In early 2021, as the world was slowly recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, many event marketers had already decided that they were going to continue running a higher number of virtual events than in-person ones. This is borne out by research findings reported by LinkedIn during this time.
So, if you are at the helm of a small business, why should you go big on online events even now that the world has shifted to a post-lockdown landscape? Here are several good reasons…
Attendees and guests can participate from their own homes
Hence, none of these people have to set aside extra time and money they would need simply for traveling to a physical venue. The attendance numbers for your event could consequently range from a few hundred to many thousands.
You could also find it easier to book speakers who are particularly in demand and so might have lacked enough time to participate if the event had been a traditional, in-person one.
You can show rather than just tell
With many forms of marketing content, like web copy and social media, it can be tricky to clearly convey complex concepts. However, this doesn’t so much have to be the case with online events, ensuring that they can be effectively used for educational purposes.
Talented Ladies Club points out that, “if you’ve launched a new food product, you can hold online classes in cooking or baking”, while workers in the beauty and skin health industry “can create a short course on skincare, makeup or hair styling”.
Your company can generate valuable leads
A Forbes article explains: “One of the best reasons to create a webinar or other online event is to generate leads for your business.”
To this end, you could ask participants to provide you with their email addresses or phone numbers when they register for attendance at your online event.
Before doing this, however, it would be wise for you to source a webinar platform that would enable you to sync registration and attendance data as well as personalize your sales follow-up.
You can build sales opportunities both around and after the event
For example, the event itself can include breakout-room discussions and exclusive roundtables covering key subjects in more depth than speaker slots and pitches alone would allow.
Of course, if you have already heeded the earlier-mentioned point about using online events as a means of lead generation, you could also make follow-up calls and send follow-up emails to people once they have attended an online event of yours.
The pandemic has probably taught you a lot about online experiences
As a result of the long-lasting COVID lockdown restrictions, you have probably familiarized yourself with transferring many traditionally in-person functions to the online sphere.
If this is indeed the case, you could apply what you have learned in the COVID era to holding online events in the here and now. You might have even attended a fair few online events and garnered ideas for what could have made them better.