Technology Council of Southern California Blog

Phil Becker writes:
On Wednesday, September 24, I had the opportunity to moderate a truly interesting and educational dinner meeting of that Tech Council’s Marketing SIG. An audience of about fifty people heard three panelists speak on “The New Business Boosters; How Blogging, Widgets and Streaming Video Can Make Your Marketing Efforts Take Off“.

Attendees enjoyed a nice dinner before the Panel.

Thanks to the kitchen of the DoubleTree Hotel for some tasty chicken.

As that title suggests, the talks focused on three new marketing tactics that companies can incorporate in their marketing mix to seriously increase the firm’s marketing effectiveness.

Gary Gabriel, Peter Kim, Scott Fox, Phil Becker

The first speaker, Scott Fox, who is an author, entrepreneur, Director of the E-Commerce Success Institute and a Board Director of the Tech Council gave a great overview of how to build and utilize a blog to increase personal, two-way communication with clients and prospects. Scott used some real-world examples to emphasize the “do’s and don’ts” of blogging, including how blogging can help address misleading or negative images that a competitor might paint of your company or products.

Then Gary Gabriel, Founder and President of Vmatrix, showed us how streaming video has recently become a very effective and surprisingly cost-effective way to educate your prospects about your products and your firm. He pointed out that a well-made video can keep a prospect at your web site for five or more minutes instead of the sub-minute times a static web display might accomplish. Your are essentially using a video as a product advertisement and the click-thru to your web site is far better than other forms of advertising.

The audience for the Blogs, Widgets and Streaming Video Marketing Panel

Finally, Peter Kim, Founder and President of Interpolls, introduce the audience to the recently emerging capabilities of web-based widgets. It turns out that these widgets can be any sort of bi-directional application that you can conceive of to involve the user in the subject – normally the product or service you are marketing. This includes games, questionnaires, and even the ability to purchase your product directly via the widget. The real strength is that a user can copy a widget to his or her own page on a social networking site where other views can find and use it. This becomes a very low cost yet effective form of viral marketing.

Steve Stallman, Chairman of the IMPACT Committee enjoys the Panel with Catrina Luedtke, Executive Director of TCOSC

We finished up the evening with about 45 minutes of Q&A, where the audience had a chance to drill-down on each of the subjects. It’s too bad we had to call a halt at 9:00 PM as the attendees had a range of excellent questions and really seemed to be intrigued by all three marketing tools.

- Phil Becker, TCOSC IMPACT Sales & Marketing Committee Volunteer and Panel Organizer/Moderator

Thanks to our attendees and sponsors.  Have you joined the Technology Council yet?