How to Host a Virtual Event: Tips, Tools and Resources

Virtual events have become powerhouses for digital communications. Here are tips, tools & resources for hosting events that generate high-quality leads.

Virtual events have become powerhouses for digital communications, and not just because in-person events were forced online in 2020. In fact, virtual events have been a vehicle for business success for years. RingCentral reports 73% of B2B marketers say webinars are the best way to generate high-quality leads.

Webinars and virtual events need planning and strategic execution to yield results. High-quality virtual events create close relationships between businesses and a large, relevant audience. They also connect with audiences faster and more cost effectively than offline events. When they’re done poorly, virtual events get low attendance and little engagement.

Let’s take a closer look at the main factors that contribute to a successful virtual event.

What Is a Virtual Event?

A virtual event is a digital space where people meet online using desktops or mobile devices. They can be as large or small as a business needs them to be and range from low-key 30-minute presentations to multi-day extravaganzas.

Virtual events were gaining popularity before the pandemic. According to Grand View Research, the virtual events industry was worth nearly $78 billion in 2019. At the height of the pandemic, many businesses either canceled offline events or moved them online. In the early days of the pandemic, Adobe was one of the first massive brands to shift a large-scale offline event to a virtual format with the Adobe Summit 2020.

Throughout 2020, a significant number of businesses went digital with their events, only to discover how cost-effective and immersive they can be. Virtual events deliver content and experiences at lower costs for the business and the attendees, eliminating travel and lodging costs for the audience and convention space rental costs for the hosts. For that reason, more businesses are regarding virtual events as long-term investments, even as the pandemic subsides.

Virtual events are also gaining popularity as a result of advancing technology. Emerging tools and platforms make virtual events more than an alternative to in-person conferences, but a desirable one. Virtual events can create immersive experiences with virtual reality, augmented reality, livestreaming and video, which has enabled businesses to engage with audiences in creative ways. At CES 2021, LG used an AI-powered virtual influencer with roughly 6,000 Instagram followers to announce their new products in a keynote address.

On the other hand, virtual events also present special challenges. How do businesses connect with attendees when they are not in the same room? How can you keep the audience engaged while figuring out the balance between pre-recorded content and live video?

What Types of Virtual Events Are There?

1. Webinars

Webinars (or webcasts) are online presentations developed to educate an audience. They are usually conducted live to give participants opportunities to question the speaker. Webinars usually run between 45 and 90 minutes, including the time for questions and answers.

These presentations are often recorded and distributed afterward on public platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn or gated links. Though webinars are typically shorter than full-scale events, they require planning and strategic execution. The same considerations for in-person event management apply to webinars, like defining your audience, managing the invitation process and preparing your speakers. For more information, our post “4 Ways to Do a Webcast Right” offers a brief overview of basic considerations to keep in mind.

2. Employee Events

Employee events range from webinars to sales rallies and company updates. Online employee events became more important during the pandemic as organizations searched for ways to maintain their company cultures while accommodating their remote work forces. At minimum, businesses relied on webcasts to keep employees up to date on company developments, especially during times of uncertainty. In 2020, webcasts were instrumental for communications from senior management, especially when companies had important news to announce.

Feedback tools like online polling makes informational events more interactive and inclusive. Employee events can uplift workers with events like awards, entertainment, celebration and welcome events for new hires. Each of these features can implemented during digital events. An increasing number of companies host mindfulness events where employees can meditate, listen to music and otherwise take a mental health break. In these events, presenters should take care to ensure internal messaging is consistent with external.

3. Investor Events

Investor events update investors on the performance of a publicly traded company and range from quarterly briefings to annual investor meetings. Investor events need to follow regulatory requirements for timely and public disclosure, which are changing as more events become digital.

For instance, in the United Kingdom, regulators have put more pressure on public firms to ensure that annual general meetings are conducted openly even though doing so in person is not feasible during the pandemic. This has put more pressure on firms to make their annual meetings more open online. Publicly traded firms everywhere are accustomed to holding earnings briefings online through webcasts that focus on updating investors on a firm’s growth and guidance. But investor meetings have grown more creative and dynamic online, as Disney proved in December of 2020. Disney’s investor day took a digital-first approach and rolled out a slate of new entertainment, which caused a dramatic uptick in its stock value. For more insight into planning investor meetings successfully, read our recent blog post.

