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You’ve poured your heart into organizing a unique event experience, but nobody knows about it. How do you get noticed?
Let’s face it: promoting a virtual event is a real struggle. With so many emails, social media posts, and online ads vying for attention, it’s easy to feel like your event is just another needle in a giant digital haystack.
If you’re putting together a virtual event and wondering how to promote it to gain maximum visibility, you’ve come to the right place. This blog will give you a complete overview of how you can promote your online event using your website, email, social media, and collaborative marketing. With these tips, you can broaden your reach and gain maximum visibility.
Virtual event marketing offers various advantages that surpass traditional methods. Here’s why you should prioritize it:
You can expand your reach with a well-rounded virtual event marketing strategy, increasing brand exposure. This will open up new markets and opportunities for you to engage with potential clients on a larger scale.
Once you develop an effective virtual event marketing strategy, it becomes a valuable asset you can rinse and repeat. Virtual events offer a lasting advantage over physical events, as they can be recorded and repurposed for ongoing use.
Marketing an event virtually can significantly reduce expenses like printing marketing collateral or billboard leases. This cost-effective solution allows you to maximize your marketing budgets and drive measurable results.
Accurate data collection with tools like Google Analytics helps event marketers target specific demographics, behaviors, and interests through social media posts, dedicated event pages, and event listing sites. Press releases and media mentions add credibility and further broaden reach.
Combining these tools with insights from data analysis offers a balanced, strategic approach to maximize engagement and budget.
Here are three of the factors you should consider before creating an online event marketing strategy:
Set the primary goal of your virtual event by outlining what you expect to gain from it. It could be anything from converting the attendees into customers or increasing your brand visibility on social media.
With a clear goal, you can develop creative virtual event marketing ideas that lead your audience to that end.
A significant marker of a well-thought-out virtual event marketing plan is that it addresses its audience’s needs and pain points. Before developing a virtual event marketing strategy, you must know and understand your target audience.
Event marketers can learn about their audience by defining an attendee persona profile and analyzing past event data. They can start by identifying the specific demographics, interests, and job roles that align with their event’s goals. This will help them tailor their approach based on industry, company type, and ideal attendee characteristics.
Reviewing previous event data, such as, attendee engagement levels, feedback, and participation rates provides deeper insights into their target demographic’s preferences and behaviors.
Moreover, conversations with internal teams, like sales and leadership, offer valuable perspectives on who would benefit from attending. This helps marketers refine their strategy and come up with relevant marketing messages that appeal to their audience.
Determine how much money you should allocate to the virtual event. Small events, such as webinars, can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000. On the other hand, large-scale events with more than 1000 guests, including tradeshows and large conferences, can cost up to $150,000.
The cost mainly includes
Your event budget should be at the top of your priority list while curating a virtual event marketing strategy, as it largely depends on it.
TIP: Use an event budget planner to calculate, track, and manage expenses throughout the event journey.
You should divide your virtual event marketing strategy into three phases to maximize visibility: before, during, and after the event. Here’s how to promote a virtual event at each stage:
The following are the strategies for effective pre-event marketing:
An event landing page is the first point of contact between your event and potential attendees. A well-crafted event page piques your audience’s interest. When excited, they are more likely to talk to others and persuade them to register for the event.
You can build an impressive event landing page using vFairs’ stunning free templates collection, for example:
Whether your goal is to set standard expectations, promote a fun activity, or highlight a standout speaker, a compelling landing page can help you achieve it.
But how do you create a landing page that draws your target audience in?
Here are some key elements that make for a captivating event landing page:
Branded Design Elements
Infusing your brand voice and personality into your event landing page is essential. Choose design elements that align with your business’s day-to-day marketing efforts. This will build trust among your audience and increase brand awareness.
Interesting Headlines and Sub-headlines
Good copy is a powerful tool for spicing up your landing page. It attracts ideal customers, engages them, and drives them to conversion. Start with a compelling headline that pulls the readers in with a promise. The main headline should convey what your event is about, while sub-headlines should offer insight into the value proposition.
Use powerful storytelling and raving reviews from previous event attendees to establish trust with your audience. Now, share what’s in store for the attendees, giving them more reasons to attend. Use the right messaging to garner excitement about the event’s activities or incentives.
You can use a long-form landing page if it makes sense for your event. However, avoid bloating to ensure it is user-friendly. Use simple language and be concise and clear. Test your landing page and tweak it for the desired outcomes.
