The CampfireEffect: Maximizing vendor ROI through a digital platform

Here’s a tough realization: Vendors are the backbone of the trade events industry and yet we don’t engage with them enough to provide a return on their investment.

There’s a huge disconnect between the value of vendors and an industry’s general attentiveness to them. Beyond a basic transactional relationship, vendors provide educational opportunities, share research, push technology to evolve and bring industry customers to events, significantly widening the scope of exposure to non-members or non-paying attendees.

We are missing valuable opportunities to interact, deepen our relationships with and utilize all the benefits they can offer.

CampfireSocial wants to change that.

CampfireSocial is a private SaaS social network and commerce platform designed specifically for your industry vertical. Vendors can engage with your unique community members directly, and access a trove of information to learn more about each user’s commercial needs leading to valuable insight that can help close deals.

Vendors need access to their respective industries and a relevant buying audience every single day - not just a few days a year at trade shows and events. But that’s not a gap that 3-5 day virtual trade events, emails or social media sites like LinkedIn can fill effectively, no matter how often you use them. Low engagement rates and the relative rarity of any significant business connections resulting from those interactions, make sure of that.  

CampfireSocial allows vendors and their industry members to form deep, long-lasting connections that enhance customer lifetime value and provide long-term relationships. The platform also allows a unique opportunity to let users get to know the individuals behind a company, instead of just the company itself. Personal relationships, as we all know, are critical in sales, and yet current options - both digital and physical - simply don’t allow people to stand out as themselves. By participating in rich content sharing and communication opportunities all on a single platform, relationships form more easily and go deeper than any other digital platform that exists today.

It also levels the playing field. In a typical event or digital space, smaller vendors or those without significant financial backing can get lost in the shuffle. With CampfireSocial, relationships form organically with a variety of connections, big or small, well-funded or not.

This inherent ROI creates a likelihood that vendors will invest more money on sponsorship opportunities or virtual real estate, further benefiting your organization. The higher the return on investment, the higher the spend in ways that can directly benefit your organization.

Here are a few other key benefits CampfireSocial offers vendors:

• Individual profiles to showcase themselves
• An opportunity to showcase new products in real time versus having to wait for an event showcase
• The ability to share the latest white paper or research with a large audience without the concern of low open rates of email marketing efforts
• Access to a robust suite of data about what a community is talking about, and how to customize consumer offers based on that information
• Partnership opportunities with other vendors to provide a highly customized offering for the buying audience
• Assistance with lead generation to maximize their experience

What develops is a positive feedback loop that’s unparalleled: Increased satisfaction and return on investment leads to increased spend and incremental revenue. Vendors are supported and become an integral part of the industry community.  

This all translates back into meaningful ROI and increased satisfaction for the hosting organization.

Like any business solution, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. CampfireSocial provides significant value that complements a calendar of live and/or virtual trade events. The CampfireEffect only intensifies the value of interactions in your industry community.

Written By: Erica Bishaf, Founder & CEO of CampfireSocial

erica.bishaf@campfiresocial.io

CampfireSocial is a private, branded social network and commerce solution (social commerce) that provides organizations 365/24/7 access to their stakeholders while creating a modern member, subscriber, attendee, and exhibiting partner experience that is monetizable to ultimately own the voice of their industry.  Our solution takes the interconnectivity of community, content, & commerce and digitizes the experience.  

We help organizations:

• Diversify revenue with a monetizable platform
• Provide relevance, especially ROI among exhibiting partners
• Learn more about their stakeholders with behavioral and social listening data & business intelligence
• Create a modern member and attendee experience

CampfireSocial also offers engagement consulting to better tap into the needs of your members, show attendees, and exhibiting partners.  Contact our strategy team at strategy@campfiresocial.io to learn more.