Imagine meeting and connecting with industry professionals from all over the world in the comfort of your home, or generating $2,000 in ticket sales for a two-day virtual event. Almost everything we need can be achieved with just a few taps and clicks online. Events before used to be limited to in-person gatherings but today, virtual events are starting to gain popularity. Today, event planners can make successful virtual events already with the help of virtual event marketing techniques.
Virtual event marketing techniques are needed to successfully compete with people’s attention. The power of virtual event marketing opens up innovative avenues for engagement and reach to a global audience. We created this guide to give you everything you need to know about virtual event marketing that you can start applying right away.
Definition of Virtual Event Marketing
Virtual event marketing is the strategic promotion and communication tactics used to entice, engage, educate, entertain, and convince your target audience for a specific action for your virtual event. Similar to traditional marketing, strategies take different forms and different channels to achieve a certain goal.
Virtual marketing can be in the form of content, videos, blogs, carousel posts, webinars, etc. Furthermore, marketers can choose the platform where they think their customers are most likely to see their marketing efforts.
The next section will list the different types of virtual events that you can choose from. Choose what is relevant to your upcoming event.
Types of Virtual Events
Webinars
Webinars have become a cornerstone of virtual engagement, offering a platform for informative presentations, interactive Q&A sessions, and valuable insights shared by industry experts. Whether it’s a product demo, a thought leadership discussion, or a training session, webinars provide a flexible and accessible format for reaching and engaging audiences worldwide.
Virtual Conferences
Bring together professionals and attendees and pick each other’s brains with a virtual conference. Sessions can be more diverse and dynamic now that sessions are now held virtually. The beauty of hosting virtual conferences is that attendees can learn and network with fellow colleagues from all over the world.
With interactive features like live polling, chat rooms, and virtual exhibitor booths, virtual conferences offer an immersive experience that mirrors the energy and interactivity of in-person events.
Online Networking
Form valuable connections and relationships with an online networking event. Online networking can work for almost any type of virtual event. Trying to engage attendees in an online event can be a challenge but providing networking opportunities for them can be a way to elevate their experience.
Workshops
Attendees can get the chance to learn skills from the best experts in the industry with a virtual workshop. Virtual workshops are designed so that attendees can still experience hands-on and interactive experiences online.
Courses and Classes
Set up educational events for attendees like courses or classes that interest them. Create recurring events for the different modules or topics of the course.
Virtual Trade Show
Don’t be limited by the physical constraints of a trade show hall and showcase your products and services for the whole world to see in a virtual trade show. Virtual trade shows offer unparalleled flexibility and convenience for both exhibitors and attendees. Exhibitors can customize their virtual booths with multimedia content, interactive presentations, product demonstrations, and even virtual reality to engage and educate visitors.
Fundraisers
Raise funds and awareness for a cause you care about online. With the help of technology, nonprofit organizations or event organizers can share their messages and stories online. It also becomes easier to connect with potential partners and sponsors through a virtual fundraiser.
Team Building
Virtual team-building events foster camaraderie, collaboration, and morale among remote teams through interactive activities, games, and challenges. From virtual scavenger hunts and trivia nights to online escape rooms and team-building workshops, virtual team-building events promote engagement and cohesion in distributed work environments.
The Benefits of Virtual Event Marketing
Marketing is not just about trying to sell a product or service to your customers. Instead, it’s about providing value and actionable solutions to your customers. Virtual event marketing exemplifies this principle by offering an array of benefits beyond traditional marketing methods. Here are the reasons why you should take your virtual event marketing seriously:
Wider Reach
Virtual events have broken down the barriers of physical limitations. With the proper messaging and strategies, your message can have a wider reach with target audiences all over the world. This expanded reach not only increases brand exposure but also opens up new markets and opportunities for businesses to engage with potential customers on a larger scale.
Long Term Impact
One of the wonders of an effective virtual marketing strategy is the ability to rinse and repeat it. Imagine working on a piece of marketing content once and having it work for you for a long time. Unlike physical events that are limited to a specific date and time, virtual events can be recorded and repurposed for ongoing use.
Recorded sessions, presentations, and panel discussions can be shared on social media, company websites, and email newsletters, extending the event’s lifespan and reaching a wider audience over time.
Cost Effectiveness
When you choose to do a virtual event, there is almost no more need for marketing expenses like venue rentals or billboard leases. You can easily target the people you want to reach with digital marketing when people are constantly on their phones anyway. With lower overhead costs and a wider reach, virtual event marketing provides a cost-effective solution for businesses looking to maximize their marketing budgets and drive measurable results.
Convenience of Tools
Event marketers can enjoy the tools at their disposal to make their marketing easier. For example, they can install plugins on their websites to make their tasks easier. There are customer relationship management softwares and productivity tools to integrate on their sales funnel.
