November 22, 2006

I had the ‘good’ fortune to attend three different events in the past two weeks: one as a tradeshow exhibitor, one as a purchaser looking for partners, and one simply as a conference attendee. I’ll give my thoughts on each in a moment, but first I have to ask the question, “In a world in which you can get specific conversion metrics at the click of a button for Web-based campaigns (be it cost-per-lead, cost-per-action, or for some: cost-per sale) what will happen to our ever-loved tradeshow?

My assumption is that as long as you can close the loop on your marketing and justify your tradeshow spend, they will persist, but I am interested to hear what you think?

I attended AIIM’s Enterprise Content West (San Jose) looking to see if there were companion technologies that we could include as part of the Marqui Solution Suite. And yes… I found some. These have been given to Ryan Stocker, Marqui’s new product guru to prioritize and get into our offering as appropriate. Hopefully, you will see some of these in your seasonal releases in the not too distant future.

Also interesting at this event was the keynote by Matthew Glotzbach, Head of Products for Google Enterprise (which sounds similar to the one he gave at another AIIM event back in Philadelphia in June). He spoke a lot about how we are starting to see the convergence between “work” and “personal” where, thanks to technology, the two will ever be so intertwined. You work at home, you play at work, etc. He also spoke about how the consumer web is influencing the business web. What I took away from this is that software as it grows in complexity has to be kept as simple to use as the consumer services that we have gotten to know and love (or at least appreciate): the iPod, Google, or even your online banking application.

Nothing earth shattering, but more confirmation of where we want to take Marqui in the coming months and years. I think it was also Glotzbach [though it could have been a different speaker…they all run together after a while] who said that our children will not know the concept of software, they will be simply services delivered via the Web [aka... Is Google software? Is iTunes software? What about paying my bills online?].

My primary reason for being in San Jose was not the ECW event, but rather the On-demand Conference hosted by the SIIA. In a way, this was a bit of a love-in by those in the technology community who are developing and delivering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications as we are here at Marqui. However, it was a great opportunity to speak with peers across software platforms about what is working, what is not, and what we need to do as an industry to “shout from the rooftops” about the coming SaaS revolution. The information presented here was very useful and we will be implementing several tactics and best practices to the betterment of our clients in the coming months.

And finally, late last night I wrapped up two days of exhibiting at the BC Tourism and Hospitality Exposition right here in our backyard of Vancouver. We have had a lot of adoption in the past year in this sector (see our CruiseWest case study here) and I wanted to ensure that we remain visible as the leading marketing and communications platform for this industry. And to those of you who have worked tradeshow booths in the past, you know what I mean when I say that it also gave me a great opportunity to practice my elevator pitch for Marqui’s services. Here is the winning hook (or at least the one that caused most people to pause and say, "OK...I get it. Now what."

Marqui provides on-demand marketing software that automates many of the tasks that a marketer faces on day-to-day basis. We believe that marketing works from the Web site out, and so in order to succeed, you need to take the control of the Web site out of the hands of IT and put it into the hands of Marketing where it belongs. Once you do so... creating and managing new site content, generating just-in-time landing pages, launching new campaigns (be it through e-mail or other means), and optimizing your organic search becomes much easier.

 

Posted by at November 22, 2006

Comments

John Lyotier email -

I forgot to mention... to those following my Halloween campaign with the Grim Reaper. I brought one of them back to "crash" the conference luncheon, driving traffic to our booth via a handout and. It got a few chuckles and got some awareness. Who knows if it produced anything else.

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