If your company sees tradeshows and conferences as a key part of your marketing and sales strategy, you’re in good company. According to American Express, at least one-fifth of planned meeting activity in Europe and North America are conferences and tradeshows. And event success platform Bizzabo reports, the average Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) dedicates a whopping 24-percent of their total annual budget to live events.
Despite all of the positives, conferences and trade shows have drawbacks too - notably the investment of time, resources and budget required for travel, along with accommodations and other attendee-related expenses. This is where telepresence technology can make a major difference for companies of all sizes.
Aside from the obvious opportunities for cost savings, the ability to be in two places at once makes attending such events simpler and more accessible for team members, customers, volunteers and other parties. Utilizing the right technology is an important factor in getting the biggest bang for your conference buck: Bizzabo also reports that 86-percent of marketers believe that technology can have a major positive impact on the success of their events.
Here are five ways you can use Beam to up your conference and live events game:
1) Let your team staff the booth:
We see countless innovative ways to utilize attention-grabbing mobile telepresence to its fullest. Whether you have attendees to sign-up for free giveaways (and give you their contact information in exchange) or you’re just being a crowd pleaser handing out treats, Beam gives your team extra visibility on crowd exhibit hall floors.
2) Be a virtual attendee.
When you can’t be there in person, Beam in for the day! We love how our friends at Carnegie Learning personalized theirs with a branded t-shirt and badge at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference in Washington, D.C. Carnegie Learning knows how to do the math, and saving money from not sending multiple attendees to live events really adds up.
3) Be present when you present.
For busy leaders, it’s not always easy to get away, but the opportunities to present or be a part of a panel at a tradeshow or conference can be invaluable. Beam lets you be anywhere in the world when the opportunity presents.
4) Foster inclusiveness.
Ensuring that events are accessible and inclusive isn’t easy, particularly for those who have physical disabilities or other health compromises. Telepresence changes that, allowing for virtual presence at global events.
For example, highly sought after speaker Henry Evans of Robots for Humanity and PhD candidate and Google Lime Scholar Kavita Krishnaswamy enjoy attending conferences worldwide via Beam. Here they are enjoying a break together at leading tech conference, SxSW:
5) Beat unexpected barriers.
Telepresence technology is always a great way to ensure conference attendance, but when disaster strikes - natural, legal and otherwise - it can literally be a lifesaver. For example, in 2017 several international students and researchers in the fields of informatics, interactive technology, and human-computer interaction that couldn’t obtain U.S. visas were still able to remotely attend the Computer Human Interaction Conference (CHI) in Colorado.
Although conference co-chairs Susan Fussell from Cornell University and Carman Neustaedter from Simon Fraser University already planned to have Beams there as part of the conference, their value in bridging distance and allowing people from all over the world to be two places at once became even more clear.
Photo credit: Elijah Weber-Han
With CES around the corner and conference planning for next year in full-swing, now’s the time to get on board with Beam for the gamut of your live event needs.
