Digital Solutions for Medical Meetings

Reinventing Your Medical Meeting with Digital Solutions

Melinda KendallVice President, Marketing Solutions

Agenda• The current landscape for medical meetings• Digital tools for medical meetings

– Major social networks– Audience acquisition tools– Video technologies– Digital event platforms– Mobile applications for events– Virtual events– White label social networks

• Summary and considerations

Regulatory Landscape• Regulations put new restrictions on giveaways and

medical convention sponsorships– PhRMA, AdvaMed, State, Compliance Officers

• Sponsorship budgets repurposed• Forces innovation

– Better marketing practices– Emphasis on education, demonstration– Measurement– Creativity will be rewarded

“The Great Recession”

The current economic landscape:– Housing bubble/mortgage meltdown– Consumer confidence/Jobless recovery

Results in:– Reduced travel and training budgets– Reduced marketing budgets– Declining attendance and exhibitor participation

Challenges lead to opportunities

Incorporating digital tools can counteract today’s climate of budget cuts, travel restrictions and increased regulation:– New categories of sponsorships

• PhRMA “friendly”– Leverage emerging technology to facilitate

engagement– Extend the reach and life of an event

Digital tools are gaining traction for events

Source: Survey of Associations’ Use of Digital Tools and Social Media for Events, Champion Exposition Services, November 2009

Digital tools are gaining traction for events

Source: Survey of Associations’ Use of Digital Tools and Social Media for Events, Champion Exposition Services, November 2009

Major social networks

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter•Empower your community to evangelize about your event •Harness the power of your community's friend & colleague networks through syndication

33%

48%

52%

52%

56%

59%

67%

74%

How associations leverage Facebook to maximize events’ potential

Post about event activities

Leveraging group members’ broadcasts of their activities to their friends

Encouraging group members to invite their friends to become group member

Creating buzz during the event

Send messages or emails to all members

Post event photos

Host forums/discussion threads

Post event videos

Source: Champion’s Survey of Association’s Use of Digital Tools and Social Media for Events, November 2009

Share and syndicate

• Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter• Extend your reach virally to your network’s network

Prescriptions for using social networks

• Primarily helps in audience expansion• Build out content, photos, links back to your

page• Create event page • Share and syndicate content back to

members’ networks

How associations are leveraging Twitter to support events

Source: Champion’s Survey of Association’s Use of Digital Tools and Social Media for Events, November 2009

How associations are leveraging Twitter to support events

Source: Champion’s Survey of Association’s Use of Digital Tools and Social Media for Events, November 2009

Followers: 850Following: 785

Tweets: 3,261

Followers: 850Following: 785

Tweets: 3,261

Event hashtag: #sla2010

Event hashtag: #sla2010

850 Followers785 Following850 Followers785 Following

Hashtags makes it easy for people to search and see the discussions

Hashtags makes it easy for people to search and see the discussions#ahima09

Session hashtags enable session-specific questions/posts to be displayed in session rooms for real time Q/A

Session hashtags enable session-specific questions/posts to be displayed in session rooms for real time Q/A

Moderating Live Feeds

Prescriptions for using Twitter

• Create and promote event hashtag• Consider session-specific hashtags (start with a

keynote) • Designating community members as official

conference reporters• Use your subject matter experts and thought leaders• Create a widget to scroll their tweets from the

association website.

Onsite engagementAudience acquisition

Twitter for exhibitor marketing

• Broadcast exhibitor announcements in Twitter

• Can establish criteria and review:

Launch must happen at event, etc.

100% 38% 0% 28% 53% 47%

Major social networks used across the event cycle

Pre-show attendee marketing

Pre-show exhibitor marketing

Pre-show speaker recruitment/ content development

Onsite at event

Post-show engagement with attendees

To engage with non-attendees

Facebook

75% 43% 7% 57% 50% 46%Twitter

84% 52% 4% 28% 52% 52%LinkedIn

Source: Champion’s Survey of Association’s Use of Digital Tools and Social Media for Events, November 2009

What’s new in audience acquisition?Email Marketing 2.0:

1. Video embeds: video clips in the body of emails

2. Viral sharing tools within the body of the email

3. List Sharing: Send show invites to exhibitors’ internal prospect and customer databases without requiring the exhibitor to provide the show with the database itself

Pre-eventExtends your reach Post-event follow-up

Social video sharing platformseasily post video of events, creating buzz and driving traffic and attendance.

