Events surface intentions to buy. The "location" of the event itself is the best sales venue for aftermarket digital sales. Rather than "shop" in a "store" (and confront up-sells, cross-sells, and superficial reviews of questionable authority), the web encourages communities to form around common interests where friends can recommend what to buy and how to use what is bought. Here's one example of events and social media working together to help buyers discover and act.
We see the power of social selling each time USRowing produces race videos and makes them available for sale through twitter announcements. Their target markets are the contestants themselves and their immediate friends and families. Over and over again, we saw video files going into our system, the offers being generated, the tweet go out, and then, BAM.
For several days following a given regatta (some which generated hundreds of races), sales consistently picked up around 3pm every day, with no further announcements from USRowing. Often, hand-held devices were used to make the purchase. Our analytics consistently revealed races downloaded in clumps of purchases around a given time. And now, even though the 7-minute race ended almost a year ago, we get sales going through the system long after all the excitement has died down. Viral networks at work!
