Tips for Hosting a Virtual Event

Promotional campaigns rely on events to raise awareness for new products, services, and business opportunities.

However, since early 2020 and the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, people have become understandably cautious about gathering in large groups. Organizations are also leery about physical gatherings: No-one wants their promotional event linked to a disease outbreak.

Thanks to technology, you don’t need to put your promotional event ideas on hold. In today’s world, virtual events can promote your business as effectively as physical events. 

What is a Virtual Event?

A virtual event is any event that takes place online without a physical component, including webinars, live streams, Facebook events, and virtual conferences. A virtual event is usually cheaper to organize than a physical event since you don’t need to procure an event location or transport speakers to and from the function. 

In addition to complying with social distancing and government health regulations, a virtual event has other advantages. Attendees can log into your event from around the world without travel and lodging costs. As a result, you have the opportunity to get your message out to a larger group than usual. 

Due to their nature, visual events also make it easy to track and evaluate event data. You can quickly generate data on the number of attendees, where they live, how they paid for event sessions, etc. This information allows you to redefine your promotional event ideas as you move forward.

Virtual Event Ideas

Virtual events come in various formats, allowing you to choose the delivery method that best matches your needs. Possible visual event ideas include:

• Online conferences: Like a physical conference, a virtual conference runs for a full day or more, with distinct scheduled presentations and sessions run by different speakers. Attendees can choose which events to sign up for based on their schedules. 
• Webinars: A popular way to spread the word about new services, products, and solutions, webinars are hosted by a presenter who talks over a slideshow presentation. Attendees often have the opportunity to submit questions to the presenter through live chat. 
• Online workshops: Online workshops provide step-by-step instructions attendees can follow to complete a task, create a product, or resolve a problem.
• Live streams: Popular on social media and live streaming platforms, live streams deliver videos to viewers in real-time without being pre-recorded. Streaming dates are announced in advance, and attendees can drop in and out of the stream as needed. Live chat is often supported, and comments are actively encouraged.

Promotional Event Ideas for Businesses

• Plan ahead: Like a physical promotional event, a virtual event requires careful planning. Your action plan should include information on the topic you want to cover, which platform you’ll use to host the event, how people will register, whether attendees will pay to enter the event, how they will pay, and what types of marketing you’ll use to promote it.?
• Secure some event sponsors: Reach out to possible sponsors to see if they’re willing to partner with your event. Visual event sponsors may help with event promotion, provide capital, use their leverage to convince speakers to participate in virtual conferences, or offer gifts and discounts to event attendees.?
• Seek out the best presenters: Ask well-known industry experts to participate in your event. Virtual event speakers don’t have to worry about travel arrangements, so they can give presentations from anywhere in the world. Provide possible presenters with an information package detailing the nature of the event, what attendees will get out of the presentations, and why it’s beneficial for speakers to participate. ?
• Consider selling premium tickets: While many virtual events are free, it’s not unusual to charge attendance fees. In the case of a virtual conference, you might want to consider offering some sessions for free, with premium content available for a fee.?
• Pretest your platform: It’s vital to understand how to host a virtual event on the platform you’ve chosen for the occasion — the last thing you want is technical problems on the big day. Run some rehearsals before the event, and have a troubleshooter on hand to help attendees access presentations if necessary.?
• Promote your event: As with physical events, you must promote a virtual event for it to be successful. Create a promotional plan for your event complete with a social media presence, graphics, and hashtags. On the day of the event, live Tweet presenter quotes as they’re spoken. ?
• Record events: Unlike physical events, virtual events can be recorded and stored. Not only does this give you a record of the event, it helps you build a library of webinars, virtual conferences, and workshops to make available to your employees, customers, and clients.