Author: INDEVCO Consultancy Admin

For years now, technology has marked the course of our actions as it became an advantage we take to effectively carry out our daily tasks. The accessibility of data that technological advancements bring, created greater possibilities for businesses to make informed decisions. Events and trade shows are no different from other industries and have been majorly upgraded to adapt to new technologies that changed the way we attract visitors.

From interactive media all the way through holograms, the trend evolved really fast and marked how companies are also starting to consider virtual events.  

Why would companies invest in virtual events?

Personalized events for attendees: the digital landscape is making it easier to offer personalized events to increase engagement and have real-time conversations with leads, prospects, and customers.

The huge reduction of physical and logistics costs: with the economical struggles, businesses need to keep up with their evolution while at the same time being smart about costs.  

Greater reach: time, geographies and other physical barriers are no longer a constraint to attend an event. Users can now visit an exhibition at the convenience of their own time and device. 

Personalized follow-up with event attendees: with the measurable results companies can access from virtual trade fairs, it becomes easy and intuitive for them to follow up on all conversations, address specific needs, and close deals more effectively.

Comprehensive and unforgettable experiences: as virtual events immerse users and grab their attention, it becomes hard not to remember products and services promoted and not to engage in meaningful conversations with companies and other attendees.

The availability of multiple application tools: from 3D setup to video, chat, voice-over IPs, and other tools and gadgets, virtual events bring unlimited innovative tools that address every need.

Along with the buyer and marketplace changes that took place over the years, marketing collateral evolved too. Marketing communications materials back then were limited to print and offline materials, and were considered more than enough to promote your company, products and services. Examples include brochures, ads in magazines, billboards, and many others.

Today, marketing collateral offers you endless possibilities, shapes and forms especially with the rise of digital marketing and the high usage and availability of smart phones. You can avail at the fingertips of your audience different types of collateral to help you create awareness, answer questions, give an idea of your offerings, and most importantly inform your leads and customers about the solutions you can offer to solve their challenges. Each piece of collateral can be customized and tailored depending on the different stages of the buyer’s journey.
           

Blogs: Attract a wider online audience, create an interaction between buyers and sellers, drive traffic to your website, as well as create awareness and educate readers while developing a better customer relationship.

Case Studies and Testimonials: Spread your success recipe, show how valuable your services are and your ability of offering customized solutions to real customer problems and struggles.

Landing Pages and Websites: Promote your entire business and marketing collateral materials while maintaining brand awareness and establishing an online presence.

White Papers: Present compelling and useful information to solve specific problems.

Short Videos: Captivate your audience with short, explanatory, educational and promotional video to get their attention in a visual and animated approach.

E-Corporate Brochures / E-Product Catalogs: Share and promote your company, product or service information in a simple, easy and effective way.

Newsletters: Keep your audience informed with latest happenings, developments and new product or service launch, as well as connect with them and drive traffic to your website.

Infographics: Leave a more lasting impression on your audience by promoting any piece of content in visual way, including illustrations, graph, chart, or a combination of any of those elements.

A customer-centric organization is one that commits to customer success and actively engages with customers to provide support and offer solution-based products and services in response to their needs. Putting the customer-first helps businesses offer exceptional service and experience, retain customers and create loyalty and brand advocacy. Knowing your customers is today the key driver to developing a competitive edge and generating more business.

Here are 6 characteristics you can follow to transform into a customer-centric organization:

Start with the customer: to claim being customer-centric, organizations have to start with their customers and not their products. They should stay focused on the customer changing needs and market conditions.

Instill a customer-centric culture: to guarantee a winning customer experience, businesses must integrate their customer-first strategy as a crucial part of the company culture and cascade it down the organization.

Make informed decisions: as data remains the unique source of truth, businesses must analyze their customer insights and build their strategies using accurate data. This will help organizations change their products, processes and policies based on factual data.

Engage with customers: to better understand their customers, organizations must regularly engage with them and work hard to tweak their processes to fit their perspective and perception of performance.

Find solutions for their problems: to anticipate customer needs and delight them, it is essential that the offering exceeds the customers’ expectations, tackles their pain points, and provides them with the value they need to succeed in their own ecosystem.

