We're planning to launch a road show in 2022, but we're concerned prospects and staff won't attend due to concerns about COVID. How can we leverage the experience while addressing pandemic-related fears?

Even amid a pandemic, road shows are a great way to maintain and establish contact with customers and prospects. In fact, we've found that many attendees appreciate any such efforts to bring innovations to their attention – and often to their doorsteps. To make your encounter a bit more COVID friendly, you might consider a hybrid mobile experience.

A hybrid tour pairs a traditional in-person, vehicle-based encounter with online participation options. For example, your mobile tour could stop in the parking lot of XYZ Corp., where some attendees would walk through the experience in person. Meanwhile, thanks to your camera and tablet/monitor accommodations, remote attendees would view your products online along with their in-person cohorts. This interaction allows for easy communication between your experts and attendees and even between co-workers at the same firm. What's more, it may help reach a wider range of attendees, from decision-makers to influencers, in one tour stop.

Along these same lines, a hybrid experience allows your key personnel, such as R&D specialists, executives, etc., to "Zoom in" for a few hours as opposed to spending days or weeks on the road. Plus, you can tailor staff schedules to the needs of each stop's target audience. For instance, if you know Client A is keen on technical specs but Client B wants a general overview of your options, you might schedule an engineer to talk to Client A virtually and a regional salesperson to visit with Client B in person.

Suffice it to say, hybrid road shows have advantages over and above strictly pandemic pluses. But before you hit the gas with a hybrid model, here are some things to consider.

Tools of the Tour
You don't have to totally reinvent your tour to make it a hybrid experience. You do, however, need a few technology components. But depending on the complexity and duration of your encounter, the following elements could cost you as little as a couple of thousand dollars.

First, you need a reliable internet connection. The simplest and least-expensive solution is to purchase a wireless router that works with a nationwide carrier. But don't buy the bare-bones option. Spending a little extra for a high-quality router and a carrier with consistent data strength will save tons of troubleshooting and help you avoid embarrassing mishaps. You may even want to employ multiple carriers and their respective routers to maintain proper signal strength as your tour travels the country.

Similarly, you need a secure and dependable video/audio platform to connect on-site and virtual participants. We've found Zoom to be the most user friendly for a wide range of audiences, but we also use Microsoft Teams. Always select a platform whose functions and complexity are appropriate for both your staff and target audience.

Finally, secure at least one smart monitor or a laptop/tablet so you can see online participants. And of course you'll want a minimum of one camera and microphone (more is likely better) so everyone can seamlessly interact. Typically, we install multiple cameras and microphones in the trailer along with a switcher controlled via a tablet or smartphone. This allows us to change the online view to different areas of the trailer or even provide different angles with the push of a button.

Training and Custom Tailoring
Along with the aforementioned technology, your staff must know how to use it and how to interact with visitors effectively. So ensure at-home and on-tour personnel not only understand how to wrangle the technology and troubleshoot glitches but also how to effectively engage both in-person and online attendees. There's an art to moving smoothly from one product demo to another and from talking to an in-person attendee to interacting with another via Zoom. Allow staff plenty of time to familiarize themselves with the technology and with the trailer and encourage them to role play realistic attendee/staff interactions.

We've also found it helpful to have a moderator on every Zoom or Microsoft Teams call. This person captures questions from customers, monitors the exchange, switches cameras when necessary, and ensures the proper experts tune in at the right time.

Also, to create the most effective mobile-tour experience, don't forget the needs of your target audience. While attendees should be paramount components of all marketing endeavors, a hybrid tour allows you to fully customize both the overall tour and every stop on it to meet the needs of each customer. To that end, we spend a considerable amount of time prior to the tour launch gathering intel about each group. At the very least, we determine what products they are interested in and where they are on the sales journey. But more personal details, such as the amount of technical info each visitor is likely to request or whether people will expect to speak with executives versus salespeople, can help leverage each encounter. By collecting this data, you can ensure you have the right experts in the trailer or online to best meet their needs. Plus, you can adjust the length of your presentations and the topics discussed to meet the time demands of each customer.

We start the data-discovery process 10 to 12 weeks before a tour launches, and we compile it all into a proprietary spreadsheet that's shared with our clients and anyone staffing the tour. The idea is simply to take the time to fully understand their needs to maximize both each experience and your overall investment.

Adding a hybrid element to your mobile tours extends the reach of your road show and is a great tool to overcome lingering pandemic-related concerns. Plus, chances are that hybrid online/in-person road shows will continue long after the pandemic appears in our rear-view mirrors.