PSE Stock Exchange Expo Wows Its Audience

About Philippines Stock Exchange 

As the only stock exchange in the country, The Philippine Stock Exchange, Inc. (PSE) is one of the oldest in Asia. Beginning in 1927 with the establishment of the Manila Stock Exchange and the Makati Stock Exchange in 1963. The PSE started its operations as a unified exchange in 1992. It offers equity based financial instruments i.e. stocks and products that can be derived from stocks. These include warrants, Philippine depositary receipts (PDR), exchange traded funds (ETF), real estate investment trusts (REIT), and foreign denominated securities. They serve two types of clients:

1. Issuer clients – those looking for capital for their business.
2. Investors – those who come from a wide range of high institutions down to retail investors looking for places to invest.

The Market Education Department is tasked with continuously engaging with retail investors. Their mandate is to grow numbers of retail investors locally and overseas; meaning increase people investing in the market. That’s what the PSE Investment Expo event was all about!

This was a two-day online conference on legitimate investment instruments in the Philippines. The PSE, together with its event partners, exhibitors, and sponsors celebrated the PSE Investment Expo 2022 with the goal of demystifying investing and making it fun, relatable, and accessible.

Objectives

Having done big physical events in the past, this really was a test to see how an event like this would be received by both sides. The main aims were:

1. To keep on engaging and educating the market through various means physical and digital about investment 
2. Showcasing the different investment instruments available
3. Educating the audience on relevant information about the market
4. Assist partners with lead generations and increase potential clients 
5. For investors across all levels of experience to promote investing and increase awareness 

Why vFairs?

With the pandemic, PSE expanded into the digital space. They used to hold quarterly webinars, and in 2020 increased webinars to weekly ones. These were reduced to twice a month once the audience was engaged. At first, numbers grew but then plateaued and sustained. 

Simply attending a webinar where some of the participant queries were answered was simply not enough anymore. They soon realized they needed more participation and wanted to have a more immersive experience where participants interacted with each other as well. 

The ability to connect with people had been lost and needed to be regained. PSE wanted a virtual event platform where it brought investments closer to the participants, through a holistic platform. They wanted a one stop shop. Enter vFairs!

When researching, PSE was presented with three or four different platforms. However, according to John Garcia, head of the Market Education Department, vFairs stood out the most. This was because the vFairs website was impressive, had a list of impressive clients and was very responsive to queries in comparison to other platforms. 

At their first meeting at vFairs, PSE brought forth a concept, and vFairs ended up sharing more about their features that PSE left with more ideas. vFairs assisted by adding to the list and gave PSE more than what they wanted. Especially on how to increase engagement through gamification and a leaderboard.

It is an immersive platform, not only webinars. A real expo where the participants’ attention was captured.

Looking at the number of participants and engagement PSE got, they were thrilled with the platform. They plan to continue with it in the next year and for years to come. 

How Were These Achieved?

An event has to be made memorable by providing the best features possible. Here is how PSE was able to do that. 

Landing Page

PSE created a landing page on their own domain where participants could register for free to the event. They were able to gain information about the event from here including the agenda, the objectives of the event. A highlights video was later included to share the successes of the event. 

Virtual Lobby

The virtual lobby displayed all the partner and sponsor banners and provided easy navigation into the various activities of the event. 

Virtual Auditorium

The auditorium is where multiple webinars and plenary sessions were held. Covered a lot of basic topics that were very useful to the audience: strategies, outlook for the market, what to expect, for the month of January 2022 (when the Expo was held). Topics included “The Shifting Business Landscape”, “Getting Ready for 2022” and “Improving Your Relationship with Money” were covered, to name a few. A number of breakout sessions were also conducted here in order to ensure participant involvement.  

Exhibit Hall 

An exhibit hall was where partners of PSE presented themselves and their services. Each booth had respective activities, who also conducted their own mini webinars. Participants were able to interact with exhibitors through live chat options. They went around and researched the different products that would suit their interests.

Virtual Leaderboard and Photo Booth

Gamifications are always a great way to draw in attendees. The virtual leaderboard provided added engagement. During the registration period, PSE raffled off 300 I LOVE PSE T-Shirts to the first 3,000 registrants. During the event, the top 5 individuals in the leaderboard were able to win prizes such as an iPad Mini, Xiaomi electric scooter, Sony wireless noise canceling headphones, and a Nespresso machine! Winners of the virtual photo booth were also awarded prizes including an iPad Mini or a Herschel backpack. The PSE also draw winners for the grand raffle from the top 500 participants in the leaderboard. The gand raffle winners got a MacBook Air, iPhone 13, iPad Air, Apple Watch Series 7, and Airpods Pro. Throughout the two (2) live days of the Expo, PSE also gave out 100 minor raffle prizes.

Social Wall

A social wall provided pre, during and post event engagement. This creates awareness and traction on social media sites. This is also a great way to congregate all social media content onto one platform. 

Major Successes

Before the pandemic, PSE conducted local roadshows, where the usual audience ranged from 800 – 1,200 live attendees. The format for the Expo was the same as the physical event. 

However, if you compare attendee numbers, this was the biggest event PSE was able to do to gather participants – of course this was all scalable due to being virtual!

The two day expo was able to gather:

1. 7,179 live attendees – a whopping 43% more than the anticipated number of 5,000 live attendees. 
2. 60,000 webinar views
3. 16,000 messages in chat rooms
4. 39,415 tab clicks
5. 19,000 unique booth visits 

In the two days, the event truly promoted participant engagement. According to Garcia, some partners were able to open accounts on the spot during the event. 

Wrapping Up

Currently PSE is waiting on further analysis from the reports from vFairs platform. They wish to see conversions of how many clients they were able to obtain. They are very keen to find out the number of client partners acquired through this event. Through this information they will be able to further determine how effective the activity of the event was. 

PSE shared reports with partners pertaining to their own booths. With that knowledge everyone can now add more and bring greater engagement to future events.