In Person and Online

About a month ago, shortly after we published a Page 1 story on the acquisition of a virtual tradeshow, I wrote a blog suggesting that nobody should get carried away and that the physical showfloor was not going to be replaced by some virtual version of one any time soon.

I still think that, but in recent days I have had my consciousness expanded a bit on the subject.

I am as guilty as anybody of sometimes having a limited definition of a tradeshow. Certainly, there are organizers who still just sell space on their showfloors and then encourage attendees to visit their exhibitors' booths, but the number of shows for which the economic equation is that simple and straight forward becomes smaller every year.

Most show managers derive more and more of their revenue from sponsorships, for instance. This is at least in part because the traditional exhibitor looks for more interesting ways to market its products and services than just lining them up in a booth. At the same time, the conference component of the typical show becomes more and more important, in great measure because attendees want more out of their time at a show than just the opportunity to wander around from booth to booth.

As technology allows marketers a wider variety of ways to get their companies' stories out, tradeshow managers are also looking for a wider variety of ways to make sure they get their fair share of those marketers' dollars.

This was certainly the theme for many participants at the recent American Business Media Spring Meeting in La Quinta, Calif. It was not a gathering of disillusioned business-to-business magazine publishers grumbling that life had passed them by.

Instead, the catch words for most were “in print, in person and online,” as they have in recent years begun to think of themselves less as producers of print publications, and more as providers of information and marketing opportunities for the industries they serve.

(And by the way, I learned during the couple of days I spent at the meeting that not all publishers are obsessed with making a mad dash from print to online. Most do believe that face-to-face marketing is one more option they have to offer their customers, if they hadn't done so before. See Gordon Hughes' comment below in Overheard on the Showfloor.)

There was plenty of talk about the virtual event too. One interesting comment I heard: If all you try to do is sell booths at a virtual show, you'll go broke fast. The most productive model seems to be to get a sponsor to invest in some type of content and, once it's done, “drop the attendees onto the showfloor.”

I don't exactly know how you drop anybody on to a virtual showfloor, but someone does. And whoever it is that's getting the virtual event right understands that what they are offering is not simply a lineup of products and services on display, but that fabled community of buyers and sellers we're all talking about.

Publishers and show managers are finding that they must become community builders if they are to survive and thrive. At the same time, many of us are learning that simply selling space on a showfloor is not the only – or even the best – way to build that community.