4. Conferences

Conferences are events where multiple speakers share content over a period of several hours or days. As anyone who has attended an offline conference knows, organizing a successful conference has many moving parts. Hosting a successful conference requires the coordination of multiple speakers, strategically-timed breaks, content moderation, audience engagement and beyond. For virtual events, each of these elements must be managed online, with increasing levels of complexity and immersion. For instance, the 2021 South by Southwest Interactive Festival, which occurred in Austin this year, recreated the city of Austin in virtual reality. Adobe moved its annual summit online in 2020 through a mix of recorded and live presentations from presenters’ homes. Investis Digital moved its Connected Content Week online in 2020, including all aspects of event registration and follow-up, managed by Investis Digital Live on the company’s secure Connect.ID platform.

5. Hybrid Events

Hybrid events combine offline and online elements and have been around for years. Ideally, hybrid events deliver the best of both worlds: the in-person experience for people who are comfortable interacting face to face, and virtual for those who prefer to attend remotely. At the same time, hybrid events require special considerations such as:

Ensuring virtual participants don’t feel alienated or excluded from the in-person experience
Making sure in-person attendees feel like they’re getting a special experience worth the effort of attending live
Managing the logistics and expense of accommodating an online/offline event

Hybrid events are becoming more common. According to Gartner, by 2023, 60 percent of businesses that pivoted to virtual events will incorporate physical real-time/real-space experiential elements into marketing experiences. Forrester Research also notes the increasing demand for hybrid events.

Why Have a Virtual Event?

Recent studies from Sirius Decisions indicated buyers are 65 percent through the customer journey before they decide to talk with anyone from the sales department. Virtual events can inform, educate, answer questions, help prospects make comparisons and move a prospect through the customer journey. They offer a number of advantages over offline events such as:

Relevance to how we’re living now. The ways we live and work are changing. We’re in the midst of a profound shift to a stay-at-home economy. Many bellwether companies are permitting employees to work at home indefinitely, which reflects this massive shift. Entire industries such as retail are shifting to a model of catering to people in their homes. Engaging with audiences on a large scale increasingly means finding ways to engage a decentralized audience. Virtual events are ideal for accommodating these audiences.
Reach and inclusion. Virtual events empower businesses to cast a wider net than their in-person equivalents. The virtual format is inclusive, and gives opens up your event to people living with disabilities and people that lack the time or resources to travel. Additionally, some people may not be comfortable attending an in-person event as the pandemic subsides.
Budget. Virtual formats save businesses (both the hosts and the attendees) money for costs ranging from travel to lodging to rental space.
Metrics. Holding an event online makes it easier for a business to track data. Businesses can get in-depth metrics regarding overall attendance, engagement, popularity of individual events, and a host of other data. Virtual events can be gold mines for lead generation, but businesses should be transparent about how an attendee’s data might be used when they register and attend.
Content syndication. Packaging and sharing digital content is much easier after a virtual event than an in-person one. For example, a business might circulate a specific presentation through post-event blogs, or share personalized emails for attendees (and those who signed up for an event but missed it) with event content tailored to meet their interests. That way, a business can extend the value of the content beyond the event.

That said, no business should conduct a virtual event for the sake of conducting a virtual event. A virtual event needs a purpose or a goal in mind. We suggest tying your event to measurable goals to determine whether or not you should do one. For example, your webinar or virtual event could have any of the following:

Generate marketing qualified leads
Generate sales qualified leads
Generate new revenue
Move prospects through the customer journey faster (accelerate sales cycle)
Improve conversion rates

Doing so will ensure that your virtual event meets and exceeds your expectations.

Getting Started Hosting a Virtual Event

All events should begin with a clear objective. What is the purpose of holding the event in the first place? To generate leads? To inspire employees? Before holding a virtual event, you should understand the “why” questions that will drive your decisions for the event. Here are some considerations:

Why do you want to have your event? Are you supporting the launch of a new product or service? Building your brand? Your “why” is your north star that guides every decision you make, ranging from choice of content to format.
Who is your audience? Before your event, you’ll need a profile of your audience, down to their titles, interests and pain points. The more you humanize your audience, the better you’ll be able to create a virtual event that connects with them.
What will you do to give your audience a reason to attend your event? The most effective webinars provide valuable information and cover topics that your audience cares about. The key is to deliver this information in a compelling format with strong visuals interspersed with interactive elements. But it’s not always easy to define a “what.” One way to get started is to ask your sales team and/or customer service team what questions they’ve been dealing with on the front lines of working with customers and prospects. These teams can be a wealth of information. They are constantly hearing and fielding questions from your audience.

