Adapting to unpreceded shift from physical to virtual spaces requires some agility. According to Bizzabo, more than 63% will be investing and hosting virtual events in the future to adapt to the current circumstances.
While everyone is certainly becoming more comfortable and proficient at hosting these sessions, Pace Creative has been actively honing its virtual event capabilities for some time.
With our experience and knowledge, we even compiled a virtual events marketing strategy to help you plan, organize, and effectively strategize your next virtual event.
Ready to start? Let’s go!
Virtual Vs In Person Events
Virtual events are a great engagement and communication tool with some interactive elements that can help your events stand out and foster great networking opportunities.
So, why pick a virtual event over an in person event? Here are some reasons:
1. Less Expensive With High ROI
Virtual events tend to be more budget-friendly and can reach bigger audiences. Attendees can be participating from anywhere around the world, in any time zone, and across various digital platforms. In addition, attendees can consume the content at their own pace even after the event is over.
2. Personalized Experience
Different event platforms can help you tailor the virtual experience based on the persona of your attendees. Event participants can even personalize their digital experience through app or software settings.
3. Post-Event Feedback and Performance Analytics
After your virtual event is over, you can easily and quickly measure attendance and ask your audience to engage in a post-event survey to measure success. You can showcase the results later in your marketing materials to build trust and credibility with key stakeholders and these results can help pinpoint areas where you did well and areas you can improve further.
4. Centralized Control
Most virtual event platforms provide a feature to control your event using a centralized control system. This makes any necessary changes seamless and allows your audience to search for and share relevant information easily.
5. Social Interactivity
Provide your audience with the most engaging experience by incorporating interactive social elements such as group chats, social networking via Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram, virtual networking lounges, and much more.
How to Approach Your Virtual Event Marketing Strategically
Regardless of being in-person or virtual, events should always start with a plan. First, you should determine which type of virtual event your company would like to host. Are you:
- Announcing a new product launch to your current clients?
- Organizing an event to raise funds?
- Promoting your product or service to your potential customers?
- Coordinating a thought-leadership conference?
- Planning a virtual tradeshow?
- Utilizing a virtual platform to recruit new team members?
- Using the virtual space for training purposes?
Virtual Event Marketing Step By Step
1. Planning
Depending on the type of virtual event you are planning, it might take around 8 to 12 weeks to organize. Make sure to book off your event far in advance!
2. Promotion
Start by marketing your event to potential attendees by creating an event campaign with a concept that is memorable. Then develop marketing materials with customized content to make sure it resonates with your audience.
Some tactics that are used to promote events include banners on your website, e-mail marketing, and the development of a landing page. You can also create a sneak peek preview of the event through videos and social media marketing to spread the event’s information organically through your networks.
Closer to the event, remind your registered attendees regularly about the upcoming event to increase the turnout rate. 😊
3. Master the Technology
After picking the best and most optimal virtual event platform, it is time to test the available features and run a few rehearsals before going directly to the event.
Tip: Remember to make your event 508 compliant! This creates an online experience for your attendees that is fully accessible and inclusive – that is to say, it is easy to read, navigate, and understand for those who have visual impurities.
4. Create Engaging and Memorable Content and Visuals
To guarantee your event is a success, use engaging visuals and convey the information through storytelling. Also, don’t be afraid to break the ice with your attendees through opportunities of interaction. Because who likes long and monotones events?
The level of interaction will depend on the size of your event, however, ideas include posting surveys, encouraging questions through chat boxes, or posting comments and photos through social media using your event hashtag.
What’s the Best Time to Schedule Your Virtual Event
Are you organizing a global event or is it purely in North America? One of the most important things to consider is where your attendees are located.
By understanding different time zones and the location of your attendees, you can choose the most optimal time for your event. Also, make sure to have your content is available after the event for people who couldn’t make it.
Examples of B2B Virtual Event Marketing
Here are a couple of examples of marketing events that successfully turned virtual:
1. Virtual Fundraiser – Craft Council of BC
With COVID-19, the Craft Council of BC (CCBC) hosted the 7th Annual Earring Show fundraiser. The executive director decided to host the event and make it a virtual fundraiser as The Earring Show is one of the non-profit’s signature events.
The event theme was “Virtual Happy Hour” and was topped off with the official cocktail – the Authentic Craftini, complete with a ‘how-to’ segment to craft your own.
The event had two hosts – a CCBC board member, Lindsay, and a local radio show host, Sheryl MacKay, included three opportunities to win gifts and prizes and featured nine artist interviews. At the end of the event, participants voted on their favorite pair of earrings.
The event was promoted using social media channels including Facebook and Instagram, as well as through craft communities and local outreach. Turns out, no promotion budget was even spent to promote this event!
This was the first virtual event for the CCBC and, even with a few rehearsals prior to going live, some technical issues did arise. But that’s just the reality of events – virtual or not. Overall, however, the 7th Annual Earring Show fundraiser was a huge success! The fundraiser brought in more revenues than all previous years combined.
See our case study for this project here.
2. Virtual Symposium – Siemens
As an international provider of business-to-business financial solutions, Siemen’s Financial Services (SFS) customizes solutions across a variety of industries including healthcare, energy, infrastructure and cities.
Siemens Financial Services needed help to develop support materials for a virtual thought leadership symposium focused on supply chain risk and resiliency in an age of uncertainty. Slated for late July or early August, the team had less than two months to strategize, plan and execute the event and supporting digital collateral.
Working with an internal team of designers and content strategists, Pace Creative met with all Siemens stakeholders prior to the event. This included representatives for the symposium’s platform, On24, to design assets and ensure a frictionless technical experience for their live stream for over 1,000 attendees.
As requested by Siemens, the strategy refrained from using images and instead, focused on the design of customized icons and graphic elements that communicated key messages through a series of promotional emails, digital ads, and a symposium presentation hosted on the On24 platform.
The event was a massive success with all elements working seamlessly together despite the challenge of a tight timeline, multiple stakeholder requests, and technological restrictions.
We hope our virtual event marketing strategy has provided some inspiration and ideas on how you can create memorable and successful virtual events for your company while also meeting specific business objectives.
If your B2B needs help getting results from your virtual conferences or other virtual events, reach out to us today and we can get strategizing together!
