Marketing WilesUsing Wiles to Market Your Brand

GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar are online meeting tools created and maintained by Citrix. The main functionality of the two is to bring people from remote locations together through their computer and/or a phone line. GoToMeeting allows organizers to gather 15 or 25 people together (depending if you have a GoToWebinar account as well) while GoToWebinar can fit up to 1000 attendees.

With both of these mediums you have the ability to mute and unmute attendees, record the meeting for later use or for those who miss it, launch real-time polls during the meeting, launch surveys to gain feedback after a meeting, view attendee reports (including a reports on the attentiveness of your audience), brand the meeting to your company, automate email invitations and follow-up messages, chat with attendees privately or publicly while a meeting is taking place, and much more.

A yearly subscription to just GoToMeeting is around $600. GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting together is around $900. In today’s economy, these applications are perfect for corporations needing to host remote meetings cheaply and effectively. There are no travel costs associated with attending meetings and this medium simulates a brain storming session or actual lecture, minus the physical presence of a speaker(s). An attendee could participate in the meeting from their desk, a conference room, even their home, just as long as they have access to the internet and a computer. The number of meetings and webinars you host are unlimited. However, you cannot host two simultaneously.

There are a handful of drawbacks to both programs. First, this software was originally built for PC’s. Citrix has been working very hard to make GoToMeeting compatible with Mac computers, and has done a good job so far, but Mac computers are still limited with the software to a certain degree. No other operating systems are supported (sorry LINUX users!). Additionally, if an attendee chooses to listen through a phone line, the number to call into the meeting or webinar is a regular toll number. Attendees will incur regular long distance charges to use it. However, GoToMeeting does allow for you to use your own toll-free number if you provide the calling information. I believe you can also pick up the tab on any phone charges made by your attendees through GoToMeeting. Lastly, I have had issues with the recorded versions of the meetings. GoToMeeting only formats the recording into .WMV files. It would be a nice upgrade to allow organizers to format their recorded files into .MOVs or .FLV files.

I had the opportunity to use GoToMeeting in a corporate manner creating training and educational presentations. I used the webinar format twice a month to play pre-recorded trainings utilized by hundreds of people around the United States. It was the first time my company had done something like this and it was well received, even though the majority of our attendees were baby boomers who sometimes tend to by shy with new technology.

In my professional opinion, GoToMeeting is a worthy investment by any company because of its flexibility, its ease of use (to people of all ages and most computer types), and at its cost saving potential. It can be used in a variety of ways to bring people together who are, more and more these days, on-the-go in remote locations.

Tags: web media