It takes some time to consider what you will need for your event. We put together a Webinar Strategy Planner to help you think through all the things you might include in your webinar or virtual event. The document is set up as a form fill, so you can easily answer the questions and have a detailed strategy for your event. There is also a companion document (Webinar Timeline Checklist) to establish a timeline. The document is set up as a checklist to make sure you’ve got all your deadlines in place. Both documents are useful for all types of virtual events, including and beyond webinars.

Tips for Doing Virtual Events Right

1. Get the Content Right

The content is the most important element of your virtual event. Consider what you want your audience to get from the event, whether it’s an update of information your customers or prospects will find important or a company-wide update.

Virtual events work across the entire customer journey, and it’s important to decide what you’ll cover in the context of where your audience is in their journey. Virtual events are a very effective format to move prospects all of the way through the sales process and turn them into buyers.

The best way to start with content planning is to begin with the end in mind. Start with an outline to gather the most important points you want to make, flesh out those bullet points and create slides with strong images to support those points.

Once you define your outline, create your story visually. Think like a movie producer, not a writer. You’ve already created your “movie script” with your outline. Now you’ll need to bring the script to life through visual storytelling—not text-heavy slides.

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) recently updated its “No-Fail” Formula for Creating Awesome Webinar Content. The CMI recommends the following four steps:

Pick a narrow topic
Decide the best format for the topic
Create a structure
Write a compelling script the topic

Also included in the blog post are references to a number of tools that will help you create better graphics, embed video and generally upgrade the quality of your presentation.

2. Define Your Format

Once you have honed in on your topic, determine what format is the most appropriate. Here are some ideas on formats:

Single presenter: one person presents the content via a slide deck
Dual presenters: same concept but with two speakers
Panel: host a number of subject matter experts who tackle a specific topic
Q&A: an expert or panel of experts answers questions, provided by the organizers, the audience or a combination of both
Interview: the host interviews a subject matter expert or guest speaker
Product demo: the presenter highlights the features or functionality of a product to convert audience members into customers

As you plan your format, consider the length of the event. Length and format go hand in hand, and thirty minutes is a popular length for a presentation. If you plan to have a longer event, you’ll need to innovate to keep your audience engaged throughout. The longer the event, the greater risk of audience drop-off.

Additionally, consider the presentation’s medium. Virtual presentations range from PowerPoint to video (with a single presenter) and multiple videos (with multiple presenters). There are many platforms to choose from, and takes time to decide on the medium meets your needs without breaking your budget.

Presenters should also consider whether to use pre-recorded content or perform the presentation live. The technology used in your presentation should be a vehicle for delivering your overall goals.

Using a hybrid format is also an option. In hybrid presentation, parts of the content are pre-recorded, with live portions like Q&A and closing calls to action. Pre-recording your event allows you to add interactive elements or edit your content. The other advantage of prerecording is making the content available immediately after the live event.

For more insight, read our blog post “Pre-recorded or Live: Which Is Right for Your Virtual Event?”

3. Mind the User Experience

The user experience for digital content in some ways mimics the in-person experience. You’ll need to invite guests, clearly communicate the guidelines for the event and make it easy for them to navigate content. Digital presentations have special requirements that you’ll need to think through and manage. For instance, will your event require your audience to install any special software to experience the content properly? Are there bandwidth considerations? The ease of use of your platform, login and user experience can have a big impact on the attendee experience. People need to be told of any considerations and login details. Set the expectations about whether Q&A will be involved, and how to do it.

Additionally, coach all of your speakers on how to prepare for the event. Make sure they know how to advance presentations with their laptops, and make sure they’re presenting from a clear, well-lit room. You don’t want distracting glitches like a speaker forgetting to turn off the Mute button or other technical difficulties.

Don’t do anything without having a cybersecurity plan in place. Unfortunately, cyber threats are growing at an alarming rate, disrupting businesses and causing major expenses. We’ve all heard of Zoom bombing, or hackers hijacking Zoom meetings. These disasters serve as a reminder that businesses need to choose their virtual event platform carefully, and to put a security plan in place to protect the event’s integrity. Hosting a digital event without secure software and platforms is like holding a high-profile event in a building without security.

