Advantages of Hosting A Virtual Event
The advantages of hosting a virtual event include increased attendee count and engagement, saving valuable time for all involved (presenters and attendees), an economical solution compared to an in-person event and improved networking opportunities for attendees. Virtual events offer a variety of benefits that can make them an excellent option for businesses and organizations looking for a solution to their essential business communications. This blog post will explore the key advantages of hosting a virtual event, such as easier attendee feedback, more data to measure success, and more learning opportunities. We will also discuss how virtual events provide flexibility for attendees. Read on to learn more about the advantages of hosting a virtual event.
Advantages of Hosting a Virtual Event: Attendee Count
The greatest advantage of hosting a virtual event is the potential to reach a wider audience. Anyone with an internet connection can join your event without geographical barriers. Virtual events eliminate the need to travel, making it easier for attendees to participate wherever they are. This allows for increased attendance numbers and higher engagement than traditional in-person events.
Furthermore, offering your event materials on-demand or streaming allows you to engage more attendees that may have been unable to attend the live event due to conflicting schedules.
By making your event accessible online, you can encourage more signups from people who would have otherwise missed out due to distance or travel constraints and restrictions. Overall, virtual events offer the potential for a significantly higher number of attendees and more engagement.
Attendee Engagement
In recent years, attendee engagement numbers have spiked for virtual events. Attendees are more willing to ask speaker questions within a chat feature of the virtual event than, say, at an in-person event, in front of hundreds or thousands of attendees. This considerable benefit should not be taken lightly when planning your virtual event. Event planners should consider time for speaker questions after presentations and build this time into the overall schedule of the virtual event.
Other features that should be considered besides Q+A’s are pre-event swag boxes, polling, trivia, surveys, giveaways, gamification and encouraging “chatting” within the platform. By adding features like these, you are providing multiple ways for a virtual event attendee to engage.
Save Time and Money
It’s no secret that virtual events are more economical than in-person events. Recently, we transformed our client’s 1.5-day continuing education course, typically held in three cities across the US for 300 attendees each, into a 90-minute virtual event. Going virtual allowed our client to save money on flights, hotel rooms, rentals, labor, food and beverage and more! Not to mention that the presenters had the choice of coming to The Studio to pre-record their messages OR present virtually from their homes.
Moving this typically in-person continuing education event to a virtual event allowed for increased participation. For example, over 1,200 attendees logged on, and over 200 questions were asked and answered in real time by subject matter experts. This client has not seen an engagement like this before this virtual event.
Virtual Event Broadcast Studio, TSEC
Virtual Events Offer More Value for Exhibitors and Sponsors
Virtual events can offer more value to exhibitors and sponsors than in-person events. Sponsors and exhibitors can create a more interactive experience than in an in-person setting, such as offering online polls, video or audio chat sessions, surveys, and other interactive activities.
Virtual events don’t require exhibitors and sponsors to set up booths or have materials printed and shipped. This reduces costs significantly while increasing their reach with potential customers. Another benefit of virtual events is that you can provide sponsors and exhibitors access to event data and analytics, which can help them refine their approach and better understand their target market. They can easily track attendee engagement, generate leads, and analyze their marketing campaigns’ performance. This data can be invaluable in understanding what works best and making improvements for future events for sponsors.
In short, hosting a virtual event presents many more opportunities for sponsors and exhibitors to engage with their audience and measure the success of their marketing efforts.
Advantages of Hosting A Virtual Event: Networking
Networking is a powerful relationship-building tool for individuals and brands alike. One of the significant advantages of hosting a virtual event is that it can make the time-consuming task of networking more efficient. Event planners must ensure that a virtual conference, summit or any other type of virtual event has features that speed up and aid the networking process.
Attendees of virtual events look to connect with people from their target industry who share similar interests and business goals. To facilitate this, event planners should consider introducing fun breakouts during the event. Examples include virtual coffee or happy hour, where guests bring their beverages and chat in a relaxed setting, or activities such as at-home scavenger hunts, memory games or puzzles to keep attendees entertained. Furthermore, gamification and augmented reality can set up friendly competitions and create engaging interactions.
Easier to Gather Attendee Feedback
With a virtual event, gathering attendee feedback can be much easier than with a physical event. Attendees are more relaxed and likely to be more forthcoming with their opinions at home and behind a computer screen. Collecting feedback from your attendees is essential to create memorable attendee experiences and assessing the event’s success.
A post-event survey can help you collect feedback. These surveys are typically sent out after the event and provide a great way to gauge overall satisfaction. They ask questions such as “What did you like most about the event?” and “Would you recommend this event to a colleague?”. You can collect more granular details and specific feedback on the event’s content. Post-event surveys help you gauge and measure participant satisfaction with the event and plan for future successful events.
Advantages of Hosting A Virtual Event and Data Collection
One of the key advantages of hosting a virtual event is measuring success with greater accuracy. Getting a real sense of your event’s effectiveness can be difficult with an in-person event. However, with a virtual event, you can access more data and metrics to gauge success accurately.
For example, you can get real-time user activity logs, track the number of participants joining virtual sessions, and see who downloaded apps, engaged in chats, completed surveys and polls, etc. You can also analyze data on the most visited areas of your platform or the most consumed content. This data can help you decide how to improve your virtual event in the future.
Overall, having more data available gives you much more insight into the effectiveness of your event. Even more, you now have access to valuable information for making improvements.
Host Your Virtual Event In Our Studio
The Studio by The Special Event Company will fulfill your filming and broadcast needs. Our versatile and customizable studio space is located just outside Raleigh, minutes from the Research Triangle Park (RTP) and available to clients nationwide.
For additional information or to set up a studio tour, contact:
Joy Matheny
919.459.8788
joy@specialeventco.com