Circumstances have changed! Our current circumstances require us to go digital, irrespective of our original plans, and it’s more important than ever to utilise our digital assets. We’re swapping venues for bandwidth, conference rooms for virtual meeting tools.
You have the potential to engage with more customers and partners than ever, and you can keep connected without stepping out of your home. In an environment where physical meetings and events are not viable, digital events can bridge the gap. Your focus shifts to the kind of content you want to create and share, building meaningful interactions with a customer base hungry for content. This new way of communicating can be supplemented with a digital content archive. This is your opportunity to create a unique and tailored digital space.
5 ideas to get you started
1. Strategy
Make a list of objectives you want to achieve and create a structure to support digital delivery.
Some questions to guide your analysis:
- Who is your target-audience?
- How does your offering differentiate you from the competition?
- What is the structure of your virtual event?
- How will you keep your audience engaged?
Content is king! You aren’t constrained by a venue anymore so think outside the box – move your feedback online, create digital libraries of supporting content and consider how you will keep your audience entertained and engaged. Consider breaking up your event into segments. If video isn’t an option, why not podcast? Really think about and refine a strategy to supercharge your events.
2. Build Momentum
The best online events require planning, and use everything from invitations, countdowns, social media campaigns, landing pages and mailshots to remind people you’re going digital. Paid advertising via Google Ads and Social Media gives you an opportunity to spread the word to highly targeted audiences. Break conventions and move away from overused formats; don’t call them webinars, use a more invigorating and interesting term, something that resonates with your audience. Follow-up invites and event schedules help engage your audience – why not take it a step further and launch a teaser trailer, build a LinkedIn community or a competition to build event momentum.
3. On the Day
Utilise Live chat functionality on your chosen platform. Moderators should be at their keyboards, ready to respond and take questions from the audience. The average person’s (task-dependant) attention span is 9 seconds! (source: Consumer Insights team of Microsoft Canada). It’s important to feed your audience knowledge in chunks, interacting and breaking up content with live Q&A, video clips and slides. Supporting content such as whitepapers and datasheets can be shared and uploaded to enable your audience to easily digest more information on the subject matter. You’re the host and this is your opportunity to get your message across in a new, exciting way.
Why not run a competition during the event – perhaps to answer questions with the chance of winning a prize.
4. Follow-up after the event
The completion of your digital event isn’t the end of the journey; be prepared to followup, follow-up and follow-up some more! Release a marketing campaign, Q&A sessions, send out care packages, a video message from your vendor – all of this keeps the audience engaged and prepares them to anticipate and look forward to your next digital event. It is also a prime opportunity to engage your sales team in utilising their skills and relationships to make follow-up initiatives as effective as possible.
5. Learnings
After the event you need to make a detailed analysis, understanding how it performed. What went well? What can be improved? This is your chance to refine and conquer when planning your next appearance in the digital space – it’s important to learn from the best: use YouTube and Vimeo to find engaging content and channels that excel. What can we learn from them? The best influencers keep a perfect balance between content and interaction – the audience need to know they matter.
Get in touch!
Nuvias and our ChannelUP team are here to advise you. Get in touch to instil life into your digital events. Nuvias offers remote collaboration, voice and video platforms, network infrastructure solutions and intelligent WI-FI to bring your events to life and Cybersecurity solutions to keep your digital environment safe.
