In China, the defacto conversion rate of a trade show website is 30%. That means approximately every 30 out of 100 visitors who have registered on the web will show up on the expo floor. But someone in China has managed to have 64.5% online conversion rate for the offline events. To many event organizers, this kind of pre-registration turn out rate is an unfulfilled wish.

Yesterday I read an interesting piece on MoBinoDe about the phenomenon of the Chinese Internet BBS. The author has quoted some numbers that really interest me,

3 billion registered BBS users in China.
36.3% users spend 1-3 hours per day on BBS.
60% users use BBS more than 3 times per week.
98% users have posted on BBS.
64.5% users have attended the offline events organized by the BBS administrator.
80% users use BBS to search for the information of the product.
61.7% users share second opinions with other BBS users.
47.3% users have bought products directly from the BBS.

Look at the numbers. They represent a perfect medium that every marketer is willing to die for. If you are a trade show organizer, the numbers mean for those prosperous buyers who’ve visited your event website, 98% are the active visitors, and 64.5% of them will actually visit your show.

So, judging by the numbers, if your marketing goal is to reach primarily the Chinese visitors, I would say putting a BBS feature in your event website isn’t a bad idea. But in view of practice, trade show marketers have more to manage for a BBS.

BBS has a long history in IT and is always the center of the tech community. I had spent a number of great years, the days before web, surfing BBS using my dialup modem. Now I look back, it is still geekie. Nowadays the BBSs on web have not been changed too much. It is still a lightweight forum-alike communication medium.

Setup a BBS is low-cost, and allow me to say, technically friendly. I can point you to a couple of open-source packages available in the market:

PHPBB
bbPress
Vanilla
SMF
MyTopix
Discuz, the most popular one in China.

But using it as a marketing vehicle, the marketers should get to know something about the DNA of BBS. This has nothing to do with technology.

Image by Geek&Poke

BBS is a moderated many-to-many medium, usually administered by one system operator, a.k.a. Sysop, and then managed by single or many moderators. Each moderator is responsible to manage his/her own discussion forum. Unlike blog, which every blog post is the center of a topic, users on BBS communicate through short messages, casual format, and every conversion is organized by thread. On BBS, the center of a topic is a collaboration of many users. The moderator plays an important role to maintain and stimulate the collaboration.

There are many advertiser sponsored BBSs in China. But if we look at the above statistic, the finding means more than advertising. We are talking about a highly influential and participatory marketing medium, a perfect CGM where the conversion rate looks significantly highest among all other media.

But as a marketer, I have my own doubt towards BBS as a marketing medium. It is true that users on BBS are like-minded peers, willing to share and exchange dialogues. The psychographics can easily be observed through the threads of open dialogues. But still a lot of BBSs don’t treat the demographics seriously. This is an important component in marketing metrics. Without proper demographic analysis, any psychographic will simply look superficial.

Having said that, BBS is a perfect CGM model for event marketing. I can share with you a case of organizing a successful conference purely started by a BBS. The famous PubCon was started as a BBS by Brett Tabke and now becomes one of the most influential events in the tech community. Today Brett’s BBS, a.k.a. the Webmasterworld, still plays an important role for the event.

The finding of the Chinese BBS study has presented an interesting vehicle to engage prospects in China. We don’t know whether or not the medium is still highly tech-centric as it is inherently built. Ambitious B2B marketers might try it in the mix for lead sourcing and nurturing. I also recommend trade show marketers to explore its potential for better online conversion.

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