media enabled PC.

5)Some web-enabled presentation challenges include the need to keep
people involved – you can do this easily by leveraging the chat
capabilities, dynamic polling, and standard Q&A components built into
the application. The higher their interest level (as in real world
meetings) the better your meeting or presentation will be.

6)Marketing presentations can be easily archived and made available
to others on a 24/7 basis – this archiving can include the standard
presentation, enhanced with video or audio components, depending on
the sophistication of your presentation. Be prepared to pay an extra
charge for this – but the marketing ROI can be significant,
especially when you factor in how little most companies charge for an
archiving service versus your front end costs.

7) Virtual marketing enables a whole set of web-enabled processes –
you will have the ability to easily capture your prospect/customer's
e-mail address and standard contact points via a registration
process, involve them and capture preferences via polling in your
presentations and "push" follow up communications during your
presentation/meeting or later. But, it's very important to include
standard "privacy" statements in your materials and adhere to them as
you move forward through your business processes.

8) How does video conferencing impact your assessments of web-enabled
presentations or collaborations? This depends on your budget, number
of people attending the presentation, presenter and attendee
locations and other intangible that are specific to your business. In
general, video conferencing works better for very small (under five
people) presentations or meetings, due to some of the inherent
challenges of this medium.