As we are approaching the last quarter of 2020, we look at what we can and should expect from legal conferences and events that traditionally have been held in person but will now take place online.
Webinars have been around well before COVID-19’s arrival. But, in 2020, this format of delivering content has been embraced by event organizers to transform their annual conferences into virtual events, and while it is a practical solution, is it a great experience? We have all been to webinars, and they all look the same; a PowerPoint, low-resolution video, and audio that is clear at best.
From virtual exhibitor halls to cocktail receptions, we look at all the creative solutions that some of the most renowned legal organizations implement to keep their members and attendees engaged and satisfied with their virtual events.
Events to be on the lookout for:
Send us your questions at ask@incamerapodcast.com
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Transcript
Liel: [00:00:01] It has never been easier to find legal industry webinars, conferences and events online, but more is not always best. I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media, and this is In Camera, a podcast where we break through the noise and only leave room for quality experiences.
Liel: [00:00:47] Welcome to In Camera podcast, Private Legal Marketing Conversations. Grace, welcome back. How are you today?
Grace: [00:00:54] Good, how are you, Liel? I’m doing good, Grace.
Liel: [00:00:56] Thank you very much for asking. And it’s really hard to believe for me that it’s the beginning of… Sorry…
Liel: [00:01:04] It is the beginning. Let me gather my thoughts here. The beginning of a new year. Grace, today is Rosh Hashanah. OK, and I was just thinking right around this time where I was a year ago in I remember it was like right in the midst of two conferences. Right. And I’m thinking about the Jewish calendar right now because I’m thinking, when was Rosh Hashanah? Last year. And I remember that it was somewhere in between the Crisp Game Changers Summit and the Ben Glass Legal Marketing Conference. And that really made me think a lot about how things have changed when it comes down to events and conferences that even vendors right as exhibitors in them, we’ve been depending on so much. And so now in the midst of COVID-19, because unfortunately, we are still in the midst of all of these. Right. These events are still not taking place and such, or at least not in the way that they were happening before, how the scene has changed and adopted Grace. So with that being said, today’s conversation is going to be about online conferences and events.
Grace: [00:02:25] That’s right. Because, you know, honestly, this kind of came about. So this is to all of our listeners. This came about because Liel and I actually ourselves had been talking about whether we should attend virtual conferences. And I just keep seeing so many people asking the same question, are they worth it? Do we need to be involved? Should I be involved? Which ones do I need to be involved in? And what virtual event types should be? Because there’s all kinds. Right. So which types should be involved in. And so, yeah, no, I completely agree. And with everything happening and not knowing when the end is going to be, we have to really seriously look at these virtual events and decide for ourselves as attendees and vendors and exhibitors whether we want to do these totally.
Liel: [00:03:09] Grace. And I’ll tell you one thing like just from the top of my mind, thinking about what impact has the pandemic had in online webinars, events, and even meetings, just daily meetings, I think that’s one of the very good turnarounds that we’ve seen, companies, law firms, event organizers able to adjust to. One thing that I really thank for every day is how much we have normalized videoconferencing and being able to just tell anyone, hey, why don’t we jump on a Zoom call or let’s have a conversation about that during Zoom. And it’s just easy. Everybody can just connect, know what they do. They have the right equipment. They have the right connection to support that. It’s no longer a rare thing being able to have these conversations online.
Liel: [00:04:12] So that’s definitely one of the upsides I’ve seen. Now that also created the normalization of attending courses. And, you know, the rise of webinars, it’s not like webinars were not here before they were there, but now all from the sudden, it was the only way you could access anything that would have otherwise been provided, given, or staged as a live event.
Liel: [00:04:40] So it is you know, I personally think that there has been a lot of upsides in the way that we have embraced these new technology and platform and opportunities. But with that being said, I also think that a lot of people jumped into it without necessarily having great content or great production value to offer to this community. And therefore, it’s kind of like, you know, yes, it’s easy, but it’s still your time and you still need to be careful about assessing what do you want to really invest time into and what is not worth it.
Liel: [00:05:19] What do you think, Grace?
Grace: [00:05:20] No, I completely agree with you. And that’s exactly what happened. Right. Like you said, webinars have been around for a while now. And, you know, the increase was because, as you said, this is the only way people can now gather the information that they would have gotten in person at the seminar. And so they have to learn or, you know, even speak to other people on these Zoom meetings nowadays. And it’s a whole. It’s still a strategy, right, and I think people, because of COVID and because of crisis or any type of issue that that happens, they forget and sometimes, you know, for good reason, I can understand why sometimes people may forget this, but it’s still a strategy and it’s how are you going to handle and put together a strategy to best survive this crisis or any crisis, right?
