Virtual trade show booths: What are best practices for creating virtual event booths?

One reason for the popularity of virtual events is the fact that attendees can explore on their own terms, without being bothered by aggressive sales pitches. To provide a good attendee experience, adequate booth staffing is critical. Not only do you need enough people to staff your booth, but you also have to think about the right skill set. Where at a crowded physical trade show people may be happy with a pretty face and a brochure, at a virtual event participants are usually more to the point and expect competent answers to their questions right now and right there.
Here are a few best practices:
- Staff your booth with subject matter experts (services, support, product management...)
- If possible don’t staff it with sales reps
- Invite experts from your customer or member base to join your booth
- Provide booth rep training for the booth rep interface and for content
- Create an FAQ document to help arm your experts for the easy ones
- Set up a war room, (or chat hotline, conference call ) where booth reps can exchange information and help each other out
- Monitor your event and take action to drive people to areas with idle booths
- Have fun!

Craig - a few tips on building your virtual booth:

1) Staff appropriately - ensure the right mix of sales reps, sales engineers and product experts. You may receive visits from highly qualified sales leads who ask particularly detailed product questions - hence, the important of the product experts, who can give those leads the answers to their questions.

2) Booth Labels Are Like Headlines - pretend you're the headline writer for favorite online newspaper. You need to craft headlines to grab attention and incent interest.

3) Use A Call To Action, Not A Declaration. Instead of stating that you have a "Best of Breed Solution" or that you're in Gartner's Magic Quadrant, ask your visitors a question or request that they take action (e.g. "Ask Us Why..", "Tell Us Your Biggest Challenge...")

4) Stand Out From The Crowd - your competitors are likely to be in "adjacent" booths, so do something different. Use a video host or a particularly distinctive set of imagery. You want YOUR booth to be the one that's being talked about.

5) Search Engine Optimization - no, not Google, but the same concepts apply. Virtual event platforms have a search capability, so ensure that your documents, descriptions, booth tabs, etc. have SEO applied - and that your content appears near the top of search results (within the virtual event) for key terms.

6) Bring your Thought Leaders - does your company employ some industry rock stars? If so, have them attend the event and be available in your booth. Visitors will appreciate their expertise and wisdom - and some may already be familiar with them. Your reputation and your event ROI will benefit.

Start with considering 10 Reasons Virtual Shows Fall Short: http://salesvpi.typepad.com/salesvpi/2010/06/10-reasons-virtual-shows-fall-sh...

Create show, dynamic, engaging content that can prompt questions.

Here's a dynamic way to engage booth participants: http://avitage.com/a?s8sv8gd&