MarTech Interview with Frank Paterno, SVP of Marketing at GlobalMeet

How can B2B marketers drive more ROI from their online events? Frank Paterno, SVP of Marketing at GlobalMeet has some thoughts:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Frank, tell us about yourself and your journey in the B2B marketing and communications technology industry. What differentiates GlobalMeet as a platform from others?

Thank you, Paroma! I am Frank Paterno and I run the Marketing team at GlobalMeet. GlobalMeet is the fastest-growing webcasting company in the industry and we specialize in high-impact events that empower businesses to communicate with their customers, investors, and employees.

What makes GlobalMeet different is the combination of platform reliability and our commitment to supporting our clients. The GlobalMeet platform is known in the industry to be “no fail” and our customers count on that to deliver critical communications.  We give our customers the ability to manage their own events or have experienced GlobalMeet professionals manage all the details for them, from pre-event planning to presenter training and ultimately managing the live event broadcast.

How are you seeing AI impact digital marketing and online events today? How will it shape the event tech segment in future?

Artificial intelligence can help digital marketers create more personalized experiences through their online events. Often, virtual events have multiple sessions and a ton of options to choose from. AI can help drown out the noise and provide more tailored suggestions to attendees based on their profiles, to connect them with session tracks that best align with their interests, as well as networking opportunities with others that share things in common.

We have also seen AI’s incredible ability to help create content for online events. Registration pages, highlight reels, speaker bios, and session summaries are just some of the content types that are required for putting on truly seamless and engaging events. AI can greatly reduce the time that marketers spend to create these assets.

What I envision seeing more of with AI that will mold the future of event tech, is its use in event data and reporting. At the end of the day, the best event platforms will help improve your ROI. Artificial intelligence will be an indispensable tool in identifying patterns in engagement tracking, and demographics. Marketers will be able to better decipher which sessions or times of day stuck with attendees throughout an event. This will be crucial in improving future events and turning attendees into sales leads.

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What are some of the biggest flaws in today’s digital event marketing processes that you wish B2B marketers paid better attention to?

I think the most critical mistake is not understanding the difference between a virtual meeting and a virtual event. There are very different requirements for each and using a virtual meetings technology for a virtual event can result in a poor experience. Virtual meetings are more informal and highly collaborative (think Zoom or Teams). These platforms virtualize the experience of sitting in a conference room with ten people and brainstorming on a whiteboard; or a weekly team update meeting..  Virtual events have a more formal separation between presenters and audience members. Think of a webinar series where attendees are invited to learn about best practices from industry experts or a keynote speech at an industry conference. Effective virtual events make use of features that allow the audience to interact and participate while also providing control mechanisms to avoid disruptions that may occur from some audience members. 

Can you talk about some of the most unique online events from the recent past by B2B tech brands and the key takeaways from them?  

We have a client who runs thought-leadership webinars in the medical technology industry. Marketers know that producing great content is the best way to draw an audience and produce great leads.

These events often feature surgeons who are at the top of their field demonstrating a specific medical procedure or using a specific piece of new technology. You would think this kind of use case would best be served by an in-person event, but they have found virtual to be a better delivery mechanism for three reasons:

(1) Surgeons are not usually the best public speakers so allowing them to present from their operating room or office results in a better presentation than if they were on stage in front of a live audience;

(2) The virtual event allows cameras to get in close and show the audience the detail they need to see; which would not be the case if they were sitting thirty rows back in an auditorium;

(3) The event is opened up to a much wider audience who may not be able to attend in-person due to financial, time or in some parts of the world, safety concerns with traveling.

Between digital events and physical events: how would you tell B2B marketing teams to create a healthy balance?  

This is such a common topic that many B2B marketing teams are trying to figure out in the post-pandemic business world. My recommendation is to hold in-person events when relationship-building is most important and use virtual events to continue the conversation and reinforce your messaging. As an example, a marketing team may choose a few industry events in which they will participate and exhibit. The focus of these events would be to meet new people and form new relationships. As a follow-up, a series of virtual events would keep the engagement with those new contacts going and hopefully lead them through the journey to becoming a qualified lead and ultimately, a new customer.

Tell us about the leading B2B tech brands you feel have a robust digital marketing presence and framework (and why): what key takeaways from these picks/choices?  

I think the Big Four Consulting Firms (Deloitte, KPMG, PWC and EY) are doing a great job providing a personalized digital marketing experience. In today’s world, we are all in information overload but ironically, it’s hard to find reputable, quality information for topics you may be interested in. Deloitte’s “My Deloitte” program allows people to create a profile of interests and then have articles, webinars, and reports curated according to their individual interests.

Adobe, also has a great digital marketing presence and strategy, specifically within their newsletters. Articles with software tips on different topics sit next to interviews with experts from the Adobe team. Providing educational and training content provides amazing value for B2B customers and increases audience and product engagement for Adobe. Customers see Adobe as a resource beyond a seller of software while staying informed of new features and having consistent access to information on best practices.

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