Liel: [00:06:10] Yeah. Grace, listen, I’m going to be very honest with you, right. When the first stay at home orders were put out and we’re talking somewhere around the end of March. Right. We saw a lot of really interesting webinars come up.
Liel: [00:06:26] And it was really wonderful to see some organizations just really quickly put out webinars that were attended by, I would say, close to a thousand participants at once. And it gathered a lot of very insightful minds of the legal industry. And everybody was there sharing their opinions or views. What is it that they’re doing? And kind of like everybody wanted it to have an opportunity and a place to share thoughts and kind of like associate themselves with others that are going through the same things. Right.
Liel: [00:07:00] And so I think it was great that some organizations were fast to react, some agencies were fast to react, some law firms were forced to react. And they were there putting out these amazing webinars. Right. In terms of content and in terms to what they were aimed at.
Liel: [00:07:18] But here’s the reality, Grace. Now, we are six months into that. And I do think there is a difference between a free webinar now. And if you’re actually going to transform your annual conference into an online event, how are you going to do that in a way that you can retain the quality and provide a great experience to your audience, to your participants without damaging your brand name and reputation and all of those things?
Liel: [00:07:51] Because my point here, Grace, and I’m dancing around here, is something which is a lot of people are still going forward with conferences that were planned to be in person. Now they’re being moved to online. They’re keeping up the fees, right, that you pay in order to attend. But the event itself, it’s still just someone sitting behind a webcam and just delivering their presentation. And that’s basically it. Right. And you cannot charge people thousands of dollars at times for attending that when that’s the experience. And I think there is a lot of organizations that are really going out of their way to create something of great quality. And I think we can give some examples of that. But I also see that there is a lot that are not doing that. In the least that you would expect is for online events that you are actually paying for to have at least some minimal production value. And I’ll tell you what is it that I would expect Grace. I would expect good upgraded cameras, good video, great audio, and even some interactive stuff, right?
Grace: [00:09:09] Yes.
Liel: [00:09:09] I mean, it’s not like it’s hard to add up animations to your presentation to visual engaging elements, even sound effects. Right. And I don’t see a lot of people integrating these things to make their video experience more engaging to the audience. What do you think?
Grace: [00:09:28] So, you know, from both vendor and attendee perspective, right? I’d say it doesn’t matter what it is, you’re 100 percent right. It needs to be engaging. This is something that you and I talk about on a regular basis. Your content is supposed to be engaging. Now you’re asking people to come into a virtual booth or virtual exhibit hall or whatever it is. But online, you know, the experience is not going to be the same. So how do you make it not the same? It’s not going to be, but you have to still engage. So I agree with you 100 percent. You need to do some kind of gamification polls, some way to engage the people, to actually want to speak back to you or ask questions or anything, because it’s just so difficult where you just have a static image or, you know, a slide deck on the screen with all these words, right?
Liel: [00:10:23] Totally. Grace, let’s just get out a little bit about the options. So what people tend to associate when it comes down to a webinar, they, for the most of it, think about the traditional Zoom webinar or the go-to webinar platform where you have a video, you have probably a presentation, which is PowerPoint. For most of times, and then in the best-case scenario, the interactive elements that will come up will be, as you say, polling and that sort of thing. There may be some Q&A, there may be some live chat going on there where people can talk between them or just interact with somebody else who’s also helping to facilitate or whatever that is. Right. But the reality, Grace, is that there are really good platforms out there that let you have many more things to your webinar, such as, as we’ve said, graphics that are actually embedded in your video. Because you see, that’s the one thing I keep on thinking that takes a lot out of the experience of the webinar is that when you think about how it works is you have the big presentation in the screen and then the presenter picture goes to a very tiny little box somewhere in the bottom or one corner of the screen. And I think that’s not the right proportion. I still think, you still want to have the actual face of the person who is delivering the presentation and just add on to those elements that reinforce the message that the person is actually talking about, you know Grace, let me give you an example. Right. Have you ever seen the TV show last week tonight with John Oliver?
Grace: [00:12:10] Yes.
