The year 2020 brought some major changes to the way the world moved, and businesses happened. It showed us a lot of things that were otherwise brushed off. There’s one more thing that was phenomenal during this time and until now, the rise of virtual conferences or virtual events! This brings us to the question of promoting your virtual events effectively and how to do them in the right manner.

The Emergence of Virtual Meeting and Virtual Events

There were some notable recent changes that the world has undergone. The mass-scale usage of face masks, attention towards hygiene, social distance – all were previously unexplored realms that stormed the world last year. But virtual meetings or video conferences were there earlier as well, but spiked the most recently.

Virtual events are quickly becoming the most popular way to reach a large number of people at the same time. They are perfect for networking, collaborating, and forging new connections. Moreover, virtual events are accessible for nearly anyone who has access to the Internet. And as brands and consumers adopt remote working models, virtual meetings and conferences are the perfect solutions.

Promoting your Virtual Events

With this upsurge in popularity comes new ways clever ways to market and promote your virtual event. Now, the biggest challenge for marketers is how to stand out in a sea of conferences, summits, and virtual events and promote their events effectively, driving more and more traffic. No matter how high-profile your webinar is, if there’s no traffic or audience, all your efforts go in vain.

But thanks to the advent of some revolutionary technologies, as well as certain new practices, it’s never been easier to make your event or business successful. So, for all the new marketers and entrepreneurs, knowing competent virtual event marketing ideas is key to their success.

The Challenges Faced by New Marketers

But, it is normal for novice marketers to find themselves in woe while looking for adequate promotional techniques that maximize audience, conversions, and quality leads for their business.

So what should be your approach to generate buzz for your online events? How would you formulate your promotional strategy and promote your virtual event in 2021 in a way that inspires people? And even better, how would you ensure a memorable experience for your participants?

Today, in this Blog post, we have got all the answers to your questions and the ideal tips to market virtual events in the best constructive manner. So without any further delay, let’s dive in!

Create Anticipation for your Event

No matter when your event is scheduled, start building anticipation for the event 2-3 months prior. Anticipation and curiosity are the cornerstones of audience engagement. The more the anticipation, the more is the engagement.

Start off with specifying a date and tease it on social media and through marketing emails. If you have a famous speaker joining your event, give a hint about the speaker but don’t release the name.

Your goal is to allude to your audience without spoiling the fun. When executed rightly, you can leave your audience thrilled and pumped up for the event.

Develop Inspiring Graphics and Custom Visuals

Develop eye-grabbing and memorable visuals around your event, curate the content aligned to the topic and keep adding value to your user experience. You must be having your own virtual event planning team, as well as an in-house graphic design team. Get them into action.

And if you lack such teams, contact an agency where you shall get everything under one roof. See how they can get creative with your event visuals. There can be backdrops design in the most highlighting part of your event.

You may also have virtual photo booths, graffiti walls, interactive landing pages, 360-degree virtual tours of your past in-person events, virtual exhibition halls, 3D immersive virtual environments, etc. Find the best feasible option of how to announce a virtual event and put that in action.

Create an Exciting Event Landing Page

What is a better way to showcase your UVP apart from a well-crafted landing page! Once your target audience is sorted and your objectives determined, focus on your landing page to communicate why people should join your event. What benefits will they have from it, what knowledge would you impart through the event.

All these questions must have a certain form of an answer ready for your prospects. All these minute details tend to pique the audience’s curiosity and compel them to be a part of your hosted event. Make sure there are enough custom visuals on the page that convey the right information to the right audience in the right way.

You may also want to add a short (max 10 seconds) teaser video to highlight the crucial aspects the event will cover. Showcase some social proofs that differentiate you from others, some KPIs that augment brand trust.

Start your Marketing Activities at the Right Time

Getting the time correct is vital; you cannot be too early or too late. Think of publishing some engaging save-the-date posts and occasional teasers mentioning the date and time, the platform (Eventcube, vFairs, Filo, Accelevents, InEvent, Airmeet) the event will be hosted in, so and so forth.

