From the Ridiculous to the Sublime?
We’ve been working on how to leverage various marketing strategies to launch our new product, Strategic Human Capital Management. The most obvious of these is easy — at our user conference in Las Vegas in mid-March. But the options are endless — the big conferences that occur in the spring and fall, hosting seminar and webinar events and the like.
But I couldn’t help laughing to myself about the range of possibilities. I would offer for your consideration, two distinctly different events:
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The VIEW conference presented by hr.com. They did their first virtual event in mid-December, and from the sounds of things it was pretty well attended. We didn’t participate, but it’s certainly something we’ll consider in the future. Bill Kutik provided a nice overview and perspective on the event if you didn’t participate. Take a look.
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Richmond Events offers another interesting perspective using of all things, a cruise ship. Participants get to go for free, provided that they agree to spend some time talking with guys like me about their buying plans. Add to that some marquee named keynotes and lots of networking time (you are out on the ocean, after all!), and it seems to add up to an interesting way to spend three days. I’m attending this year for the first time, so we’ll have to see if it pays for itself in the form of new revenue opportunities.
So, why the title? One could argue that a purely virtual event could qualify as ridiculous (will we give up on all human contact for such activities?). But no one will argue with me that the cruise ship has the potential to be sublime. You know they won’t be closing the spa during those important networking sessions (although from the sounds of my schedule I won’t be hitting the sauna!).
It’s overgeneralizing at either extreme, I recognize. My objective: figure out which direction our customers are taking to learn about our products, when they are getting ready to buy them. At the end of the day, it’s all about leads. We don’t attend these events for ‘brand recognition’ — show me the lead or I’ll show you the door.
More importantly, to the folks doing the buying out there — how do you see these events shaping your decisions?
Tags: bill kutik, hr executive, hr.com, Lawson, richmond events, trade show, view
February 3, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Larry, I thought you already “launched” your new product at last October’s HR Technology Conference “First HCM Battle,” where you used it to good effect against Oracle and Workday! Or were you showing futures? Enjoy your cruise to nowhere.
February 4, 2008 at 12:28 am
HR tech was the first of several launch events — what we announced was the first phase of our Charter Implementation Program, and introduced our first customers to the attendees, analysts and press at the event. The next phase of that is coming at our customer conference in March!
Nothing but the real McCoy at your events, Bill!
February 4, 2008 at 2:04 am
AKA - “not generally available”…
February 8, 2008 at 2:30 pm
We have always been very clear about communicating exactly where we are in the rollout of this product. All of our communications have focused on our “charter implementations,” because that is the phase of the launch that we’re currently in. The product is production-ready, and we’re proud to have customers using it to run their business today. But regardless, it’s a multi-phased initiative as we fully bring it to market. Stay tuned!
February 10, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Larry, I think you’re on to something. I don’t think the traditional ERP target base found at the usual trade shows will necessarily be gravitating toward a hosted HR system. Sure, people outsource a lot of the same data when they use ADP payroll, but for some reason, they freak out when it’s “HR” data being pushed out there (SaaS as a category still has a way to go). Online conferences and less traditional promotional opportunities like the cruise you mention might be the right place to find the people already thinking outside the proverbial box and are ready to consider something new. Good luck!
April 15, 2008 at 1:58 am
[...] subject, I’m off to the HR Forum tomorrow morning. I wrote about this previously (link here), and now it’s time to see if the event will prove useful. If the internet connection on [...]