Maintain an innovative momentum: adapting to customer needs and their changing demands help businesses better care for their customers and continuously work with them to offer innovative and sustainable products.

Your website is an essential lead generation tool to create growth for your business. If optimized properly, you will be able to attract leads that can turn into potential prospects and customers.

Optimizing your website for lead generation is simple but requires few hacks worth trying.

1- Drive traffic to your website
Setup your marketing efforts in a way to drive traffic to your website. Whether through your email marketing, social media, or blog plosts, always make sure visitors land on your website.

2- Direct your traffic to focused landing pages
With all the efforts you do to generate traffic, you need to make sure that your visitors land on a targeted web page where they can access information and call out for more or even place requests. Make sure your landing pages are targeted for your audience and buyer persona.

3- Optimize your website for conversions
Even if your website generates a lot of traffic, you will need to channel this traffic and convert it into actual data that you can act upon. For this, you will need to setup the proper conversion flow on your site, and make sure it is well tested and makes sense for visitors.

4- Continuously generate content
Enriching your website with new content is an ongoing process that will help you attract more leads. As you create valuable content, you will send the trust signals to your visitors and they will be more likely to make contact you or request your products and services.

5- Track your visitors
Use Google Analytics or similar tools to analyze and track your website traffic. You will be able to identify what sources are bringing more traffic to your site, and what content are users more interested in. This method will help you evaluate your marketing efforts and direct them to what is driving the highest percentage of conversions.

6- Engage with your visitors
Use live chat to talk to your visitors and understand their needs. You will be able to answer pre-purchase enquiries as well as facilitate the decision making process.

The need for continuous innovation in these challenging times drives organizations to focus not only on the customer experience that increases loyalty and gains new businesses but also on the employee experience throughout the whole lifecycle. Getting the most out of people and empowering them will result in greater organizational effectiveness. Equipping them with the knowledge and skills to build their talent will help you reach excellence and increase value through people.

Microsoft says 85% of jobs in the next 3 years will be transformed due to technological advancements, such as digital transformation, AI, IoT, robotics, and many more. The way businesses recruit, train, and retain employees is changing dramatically as they will need to re-organize work, redefine how people find jobs and the skills needed to accelerate in a more diverse, dynamic and interconnected business environment. The challenge will be to redefine jobs, redeploy, and upskill employees to fit the modern models of employment.

Here are 6 ways HR can tap on millennial talent:

1. Move them around the organization quickly: millennials need a variety of experiences to be exposed to before they choose the path they want to take
2. Create content that supports their future and purpose, allows them to learn on the job, and feeds into what they like to do
3. Assign them to meaningful work that contributes to the bigger picture
4. Tolerate work flexibility into your structure and creatively set working hours and leave days conditions. Look after the results and not the process
5. Embed diversity into your culture as millennials need a variety of different perspective and a richer workforce
6. Understand their needs and what drives them to increase their engagement and self- satisfaction

Today, corporate responsibility extends beyond its direct impacts to the impacts of its value chain on the environment, economy, and society.

To attain a sustainable supply chain, businesses must take a widespread approach to address environmental and social concerns starting at the source and aiming at ensuring a sustainable business that safeguards the planet, improves people’s lives, and supports business growth and continuity.  

From securing long-term supply, sustainable waste management, and energy consumption, all the way through, safeguarding employee wellbeing, productivity, and commitment, here are the impactful benefits for having a sustainable supply chain:

Secured Supply Continuity: ensures that suppliers implement best practices that sustain long-term supply of materials and services

Lower Carbon Footprint: enables businesses to minimize negative environmental impacts throughout the value chain, conserve energy and natural resources, and reduce the overall carbon footprint

Improved Reputation and Regulatory Compliance: Secures supply chain compliance to regulations, builds customer trust and loyalty and investor confidence, and enhances supplier partnerships

Increased Profitability and Market Share: enhances supplier efficiency and productivity and meets customer/consumer demand for responsible supply chains

Innovation: leads to opportunities for partnerships to develop new products and sets businesses apart from their competition