Virtual Events as Marketing Tools

July 2, 2021

With the word “Event”, we had always thought of going out, sitting in a hall, and seeing other people in person. Attending virtual events was beyond our thought as it seemed so unconventional and counterproductive. Even though we miss meeting people and hanging out, virtual events have been a great rescue and have been proven successful.

Due to the Pandemic and the Lockdown condition, everything went online. With work from home instructions, people have gotten used to staying in and spending more time on their phones and laptops. Surfing through social media platforms; attending and organizing conferences, events, and meetings online have become everyone’s daily routine.

This brings us to the marketers and promoters.

As the case is as it is stated above, marketers and promoters have used these virtual events to an enormous benefit for themselves. Marketing has been happening both online and offline since a decade but virtual events have been a great upgrade in online marketing strategies. Virtual events have proved to be very helpful marketing tools for marketers as they come with several benefits.

Some of them are listed below:

1. Less Investment, More Return

Virtual Events require less investment in every way possible:

Planning and Execution: These events require very little effort and time for planning as well as execution. Marketers do not need to put in a lot of labor in conducting such events. In return, they can improve on the material that they have to deliver to their audience and give them time to plan multiple events while freely working on the quality and interaction involved in the event.
Money: As the event is online, the marketers do not need to invest money on anything other than their own network connection or on keynote speakers for panel discussions or expert advice. There is no investment in hospitality, venue, or travel and stay. There is a lot of money that is saved which can be used in promotion or deliverables to the audience from marketers.
Venue: Searching for an appropriate venue that fits all our requirements is a huge task and requires a lot of effort. Going from place to place, looking through several venues and then coming to a conclusion takes a lot of decision making. Virtual Events cut that out as everybody attends from their homes themselves.

2. Global Coverage

Virtual Events connect people from all around the world through merely one link. If it was like old times, covering large grounds would require conducting several offline events in different locations but virtual events make that easy. With one link or live video, plenty of people can join from the locations far away and get to know about the service or product of the marketers. This saves the marketers from physical labour.

As these events are usually recorded and posted later on social media platforms, they also cut out the time gap between different countries. People from other locations can have access to these events even after the live event has ended.

These benefits greatly increase the audience interaction for every event that is conducted and market the products or services for the marketers far better than offline events.

3. Finer Audience

Although it requires less effort from the audience as well, as they get to attend the event from their comfort zones, people who attend these events are finer than the ones in an offline event.

Everyone who attends the event is already a verified lead for the marketers’ product or service as they registered for it. It would have been a task to get a hold of people in an offline event but through the registration process, they are already in for the product.
In a virtual event, with the help of technology, you can easily analyze who showed interest. In an in-person conference, it is hard to know who attended the event after registering but it is easier to keep track of that in a virtual event.
You reach your target audience as well. When it comes to traditional events, due to limited seating or space, registration is done based on first come first serve. This might leave out people who were actually interested. This differs completely in a Virtual Event.

With the time that is ahead of us, virtual events seem very beneficial as marketing tools and are sure to not go away anywhere even when we step out of the pandemic. It has knocked open another avenue of marketing for the advertising world. . They need to be embraced as they have proved to be savior and ray of hope past this lockdown.