Due to the pandemic and the rise of remote work, businesses all over the world have made a drastic shift from an in-person format to a more virtual experience when hosting corporate entertainment, thought leadership conferences, product launches, and other events. #Virtualeventcompanies have started to offer innovative and creative virtual event ideas in the events industry space.
This trend won’t go anywhere anytime soon, especially since 93% of marketers are planning to invest in virtual events in the long run.
Why Should I Host A Virtual Event Or Engage A Virtual Event Company?
If you haven’t tried it out for yourself or for your company yet, here are a some reasons on why you should host a virtual event:
It’s easy on the wallet for both attendees and organizers.
It offers more flexibility when switching around dates or scaling up to an even larger audience at the last minute.
It makes connecting with attendees easier.
There’s a real-time collection of feedback and better measurement of results as you can gather data about attendees seamlessly.
How Can I Make My Virtual Event More Effective?
Conduct a successful virtual event with the following best practices:
1. Make A Strategy
The first step to any event, whether virtual or in-person, is to have a solid plan. Big #eventcompanies make them look easy, but events held online cannot and should not be rushed. Create a project plan that will help you and your team visualize the process of organizing an event. This will also be the tool that will help everyone stay on the same page.
A virtual event plan will ensure that deadlines are met, changes are accounted for, and conflicts are averted as much as possible. If you need help from an expert, you can always hire a corporate event planner to make things a little easier for you.
2. Understand Your Event Metrics
If you do not have goals for your event, you will not be able to assess it properly afterward. Realistic and achievable event metrics include the following:
Number of registrations
Attendance and bounce rates
Social engagement
Generating better leads
Increasing conversion rates
These goals must be set in advance so that you know what areas to focus on for your online event.
3. Test Your Technology And Equipment In Advance
Laptops have built-in microphones and cameras, but the quality of their output may not be high enough for big events. You can either invest in or rent a good camera and microphone to give your attendees a more pleasant experience.
Check the technology you plan to use multiple times before your event goes live. A piece of equipment or software acting up in the middle of your event will leave a bad impression on your attendees. They may not remember it once the event is done, but this may hurt the chances of them returning to your future events.
4. Promote Your Virtual Event
What good would going through all the hard work of planning and organizing a virtual event be if no one shows up in the end? Promote your event on the right channels—whether that’s social media, email blasts, press releases, blog posts, or paid advertising, it will entirely depend on who you’re targeting.
The best way to market your virtual event is to give the spotlight to your speakers and the top takeaways your attendees will gain when they join your event.
5. Add A Human Touch
When you don't engage with your audience, virtual events can feel a little too cold and distant. Try recreating the in-person experience by making your event more personable and unique. If your event calls for it, you can allow your guests to engage with each other through group chats. They can even collaborate in real-time during certain activities.
Another thing to consider is the amount of content you will include in your event. Everyone wants their online event to be as information-packed as possible, but that can easily turn the entire program into a snore-fest. Keep presentations short and sweet.
Lastly, avoid inviting the wrong speakers. Ensure that whoever will speak at your event is comfortable with speaking to an online audience. Some speakers can command a room in person, but they can’t do the same when facing the camera.
6. Engage With Your Attendees Before, During, And After Your Event
In virtual events, providing value goes both ways. You’re giving attendees information that they need, and they’ll give you the data that you need. Below are some tips you can use to capture the interest of your audience before, during, and after your event.
Before The Event
Reach out days, weeks, or months before the event and maintain open communication. Let your audience submit questions and answer surveys that can better inform your virtual event.
Simplify your event registration to make it easy to join. Resend the link the day of the event so that they don’t have to dig through their inboxes.
Provide an agenda so that they’ll know what to expect.
During The Event
Provide opportunities for interaction, community-building, and connection. However, make sure to keep this low-risk and low-pressure—don’t force anyone who doesn’t want to interact.
Respond and engage in real-time to keep your audience excited.
Track engagements with whatever tracking capabilities you have. This will give you so much valuable information, from the segments of your event that have the highest or lowest viewership to the landing pages or pieces of content that get the most clicks.
After Your Event
Reach out to your attendees by sending a simple “thank you.” You can also take it to the next level by sending recordings, additional readings, an invite to another event, etc.
Send a post-event survey to gauge the overall satisfaction of your attendees.
Grow Your Business With An Excellently Conducted Virtual Event
Much like in-person events, virtual events also take a lot of time and planning. However, if you’re able to pull it off brilliantly with the best practices highlighted above, you’ll be able to grow your business while giving valuable information to your audience. You can also leave everything to a virtual event company to handle everything for you.
This article was written by Regi Publico for Electric Dreamz, an event company in Singapore. Regi Publico is a full-time writer based in Manila who is also an artist for fun. She takes pride in her towering collection of books and loves reading about anything under the sun. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge through every article that she writes.
Here is a fun video by Electric Dreamz, an event management company in Singapore, on some key points to successful events.
Here is another video by our event company on some of our past events.
For more fun videos by Electric Dreamz, an event company in Singapore, visit our event company YouTube channel. Also feel free to visit our event company blog page for more event company related blogs.