Voxburner Proves Leadership with a Phenomenal Virtual Conference

ABOUT THE HOST

Voxburner’s global industry events, insight and research are known to keep marketing professionals in touch with the fast-paced world of youth marketing. Their primary goal is to bring the youth marketing industry together to keep up with the constantly changing trends, habits, and attitudes of young consumers. This time around, Voxburner decided to elevate the experience offered to attendees and participants by hosting a spectacular virtual conference.

The business nurtures two active divisions, events and insights. Youth Marketing Strategy (YMS) is the title of their global festival hosted by Voxburner, aimed to help brands better understand the changing trends, habits, and attitudes of 16-24-year-olds.

CHALLENGES

Voxburner has been known for their phenomenal events across the globe for the past ten years. Along with other goals, it is no surprise that offering a virtual experience to audiences had already been on their roadmap. However, the pandemic shifted this to a top priority, as they decided to go ahead with it sooner rather than later. 

While some might think of it as a huge challenge, Voxburner treated this as a remarkable opportunity to experiment and achieve everything on their wish-list.

In a digitally saturated world, Voxburner had to find a way to ensure their YMS event stood out from passive experiences such as webinars, which crowd the market from left, right, and center. They wanted to be able to create a place where people could meet with each other, interact, and network in a unique manner. What they desired most was the authenticity of this experience. 

Although this was their first time moving the YMS onto an online platform, the host had very clear objectives and expectations for the virtual conference:

• Creating an interactive environment for high-value conversations
• Boosting real-time communication and encouraging face-to-face meetings
• Wowing the audience with incomparable aesthetics
• Making effective use of content 
• Gaining a competitive advantage by incorporating fun activities
• Capturing high-volume data for the internal (Voxburner) as well as external (sponsors and partners) teams

While a number of virtual event platforms seemed to either offer networking tools or act as a content platform, vFairs impressed the team at Voxburner by offering all the things they desired, and much more, on a single platform. That’s where the beginning of a long-lasting partnership was established.

VIRTUAL CONFERENCE STRATEGY 

Setting an impression was one thing, but now was the time for vFairs to roll up their sleeves and get to work. After all, YMS was not just about words but loud and bold actions! 

On July 16th, 2020, vFairs fulfilled their promise as YMS Online opened its gates to the audience and made an impact that was beyond any predetermined wish-list. 

This case study is a detailed depiction of the strategy that made Voxburner’s journey with vFairs a tremendous success. So, let’s walk you through what they did at their virtual conference. 

1) Localized and Restored Audiences

It’s a normal practice for virtual conference organizers to set up a landing page with the description of the event, the agenda, videos, and much more. They do this to educate and compel visitors to register for the event, so they know what to expect before setting foot in the virtual lobby. 

Even though this was their very first virtual conference, Voxburner did not shy away from making their own decisions, while consulting with the 24/7 support team at vFairs. According to their strategy, they wanted to opt for on-site registrations. Since all their marketing efforts were directed towards their own website’s homepage, they went ahead and invited registrations in the same place, offering all that their visitors needed on that same page. 

2) Focused on Engagement and Networking Opportunities

For any conference, the primary objective of the event is to form connections and share value around mutual interests. In this way, organizations have been gathering people under one roof for centuries. 

Similarly, YMS focused and offered unique opportunities to engage and connect marketers and young enthusiasts on a single platform, online. The virtual conference offered textual, audio, and best of all, video chat in real time to hold onto the essence of smooth and easy communication. 

At a conference that would normally go on for hours, we don’t usually expect remote audiences to stay online for the entire duration of the event. However, surprisingly, this virtual conference did the impossible by keeping huge volumes of people hooked for long hours, turning the event into a hands-down success. 

3) Carefully and Aesthetically Designed Areas to Boost Results

(i) Virtually Interactive Exhibit Hall – This is where different tools, services, and experts in the industry with a youth marketing strategy could set up their individual booths. Since the virtual conference was all about communicating with each other, visitors could engage themselves in live chats with booth reps with a single click. 

Moreover, Voxburner strategized the positioning of their booths in terms of urgency, frontloading those that could serve visitors on a first-come, first-serve basis. 

(ii) Live Youth Lounge – Built to provide a platform for the audiences to interact with each other and nurture connections. 

(iii) Virtual Auditorium – Much like a physical auditorium, this is where a number of talks, panel discussions, and Q&A sessions took place.

(iv) Help Desk – In case the audience wanted to seek any kind of assistance, a Help Desk was available to handle and cater to their queries.

4) Gamify the Virtual Conference to Increase Time of Stay

Using leaderboards and scavenger hunts, YMS Online kept its audience engaged, delivering rewards to those who completed the stated tasks. 

Moreover, this gave them an edge over competitors in the industry by entertaining their audience, and providing them with incentives on their actions. 

OUTCOMES OF THE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

YMS Online turned out to be an enormous success. It cemented Voxburner as a progressive industry leader, as they were able to create an experience that their attendees and sponsors claimed to have never seen before. 

A few aspects of the event that led them to the heights of success included: 

• High-profile speakers who were unable to attend the event in the past were now able to contribute to it with the help of pre-recorded sessions.
• Aside from speakers, the fact that audiences and sponsors were simply able to show up remotely was one of the greatest benefits of hosting a virtual conference.
• Along with travel budgets and restrictions, catering, limited capacities of venues, and other burdens were simply trimmed off, resulting in this online event opening up a lot more opportunities in a cost-effective way. 
• The volume of data that was captured by the virtual conference provider, vFairs, was exceptional. Not only did this help the event organizer, but also the sponsors who were able to generate leads using the valuable data that was provided. This helped fulfill their purpose of participation.

As far as the virtual conference platform was concerned, Richard Jackson, General Manager at Voxburner stated, “The team that built the event for us was phenomenal! We did what we did because of them, and they guided us every step of the way. Our audiences were very senior marketeers from the world’s biggest brands. Their feedback on the platform was fantastic!” 

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.

Get in touch with an expert to learn more about vFairs here.