Virtual exhibitors often ask us to review their virtual booths and give them recommendations about the content they have displayed on their virtual booths.
What we have observed is that in the clamor to ‘go virtual’, marketing professionals who are responsible for displaying messages on their virtual booth tend to forget the main goal of the virtual booth. Let me reiterate it here: The raison d'être for your virtual booth is to get a buyer to contact you in the manner most convenient to such buyer. Even if that means a telephone call. (Feel free to replace 'buyer' with 'prospect', 'lead', 'job candidate' or whichever specialized category to which your audience belongs.)
It boggles my mind as to why a company would go to great lengths to try to hide the phone number as a way to contact them on their website. That same approach seems to be common in planning content on the virtual booth. While your company’s logo and the cool tag-lines may be great to display on your virtual booth, if you are serious about making connections through your virtual booth, do not for even a moment think that it is old fashioned to expect online visitors to make a phone call.
Instant messaging, text messaging, SMS, skype calls, a twitter message – all of these are fine. However, there is absolutely no harm in displaying a specially set up phone number – a hotline, for your online visitors to call decision makers at your company.
During your virtual trade show, try giving your prospective buyers a refreshingly new experience. Allow visitors to cut through the corporate red-tape by setting up a hotline with your company CEO or a VP of Marketing or Sales. Display the phone number prominently on your virtual booth. You might even use some variation of the phrase common in infomercials … “Our operators are standing by to take your call! Call now!” That is because, in a virtual trade show, you have the power to attend to your online visitors no matter where you or they are located. It’s a promise you can make and keep. All you need is a phone that works.
Now, one can get fancy with technology relating to phones as well, but we’ll save that discussion for another time.
