How to Launch Products in a Virtual World

Education is the highest form of marketing. Shannon Maverick sets on out on a quest to speak with business leaders from around B2B to better understand how they are utilizing education with their customers.

Product launches in the B2B realm traditionally occurred at trade shows. These events offered exposure but also a lot of competition for eyes. Once COVID-19 hit, the event industry collapsed, leaving companies to pivot on launching products digitally. As always, Maverick of Marketing wanted to provide listeners with tips on marketing in a virtual world. Host Shannon Maverick welcomed AtlasIED’s VP of Marketing, Gina Sansivero, to discuss its successful campaign of introducing its audience to the Atmosphere platform.

First, Sansivero talked about her journey with AtlasIED. “I’ve been with the company over two years. At that time, the son of the owner took over the company and wanted to refresh with new people and energy,” she said.

In her second year at the company, she faced what every marketer did—the coronavirus. The business was hyping up the new product for debut at InfoComm, the biggest show for AV. Two months before the event, the association moved it to virtual.

“We had to pivot quickly from the traditional marketing we were doing to get traffic to the booth,” Sansivero said.

The company decided it didn’t want to launch its product at InfoComm virtual and went about planning its own live event, which included renting a closed theater and hiring live event professionals. Sansivero also went back to the product owner to see if there was anything else they could add to the platform since they had more time.

AtlasIED tried some new channels for promoting the live event and generated a huge buzz. Their registration numbers were much larger than the leads they captured at their last InfoComm, and attendance was over 50% for those registered.

“We had an audience focused exclusively on our product launch. Ultimately, the cost per lead was less than half of what it would have been at InfoComm,” Sansivero said.
As for the future, Sansivero understands that part of the success was a captive audience at home.

However, she noted they were reducing their footprint at upcoming shows, and the product attracted a lot of attention.

“Sales benefitted from the momentum, and we weren’t lost in the noise of InfoComm. They were able to engage people and help them visualize how the product would work through virtual demos,” she added.

Check on the live launch for Atmosphere here.

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