Exhibiting Decisions

Shortly after I posted my last post an email from EMC arrived in my inbox. Its title screamed: “Momentum 2006 - Sponsorships Going Fast!”.

We have already taken the decision not to exhibit at Momentum this year and I’m not even going to attend as a delegate. This was an emotionally tough decision but a no-brainer from a business perspective.

Emotionally tough as I’ve been attending Momentums since its inception in Miami in the mid ‘90s (can’t recall when - it was probably around ’96). Since then I have only ever missed one of the USA Momentums which was 2003 in New Orleans. I simply couldn’t think of a decent excuse to go!

Momentum USA has always been a good show and one heck of a party! The first Miami conference took place during a tropical storm in the area and the big party (always the last evening of the conference), which was to be held on a cruise ship plying its way up and down the coast, ended up taking place with the ship firmly lashed to the dock being severely rocked by the wind. It was difficult to stand up on the top deck and you certainly couldn’t put a beer down as it was blown away instantly. Another memorable Momentum was San Diego in 1997(?). The party night included the band ‘Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’ which led me to buy a couple of their CDs. I wonder how many Brits have Big Bad Voodoo Daddy CDs in their collection! Documentum always threw a good party and there are several memorable Momentums – some for the right reasons, one for all the wrong reasons (Las Vegas 2000 - but that’s another story) but mainly for the parties!

In 2004 Montreal was the venue and we launched PleaseReview at the conference. As I mentioned in my initial posting this was a challenge as (i) PleaseReview wasn’t released and (ii) it wasn’t integrated with Documentum at the time. Despite these challenges, we still obtained opportunities and, as a direct result of the conference, we are currently waiting for a purchase order for 150 user license to work its way through the procurement system of a large US organization. A sales cycle of some 20+ months - the wheels of corporate America can turn slowly!

So having been such an important show for so long what has changed? Why have we taken a decision not to exhibit?

Well, last year in Las Vegas wasn’t a great show for us (it was, of course, lots of fun) and didn’t directly lead to sales opportunities. My analysis concluded that it was as a result of the EMC effect. Documentum as a company was no more and the focus was very much (as, I guess, it should be) on the entire EMC suite of software products. However, what this meant to us, as specialist vendors within the document management umbrella, is that the focus was lost. Do the maths yourself. Momentum USA has always been around the 1,500 - 1,800 delegates. Previously that meant 1,500-1,800 people living, eating and breathing document management for three days – it was focused. Now the focus of the conference reflects the focus of EMC’s offering and this has significantly diluted the influence of the document management element. Last year there were delegates passing by the booth who didn’t know the 1st thing about document management.

Momentum also beautifully illustrates my point of the value of European conferences compared to those in the USA. Consider the facts: Momentum Europe is forecast to have one third the number of delegates of Momentum USA, yet the cost of having a booth at Momentum Europe is 32% higher! Go figure!

This doesn’t mean that we aren’t a dedicated Documentum Partner, it simply means that Momentum is no longer value for money for us!

So we are investing elsewhere. The RAPS annual conference is costing us just 13.5% of the cost Momentum Europe (& 18% the cost of Momentum USA) and is anticipated to have around 1,500 – 1,800 delegates – that’s the sort of maths I like!

Guerrilla marketing and the recent DIA and CTC conferences.

Obviously a critical aspect of a software business is marketing. How do you get attention in, what is increasingly, a very busy world? It's beginning to seem more and more that people are so maxed out and under so much pressure that they don’t have time to investigate new options and solutions. I’m sure that we all have the same problem.

Unfortunately (or should that be fortunately?), we are not in a position to simply throw money at the problem (unlike, it would appear, some large companies – I’ll address this later), so with our limited resources we have to adopt guerrilla marketing tactics. Note: that is ‘guerrilla’ not ‘gorilla’. Guerrilla marketing is covered by Wikipedia here, but I prefer the definition from Marketingterms.com, which summaries it as “Unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources” and then expands “Coined by Jay Conrad Levinson, guerrilla marketing is more about matching wits than matching budgets. Guerrilla marketing can be as different from traditional marketing as guerrilla warfare is from traditional warfare. Rather than marching their marketing dollars forth like infantry divisions, guerrilla marketers snipe away with their marketing resources for maximum impact.” In other words its marketing which doesn’t rely on blindly throwing money at the problem.

Of course, since Jay Conrad Levinson wrote his book in 1982 the Good Lord saw fit to invent the internet, Google and sponsored searches. For specialist companies with limited budgets the Google adwords system is the perfect marketing tool and, personally, I think Google’s founders deserve every one of the billions of dollars they now possess. One day Yahoo may be as good as Google (they have a new release scheduled for later in the year apparently) but currently they have a long way to go. This is not the time and place to rant about Yahoo search’s inadequacies but, suffice it to say, when I told one of their support staff earlier in the year that they should take a look at how Google does it and learn, he told me “lots of people say that”. Maybe they finally got the message.

Clearly, sponsored searches are an integral component in any business’ marketing campaign and we subscribe to both Google and Yahoo. Although these days using sponsored searches is ‘conventional’ (as opposed to unconventional), I believe that sponsored searches do meet the guerrilla marketing conditions in that they provide maximum results from minimal resources.