Video management platformsTurn-key systems for integrating video, custom video players, video category navigation, video search, user-generated video and more into website

Streaming channel toolsBroadcast live/archived keynotes or sessions online with live chat feedback from audience

Video tools

Video for attendee marketing

Video for enhancing onsite experience

Video as a marketing tool for exhibitors

Thermo Fisher Scientific produced a series of “Innovation Minutes” videos from their PittCon 2009 Exhibit to evangelize new products and innovations.

Video for extending the reach of event: pre, post and onsite

PhRMA-friendly sponsorship ideas

• Short-form video content that runs in Exhibit halls and hotel lobbies

• Webcast series or online broadcast of keynote sessions

• Live “streaming” surgery broadcast or demonstration• Virtual “field trip” to hospital, clinic or research

facility

• Attendee: Personalize, Plan & Connect•personal show agendas•personalized show floor walking maps•meeting-setup, interest matching

• Exhibitors: Lead generation & engagement•Capture registrant’s requests to be contacted•Capture buying behaviors which signal buying interests•Set up meetings

Digital event platforms

Digital event platforms

•Personalized floor maps

•Meeting set-up

•Virtual tote-bag (exhibitor collateral, session material)

•Personalize schedule builder/planner

•Built-in search engines

- Recommendations engines

- Product category browse tools

Who’s using them? And how?

Mobile solutions allow you to engage with attendees before, during and after your meeting via:•SMS/text messaging

•Mobile applications that put your event on a smartphone

Mobile solutions for events

SMS/text messaging: how it’s used

• Pre-event– Alert attendees to session changes/additions

• Audience engagement– Facilitate conference Q&A– Audience polling/results– Sponsored contests, promotional giveaways

• Post-event– Send thank you messages after the event

Mobile applications

• Mobile versions of event website• Mobile versions of show guide• iPhone Apps

Your event on your smartphone

Interactive, 3-D immersive environments with content assets focused mainly on video and PDFs

Purpose:

• Alternative or replacement for physical event

• Complement physical event (hybrid)

• Online education

Virtual event platforms

Where in event strategy does virtual fit?

Source: Survey of Associations’ Use of Digital Tools and Social Media for Events, Champion Exposition Services, November 2009

Virtual event features using or planning to use

Source: Survey of Associations’ Use of Digital Tools and Social Media for Events, Champion Exposition Services, November 2009

Virtual events: PhRMA friendly sponsorship opportunities

• Extend the reach of event–and offer key exhibitors a chance to extend their investment

• Accessible to people not able to attend live event• Adds virtual content sponsorships

– Virtual labs, educational broadcasts—live and prerecorded• CME approved

•A proprietary social network, branded by you•Full social network features

• Forums, blogs, photo sharing, comments, activity streams•Deep user involvement

• Rate content, comment on content, and contribute content• Crowd-sourcing surfaces valuable content through activity streams like most

highly rated, most frequently viewed, most shared, etc.

White label social networks

Attendee marketing

Exhibitor marketing

Year-round engagement

Social aggregation vendors• Create a social mashup of registrants’ Twitter updates and intermix them into one stream

Social Aggregation Tools

Summary & considerations

Summary• Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are leveraged across the event

cycle• Twitter and SMS/Texting for facilitating QA• Email Marketing 2.0: List-sharing/exhibitor database tools• Video: leverage for attendee and exhibitor marketing• Digital event platforms facilitate meeting setup between

attendees and exhibitors• Mobile apps can put events on your cell phone; offer

additional exhibitor sponsorship opportunities• Virtual events can extend the reach of your event • White label social nets: association specific can extend

engagement year round

Considerations

Strategy first

• What are you trying to accomplish?– Year-round community?– On-site engagement?– Audience acquisition?

• Develop a long-term plan• But execute on one technology at a time

Many-to-Many, not One-to-Many• Create a conversation• Use features to allow attendees to communicate with

you and others• Make sure someone is monitoring the conversation• Cultivate super-users and influencers in your

community– They’re 2% of your audience, but reflect 90% of the user-

generated content

Go beyond basic functionality

• Make use of features and applications designed for events.– Add applications to your Facebook page to display

keynote videos or poll your fans on hot session topics

– Use Twitter’s Direct Messaging and hashtag functionality to allow followers to post to and read topic threads about your meeting and communicate onsite with event staff

Digital solutions: PhRMA friendly sponsorships

• Digital event platforms• Social networking

– Public social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)

– White label social networks• Video

– video streaming • Email

– Exhibitor invites• Mobile

Questions?

Melinda KendallVice President, Marketing Solutions

350 Rhode Island Street, Suite 220NSan Francisco, CA 94103

415-655-2205ImmersaMarketing.com