Accurate Data Collection
Digital marketing can be targeted because of accurate data collection from analytics tools like Google Analytics. Advertisers can create advertisements that are targeted to a demographic or a person’s digital behavior, interests, and preferences. The ability to capture data and use it responsibly allows marketers to be more effective in their marketing efforts.
Effective Strategies for Virtual Event Marketing
Use Storytelling Techniques
In the digital world, new information is being presented every millisecond. Stand out by applying storytelling techniques to your marketing strategies. Start with a hook and a memorable story for a message that sticks to your target audience.
Understanding your Target Audience
If you have an existing client base, you can look at their profiles and their interactions with your business or organization. Carry out our surveys and focus group discussions to understand their needs and desires.
Another helpful tip is to identify the main audience friction points of your customers. These are obstacles or inconveniences that prevent someone from being a customer. Examples of friction points are purchasing processes, poor website usability, slow loading time, lack of trust, etc.
Creating detailed personas for your target audience is also a helpful exercise in your event planning. You can create a table and answer questions like where your target audience is now and where they want to be. What does their daily life look like? Personas represent fictional characters that embody the key characteristics and traits of your ideal attendees.
By delving into demographics, interests, pain points, and motivations, you gain invaluable insights into who your audience truly is. This process enables you to tailor your event experience to resonate deeply with attendees, addressing their needs and desires effectively. Ultimately, the better you know your audience, the more successful your event will be in engaging and delighting them.
Staying Updated on the Latest Algorithm Changes
Since your marketing strategies will be hosted online, you will need to stay updated with the latest algorithm changes in social media. Follow industry leaders and platform authorities to know what’s coming and adjust your virtual event strategy accordingly.
For example, search engine optimization is an important factor to consider for your event website. By optimizing your website with relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and high-quality content, you increase the likelihood of attracting organic traffic and capturing the attention of individuals interested in your event’s theme or industry.
Additionally, incorporating SEO strategies such as link building, local SEO tactics, and mobile optimization can further enhance your event website’s visibility and accessibility, ultimately attracting more attendees and participants to your event.
Customer Relationship Management integration on your event site is also something you have to familiarize yourself with. These tools enable event organizers to centralize and manage their contact database, track interactions with leads and attendees, and personalize communications based on their preferences and behaviors.
Analytic tools like Google Analytics are also needed to make data-driven decisions and understand your customers better. Analytic tools provide valuable insights into various metrics such as website traffic, user engagement, and conversion rates, allowing organizers to measure the success of their marketing efforts and identify areas for improvement. These tools can be plugged into your event website for easier tracking.
By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as page views, bounce rates, and click-through rates, event organizers can gain a comprehensive understanding of how users interact with their event website and pinpoint areas where adjustments may be needed.
Collaborate with Influencers
Partnering with influencers gives a human touch to your message or event. People can trust more when they hear it from someone they know and trust. Additionally, influencers already have a niche following which makes it easier for you to send your message to your target audience.
Come up with a win-win partnership with an influencer for both your event and them. Influencers can conduct Q&A sessions, create exclusive content, or host giveaways for your event for maximum reach and visibility.
Stick to a Marketing Channel
With the allure of different available marketing channels, it is easy to fall into the trap of trying all marketing channels. However, it is better to stick to a marketing channel to avoid overwhelm, burnout, and diluted efforts. This focused approach not only streamlines efforts but also empowers businesses to allocate resources more efficiently, maximizing their impact and staying ahead in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Measuring Success and ROI
Measuring success and creating post-event reports is easier with the help of technology. Easily compute your ROI and the results from your digital marketing campaigns. Focus on what’s working and quickly eliminate what is not.
14 Steps for Virtual Event Marketing
If you have an upcoming virtual event, here are the steps and checklist you need to take to get started.
- Define your virtual event objectives
- Research about your ideal customers
- Decide on a virtual format
- Create an offer to get them interested in your event
- Choose the right virtual platform
- Create compelling content
- Set up your virtual event website
- Open an event registration page / ticket-selling site
- Create a ticket pricing strategy
- Seek and send partnerships
- Create an engaging event program
- Start promoting your event
- Collect Attendee Feedback
- Do post-event follow-ups
Case Study
An example of a successful virtual event is the AdWorld Conference. It is a conference for advertising or business professionals who want to level up their marketing efforts for their business. Every year, they invite top speakers in different marketing disciplines to talk about their expertise.
Event planners for this worldwide conference are successful in promoting their conference to over 20,000 attendees just for a two to three-day conference. What makes their conference stand out is the valuable lessons they promise participants. Their marketing messages talk about how attendees can bring marketing strategies that can change the way they do their business.
With the traction they are getting for their conference, sponsors are willing to partner with them by providing monetary support or in-kind donations.
