Digital processes are engrained in our day-to-day business activities. As a result, virtual events have found a foothold in the marketing strategy. But without a good promotion strategy, they won’t give your company the results achievable. It’s all about communication where your event promotion is concerned. To generate new leads, your events need to be well-attended. And if no-one knows about your event, how will they attend?
Get your topic right
The subject of your event is one of the most important aspects. 80% of people join a virtual event for educational purposes. Meaning the type of event you run needs to be carefully considered to ensure it meets your aims but also delivers on your audience's expectations. Whether that be a webinar with a presentation that informs people about your chosen topic, or a Q&A which allows individuals to ask their own questions. Research your market to identify gaps that you can address.
Tell people about it
Just as you wouldn’t plan your in-person event overnight, don’t expect to do so for a virtual event. For small events, most businesses need between 3-6 weeks for their promotion, whilst this jumps to over 6 weeks for a large virtual event. Your contact database will be the first place to start your promotion preparation. But just contacting everyone in your database is not a best-practice strategy to use. Instead, you need to be contacting the people with an interest in your product or service. Ensure your recipient list is relevant, segmented and up-to-date, then you can use your email, social and telemarketing channels to engage with these leads. Each channel has its pros and cons, and a combination of several will likely offer the best results.
Delight during the event
You may be forgiven for thinking that when you reach the virtual event, your promotion is finished. However, this shouldn’t be the case. Use your event to delight your delegates.
Whilst you need to make your event stand out, you also always need to be thinking about what the delegate experience is. And how you can make it valuable to them.
There will be a number of drop-offs throughout your event, so get your main points across quickly. Keep presentations succinct, with key messages delivered in the first half. Additionally, attendee fatigue is a very real thing. Keep engagement levels high throughout your virtual event and schedule in natural breaks if your event is longer. Many virtual event platforms now offer interactive features and the ability to run Q&A’s to help achieve this.
The follow-up
When your event is over, the communication isn’t. A follow-up gives you the opportunity to gather feedback, qualify leads generated from the virtual event and to promote your future events in order to drive early-bird registrations.
With only 40% of registrations attending the live event, you need a strategy for engaging both those who attended and those who didn’t. By recording all sessions, you can then offer this on-demand version as valuable content during your follow-up. Whilst this can act as a refresher for those who attended, it also gives you a motive for getting in touch with those who didn’t.
Whilst some may choose to focus on using email for the follow-up, the best way to re-establish the connection made during the event is by picking up the phone. Telemarketing brings a personal touch to your outreach, whilst also giving you the opportunity to schedule another call or meeting and answer any outstanding questions or apprehensions.
With any event, it’s not uncommon for the audience or follow-up list to contain dozens, if not hundreds of contacts. And it can be a costly affair to expect your sales team to reach out or cleanse each one personally. Using a professional telemarketing company can give you additional support to get in contact with everyone whilst the event-high is still in full-force. For more information on how to get the most from your Virtual Event, download our guide on making virtual events work for your B2B company.
