The effects of Covid-19 have called for businesses in the events industry to find opportunities to thrive in new ways. Technology plays a significant role here and many companies are now considering the idea of hosting virtual events online as an alternative.
The good news is, virtual events have incredible potential for growth in audience engagement and sales when it is used as a strategic platform for a company’s brand and business. Having been part of the events space in-person and virtually, we want to share five key benefits of hosting a virtual event that you should consider if you need to plan an event soon.
Virtual events give you greater audience reach
Finding a suitable date, venue, and location is crucial in event organising. You may be concerned about whether the location is convenient and accessible for your target audience, whether it is disable-friendly, if it can fit the number of attendees needed, and what the dropout rate might be like due to traffic or unforeseen situations.
Running a virtual event immediately reduces these concerns by more than half. Participants can attend from the comfort of their homes or anywhere in the world on the go, as long as they have a computer or mobile device and Internet connectivity. Because virtual events are so easy to attend, the attendance rate can go up to over ten times higher than a physical event ever could.
If engagement is a concern, there are plenty of fun and effective tools available to keep your audience engaged throughout the event as well. Take Pigeonhole Live’s leaderboard and quiz features or polling features for example. These are great ways to gamify a conference experience and get your audience collectively doing something together even though physically apart.
Virtual events have low marketing and operating cost
When you’re hosting a virtual event, you can focus your marketing efforts and budget online. Even with strategic partnerships, promoting your partners’ brand won’t require printing costs for conference booklets, banners, and buntings. Everything goes digital and you can have greater control over the ROI of your ad spend through SEO, email marketing, and more.
Operating cost is also kept to a minimum as you won’t be spending on venue fee, AV production, service staff, transport, VIP accommodation, F&B, or logistics. Overall a virtual event demands less expenditure compared to a physical event and you get more returns.
Virtual events are easier to manage
Virtual events give you more control over the day of the event. There won’t be the usual stress that comes with logistics, equipment, training on-ground staff, or having to physically be in many places at once to meet stakeholders and media guests in person. This means you can focus on ensuring you have all the digital tools to deliver a seamless experience for your attendees such as the video conferencing and webinar tools that can be used with Pigeonhole Live.
If you haven’t already heard, we’ve recently made our integrations with our video conferencing partners free to use! The free custom integrations with platforms such as Zoom, Cisco Webex, Vimeo, Livestream, BlueJeans and more, will create the perfect ground for your event to build high engagement among your audience.
Virtual events can improve your brand strategy
If there’s one thing people respect, it's an organisation whose people have a spirit of resilience and innovation. Being able to quickly embrace change with such a great leap can position your brand in favourable light among your audience.
In addition to being a leading example in your industry, hosting a virtual event helps you improve your brand strategy because people are drawn to fresh and new experiences like this. This is your chance to turn your attendees into subscribers who will eventually become customers and then brand ambassadors. Virtual events have the potential to get that whole process going at a faster speed by virtue of every action taking place online. You can also get creative and run pre-event brand activities online that can build hype towards the event and continue after.
Virtual events give you fast and valuable data for your next move
Data is so crucial in decision-making for the future. With the Attendee Profiles feature on Pigeonhole Live, you’ll be able to collect useful information such as knowing which sessions had the most questions from attendees and who the most engaged attendees were at your virtual event. This already allows you to get to know who your audience really is and think of content or campaigns that will meet their needs and motivate them towards a specific goal.
You can even instantly send them a digital freebie in exchange for collecting valuable feedback on the spot, which gives you the means to make your next event even better than before!
