A significant portion of the marketing and publicity budget for any company is taken up by the hosting of trade shows, seminars and other such events. While such events are undoubtedly an important component of any advertising plan, they are very expensive proposition. But small business owners need not be deterred by this as technology comes to their rescue.
Often, you can get the same exposure and market penetration by hosting online events, known as webinars. While webinars will often take as much thought and planning as a conventional event, it online conference providers does help cut down costs significantly. A little extra effort will help you reap the rich rewards of virtual conferences, while taking you out to an audience that you could never hope to reach before.
Virtual events have a number of advantages, primarily in the form of reduced costs and more effective use of the time of both, the guests as well as the speakers, and possible options for replaying the seminar for those who could not attend the live presentation. Here are a few tips to ensure the success of your virtual event:
Design a clear-cut event plan with precise strategies to meet your primary objectives.
Try and rope in some partners company online meeting provider and sponsors who will not only help with funding but also draw higher participation for the event.
Choose a good webinar service provider. A good organizer will help you schedule dates and take care of other nitty-gritty’s.
Choose a date carefully so that it does not clash with holidays or major events. Find out about other industry events that might be going on close to your event date and don’t organize your event when most employees and potential attendees would be busy with their annual budgeting and planning cycles.
Develop a strong working plan to draw traffic for your event. It is advisable to start some amount of up-front marketing to pull audiences up to 60 days before the event. You should design an email newsletter that you can mail to all potential guests. Also, start contacting your potential speakers early and stay in touch, so that you get a date and the person keeps it.
Design a program that will be interesting and can hold attention. Don’t waste the employees’ time with mundane content. They have a number of distractions like the phone and email when they are web conferencing provider watching a webinar, and their attention is likely to wander during a boring presentation.
Develop a strategy to ensure live participation and interaction during the event.
Use the event to generate marketing data and then use it in future analysis.
Finally, conduct a thorough returns-on-investment analysis to gauge the efficacy of your event.
Once you are able to nail these few basics, you can be sure of hosting a successful event that will hold audience interest and make them appreciate your efforts to utilize their time well.