Liel: [00:12:11] OK, so it’s your traditional or you know what, almost any late-night TV show, right? Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, you name it. They’re actually sitting at your desk. They’re talking and they’re constantly images, bubbles showing up to one side of their head. Right. And so these visuals support the story or the message that they’re talking about, but they’re not taking them out of the picture. Right. And so that’s what we are not necessarily yet started to see being used more in webinars.
Liel: [00:12:45] And that’s where I think we need to be shifting towards to really make these presentations more human, more entertaining, more engaging in with that. You know, you should also have calls to action right away. Coming up, as you’re speaking, as you’re saying, whether that’s a pool, whether that’s an opportunity, whether you know, particularly if you’re the one delivering the actual webinar, you may definitely want to be able to give an option for people to either, you know, subscribe to another webinar to download something that you’re actually talking about right there and then so you can actually have these things come up as you are talking about them.
Liel: [00:13:26] So I do see a big opportunity to make things a little bit more interactive. Right. This is kind of like more addressing the traditional, the standard kind of webinar format that has been put out there by most people who are now conducting webinars. Grace, now, you brought up something that I do think it’s very interesting and that’s the virtual exhibitor hall. The option that we have all agencies and other vendors being given to have a presence at some of these bigger events and give an opportunity to the attendees, participants to still have an opportunity to explore and see and talk to vendors, Grace. So I know you’ve been at one or two of these virtual events already as an exhibitor. Tell us a little bit about what is a virtual exhibitor hall how does it work and what’s in it both for the vendor and for the attendees?
Grace: [00:14:26] So, yes, I actually attended the AAJ virtual event. I thought it was actually pretty well done because they tried to give you as many opportunities to load your own assets as possible and create a virtual online exhibit hall that you not physically walk through, obviously, but digitally kind of click-through different setups. So I know you probably remember, like going actually to AAJ right, where you would physically walk down a hall and you’d see the exhibitor list.
Liel: [00:15:05] Right.
Grace: [00:15:05] And it sort of showed you, OK, go here for this, go here for that. It was set up exactly the same way, but virtually so they had virtual signs and virtual people that were standing in little groups just as if you were at AAJ in person and you could click to either go directly into a booth or into a hall or into a session. So the images almost kind of looked CG, you know, computer graphics a little bit. So the interactivity…
Liel: [00:15:36] In a good way or in a bad way, Grace?
Grace: [00:15:39] You know…
Liel: [00:15:40] Does it actually show 3D people moving around the halls like is there?
Grace: [00:15:46] Well, they’re not moving their 3-D people, but, they’re just standing in like little groups to make it look like a full hall of people, right?
Liel: [00:15:55] Fair enough, it’s kind of like video game ish.
Grace: [00:15:58] Yes. That’s actually probably the best way to explain it. So they use the platform called Connexxion and with two X’s. And I guess they are set up to do these virtual events as if it was a real exhibit hall. So the look and feel was as if you were in an exhibit hall in person. But instead of, you know, physically walking, you just click through. Now, that’s where the, I think the opportunities were missed a little bit in some of those sense. Right. Because once you’re inside of an exhibitor or inside of their booth, you see the booth as if it was a CG and that’s what we were allowed to load so I could put up a video and have it play. As soon as somebody walked into my booth, I could have a brochure that they could download. They let me put a little special chat. So they allowed me to do quite a few interactive things inside of my booth to get people to actually interact with my booth.
Grace: [00:17:01] But I think it kind of goes back to what you and I were talking about before, how you’re trying to do it exactly like it was as if you were in person. And I don’t think that that’s going to work so well.
Grace: [00:17:18] I think they need to create something different. And I don’t know what that is, to tell you the truth.
Liel: [00:17:22] So what you were saying, Grace, is that maybe this whole idea of trying to make the exhibitor hall feel like a video game where you’re literally walking in a place and turning to the right, turning to the left, and different virtual vendor shops are available for you to go in to explore. You say that may not necessarily be the most effective way to actually participate as an exhibitor perse in a virtual event?
Grace: [00:17:53] Potentially. Now, I do have to say the people that did actually get into our booth were quality because they came in specifically to look at what we had to offer based on the little description on the exhibit hall list.
Liel: [00:18:12] Yeah, correct.
Grace: [00:18:12] So it was like I said, it was a good quality people. And we actually I’d say we physically had more quality conversations via chat and email than maybe in person because a lot of times they’re going from session to session the session at AAJ in particular, because they go there to learn.
