Publishers and Event Producers Compete Online

A couple weeks ago I met with one of the largest B2B event producers in the world to talk about their online media efforts. As we started talking over surprisingly good hotel pastries and coffee, they explained that their primary goal was to increase attendance and exhibitors to their events. They wanted to explore how they could best use online media to achieve that goal. This company has web sites and some monthly email newsletters to support their in-person events, but as we talked it became clear that their biggest opportunity was to take their amazing event experience and community and move it online as much as possible.

A significant problems event producers face is that the event happens only once per year or even once every 2-3 years. This company needed to extend the equity of their in-person brand online and give their community a place where they could connect and interact continually in-between the physical events. Why should they do this?

1. Their event brands would be continually in front of their attendees and advertisers as an information resource. A good, low-cost marketing tool for enouraging repeat attendance and exhibitors.
2. The social networking and resources of the online community would draw in other business professionals from their markets that do not yet attend or exhibit at their tradeshows. The online experience can help lead them to attend the in-person event and be an effective, low-cost marketing tool to grow the physical events — especially internationally.
3. The online community could itself could beome a new revenue stream through advertising, sponsorships, webcasts, etc.

What really struck me about this conversation, however, is how similar the topics were to those I often talk about with publishers. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising, but on the flight home I had one of those “ah-ha” moments where it really crystalized: today’s publishers and event producers are converging and competing online. Let’s look at it…

• Publishers are already well-established in producing webcasts and generating millions of dollars in event revenue each year. If done right, these directly compete with conference sessions like you would get at a trade show, roadshow, or even paid conferences.
• Publishers are re-creating the networking experience of in-person events through discussion forums and other online social networking tools that allow the community to get to know each other and interact freely.
• Publishers are event launching full-blown virtual trade shows. I’ll admit I haven’t been a big fan of these in the past, but recently the technology has advanced significantly and I know of several publishers that are doing excellent business in these virtual trade shows in various markets (not just tech).
• Event producers are realizing that they must start producing content on a regular basis to keep the attention of their market and on-going relevance of their brand. Many are starting to hire magazine-like editorial teams to accomplish this.
• Event producers are sending out regular email newsletters that contain much more than their event information and promotion … they contain important, timely, and relevant industry information, news, and other editorial content.
• Both want to reach out internationally and the “world wide web” by its very nature and definition can have world-wide reach (not as easy as it may sound, but that’s a topic for another post another day).

Publishers are becoming event producers online, event producers are becoming publishers online, and both event want to become THE brand and key online resource where their market turns for industry information and where the community “hangs out” to discuss issues, help each other, learn about new techniques and products, and interact socially and professionally. It’s very similar to what’s happening in local news media. Local TV, radio (especially talk radio), and newspapers are all converging and trying to become the online destination for local news and entertainment in the regions they serve. B2B publishers and B2B event producers are (or soon will be) experiencing the very same convergance and competition online.