To stand out from its competitors and generate leads from customers who couldn’t make it to the show, GE Healthcare created a virtual trade show booth to complement its physical presence at the Radiological Society of North America’s (RSNA) 2009 annual convention in Chicago. RSNA is always a crowded show, typically bringing more than 10,000 visitors to GE Healthcare’s booth. Enhancing the show experience with a virtual version helped people navigate the booth and find content, demonstrations and staff and share it with those who couldn’t attend.

“I wanted to do something more engaging this past year — something that would give those customers who couldn’t attend the show in person the same experience as those that did,” says GE Healthcare Global Webmaster Jim Salinsky. “Our previous microsites just didn’t have the kind of personal and catered experience that I was hoping to achieve with the virtual exhibit.”

Because the RSNA show is so important to GE Healthcare’s marketing efforts, Salinsky faced some apprehension within the company’s ranks about how the virtual exhibit would work. “We had to manage change internally to show that the virtual exhibit wouldn’t just be another microsite or brochureware,” Salinsky says. “We needed to prove that it would be an exclusive experience for our customers, just as the booth was.” To alleviate those concerns, Salinsky held several training sessions to help employees understand the value of the virtual exhibit.

GE Healthcare also set to work promoting the effort to attendees via every marketing method at its disposal, such as Twitter, Facebook, banner advertising, Google AdWords, on its Web site home page and by word-of-mouth. “We even ran a contest to reward the GE employee who forwarded an e-mail about the event to the most people with non-GE addresses,” Salinksky says. “That person won an iPod docking station for forwarding it on to more than 1,200 people.”

Working with partner InXpo, GE Healthcare positioned its RSNA virtual exhibit as a true complement to its booth on the trade show floor. The virtual exhibit opened 10 days before the RSNA show and also ran throughout the five days of the show.

GE Healthcare’s virtual exhibit was created from the same 3D models as the 30,000-square-foot physical booth, and was divided into several product areas. The user interface carried the same brand graphics, and included a live webcam that visitors could maneuver through the physical booth to see the action on the floor. A one-on-one chat function connected visitors with virtual exhibit staff to discuss products, ask questions and schedule appointments.Virtual exhibit users could actually see icons of the booth staff, with the employee’s face, name and regional territories online.

GE Healthcare also offered 15 to 20 taped demonstrations that walked visitors through new product features and benefits.Visitors could download a variety of product information, including brochures, images and case studies on the more than 25 new GE Healthcare products being introduced at the trade show.

“Virtual exhibits give us the ability to replicate the trade show experience online,” Salinsky says. “This includes the ability to feature live presentations from the floor of the actual show, and provide dedicated virtual staffers to staff areas of the booth in which they’re experts, just like the real thing.”

To further link its virtual and physical exhibits, GE Healthcare stationed four HP Touchsmart monitors tuned into the virtual exhibit at its booth, which allowed booth visitors to download those same product materials from the floor as well as view various parts of the booth, plan their visit and set up appointments.

The result was a major success. The virtual exhibit attracted nearly 4,000 attendees and generated four documented sales opportunities, Salinsky says.More than 1,500 of those attendees came to the virtual exhibit before the RSNA show even opened; another 400 visited the virtual exhibit after the show closed.Visitors spent about 1.5 hours at the virtual exhibit on average, and visited more than five product areas during their visits.

“By requiring each user to register, they give us better data than we ever acquired on our microsites,” Salinksky says. “I can tell exactly who’s downloading what, what areas of the site they visited and for how long.”

Additionally, the company ultimately spent 30 percent less creating the virtual exhibit than it had in past years on more static, Flash-based microsites. GE Healthcare plans to expand its use of the hybrid physical/virtual trade show model, and is encouraging its other business units to consider similar plans for other major events.

“Virtual exhibits are still pretty new, so I think we definitely got ahead of the curve — and ahead of our competitors — with this show,” Salinsky says. “The challenge, of course, will be to see how we can top it. There’s a lot more that we can do — live presentations, Q&A, audience participation, giveaways, etc. — that will make this a critical part of our exhibits strategy.”