Grace: [00:18:30] Right. Whereas in this sense, they were actually giving them some really great incentives to visit all the halls and they would give them points if they visited everybody’s booth.
Liel: [00:18:40] Yeah, that makes all the sense of the world right. I mean, it’s like going to the supermarket or buying through Amazon. Amazon, you just type in what you were looking for and he just pops right up and that’s what you want. Right? Whereas when you go to the supermarket, you need to walk through the aisles, find what you’re looking for, and maybe you will find something that you did not know you needed it or you wanted it, but you end up going after. And so that kind of seems to be potentially what could be one of the missed experiences that you just cannot translate that easily in virtual right. Because in virtual it’s indexed and you can very well screen things out faster or more efficiently and just go after the things that you care so potentially more efficiently, but less opportunity to discover things that are so potentially of interest to you. Now, Grace, that’s interesting, but here’s my thing. Where would the participants go? Because when I think about an actual event, it’s so people are physically dear, they’re physically there. And so they have different rooms that they’re moving around within different conferences and talks and you name it. And so in between those sessions, they have time to actually just go and explore the exhibitor hall. Does that time exist during these virtual conferences? I mean…
Grace: [00:20:11] At least with AAJ, they tried to do this.
Liel: [00:20:14] And here and here’s the thing. Sorry to interrupt you there, but if the time exists, why, like how are participants being encouraged to actually go and explore the exhibitor hall and not just minimize the tab where they’re in the virtual conference and go to their emails like.
Grace: [00:20:35] One hundred percent. You can’t, that is basically what happens, right? Because it’s a virtual event and it’s the same with webinars. Right. How many times people speak about zoom fatigue? Like how many online events can I really go to? That’s all there is now. And on top of that, I’m on meetings and meetings, meetings on Zoom or go to webinar or whatever. All day long. So, no, you’re right. That is potentially an issue. And what they did at AAJ, I can only tell you what they tried to do at the end of the sessions. The sessions themselves were scheduled. Right. So people would know when the session would happen. And then before and after the sessions, they try to give incentives to walk the exhibit hall just like they do in person. And the incentive was, if you get enough points, you could win this contest by visiting all the exhibitors. Right? I mean, that was the best I think that they could do in the short notice that they had to set up this whole virtual world really was a virtual world that we kind of stepped into. But I agree with you, it’s like hard, because the attendees, I personally am tired. Right. I just sat through an hour long session talking about some specific legal matter. Am I going to go walk through the exhibit hall? I don’t think so. Maybe not. I don’t know.
Liel: [00:21:54] Well, but that’s the thing, right? You may not do it every single time you have the end of the session, but if you’re there in person out of three days of conference one day, you may go because that’s exactly what you want to do. You want to stretch your legs and you want to see what’s up. Right. Because everyone who’s at this exhibitor hall is people who actually provide services that are relevant to your law firm, whether you need them or not.
Liel: [00:22:16] But there it’s basically, think about it as a shopping mall that was temporarily created just with stores that cater to your needs. So that’s definitely something that I think people generally are curious about. And just because of that, they’ll go and take a walk.
Liel: [00:22:34] I don’t know if that level of curiosity and intent can be generated in a virtual conference. That’s really Grace, if you’d ask me, the one big challenge that I see for vendors participating in this kind of events is that the reality is that people, as you very well say, they’re sitting in front of their screen for an hour looking at a conference. They have fifteen minutes before the next session start. You know, do you want to stand up, stretch their legs, go to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, see what’s new, right. Yeah, and that’s basically, you know, your opportunity to capture their attention. And so that’s where I don’t see, you know, a lot of…
Grace: [00:23:15] Benefit to vendors maybe.
Liel: [00:23:17] Yeah, I guess, Grace. But I, you know, that’s why I really wanted to talk to you about it, because I can see that you did have a good experience. Right. Because here’s the upside. A lot of people know that at these events, some of the best and most renowned vendors in the industry are present, are gathering. And so they come ready. And I’ve seen it like other events that I’ve been present, like people come ready. There are some people that come ready to buy. They come ready to schedule things to get the information they need, whatever that is. And it looks like you were able to get those people more efficiently. That is the value that I see. I don’t think it maybe helps a lot for discovery, but it certainly helps to connect with people that already have intent in them.