In our experience, Google and Yahoo searches do produce good opportunities in some very major companies. Firstly, by definition, the searcher is actively searching for a solution to their problem. In our case, that may be collaborative authoring or document review or some variant thereof. Secondly, again by definition, they have a problem otherwise (one assumes) that they would not be searching for a solution. And finally, they take the time and trouble to check out your website and then contact you. That is what we call in marketing a qualified prospect!

Paying cash to exhibit at conferences and other industry events doesn’t immediately fit in with the guerrilla marketing philosophy. However, for a software company such as PleaseTech I believe that it is critical part of not only marketing and lead generation, but also the feedback loop.

Where else can you sit down ‘one-to-one’ with expert users in your chosen field, show them your software in a ‘informal’ setting and gather their feedback and insights? Sue, who manages the ‘enhancement request list’ in PleaseTech, will confirm that every conference is followed by an email from me listing the ideas and potential enhancements that have resulted from conversations with people stopping by the booth. It’s a very valuable exercise in its own right. Not every brainwave and suggestion stands up to the follow through scrutiny but conferences certainly provide a fertile source of ideas. That is why you will find me on the booth at conferences talking to our clients and potential users.

So, conferences and events can provide good value for money and an attentive audience. They are a good chance to catch up with people who you probably wouldn’t have been able to access otherwise, they tend to deliver good leads and can be a huge amount of fun!

Of course, there are two ways to do conferences – the expensive, ‘lets throw money at the problem’ way and the guerrilla marketing way.

Firstly, conference selection is vital. Spending $2k on a booth at the correct conference can deliver better results than spending $10K - $20K on a booth at other conferences. We are currently concentrating on the Life Sciences sector and have attended (and will attend) conferences organised by the DIA (Drugs Information Association), AMWA (American Medical Writers Association), RAPS (Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society) and other similar organisations. However, these are USA only.

We simply don’t do conferences or trade shows in the UK and Europe. It’s a combination of factors. However the bottom line is that, in our experience, conferences in Europe simply don’t provide value for money. For example, take a particular conference we did last year on both sides of the Atlantic. The European one cost at least twice the US one and had 20% the number of delegates. Note: that’s not 20% fewer delegates, that’s one fifth the number of delegates! I rest my case, M’Lud!

I’ve recently returned from the annual DIA conference, held this year in Philadelphia. This is a large life sciences conference with a large exhibition. The sole focus is life sciences so the exhibitors range from software companies like ourselves through CROs (Clinical Research Organisations) to the ever present recruitment companies. There were allegedly over 7,000 delegates.

Historically, DIA has always been a good show for us. Last year we had over 400 contacts and just under 50 leads. This year was not so good. From conversations with other exhibiting companies, no one was having a good time. There were several theories being bandied around as to why this may be. The fact that a lot of the Life Sciences companies are local to Philadelphia was one. This ‘local’ theory is that people don’t attend conferences on their doorstep because they have limited opportunities to attend conferences and like to go somewhere further away. Another theory was the layout of the Philadelphia Conference venue itself. Apparently some of the rooms holding the sessions were a good 10 minute walk away from the exhibition area. I think another fact affecting us specifically, is that the nature of our audience is changing. Whereas last June everyone was a prospective client, this year some of the people who dropped by the booth were already either clients or prospective clients. Therefore, almost by definition, the number of leads is going to be smaller. No matter, we singed up for next year in Atlanta – let’s hope lots of people from companies we aren’t currently talking to want to go there!

However, the DIA conference is always a great opportunity to watch the ‘lets throw money at the problem’ brigade in action. The ‘give aways’ on booths always provide an interesting insight to marketing strategy. I do sometimes wonder what goes through the marketing manager’s head when I see what goes on. We are not talking about the odd pen or ‘knick knack’ here and there but reasonably expensive items. So, at DIA, the busy booths were the ones with the best freebies. I suppose that it gets the companies ‘attention’ - but is it quality attention? Not from what I saw! I’m not sure you can build a ‘buzz’ around a brand by having expensive give aways. However, the whole ‘give-away branding debate’ merits a future post all on its own!

Instead of heading straight home after DIA, I swung by the Collaborative Technologies Conference (CTC) in Boston. I had been invited to participate in a panel session entitled “Solving Document Chaos: Collaborative Document Construction the Productive Way” sharing the platform with IBM, Microsoft, SocialText and NextPage. Speaking slots are classic guerrilla marketing tactics!

The guy who invited me is a chap called Michael Sampson who, until joining Foldera in the last few weeks, ran a well respected collaboration blog called Shared-Spaces. Michael had been very complementary when he reviewed PleaseReview (see the review here).

The panellists had been asked to limit our individual talks to 5 minutes and then the idea was to have a Q&A session with the audience. I exhibited a little bit of naivety in following instructions and limiting my talk to 5 minutes whereas everyone else managed to overrun by at least another 5 minutes. No matter, the whole session emphasised another great benefit from attending events - ‘validation’ - validation that what you are investing in product wise is right.

I came away from the conference very happy that strategically, from a product functionality and positioning perspective, we are absolutely spot on!