Strategies to Market Virtual Events
Virtual event marketing has become increasingly popular since the global pandemic. About 38% of companies globally invest in virtual marketing strategies, according to VFairs. Businesses are looking at how to promote their virtual events.
Virtual events involve having an event around a launch or a business event usually centred around a target audience. To promote virtual events, you need virtual event marketing strategies. Platforms like Oreed help companies design, manage and execute their chosen and curated marketing strategy.
In this blog post, we'll discuss three virtual event marketing strategies that will help you reach a wider audience and drive more leads and sales. So what are you waiting for? Start exploring the possibilities today!
The power of virtual event marketing:
Virtual event marketing is dynamic and has been gaining more and more traction. Studies have shown that almost 92% of companies have looked into hosting virtual events since the pandemic.
These statistics also indicate how challenging it will be for companies to stand out among their competitors when it comes to hosting events online.
This is why virtual marketing strategies are becoming the focus of marketers who are looking for creative and robust ways to interact with the target audience.
Despite the power of virtual events, we have to look at the challenges marketers might face to get a good amount of attention, attendance, and engagement via virtual events.
After all, the point of hosting virtual conferences or a webinar is not just getting people to sign up for your event.
Challenges of hosting virtual events:
You need the perfect combination of virtual marketing strategies to help you engage with your audience and give them a memorable and fruitful experience. Many people only just sign up for the live event and do not attend.
Your virtual marketing strategies should have the correct measure of hype, information, awareness, promotion and content that shows how valuable the experience will be for the attendees.
As mentioned before, the biggest challenge is audience attendance. Even if you have an amazing lineup of speakers and activities to engage your audience, they will not attend your virtual event if there is no creative hype around it.
Moreover, not having enough opportunities to engage with your audience is also another issue which might avert your audience from attending any further events.
This also highlights an issue in the marketing strategy. When you promise an immersive experience to your audience in marketing campaigns and promotional content, you must deliver it. The issue is when your audience doesn't get what they are promised.
Event promotion is the main highlight of any virtual event. It sets the stage for what's about to come. Sometimes marketers only think about creating live event pages or sending bulk emails.
This makes it feel like the audience is only getting to be a part of an online meeting. Without exclusivity, these events are bound to fail.
These challenges can be dealt with if you have the right marketing tools and strategies to channel more audiences to your events. Inspired by these technical or marketing-related issues, you can have a fruitful virtual event if you revise your marketing strategy.
A Complete Guide on How to Promote Virtual Events
we'll share a few tips to get started. By following these tips, you'll be well on your way to promoting your event and getting the word out there. So, what are you waiting for? Let's get started!
Conduct your audience research:
It might seem trivial, but audience research on their behaviour and taste should be a part of your virtual event marketing strategy. We can even go far and say that it should be done prior to curating your event.
Knowing what your audience wants out of a Virtual event can be hard. One might think that an online zoom call with a bunch of speakers is frankly boring.
However, you can conduct surveys or social media polls to find out what your audience would like in an ideal virtual event.
Based on this research, you can curate your event, maybe around an industry leader, your attendees want to talk to and have a Q&A session with them or give them exclusive access to members for a more personalised experience.
Launch a personalised email marketing campaign:
Email marketing campaigns are ideal for driving registrations to your events. According to Markletic, about 78% of companies prefer to use personalised email campaigns to send invites and drive registrations.
You can also send them important reminders and the total schedule of the event. Once you have the date and time decided for the virtual event, it is important to start marketing your event a couple of weeks prior to the event.
Utilise social media marketing for event promotion and coverage:
It goes without saying that your social media pages are the most important part of your virtual marketing strategy.
You can create the event page on your LinkedIn or Facebook account. Users can see checkboxes on both platforms to confirm their attendance and registration.
This way, you will have a designated page around the event, and sharing content will be easy with a heavy focus on the event line-up.
You can use their platform and audience to market your event with your sponsors and partners.
Invite your audience via an events page:
You need an events page to be the centre of your virtual marketing campaigns.
For this purpose, you can also link it to your website so that your audience can see your event and its features clearly. On your event's page, you have to add the date, time of the event, speaker list, number of activities and how your audience can sign up for the virtual event.
Whether you are using Facebook or LinkedIn, make sure that your events page has all the information your audience would want to know. You can also add a simple tutorial on how to join the event.
For example, if you're using zoom for a webinar then make sure that your audience has this software. When marketing your event, make sure that you have well-planned for the audience on boarding and plans in place in case of technical difficulties.
Utilize paid advertising to increase your reach
Paid advertisement is also a great way to market your virtual event to your audience.
Even though you can leverage organic marketing on social media like designing an events page or Instagram stories, paid LinkedIn or Google ads will help you convert more leads.
Make sure you have an interactive landing page leading the audience to more details about the event.
Use Live Streaming to enhance the reach of the event
Using live streaming on Facebook is a good idea whether you want to give your audience a sneak peek into the event preparation or share inside stories.
It is all about how you want to utilise these tools. What you choose to broadcast is up to you. Connecting with your audience personally will become easier if you share interesting insights from your event with them.
This will also help in creating excitement and would also prompt them to engage prior to the event.
Reach out to the audience post-event
After a virtual event, it is important to reach out to those who attended. This is a great way to build relationships and keep the lines of communication open.
By reaching out, you are showing that you value their time and are interested in what they have to say. Additionally, this is an opportunity to get feedback on the event and find out what people liked or didn't like.
It can also be used to gauge interest in future events. Reaching out after a virtual event is a great way to build relationships, collect feedback, and gauge interest.
Oreed -- your ideal virtual event partner
Planning and hosting a successful event takes a lot of work. There are so many details to take care of, from finding the perfect venue to coordinating timing and logistics. And then there's promoting the event and making sure everyone who wants to be there knows when and where it's taking place.
With the COVID pandemic still raging, many organizations have been forced to cancel their in-person events and move them online. While this has been a necessary adaptation, it has also created a whole new set of challenges. Fortunately, there is a tool that can help you manage all of these challenges and more: Oreed.
Oreed is the perfect solution for hosting virtual events. It offers a variety of features that will make your event run smoothly, including online registration, attendance management, technical support, and insightful analytics.
It is the ideal platform for businesses that want to improve their webinar and meeting capabilities. With Oreed, you can quickly and easily connect with your audience, no matter where they are in the world.
The built-in audio and video quality ensures that your message comes across loud and clear, while the easy-to-use interface makes it simple to share presentations and other materials with your audience.
Additionally, it integrates seamlessly with leading business tools, so you can continue using the software you're already comfortable with. If you're looking for a better way to conduct webinars or hold meetings, Oreed is the perfect solution.
Perhaps best of all, Oreed is extremely user-friendly and easy to use. So if you're looking for a way to make your virtual event a success, look no further than Oreed.
With Oreed, you can be confident that your event will be a success.
Conclusion:
Virtual events are becoming more popular, and there are many reasons why. They’re a great way to save time and money while still getting the valuable face-to-face interaction that people crave. And if you want to get in on the action, we have seven strategies for you to market your next virtual event.
Sign up for our free trial today and see how easy it is to create a virtual event that engages and excites your audience!