While face-to-face engagements have been cut short, virtual engagements continue to show prominence. It’s valuable to understand that online engagement is scalable, flexible, fast to market, execute, and measure.
There are numerous reasons why companies shift to a robust and scalable virtual event strategy: “it’s a matter of shifting your perspective and understanding the unique character of online engagement.”
Here are a couple of reasons why:
Are inexpensive and boost ROI
Hosting virtual events is much less expensive, for obvious reasons: there is no need for a physical venue, food and beverage, printed materials, and many more. When you spend less money, you increase your event ROI.
Expand your reach
You can increase your reach 50 times more by broadcasting a virtual event stream to various social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. This helps you reach people who can’t attend in-person and gives them a chance to engage with the host.
Reduce your risk
With the world on a temporary hold, it was tough to transition to an online world. However, with our current conditions, hosting virtual events doesn’t require too much change. It is just one simple rearrangement of meeting from home another day! Online events also reduce liability and other risks that may be encountered during a physical event.
Democratize your event experience
With the fact that people and event marketers do not have to attend events physically, the attendees save a lot of money. They don’t have to pay for possible pricey registrations or travel fees. Virtual events can be a low-cost alternative that can be equally effective. The convenience of being at a conference from your couch also brings other engagement factors, such as the event chat or polls.
Extend the shelf life of your content
Once the content is out there, it is out there forever and wouldn’t lose value. Your live streamed events/sessions can live on as a branded, searchable experience that will continue to drive engagement and awareness.
Support green efforts
Virtual events help companies minimize their carbon footprint by disregarding the elements and aspects of the planning of a physical event. A lot of things play a crucial role: printing materials, production, shipping needs, staff and attendee travel, and many more.
Taking it step by step
Goal Setting
For virtual events, it is essential to strategize and have a suitable streaming platform, but what’s the next step? It’s time to set your goals to analyze if your event is working or not. Here are a few goals that you should have mind before having a virtual event:
- Be trained
- Time matters
- Always keep the big picture in your mind
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase thought leadership, someone who can educate, inspire, and influence within the industry.
- Generate new demand
- Conduct customer-only event brings up opportunities for customer Retention and Loyalty
- Focus on revenue goals
Distribution
Understanding the viewers of your virtual event is necessary for the distribution. Hence, it is best to have a public event streamed on multiple platforms to have that focused reach, impression, and share of voice that the company aimed for. Many live streaming platforms offer simulcasting algorithms that help the broadcast land on different destinations without any hassle and for gated virtual events that require registration embed that stream on a dedicated page, which will help the distribution of the stream efficiently.