It is recommended to start 3-4 weeks prior and boost your awareness campaigns since then. If you start too early, then you might lose the audience’s attention and fail to make them sign up. If it is done too late, not enough outreach could be generated. So it is pivotal that you must strike the right balance of time.

Don’t Forget to Enlist your Event on Online Event Calendars

Online event calendars are one of the much-visited sites by people these days, given that most things happen virtually. People who seek quality events that can add value to them, regularly visit these sites to tick off their calendars.

So, imagine how much viewership and participants you can have just by getting your event listed there. You can maximize your Blog’s online visibility and organic traffic.

Discover High-Quality Leads

It goes without saying that the more you generate buzz and create engagement, the higher the chances of garnering quality leads. So you need to create a favorable environment for your prospects to turn into leads and eventually actual participants.

Create short but regular interactions between the speakers/presenters and the attendees, create polls, surveys, real-time Q&As. All these contribute in creating a strong environment for your leads to generate. Focus on real participation, align your lead scoring system based on the successful completion of any sub-event within the main event.

Virtual events have seen enormous success during the pandemic, and there’s no stopping to it. But make sure you make things fall in the right places, only then can you guarantee participation.

Promote your Events Hard

Promotion, promotion, and promotion! Promoting your virtual events on social media or your website, or any other forum is of paramount importance. Unless you let the word out and utilize your web presence, you cannot really make the mark.

Add a noticeable section within your homepage that redirects the visitors to the event landing page. You might also try leveraging banner ad placements, message panels at the top or bottom of your homepage. Reach out to your partners for putting an ad on their website, feature a short teaser video on your homepage showcasing the highlights of the event.

Lastly, you may put a live chat option on your website that can give answers to your visitors’ queries. There are a plethora of ways of how to promote a virtual event; however, ensure you do not overdo it. Too many push ads might piss off your prospects and backfire your efforts.

Put up an Event Countdown Clock on your Homepage

A countdown timer is probably the best way to drive conversion and compel the audience to take action. Think of putting an event countdown timer on your website and create a sense of urgency amongst your audience.

Put up an animated GIF or a virtual clock that counts from a date to indicate the beginning of your event. This acts as a push for those who are still on the edge of taking a decision.

Showcase your Sponsors and Leverage their Brand Influence

Piggyback on the fame and popularity of your sponsors, showcase their logos on your landing page or within your teaser video. If you have got Nike, Coca-Cola, or Apple Inc. to sponsor your event, leverage their phenomenal brand influence and brand recall power over your prospects.

This is sure to boost their interest and enthusiasm, which will eventually convert into registrations. Accelerate your marketing activities and get your messaging right. You may also request your sponsors to promote your event on their social media handles or website – all these efforts can certainly improve your chance of getting more registrations.

Leverage Text Message Marketing for Promotion

Text message marketing is now in popular demand, and several big brands are leveraging it. Quirky and short marketing copies with a humorous undertone are everywhere, and they get enough adulation. So, never underestimate the power of text message promotional campaigns.

Sometimes they can even beat email opens, flaunting a 98% open rate! It is not just less expensive but also pretty simple to set up as well. You may reach out to third-party text messaging service providers like Trumpia, TrueDialog, Twilio, SimpleTexting, etc., to handle the database creation, as well as the transmission of the texts.

These tools come for a pocket-friendly subscription fee. If you want to gain traction for your event in a short time, try using these platforms. Moreover, tools like Braze and EZ Texting even automate your SMS marketing and even track its open rates.

And last, but not the least!

Your virtual event also requires one more activity to bolster its promotion. And that is, incentivizing your event. Because unless you give some sort of performance advantage to your audience, why would they join. Think of giving out an incentive to your audience to guarantee their participation.

Things like a percentage of the tickets sold, an “early bird” reward, discounts coupons, goodies that they would receive through courier, etc., go a long way.

Final Thoughts

Promoting your virtual events might seem daunting. But in reality, with some amount of effort and appropriate planning, you can create events that are scalable and position you as visionary. Just ensure to create an event distinguished event that adds value to your audience and participants.

And we hope the tips mentioned above can help you plan your next virtual event and create greater engagement amongst your target audience. Start planning right now, promote a virtual event on social media successfully and make the most out of this year and beyond!