A new round of challenges has been thrown at the world in the recent pandemic phase, and medical meeting planners have even more on their plate. This mutual interaction between the medical fraternity is crucial because much of the impact of medical updates depends on a healthy exchange of information between all health care professionals.
As social distancing undermines the in-person experience, virtual platforms are a smart way to stay connected during healthcare endeavors. In addition, virtual events offer a new approach to how medical meeting planners conduct their conferences.
When it comes to virtual medical events, certain modifications need to be made and technical proficiency needs to be developed.
Here are some tips to jumpstart your journey as a medical meeting planner and make your next online medical conference a success!
Organizing a conference requires time and support
Medical conferences aren't like regular industry meetings you can put together in a few months. They usually take at least a year to plan. As well as calling for papers and securing outstanding speakers, it would be beneficial if you allocate adequate time to organize logistics such as transport and accommodation for delegates, the conference venue, and sponsorship.
A healthcare professional may be asked to organize a medical conference or symposium. While engaging with colleagues in their field can be beneficial, organizing a large science assembly can be challenging. It's always best to get support from a professional conference organizer who can help you navigate the nuances of conference organization.
Getting attendees to a science conference is rarely a last-minute decision, so promote your conference at least six to twelve months in advance to give attendees plenty of time.
As a medical meeting planner, you may want to advertise your conference in relevant publications, promote it on websites, and leverage your speakers' followings to reach the right audience, depending on the topics being covered.
Putting more emphasis on valuable content
In contrast to business management, sales, and marketing conferences, medical conferences are technical conferences.
When attendees buy your tickets, you want to make sure they get the greatest return on investment.
It's easier to ensure you do it right if you use illustrations, graphics, videos, and stories to enhance the digestibility and understanding of your conference/event content.
Here are a few additional tips you may want to consider:
- Keep medical jargon to a minimum.
- Personalize their experience more to delight them.
- You can categorize your attendees based on their types.
- Provide them with relevant content to their background, interests, and consumption habits.
- Prepare separate event materials for each group.
- Make sure you're not using the same approach with different types of attendees.
- Ensure they don't get confused or find it difficult to relate and understand concepts, stats, and data.
Gathering research papers and requesting extracts from speakers in advance
It seems that most medical conference planners and managers struggle with this particular task as it has to be done extremely carefully for nominations and selections.
Your speakers are technically from the same medical background when you invite them to speak virtually at your event, at a medical conference. To onboard the best speakers and presenters, you will need to review and qualify their research papers and extracts. This process is also called a nomination process.
In organizing a medical conference online, everything is digital. You can benefit from the new technology to make this process go smoothly for the speaker and the attendees.
Some more factors to take into consideration:
- Be sure to inform them and give them updates on a timely basis.
- Make sure your dates and criteria are clearly stated.
- Be clear about how you would like them to present to the audience online.
- Establish a flawless process for selecting and nominating candidates.
- Through submissions and reviews, take help from experts in selecting the right speakers.
- Communicate clearly with your speakers about the next steps.
An opportunity to provide inclusive opportunities
A Medical event planner who works on providing inclusivity is the one who is truly successful. And success comes from will giving junior and senior healthcare professionals an opportunity to share their work and gain valuable knowledge.
To create an inclusive conference, it is essential to have a diversity of speakers, including young researchers as well as senior scientists who are experts in their fields.
To create an inclusive conference, attendees from all backgrounds must be accommodated. Whether you are a one-year medical professional or have been in the field for fifty years, you should be treated equally.
It may be a good idea to include sessions where younger delegates can speak with those with more experience in order to avoid attendees forming cliques.
You should always strive to create a robust learning and networking experience for your attendees when planning a medical conference. Understanding the medical community's specific needs can be challenging without professional support. For hands-on assistance in organizing your medical conference, contact Oreed.
Adapt your promotional strategies to your audience's needs
Your message and invitations can be sent across using promotional strategies, such as social media and allied advertising.
Medical meeting planners often have a specific audience segment, so you should use promotional platforms that your audience and delegates will likely use.
Pharmaceutical meeting planners can find their audience online by following these steps:
- Take surveys from medical groups and the marketplace
- See what questionnaires are available
- Participate in chat rooms, forums, and Facebook groups.
- Take a look at your demographics on each social media channel (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook).
- Integrate an API to track attendee behavior or traffic sources (HubSpot is great for following leads and their online behavior).
Partner with the right medical event management provider
Even though most pharma companies still prefer face-to-face investigator meetings, virtual or hybrid formats are becoming more common today. With rising costs, busy schedules, travel restrictions, and tight deadlines, it's imperative to maximize convenience.
Principal investigators and site staff expect virtual options. Virtual investigator meetings are highly convenient and cost-effective. If you combine the right platform with an intentionally designed presentation, you can empower presenters, boost content engagement, and measure the effectiveness of your training.
Enhance your next conference with feedback
The best way to discover how your event went. Always be open to feedback that will be shared by your attendees and presenters.
In receiving constructive feedback from them, you will get a clearer understanding of what you could have done better. If you succeed in achieving grand success with your conference, it will be great news to spread. But you don't have to reach milestones for your conference. It just needs to be acceptable, entertaining, and professional.
In spite of this, the most critical deliverable of an event is the delegate experience and awesome content.
Develop an improvement plan based on rigorous feedback collection. Once the event is over, follow up with your delegates. Your next event can be improved if you listen to their feedback and opinions through various mediums, including social media.
Ultimately, they will end up coming back to you for tickets to your new events if you make them feel good and important.
Why Oreed?
An All-Event Planning Platform that Gives You the Power To
Complete branding and customization
Boost employee satisfaction by building the event you envision with custom branding and highly customizable features.
Audience engagement
With interactive tools like session chat, Q&A, polls, and more, you can make your event more engaging.
Detailed dashboard of data
With Oreed's most advanced engagement data, you will be able to employ a better understanding and categorization of your target audience through a live stream, engagement, networking, and sponsor analytics.
Registration
Provides customers with customizable registration landing pages, including free and paid tickets, promo codes, hidden tickets, payments, invoicing, and email campaigns.
Communication that flows smoothly
Make your business more productive by working smarter, not harder. Knowing which attendees interact with what content is key to targeting the right people with your messages.
Find out how Oreed can boost your event registrations, personalize your marketing, and maximize your ROI. Our CRM system allows you to customize communication and learning experiences for your customers.
Built for Any Event of Any Size
There's no point in settling for a one-size-fits-all solution. Designed with highly configurable functionality, Oreed's event management software can be configured to meet your organization's unique requirements and everything in between, irrespective of your industry.
Conclusion
When planning a medical conference, you have to consider many other factors as well. You want to deliver a pleasurable experience for the attendees, but you also want to address their main concerns, such as learning and connecting. There are many places where this can be accommodated, but some are more sensitive to the wishes of the medical community.
Can we envision what medical conferences will look like in the future?
If organizers are willing to go the extra mile to make online events work, there are ways to mitigate and minimize their drawbacks.
We at Oreed can assist you with planning and delivering great conference experiences for your attendees, sponsors, and business, regardless of the format you choose.
Whether your meetings and congresses are big or small, in-person or virtually, we'll bring your people together to achieve incredible results. If you're looking for an enthusiastic and energetic medical event management company, we'd love to talk to you!
