With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, gathering in person is still not possible, pivoting to online and virtual events became more unexceptional during this period and kept businesses at top of mind, people engaged, and helped in generating new leads. They also allowed brands to connect with hundreds of people worldwide under one roof through conferences, webinars, and so forth. Organising, promoting, and hosting an event virtually requires the same attention and effort as a real-life event does. But how do you do so fortuitously? Read on to discover the top 5 ways on how to organise your virtual event better! But before we head to the tips let us first understand why and how virtual events are important for any event organisers.
Virtual Events – Why and How?
Without a doubt, it is pretty obvious that due to the ongoing health crisis people have started avoiding going out to attend any event in-person as keeping 2 hands distance is the best way to avoid getting infected from the virus. Thus, virtual events have become the most used platform after traditional events got shut. Virtual events have provided the scale of interactivity and engagement in a way like in-person events could ever offer. A virtual attendee is always looking for events that provide the knowledge and at the same time engage them effectively.
There are many tools and features that a virtual event platform offers to its customers for better revenue generation, great leads, global reach, better ROI, sustainability, improved networking, and better client relationships.
Start With Virtual Event Strategy
Your top priority before organising any virtual event is to align the overall objectives you want to deliver in front of your targeted audience. Note down, in priority order, things that you require to accomplish, for instance, the establishment of thought-leadership, brand developing, lead generation, audience engagement, revenue generation, exposure for industry suppliers, and so forth. While planning the event budget, sponsorships, technology/delivery, or simply while making your marketing strategies always refer to this list so that you don’t miss out on anything.
Use Multiple Channels to Promote The Event
Next on the list of marketing strategies for virtual events is to work on multiple channels to reach implicated leads. There are many companies that fail to promote their event. The sole reason behind this is promoting events through one channel. If you are determined to get a large set of audience in your event, you must utilize multiple channels to reach the maximum number of interesting leads.
There are numerous channels options, including:
- Social media marketing and advertising
- Email marketing
- SEO
Utilizing multiple channel options allows you to widen your reach to achieve more audience to attend your event.
Promote Your Event Frequently
Remind your audience frequently about your virtual event. A core part of advertising virtual events is ensuring that the audience doesn’t forget about them. Hence, post frequently to reach your targeted audience and encourage them to participate in your event. But this does not mean that you will spam your entire social media account with information only regarding your event. Find out the essential milestones leading up to the event to post. For instance, if your event is in three months, start promoting it by creating a post each week prolonging the registration deadline.
Develop A Dedicated Landing page or Webpage For The Event
After you have recognised your goals, built your event marketing tool kit, and defined your targeted audience, it’s time to work upon the focal point of the event-your website. Remember, your site should serve every key segment within your audience, make it comprehensive and flexible, but don’t forget the fact that people who visit our site will get out and get in with minimal fuss.
Use forms that provide a quick and easy way for cold leads to keep informed, personalize your content blocks which are based on acquisition source, and set cookies to remember users’ choice on return visits, or, even better, past behavior data pulled from the automation platform or CRM.
Send Out Post-Event Survey And Polls
Having a follow-up survey can help you get an insight about what did you do right and where it went wrong so that you don’t repeat your mistakes and expand upon that next time. If you ask your audience the right post-event valuation questions, you can even get a glimpse into areas that need improvisation. Figure out what your guest disliked the most about the event, note down their feedback, and make regulations for promoting your next virtual event a great success.
Over to You:
All in all, these were a few marketing strategies to make your virtual event better in 2021, they are effective, powerful and here to stay. Events must be thoughtfully and creatively designed to encourage audience participation, making sure that the participants feel the experience has been valuable. To create an audience for your next virtual event, do consider these practices to grow, expand and enhance your events.
It also seems that virtual events are going to stay around for a while, because of the COVID-19 pandemic with people’s awareness about social distancing and the realisation of the true potential of virtual events, hence it is important to understand how to make your virtual event a success. There is no secret recipe to that question, however, we follow certain guidelines and steps to increase the probability of success. Follow the above-mentioned articles to understand why and how virtual events are important and how to make them successful.
Happy Hosting!