Grace: [00:24:06] That’s a very good point, honestly, because that’s what I have noticed, people that were ready to buy that. So those are the people that showed up, right? Those are the people that came specifically to my booth looking for persist communication software platform that will help them automate follow-up. Right. So they had it in their mind. They knew we were a vendor there. They’d seen us probably a bunch of times at every single AAJ there was. And so they’re like, OK, like you said, we know these vendors. We’ve seen their name a few times. And this is something I need. I’m going to go right into their booth and check them out. So we did get benefit from that. But I also completely understand what you’re saying, where if for those that don’t have that time, you know, or the walk around. Right. That’s why AAJ does the in-person events at such nice places. Right. Hawaii and because they lock you into well, not lock you in, but you don’t want to leave. You don’t want to leave the hotel. Right. Because you’re in a nice, beautiful place. You’re in a nice, beautiful hotel and you want to stretch your legs by walking through the exhibitor hall. That’s how they’ve always encouraged it. So virtual is going to be very difficult to achieve that. And I think they’re going to have to think outside the box, like you said, and that that whole idea with the imagery, it’s like TV.
Grace: [00:25:25] I think that we need to kind of go back towards that TV, the lower third content, you know, with, you know, the name and, you know, always reminding them who you are and the company and then the little visuals that don’t take over the person.
Liel: [00:25:39] Yes, I cannot stress that enough. Treat your webinars as interactive TV. That’s really the best way to make the experience outstanding and to really be able to say, you know what, this was better delivered in this format than if it would have been in person because at the end of the day, that’s your goal. Now that you’re shifting to this new model, you don’t want to take what you were going to do in person and try to make it work on an online format, reinvent it for online. And that’s what I don’t see a lot of people doing. They’re still doing old school in a new format that doesn’t necessarily give and provide the best experience. Now, Grace, I do have one more question to you, right? Because we talked about the experience for the actual participants. We’ve talked about the visibility for vendors and the interaction that vendors have. But there seems to be quite a bit of a setup, right, in order for you to be able to just be present as a vendor there. So what was that like? Because you said there is a video here, there’s a brochure here. There’s so like you had to be like literally online in front of your screen webcam on.
Grace: [00:26:57] So, yeah…
Liel: [00:26:58] For the entire eight hours that if you were in the exhibitor hall?.
Grace: [00:27:01] I’m so glad you asked that question, OK, because that experience was horrible. I have to say, like the initial experience of trying to load my assets and making sure that they displayed the way I wanted them to in this program that they had, and that when I click through the booth that it was the experience I wanted my attendees to have. It was very difficult. I had to physically create assets specific to the sizes of the platform and even the videos. Right. So any asset that I wanted, I had to specifically create and name and tag and upload. And if I had a whole team, you know, to do that, it would have been great because then I would have had every freaking asset, amazing asset known to man on there. But how much do you put into something like that when you don’t know how much people are going to actually pay attention?
Liel: [00:27:58] I really wonder. It definitely sounds like you need to put a lot of work and effort and if you really want to stand out and but then there’s the thing, right? You may do a lot of things to want to stand out, but at the end of the day, you know, it’s not like if you have, you know, at an exhibitor hall, you can strategize. Right. You can be one of two kind of vendors. You can come with your six-foot long table cloth that has your logo in it, a few pens, a few notepads, throw them on top of the table. One of those freestanding banners, right. And you’re set in literally 15 minutes. Right? Right. Or you can be like us that we really go out of our way to try to pop out in the way that we present ourselves in these kind of events.
Liel: [00:28:52] And my thing is, how are vendors responding to having to put up so much effort to have this online presence, sort of saying in this new virtual exhibitor hall because it’s a lot of work, Grace. I mean, I know I spoke with a lot of vendors that they come by and they just want to ask me, how much time does it take you to put this booth up?
Liel: [00:29:17] And I tell them we’re usually comedy before and we work on it two to three hours and oh, my God, that’s so much time. Like, I’m literally done in 15 minutes. And so I’m trying to think like for them going to exhibit to events is like plug and play. They get on a plane, they get their, like they know what they’re doing. They have a system. How easily has it been to take people out of that routine and get them to… No, no, no, no. You have to build up your landing page on this platform. You need to create assets, content, here that, when they were not doing this before, who knows? You know.
Grace: [00:29:52] That was not easy.
Liel: [00:29:53] They may not even have a website, honestly.
