Promoting virtual events – How to reach a bigger audience

It’s no secret virtual events have become more popular in the post-pandemic era. They allow businesses to reach a much bigger audience with hundreds of people in different locations at different times. In fact, virtual events helped 80.2 Percent of the event organizers reach a wider audience in the past year. 

However, creating, planning, and promoting virtual events is no easy task.  On the contrary to what you think, they require the same attention to detail as in-person events. This is because you still need promotion strategies that can bring a level of excitement to the audience about your event. At the same time, you need to create awareness and there’s a lot of things to consider when promoting a virtual event.  

On that note, here are some strategies that can help you promote your virtual event to a much bigger audience. 

Strategies To Promote Virtual Events

– Create an exciting landing page

Creating a well-designed landing page can help you communicate to the audience why they should care about your virtual event. Let them know what makes your event apart from the rest. When creating a landing page, you have to make sure that each segment is serving your target audience. Keep in mind that the page’s main goal is to encourage the people to sign up with minimal friction.  

Apart from your brand theme, the virtual event landing page should include the following elements:

• A compelling headline 
• Date and time of your event 
• Agenda of the event 
• Bios of Speakers 
• Information regarding the sponsors
• Sign-up links
• Videos and other content that supports your message  

Another important thing to note here is that your landing page should be designed to collect as many email addresses as possible. These email addresses will then be used in the next phase of marketing, which includes in promoting virtual events.

– Use Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best tools for virtual event marketing. Everyone uses email and what’s even more remarkable is that you cannot register for an event without email. If we talk numbers, more than 76 percent of marketers say that email is the most effective way to drive more registrations. So, make sure that you send out email newsletters to your audience with the news regarding your upcoming event and a sign-up link. 

Remember to not give too much information in your emails. Try to only include news about the event, exciting updates, reminders to sign up, post-event surveys, and invites to future events. Moreover, to get the audience interested, you can add special discount codes to entice them to buy a ticket for your event. 

– Use Different Social Media Channels

After email marketing, social media is considered an effective tool when it comes to promoting virtual events. According to Markletic, 60 Percent of the virtual event organizers use social media networks to drive for more event registrations. There are tons of ways through which you can promote your event on social media: some of them are discussed below: 

• Facebook event is a great way to promote your event as it keeps track of your RSVPs 
• LinkedIn can also be used to market your virtual event. It contains options of ads, groups, pushing through your company pages, and even promotion on your own 
• On Twitter, make a hashtag for your event and spread the news and updates through that hashtag 
• When it comes to Instagram, you can share pictures and video clips about your virtual event to grab more audience 

Be sure to focus on the social media channels your audience is already using. This will give you the main idea of the audience’s journey and also which ideas need improvement.  

Click on this link to read more about the marketing aspects of hosting a virtual event. 

– Ask Speakers to promote your event

When it comes to advertising or promoting virtual events, there is no better way than word of mouth. So, ask the speakers to promote your event to their audience to build a much wider reach, as this will benefit all the stakeholders. 

You can provide the affiliate link, links to social media pages, content you published on your website or graphics. You can also use announcements messages, along with your social media hashtags to your speakers to share with their built-in audience. 

– Influencer Marketing

Being the industry thought leaders and game-changers, your virtual event’s influencers are the most important individuals. They have the reach, resonance, and credibility required to amplify your event marketing strategy.  

When it comes to marketing with influencers, don’t just be limited to social media posts. Instead, get your creative juice flowing and work with your event influencers in exciting activities such as creating presentations, videos, event teasers, and more. So, make sure to find an influencer that has a wider range of audience and can influence the people to sign up for your event. 

– Offer incentives

Offering incentives or awards is one of the best ways to build excitement in the audience about the event. Some of the incentives that you can offer to your audience are: 

• Free subscription for a specific time frame 
• A product related to your industry  
• Secret giveaways to attendees 
• Complimentary goodies including your Merchandise  

These ways proved to boost event registration and increase social media shares to the next level. Not only this, but these strategies can also create the buzz in the audience that you were looking for. 

– Keep the conversation Going

Even after your event has ended, make sure the conservation around it has not. Part of your event marketing should include a post-event plan, such as sending out emails to all the attendees with a thank you note or a survey to get some first-hand feedback.  

Also, make a plan to continue posting on social media after the event for a few weeks and encourage the attendees to join a forum where they could chat about the event. In short, you have to organize activities to keep the buzz going until your next virtual event.  

Now that you are done with promoting your event, you need to hold a more engaging event for the audience- here are 6 Tips to conduct highly productive Online Meetings and virtual events. 

Final Verdict

Planning and promoting your virtual event takes time and persistence, but the results are well worth the effort as long as you plan a good marketing strategy. When making the marketing strategy, you will have to ensure that your virtual event succeeds with the right platform.  

A platform like SCOOCS can help you create a customized virtual event that the attendees remember even after a long time. The platform has all the features that you need to run a successful virtual event. Some of the features are video rooms, Chatbox, private video calls, Audience Response Tools, Networking Roulette & Matchmaking Algorithm, Engagement Gamification, event analysis, and more. If you are looking to host a successful event and need a few ideas, then here are Top 6 ideas for your next virtual event.