We strongly recommend using a secure, professional platform. For example, the Connect.ID Virtual Event Platform is a packaged, scalable, and secure solution to support virtual events. The solution can be configured in as little as two weeks. The Connect.ID Virtual Events Platform is part of Investis Digital Live, our in-house virtual events service.

4. Get the Audience Engaged

Unlike in-person events, virtual events attendees can disconnect at any time. The longer the event, the more important it is to include interactive elements like surveys, poll chats and the ability to ask questions. One of the best ways to keep your participants engaged is to make them part of your presentation. We have listed a number of engagement tools below. Carefully consider how you will use them during your event with tools such as:

Surveys

An excellent way to better understand your audience is through surveys. Surveys provide valuable post-presentation feedback, including what they liked, didn’t like and how you can improve for the next live event. Post-presentation surveys show your company values what the audience thinks and how you will take the information and use it to improve your products and services.

Here are a number of survey tools that offer free and paid versions:

Polls

Polling also keeps your audience engaged and can be a valuable method to gather quick stats. Plan your poll questions ahead of time and sprinkle them throughout your presentation, but be careful to maintain a careful balance. You don’t want to break up the continuity of the presentation with too many polls.

Keep your polling questions simple and don’t combine questions. Also be sure to use one at a time. If you’re at a loss for which polling questions to use, many webinar platforms have built in polling software.

Here is a list of potential webinar polling questions.

Chat

Chat apps allow real-time questions and feedback, which is a great way to drive engagement during virtual events. The downside to using chat is they can be distracting for a single presenter. When using this format, it’s a good idea to have the moderator receive and respond to the chat.

Sometimes when you use chat apps, you could get an inappropriate or off-topic comment from the audience, which has the potential to derail the presentation. Again, the moderator can usually handle this, and you can also push an answer or response to the commentor after the presentation.

Another awkward moment can come from an unresponsive chat bot. Your attendees may think, “Am I the only one attending?” To keep this from happening, seed the chat with questions to the audience. You can also have your moderator continually engage with the audience through chat.

5. Promote Your Event

Once your event is planned and scheduled, it’s time to build awareness with a combination of paid and organic content. Your approach should maximize several digital avenues, including search, social media and blog posts.

Running ads in search and social media can boost the number of participants. Use your first-party data to define your audience and then use that information to find look-a-like audiences to target. You can target those with the greatest potential to sign up. Using this focused approach will help you save on advertising costs and will also increase your conversion rates.

Schedule ads and emails far enough in advance so potential participants can lock in the time and date. If your sign-up window is too short, your audience may already have committed their time to something else.

At Investis Digital, we typically complement advertising with blog posts that teases the audience with information they’re going to get at the webinar itself, as we have done in this example on our blog. We have also created longer-form content that digs into a topic in more details, as with this example.

Finally, don’t forget to enlist the support of your most powerful resource: your own people. Employees can be incredible brand ambassadors, and more often than not, they are happy to like and share a link to an upcoming webcast if you ask them to do so.

6. Manage the Post-Event Experience

To inform your future events, it’s a good idea to perform a post-mortem analysis on your event. What went well, and what could you have gone better? Take time to document the entire process from start to finish. This will help you streamline your steps for the next event.

Measurement

After a virtual event, you’ll want to analyze the data from your webinar to decide if it was successful or not. If done correctly, you can gained a wealth of knowledge throughout the process. Measurement gives you a solid foundation of information from each registrant, including name, email address, title, company-size and other information that you can choose to require on the registration form. You’ll also get engagement data, polling information, survey answers, questions and chat information. The key here is to act on the data.

These are some of the data points you could measure:

Registrant names
Ancillary contact and business information
Attendees
Registrants that didn’t attend
Leads that were sent registration info but didn’t register
Overall webinar engagement score
New opportunities
Lead scoring
New revenue from registrations and attendees
ROI on the event

The longer the participant stays on the webinar, the more qualified they become. As mentioned before, start your lead nurture with the most engaged users and work your way down through the list. Your sales team can use this data to personalize their outreach.

Contact Investis Digital

At Investis Digital, we work with 750 enterprises a year to launch and manage virtual events. To make virtual events succeed, download our white paper and contact Investis Digital Live.