Grace: [00:29:55] No, you’re right. That was not easy. That that whole vendor program, part of it was the hardest part, I think. And I and yourself, both of us have, you know, pretty much expert level media and graphics experience. And it was difficult for me because basically they were asking me to not just create or recreate the assets, but it was put it in a format that had to work with a virtual booth. So I had to think about it as if I was an attendee looking in. And what is the first interactive element? I need an interactive element because I have to capture them within the first six seconds. Right. Because this is now a virtual thing instead of in person. I have a little more. A little more. I think time, don’t I? A lot of times we have a little more time to capture their attention in person.
Liel: [00:30:45] Let’s talk to wrap this up, about some upcoming virtual events that are really worth exploring, because there’s quite a few. I mean, we know PILMMA is going to be having their annual conference all virtual sometime soon. I think that’s one interesting one to look out for because it always had great speakers, great content, particularly for those who are in personal injury, potentially Mass Torts as well. This is kind of like a very relevant annual conference that I know a lot of people look forward to. So that’s going to be interesting to see. Now, Grace, there is Mass Torts made perfect. So they’re taking it online for their full session. And I must say, I’m very impressed with everything they’re doing to make their conference as much as if you are actually there. What’s really mind-blowing Grace, is that they’re still keeping the Vegas theme because all of their conferences are in Las Vegas. So they’re still keeping that theme under virtual conference. And I think that’s great. I think that’s exactly what we’re talking about. Right. That’s really adding fun, interactive elements to really keep your participants engaged. So amongst the things that I recall seeing in what Mass Torts made perfect are going to be offering. So they’re still going to be offering cocktail reception. You’re still going to be able to sit at tables with different attendees, vendors, participants, like literally walking to a cocktail party, move around and join different tables as a participant and have conversations with people as if you were at an actual event. Grace, I think that’s going to be very interesting, right. Needless to say, they’re doing a virtual exhibitor hall. And obviously, there are also going to be running all of the conferences that way. Now, Grace, I do want to bring another event that, as I started the conversation, said I was last year. And they’re also taking their event online this year. And that’s Ben Glass’, great legal marketing event. So there are going to be having their conference late in October. And here is one thing. It’s not going to be 100 percent online.
Liel: [00:33:07] I think it’s going to be partly online. And they’re also creating room to have some in-person attendees. So it’s going to be a hybrid of those both. That’s interesting. Yes. And so here’s another thing, Grace, that really caught my attention about the way they’re doing their interactive exhibitor hall. So if I’m not mistaken, Grace, all of these other events that we’ve mentioned so far, their exhibitor halls for the vendors where you pay your vendor fee and then good luck and hopefully you’ll generate enough leads for it to have been worth your while or you get enough exposure or, you know, whatever your goal is for exhibiting there. But the way that great legal marketing is doing it is for the vendors, they allow them to be there without paying nothing up front, if I’m correct. And then they charge you per lead.
Liel: [00:34:04] Right. So you still have the same set up like you’ve just talked about Grace, similar at least. You have a virtual booth. People can come and interact. And if they found what you’re doing interesting, then the participants can decide to share with you their contact details. And at that point, that becomes a lead. Right. And at that point, you get charged X amount by the event organizer for that lead that you acquire. So almost kind of like, LSA, local service ads from Google situation. Yeah. Based on virtual event.
Liel: [00:34:42] And quite frankly, I think that’s a very interesting model.
Grace: [00:34:45] Kind of like it, that’s almost pay for performance, isn’t it?
Liel: [00:34:48] It is.
Grace: [00:34:49] Did you drive me leads or did you not? If you drove me leads, I pay.
Liel: [00:34:53] And obviously that raises the questions like, well, are the participants going to be incentivized through other external factors to go and visit? But no, I asked. They’re not they’re not like genuinely the people that are going to be coming to the booths are not going to be incentivized to complete a form or something, that says that they’ve been to all the booths. So then they can enter a raffle for a trip or a TV or whatever that they’re giving away. But they’re not giving away anything to incentivise people to go and visit the exhibitors’ hall. So what I love about these grates is that creativity is the thinking outside the box is the way in which they’re finding also ways to be interesting and appealing to exhibitors that have been sceptical about virtual exhibitor halls. And I think that’s great. I always think it’s good to experiment and try different things. And so that’s an interesting model that it’s also coming up.