Aside from this, organizers open networking opportunities for elite professionals, one-on-one connections, and exclusive access to the Ad World Community.
Because of the exceptional value that the conference speakers delivered, participants also willingly share their insights on their social media platforms or blogs. This organic promotion not only boosted the conference’s visibility but also extended its reach, inviting more individuals to join the event in the following years.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Creating Content for Everyone
As the famous quote says, when you try to talk to everyone, you talk to no one. Before creating your content, make sure you have a clear idea on who your audience is. Observe their language, what’s trending for them, and what gets their attention so you can create content that resonates with them.
Neglecting Follow Up
While the event itself may have successfully attracted event attendees and delivered valuable content, the true impact is often realized in the post-event engagement. Don’t forget to include post-event efforts in your event planning process. Failing to follow up promptly with attendees can result in missed opportunities to nurture leads, gather feedback, and solidify relationships.
A well-planned follow-up strategy can include personalized thank-you emails, surveys to gather insights, invitations to connect on social media or schedule follow-up meetings, and sharing relevant resources or recordings of event sessions.
Not Nurturing your Community/ Purely Selling
People can sense when someone is trying to sell them something and are easily repelled by it. When creating your virtual event marketing strategy, be conscious to not just create content for selling. When you give value, sales and conversion will follow. Focus on building credibility and trust with your audience first by offering actionable content that can deliver results to them quickly.
For example, if you’re promoting a virtual course or class, you can offer a valuable ebook related to the course topic for free. When people sign up and give their email addresses, you can create a welcome sequence that provides additional resources and tutorials.
Lack of Audience Understanding
Assuming what your audience needs instead of doing the legwork of research can mess up your whole marketing strategy. Gather event data that can help with your decision making.
Know where to look for data in your events. An example of event data can be the answers from your event registration website or your website data from Google Analytics.
Sample of a Virtual Event Marketing Plan
Virtual event: Digital Marketing for Events Mastermind Discussion
1. Objective
1.1 Foster networking and collaboration among digital marketing professionals in the events industry.
1.2 Facilitate knowledge sharing and brainstorming on current trends and challenges in digital marketing.
1.3 Position the company as a leading authority in the digital marketing space for events
2. Ideal Customers/ Audience
2.1 Experienced digital marketing professionals, including strategists, consultants, and agency owners.
2.2 Marketing executives seeking insights into advanced digital marketing strategies.
2.3 Entrepreneurs and business owners interested in staying ahead of the curve in digital marketing.
3. Format
3.1 Roundtable Discussion with moderators and panels from the events industry
4. Offer
4.1 Provide a template or guide for digital marketing professionals for specific types of events
4.2 Release content that is immediately actionable for your audience.
5. Virtual Platform
5.1 Create a Zoom event with a registration
5.2 Utilize Zoom’s breakout room feature for smaller group discussions and networking sessions.
6. Create Compelling Content
6.1 Identify topics as your content pillar, depending on your audience.
7. Event Website
7.1 Use Event Smart or Event Espresso to input all the details of your event on your own site.
8. Registration and Ticketing
8.1 Sign up on Event Smart or Install Event Espresso to start selling your tickets
9. Ticket Pricing Strategy
9.1 Decide on pricing strategies like Early Bird Discounts, Group Rates, VIP perks, and more
10. Partnerships
10.1 Identify organizations that fit your goals and objectives
10.2 Craft an event sponsorship proposal to send to them
11. Event Program
11.1 Write the flow and schedule of your event program from start to finish
11.2 Allocate time for networking breaks and virtual networking opportunities to encourage attendee engagement.
12. Promote your Event
12.1 Create an event on Facebook or social media channels to promote your event
12.2 Invite your community or team to share about the event.
12.3 Leverage email marketing to reach out to your existing subscriber list and industry contacts, highlighting the value proposition of the event.
13. Attendee Feedback
13.1 Send out a virtual event surveys via email to receive feedback from your attendee experience
14. Post-event Follow-ups
14.1 Send thank you notes, gifts, or other information for the next virtual event
Conclusion
In conclusion, virtual event marketing is a powerful and important strategy to make your virtual event come to life. Be clear with your virtual event objective, understand your target audience, familiarize yourself with virtual event tools and industry news to stay relevant and effective. Don’t underestimate what good content can do to building a network and community. Iterate and see what channels and messaging strategy will work best for your organization or event and stick with it.
Additionally, your event website matters more than you think. Own your data and create a professional-looking event landing page with Event Smart.
Create an event website that can sell event tickets and accept event registrations. Unlike other ticket-selling platforms, you can enjoy powerful features like unlimited ticket selling at no commission fees, customizable registration forms, secure payment collection, and more.
Experience the power of virtual events now. Check out our live demo or our 14-day free trial now.
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