5 Tips to Ace Your Virtual Event Marketing

Today, almost every business operation is performed virtually.

Think about it, you begin your morning by attending an e-huddle, connecting with your colleagues virtually when stuck with a task, and attending Zoom meetings for follow-ups.

The list doesn’t end here, you sign-up to attend your company’s virtual webinar or even download the entire session recording for future reference. There’s no doubt about the fact that online tools that help facilitate virtual interactions smoothly have become an integral part of modern marketing.

However, one aspect of businesses is certainly gaining momentum and is helping businesses drive business growth and create seamless virtual experiences ⎼⎼virtual events.

Virtual events have become the holy grail for businesses to spread brand awareness and engage with customers. Let’s deep dive into the world of virtual event marketing and learn some tips to excel at conducting them.

What is Virtual Event Marketing?

Virtual event marketing refers to the process of promoting and hosting an event online. There are a lot of key differences between hosting physical events and virtual events as the latter requires much more attention.

Research suggests that 80.2% of virtual event organizers were able to reach a broader audience by conducting virtual events. Virtual event marketing allows brands to generate awareness about their upcoming webinars, podcasts, and more across different channels. This not only helps them increase their reach and spread more awareness about their products and services but also helps them enter new markets and attract new customers.

Virtual event marketing empowers businesses to generate more leads by inviting more attendees, giving them a space to exchange ideas, learn from industry experts, and gradually become strong advocates of your brand. Let’s now take a look at the different types of virtual events and ways to ace them.

Types of Virtual Events You Can Host

Here are the 4 most popular types of virtual events:

1. Webinars: Webinars are a powerful medium to drive high customer engagement. These can be defined as a seminar on a topic where usually industry experts or product managers exchange ideas and explain the value that a product or service adds to your business. 69% of respondents say that their main purpose to host a webinar is to increase engagement. Webinars can be a highly effective tool when it comes to educating the audience as it allows Q&As and can also be presented as an on-demand asset.

2. Online Workshops/Training: Online workshops are a great medium for participants to learn new skills by completing a course or certification. The shift from offline to online has prompted educational institutions and businesses to train their students and employees using digital methods. The moderator can train learners via one-to-one interactions, solve queries via live Q&A, share content through a screen, etc.

3. Virtual Conferences: Virtual conferences deliver a live experience to the attendees, allowing them to interact with each other, collaborate, and share experiences. Virtual conferences are ideal for including speaker sessions and keynotes, specific to a target audience. At virtual conferences, attendees have many opportunities to network and interact with speakers in real-time via polls and Q&As.

4. Virtual Trade Shows: E-trade shows are best suited for large companies where they can host an online product launch event that can span across many locations at the same time. Such trade shows not only enable networking with industry partners but also have the ability to receive live feedback from customers.

It’s certain that virtual events can help you generate a buzz about your offerings and attract your target audience. However, if you don’t get people through the door to join your virtual events, all your efforts might go in vain. You must have a robust virtual event marketing strategy in place that ensures that you’re getting the desired levels of engagement. Your pre-event marketing and promotion game must hit the bull’s eye if you want to pull off a successful virtual event.

5 Tips to Ace Virtual Event Marketing

Virtual event marketing broadly encompasses strategies, channels, and tools to ensure that you bring in a sizable and relevant audience and meet the ROI that you are looking for. Here are a few tips that can help you go a notch higher in marketing your virtual events:

1. Develop an Eye-Catchy Event Page: This would be the go-to place for your event. Use attention-grabbing graphics, videos, engaging clips of keynote speakers, workshop leaders, and performers to keep the audience engaged and informed. Also, include all the event details and guidelines such as time and date, speaker bios, venue, etc, on the event page.

2. Utilize Email Marketing to the Fullest: Email marketing is not a thing of the past and it works, hands down! Send email newsletters to share news about upcoming events to your curated email list. Don’t go overboard or spam recipients but do keep them updated with new event announcements, exciting updates, and post-event wrap-ups. Make use of lively graphics and different content formats to enhance engagement.

3. Offer a Sneak-Peek into the Event: Akin to that of a movie trailer, provide a short preview of your event to entice people to register and be excited about what’s to come. Provide snippets containing brief interview segments of your speakers and highlights of what to expect throughout the event.

4. Use Social to Promote the Virtual Event: With everything going digital, why not utilize the social bandwagon to your marketing advantage? Spread the word on all your social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Use relevant hashtags corresponding to your virtual event, create online groups, post stories, and create ads to get your fair share of audience interest.

5. Be Consistent With Your Marketing Tactics: Don’t be a one-time wonder, instead be a constant name in front of your target audience and make them inquisitive of what’s next in store. Use different campaigns to create buzz and be regular in providing updates until the event. Also, be sure to take feedback, extend gratitude, and provide necessary post-event documents to nurture the attendees right.

While there may be a long list of tips and tricks that you can follow to bring the much-needed hype and attention to your virtual event, following the above-mentioned steps would definitely help you woo your audience and ace your virtual event marketing initiatives.

Wish to craft an impeccable event marketing strategy? Talk to us!