Grace: [00:35:52] And I think it’s important to also think about what type of virtual event you actually want to be involved in. Right. And include that as part of the strategy that you have for your marketing. And the reason I’m mentioning that is because, as I mentioned to you, Liel, before we started this podcast was today anyway, before we started completely. I’m part of the Forbes Council membership and they have in the forum, they’re speaking about speaking gigs in the remote world and they specifically are asking if anyone seen much success in speaking gigs. And all throughout the forum, people are talking about webinars, virtual events, associations that they were involved with, podcasts like we’re doing and whether they’re worth it or not. And what I, the common theme that I see is exactly what you and I are saying. You have to see if it’s worth it for you. Are they going to have the right amount of people and the right people? And are they going to have interactivity that you like and that you feel can best show who your business is and what you can provide? Those are the things that I’ve noticed in the themes. What do you think?
Liel: [00:37:06] It makes absolute sense, Grace, right? I mean, the options that have emerged as a result of the circumstance into which we are is overwhelming. We’re at a point that there are so many, every single week there are endless options of webinars that one can attend. So you really now need to be very strategic into which ones you want to attend and which are worth your time and make considerations as well. Which ones are live, which ones are pre-recorded and take it from there. Right. So I think we are ready for a few takeaways. And I think our first one could very well be that one is jump in the opportunity. There is great continuous, great opportunities. It has never been easier to participate at events than it is now, but you should really assess very well which ones you are going to be attending so you can make the most out of them. Because here is the other thing, Grace, right. You don’t want to, particularly if it’s an event that it’s paid and it can have a great positive impact on your business, in your law firm. You don’t want to subscribe yourself and drop halfway through it because you’ve got distracted with all the other things that are happening around you because you’re not there. That’s one of the reasons these events and many people attend them is because they really get to focus on things without the usual daily distractions. So I think those are some of the considerations people should have when opting and subscribing to these ones. What do you think?
Grace: [00:38:43] Yeah, no, definitely when you put the time in, right, so put the time in, whether it’s before, during or after, whatever it is, you need to put the time in and, you know, make it a part of your strategy. That’s why I keep saying that I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think that can be one and honestly because one needs to be choosy, be selective and to put the time in.
Liel: [00:39:05] Yeah. Absolutely Grace. So with regards to number three, let’s now talk a little bit about vendors, exhibitors, and kind of like the elements that may not be as central to conferences and well what used to be live events, now virtual events. But there are still part of the experience. So I would say a couple of things. Number one, if you’ve decided or have been thinking going for something for a partnership with a vendor or you have a need, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s software, don’t rely on these events as much as you were doing before. Start your search process ahead of time. There are other sources to really get connected with the right partner to whatever it is that your law firm needs. Right. So we talked a lot about that last week, Grace. I think so. Maybe just clicking on the first Ad that you see on Facebook is not going to be the best way to go out for it. But there are certainly a lot of resources. And most of companies, whether they’re software, whether they’re agencies that are serious in the work they do and such, they have also revamped their game so that they can be more easily discovered online by their ideal customers. Right. So that’s definitely something that needs to be said. If you’re no longer having these exhibitor halls that were connecting you with your next partner for the law firm, then you potentially want to just revisit your strategy. But then again, if you’re attending one of these events that actually do have an exhibitor hall, then go for it, then go for it. Give it a give it a try, give it a try. Make it one of those must do things during the period that these virtual event lasts. What do you think?
Grace: [00:40:57] Yeah, and most of them, all of them actually list the exhibitors that are going to be there and just take a look at the descriptions, you know, and note down the ones that you want to visit, that you want to see.
Liel: [00:41:06] And they’re putting a lot of work.
Grace: [00:41:08] They are.
Liel: [00:41:08] To be there and to participate in those meetings. Grace, I must say, I mean, when you see the list of tasks that you need to complete in order to be ready for the event, it’s a lot of work that goes into that. So you can be certain that those who are actually taking the steps of being present there, they have a big level of interest to connect with you, serve you and, you know, at least initiate a conversation. Grace. So with that, we come to an end of another legal marketing private conversation, at In Camera podcast. So next week, another one?
Grace: [00:41:44] Next week, another one.
Liel: [00:41:46] All right, Grace, Shanah Tova, as I said, the beginning of the year, today, it’s Friday. So we’re recording this right before the end of the year. Grace, I’m looking forward to talking with you next week, New Year. OK, take care. All right. Bye.
Liel: [00:42:01] And if you like our show, make sure you subscribe. Tell your co-workers. Leave us a review and send us your questions at ask@incamerapodcast.com. We’ll see you next week.
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