Running successful virtual events
If your organisation previously utilised trade shows and events as a channel to market, and followed those shows up with face2face meetings, this obviously impacts your sales pipeline but there are many effective tactics you can employ, even on a relatively small budget.
Many of the organisations that traditionally run large scale trade shows are putting together virtual trade shows in which you can participate, but have you considered running your own event?
To persuade prospects and customers to attend your event, you need a compelling topic, but the great thing about a virtual event is that there is no travel time and so there is less pressure on you to create a two-hour-long agenda of thought leadership material. You can start small and keep it manageable.
#Top tips to get started with virtual events:
Don’t feel you have to do all the talking in realtime. Run an event in realtime using your best public speakers to host but record key presentations ahead of time, play them, then take questions in realtime afterwards.
If your technical team are nervous about the idea of an ‘event’ or ‘webinar’ encourage them to record short ‘show and tell’ videos on key topics to get them more relaxed about participation.
Don’t try to sell during the webinar as it often grates with the audience.
Invite some clients that have a strong relationship with you and ask them ahead of time to think of some questions to ask at the end – this will encourage other participants to engage.
If you want to keep it really simple, you can just deliver your event on a video conference call using Zoom or Microsoft Teams or Google Meet. But there is professional software that you can use and we have linked to a comparison of some of the leading webinar software here.
You can invite delegates to your event via email from your CRM and you can obviously share the details on your website and your social media platforms but it’s really easy to set up an account in Eventbrite and use that to both promote the event AND to manage the guest list, the attendees, the confirmations and the follow up. And it offers the ability for those who are interested to easily share the event with others to expand your reach.
