Over the past 5 years, Wave Commerce has helped the HKTDC reach B2B audiences and promote awareness and registrations of their annual lineup of trade events through the use of social media.

The Opportunity

In 2013, the HKTDC engaged Wave Commerce looking to leverage their growing social media presence to drive conversions for event signups. They were aware that B2B businesses were spending an increasing amount of time on social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn and WeChat and had already begun experimenting with audience engagement. At the time, while social media was used to engage and grow visitor traffic, it was not thought of as a channel for driving online conversion actions such as event registrations.

The HKTDC looked to work with Wave Commerce to not only use the latest social media channels to reach audiences, but to also optimize the event registration flows by building out a mobile-friendly and great UI/UX experience for visitors engaging through social media.

The HKTDC engaged Wave Commerce for a total service that included managing their social media buying and conversion optimization funnel starting with a couple of the organization’s largest events: the HKTDC Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition) and HKTDC Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition).

The Solution

Wave Commerce began by mapping out the overall journey of a social media visitor from impression through audience attendance to identify intervention points. Our goal was to leverage our experience managing social media ad channels and our technology and data-driven expertise to build a custom solution for the HKTDC. After we identified areas for enhancing the full user journey, we chose to build a custom solution involving:

1. Outreach: Targeted Facebook ads for global and local companies seeking potential partners/products/sourcing opportunities
   
2. Registration: Simplified responsive registration landing page
   
3. Confirmation: Registered attendees receive a barcode for event-day registration
   
4. Event reminders: Wave Commerce would send out automated reminders close to the event day via e-mail or Facebook messenger
   

A Mobile-Friendly Campaign Flow to Match User Touch Points

Since we identified mobile as a key touch point for users, Wave Commerce built a custom mobile and desktop version of the HKTDC event landing page to reduce the bounce rate for mobile traffic. We reduced registration information requirements to 3-4 essentials fields for convenience and event attendees could fill out additional information later after e-mail capture.

Our integrated sign-up page delivered a customer experience with multi-language variations designed to cater to users in Hong Hong, Mainland China and globally. In addition, we created automated e-mail engagement that adhered to these multi-language needs, including registration confirmation and event reminders. After the event, we also work with HKTDC to study the attendance rate and attendance pattern for iterative improvements.

Technology, Marketing Channels & Highlights

Over the years, Wave Commerce has used our experience in digital marketing to inform the HKTDC of strategic online channels to engage users and test for event registration. Some channels we have helped the HKTDC explore include:

• Facebook
  
• KOLs
  
• LinkedIn
  
• WeChat
  

Wave Commerge begins by understanding the new features available on existing platforms that could add value for the HKTDC. With that, we test new opportunities such as a new ad formats (e.g., Carousel ads, Custom Audience and other features provided by Facebook for Businesses), targeting and other tools for each platform. These tests often run in parallel to the standard campaigns to understand and improve campaign effectiveness and cost per signup. After several iterations, we will incorporate new features and developments into the standard campaign if the results are consistent.

Custom-Built Automated Facebook Reminders

In addition to e-mail reminders, we also used our technical expertise to create a custom Facebook messenger reminder that users can select when registering for an event on a standard landing page.

Results

What started out as an experiment for the HKTDC’s two major events evolved into an integral part of the organization’s overall social media marketing strategy. In 2017 alone, we have implemented our social media advertising and customized event signup solution for over 22 major HKTDC events annually. Wave Commerce was able to help the HKTDC build a user experience design to maximize social media engagement for B2B audiences, helping the HKTDC broaden their digital marketing strategy.