6 Signs You Need to Host a Virtual Event

virtual lobby

Virtual events, in the recent years, have evidently picked up pace due to their increased reach as well as the tremendous results that hosting companies have been able to achieve. Over time, while these companies were gradually shifting towards virtual events, after assessing and evaluating the exceptional pros and the next-to-none cons, it is unfortunate, yet undeniable, that the pace at which this transformation was taking place grew at an exponential rate as soon as the world was hit by the outbreak of COVID-19.

Hundreds of on-going and scheduled physical events experienced cancellations and resorted to shifting towards virtual events of the following types and many more:

Although each event serves a different purpose, they all replicate the layout of a physical event through features like auditorium halls for live webinars, receptions & help desks, virtual booths, a resource center, video vaults, chat rooms swag bags/wish carts and much more. Virtual events match their physical counterparts in experience and exceed them in engagement and engagement; the latter being counter-intuitive but still true. They remove many of the time, cost, capacity and geographical constraints that plague conventional events making them a popular choice amongst corporations and universities over the past decade.

To read how you can shift your event online, click now.

virtual event

This article highlights the tell-tale signs that indicate your company needs to take its events online, furthering into the benefits that this bring in the very immediate term.

1. Your target audience lives across the globe

There’s no such thing as too many leads! If your event aims to attract visitors from different parts of the world, going virtual is your best bet. Virtual events are accessible from any browser, on any device and in any part of the world. Your event lives right in their palms of your prospects which results in a wider and more diverse turnout.

Additionally, at a time where the world is distancing itself in order to survive, virtual events are mending those distances and bringing people together in a safe, virtual space to progress with their usual activities. For example, universities are rapidly shifting to virtual open days to invite a globally diverse student-base to have a look at their campuses and academic programs. Similarly, virtual trade shows have experienced a massive growth as people are shifting to online solutions to their transactions.

2. You’re on a budget

Virtual events, not only provide you with a user-friendly experience, but also a cost-effective solution. Eliminating the additional cost of venue, hospitality, travel, marketing collateral, etc, virtual events remove your physical as well as monetary burden, and provide you with greater value at a smaller cost.

3. You’re pressed for time

A virtual event has a setup time of about a month, if you partner with a reputable virtual event platform. This includes the time taken to convey your requirements, setup a mock event, train your staff in navigating through the event and its ultimate execution. A physical fair, on the other hand, can take much longer. It takes months to plan it, about the same time to get sponsors on board, weeks to conduct vendor meetings and the event itself consumes your event manager entirely. Not to mention that marketing it is a major challenge as it requires both offline and online channels. Cleanup and exit takes a day or two as well. With a virtual fair, all this stress is transferred to the platform providers who not only treat it as a turn-key project but also provide reliable customer support before, during and after the event.

4. You want each visitor to have a unique experience

This applies to all virtual event categories and is one of the strongest contributors to the success of virtual events. Since each visitor has the option to choose the content that they wish to absorb and save, and this includes webinars, videos, brochures, and e-books, they often rate virtual events much higher in overall engagement. With a conventional fair, your attendees would have to go through the standard schedule of seminars and presentations but the ‘on-demand’ viewing aspect of virtual fairs enables them to handpick material of choice which increases interest and conversions. Individual chats enabled on each session and virtual booth adds to the individual visitor experience. They can chat with reps without having to queue in a long line and having to condense their queries to a 1 minute per person interaction.

5. You labored over quality content and don’t want to waste it

If your team has worked hard at creating original compelling content for visitors, you can re-use it to improve your content marketing game long after the event is over. Your introductory videos can go onto your company’s careers site or products page. You can upload the webinars onto YouTube or Vimeo and share them with your subscribers through email campaigns. If you conducted in-event surveys and polls, you can convert those results into a quick blog post and share it with your social media followers. You can also use your chat interactions to create or update an FAQ page. The possibilities are endless.

6. Your company’s higher-ups want quantifiable metrics

Perhaps the most salient tie-breaker between physical and virtual fairs is the ability of the latter to furnish detailed reports. With a physical fair, although you do have people coming in, visiting booths, grabbing brochures and dropping their contact information, you don’t possess the means to accurately measure the results of the fair. So, in the end, it essentially comes down to how well the exhibitors thought the event had gone.

The benefit of the digital space is that it tracks every registrant and records every chat conversation exchanged, on-demand videos watched, resources downloaded and shared along with all the uploads made and transactions performed.

This benefits you in the following way:

Making it easy to quantify the event’s success
Helping track visitors’ preferences to maximize the ROI of future events
Allowing you to measure your staff’s performance down to each user and booth.

Interested to learn more? Read The Ultimate Guide to a Virtual Event.

ABOUT VFAIRS:

At vFairs.com, we strive to build a top-class online event platform that will help event organizers make memorable connections with their target audience. We’re obsessed with taking out the hassle normally associated with physical events and leaving organizers and exhibitors to focus on what’s most important: engagement with the audience.