Back in the day, marketing campaigns usually started in the conference room, with the in-house marketing team ensconced in their chairs, a pot of coffee on the table and a well-worn chalkboard on the wall. Marketing was still preceded by the word "mass" and product roll-out meant rolling somewhere into television, print or radio. And when it came to product demonstration, well, if you didn't have the money or manpower to knock on doors during the dinner hour, you could always set up booths in malls and at trade shows across the country to show yours customers and clients exactly how it slices, dices and blends.

The old ways are still with us, of course, but nowadays going-to-market is often about going online, with marketing teams using collaborative conferencing tools to plan, present and promote their products in real time but in virtual space.

The cost-benefit underlying collaborative conferencing is significant in several areas of product marketing. In the design process, creatives spread out geographically can work together online, using whiteboards, web slides and application sharing to put together marketing campaigns, saving on the expense and time of travel. Likewise, marketing teams can conduct virtual focus groups at a fraction of the cost and time of live polling and surveys. And when it comes to product release and sales demonstrations, collaborative conferencing allows sales and marketing teams to conduct engaging, media-rich and interactive presentations to customers around the world.

Selectron Technologies, one of Encounter's customers, is an example of a company that used collaborative conferencing to transform their marketing process.

Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Selectron Technologies is a premier provider of interactive voice, web, and mobile inspection solutions for local government agencies across the U.S. and Canada. Challenged with the need to communicate with customers over a large geographic area, Selectron needed a better way to market to the government agencies it targets, while also reducing the expenses incurred by the sales team for travel.

Previously, Selectron’s sales teams would travel to a city then be restricted to covering the eight or nine counties that comprised that area of the country. Selectron realized it could better leverage the reach and effectiveness of its sales organization by marketing and demonstrating its products using web seminars. Selectron began using Encounter’s web conferencing services and quickly benefited.

After only two seminars using Microsoft's Live Meeting, Selectron reduced its travel significantly and now has the ability to demo and present their products and services 50% more than in the past. Plus, their web seminars allow them to pre-qualify attendees as prospects, further expanding sales potential.

From small marketing meetings to large-scale product presentations, collaborative conferencing is an effective tool for companies like Selectron to interact more productively with customers, partners and vendors. If your company is interested in using collaborative conferencing to generate more customer interest, deliver go-to-market campaigns, reduce the cost of marketing or explore new ways to demonstrate your product, you can register for a demonstration by clicking here.

Microsoft Announces Real-Time Collaboration Offerings

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates hosted a web conference on March 9 in San Francisco, announcing plans to deploy software that will allow businesses to move forward in the burgeoning field of real-time collaboration.

With the goal of integrating various modes of communication, Microsoft plans to release three products over the coming months that will improve how individuals work and collaborate with each other.

Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 unifies IM, Short Message Service, phone, video conferencing and web conferencing capabilities into a single application. Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005, an update to Microsoft's real-time communications platform, allows corporate IM networks to connect with clients or partners' networks through standard firewall ports and provides greater spam controls.

For web conferencing, Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005 offers several key enhancements over earlier Live Meeting editions. Now users can initiate ad-hoc meetings from Microsoft Office programs such as Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio. Presenters can control audio conference calls directly from the Live Meeting interface, or stream audio over the Internet using the Internet Audio Broadcast feature. Documents can be shared on the fly for online review or editing. And there are several new usability features that help presenters and particpants better manage and attend web meetings.

Encounter Collaborative will be implementing Live Meeting 2005 in coming weeks.

Upcoming Events

Employees as Entrepreneurs

Encounter's popular Seminar Series continues this month with guest speaker Richard Anthony, founder of The Solutions Network. During this free web seminar, Mr. Anthony will share important steps that business owners, managers, human resources staff and team leaders can take to adopt a partnership approach to management and employee relations that are based on mutual trust, respect and an understanding of motivational psychology.

"Employees as Entrepreneurs" takes place on March 24 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific/1:00 p.m. Eastern. All you need to attend is a phone and an Internet connection. Click here to read more about it.

Reader's Resource

Earlier this month, professional speaker and business consultant, Marc Kramer, shared his insights and strategies on business networking in a free Encounter seminar entitled "Power Networking." The seminar had a large turn out and many attendees expressed interest in Mr. Kramer's book, so we've provided a link to Amazon.

Also featured is How to Make Collaboration Work by David Straus, a look into the components of effective collaboration.

We've provided links to Amazon along with book summaries.

"In Power Networking you'll learn the many applications of networking, from job searches to increased productivity in any field. You'll learn to write effective introductory and follow-up letters, maintain relationships over time, catalog your contacts, and network using the Internet."

"Collaboration is an everyday practice that many people find to be a frustrating, even exhausting, experience. How to Make Collaboration Work provides a remedy: five principles of collaboration that have been tested and refined in organizations throughout the world. Author David Straus shows that these methods can help any group make better decisions and function more effectively. The five principles are: Involve the Relevant Stakeholders, Build Consensus Phase by Phase, Design a Process Map, Designate a Process Facilitator, and Harness the Power of Group Memory. Each principle addresses the specific challenges people face when trying to work collaboratively, and each can be applied to any problem-solving scenario."