Convincing folks to enroll in a digital occasion is one factor — retaining their focus as soon as they go online is one other. After investing a large period of time, cash and energy into planning a digital occasion and attracting attendees, you don’t need that effort going to waste, so you could take steps to foster engagement in the course of the occasion.
This lifecycle of a profitable digital occasion could make or break how successfully you exchange occasion attendees into viable leads. Folks typically discover points with unengaging digital occasions. Boring content material, disorganized hosts/moderators, lack of alternatives for interplay and uncharismatic audio system prime the listing of main issues related to digital occasions.
In line with Zachary Bosin — Vice President of Product & Development Advertising and marketing at BlueJeans by Verizon — mastering digital occasions issues greater than ever. Whereas digital occasions aren’t going anyplace, they aren’t the one possibility anymore. “The world is rarely going again to a pre-pandemic expertise,” Bosin famous. “With some commerce reveals and conferences coming again, we’re actually going to need to proceed to evolve our method in terms of creating digital engagement.”
Let’s have a look at just a few methods entrepreneurs could make their subsequent digital occasion extra partaking, giving them the next return on their funding.
Be Adaptable
The great thing about any sort of occasion lies within the means to work together with others — even when it happens digitally. Interplay comes with variability, and predicting precisely how a digital occasion will pan out can pose challenges. That’s why adaptability stays a significant ability for any marketer to have prepared and ready.
To foster engagement, you could must pivot mid-event to regulate the dialog to what the viewers finds compelling. Thanks to talk options, polls and different engagement instruments, you possibly can be taught what makes your viewers tick in actual time, enabling you to form the content material all through the occasion.
The host can’t do all of the heavy lifting right here. You’ll possible want a neighborhood supervisor available to have interaction within the chat, assist information the host in the direction of new dialog subjects and handle these enjoyable options like polls.
To remain adaptable, you too can carry on prime of the most recent tendencies in the course of the starting stage within the digital occasion house. “As a marketer, you are at all times form of wanting on the tendencies and attempting to grasp what is going on on within the broader world and from a enterprise to enterprise perspective,” Bosin defined, “It’s vital to grasp what’s occurring within the client world and the way these technological shifts and people media consumption shifts are going to have a dramatic impression whenever you’re reaching out to consumers and choice makers since you wanna mirror those self same tendencies.”
Use the Proper Tech
Digital occasions are right here to remain, so many companies now search the correct tech to make their digital occasions successful. In 2021, 85% of these surveyed indicated that their group faces stress from workers and clients to enhance occasion expertise. An equal variety of respondents cited plans to judge new digital occasion expertise that very same yr.
How can the correct tech take a digital occasion to the subsequent degree and encourage engagement? With BlueJeans Occasions, you possibly can elevate your model through the use of your logos, background and colours. Branding a digital occasion is likely one of the finest methods to enhance the professionalism of the occasion from minute one.
Along with your digital occasion in full swing, you possibly can spotlight a number of presenters with dynamic on-screen layouts, add ticker banners, allow decrease third callouts and make the most of different options that make the occasion simpler to navigate and extra partaking for attendees.
Interact Immediately with the Viewers
Digital entrepreneurs can profit from attempting to reflect in-person engagement techniques by adapting them for the digital world. For instance, when somebody attends a convention, they’ll typically elevate their hand on the finish of the session to ask the speaker a query. With BlueJeans Occasions, you should use Q&A, chat, polling and hand-raising instruments to offer occasion attendees the possibility to have interaction with presenters and moderators and so as to add to the dialog at any level all through the occasion.
Bosin defined how one can use a few of these instruments to your benefit throughout a digital occasion. For instance, Bosin advises incorporating polls at completely different milestones all through the occasion. “Everybody’s warming up — it is kinda like an icebreaker,” Bosin noticed, “Let’s throw a ballot on the market and see how folks really feel a couple of sure subject.”
Occasion moderators can permit attendees to ask questions, and the most well-liked questions can then seem on the display screen for everybody to see. Not solely do these options give attendees an opportunity to change into extra engaged and make them much less prone to log out early, however in addition they give them the possibility to be heard.
Key Takeaways
Main manufacturers discover digital success by internet hosting their occasions utilizing BlueJeans Occasions. One success story consists of the Phoenix Suns — a basketball workforce put in a tough spot when followers might now not attend video games in 2020. How might the Phoenix Suns discover new methods to convey the in-arena expertise to followers and interact them after a months-long hiatus within the NBA season? They relied on further streamed video content material that enabled real-time participation. This work enabled the Phoenix Suns to supply distinctive experiences, they usually engaged followers around the globe by contests, giveaways, chat, polls and Q&As.
Penske additionally discovered they couldn’t host in-person racing occasions in 2020 and turned to BlueJeans occasions to show its Indy 500 occasions digital and to carry the drivers’ assembly and a partnership occasion. With the assistance of BlueJeans Occasions, Penske delivered best-in-class leisure experiences to greater than 25,000 followers who noticed all 33 drivers of the Indy 500 nearly.
With a willingness to adapt, the correct tech available and a need to have interaction instantly with the viewers, entrepreneurs can maintain their audiences engaged nearly.