Here are some examples of headline and sub-headlines written for Web Summit to inspire you:
Attention-grabbing call-to-action Buttons and Registration forms
Event promotion CTAs are intended to get people to buy a ticket right then and there or are simply designed to capture those interested.
When a potential attendee visits your event landing page, the last thing you want is for them to be confused about what to do next. A crystal clear CTA followed by a registration form can solve this problem. It conveys you’re glad they’re here and want them to sign up now.
Design a CTA button that pops. You can achieve that by choosing a color contrasting the background or a button shape that stands out. You can also add a visual effect to draw attention. Keep the label clear and concise, and make sure the button is large enough.
Create simple registration forms with fewer fields to fill out. The less information the registrants have to enter, the higher the chance they’ll complete the form.
Here are a few examples of the CTAs that encourage virtual event registration:
Event Details, Agenda, and Schedule
There is no reason to bury the lede! You need to sell what will happen during your upcoming event and why it’s worth attending. Share dates, times, speakers attending, and bullet points about what attendees can expect.
If it’s a paid event, be transparent about pricing and share how people can buy the tickets.
Audiences appreciate it when you make it easier for them to decide. Laying out event information beforehand does precisely that. It also increases your chances of attracting more attendees to the event.
Speaker Details
Let people know who will be speaking at your event. A great way to pre-introduce your event speakers is to share their images and LinkedIn profile pages on your event landing page. It’s also a fantastic approach to adding a human element to your virtual conference branding – which is always good!
The idea behind using SEO to promote events is simple: people make a quick Google search for information on anything—this includes the event you’re planning. Optimizing your virtual event website drives potential attendees; some may register and buy tickets for your event.
Here’s how to optimize your virtual event website to increase visibility, attract targeted traffic, and increase registration rates.
Email marketing is a cost-effective virtual event strategy for connecting your event to a vast virtual audience. A well-planned event email marketing strategy does more than draw the virtual crowd; it nurtures relationships far beyond the final curtain call and includes newsletter invitations, confirmations, reminders, and more.
Email marketing allows you to tailor messages to each recipient, speaking directly to their interests, all while communicating essential event details, updates, and reminders. To do that, you must segment your audience so that the message reaches the right people. This boosts relevance and increases conversion rates.
You must also track and measure the success of your event email marketing strategy to refine it for promoting virtual events in the future.
Here are just a few ideas where you could use it:
You must spread the news far and wide in the weeks and days before your event. Effective event promotion can put your event on all potential attendees’ radars, driving registrations, ticket purchases, donations, and peer-to-peer fundraising sign-ups.
To develop an effective social media strategy, you need to identify the channels you want to focus on, your desired outcomes, and the content you must create to achieve those outcomes.
Prioritize Your Social Media Channels
Each dominant social media platform—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok—requires slightly different strategic approaches.
X has a 280-character limit. Therefore, your message should be concise and impactful. A professional tone is the key to ace LinkedIn marketing. Visual content is king when it comes to Instagram. TikTok welcomes raw, unpolished, and genuine content. Facebook groups foster niche communities.
You can focus on all five platforms to develop a well-rounded social media marketing plan to promote your upcoming event. However, you must prioritize the ones your target audience uses the most. You can also implement virtual experiential marketing to create engaging and interactive experiences that encourage user participation and sharing.
Pair social media platforms to balance content types. For example, you can create a Facebook event so attendees can easily access the registration page and share quick graphics of your event poster or imagery-driven event teasers on Instagram.
Determine Your Social Media Marketing Goals
Guide your virtual event social media marketing efforts by setting smart goals. For example, to:
Before developing a social media marketing strategy for your virtual event, you must envision what you want to accomplish.
Schedule Key Event Announcements and Deadlines
Set your pre-event social media promotion around key announcements and deadlines. For example, you can:
vFair’s new integration with ChatGPT allows you to create posts quickly with information about your upcoming events, such as date and venue, keynote speakers, and more.
If you don’t want to lose your virtual event promotion efforts in the noise, you should invest in paid social media promotion. With millions of brands moving to social media, paid advertising can help you stand out.
Here’s how paid social media ads can help promote your upcoming virtual event.
Widen Your Reach
With paid social media ads, you can reach beyond your immediate audience to those who usually don’t see your events or event page.
Yield high Return on Investment
Paid social media marketing doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Since most platforms operate by a pay-per-click model, you’ll only pay when someone takes an action you want them to take.
Specific Targeting
You can get specific with your targeting, going beyond demographics and into psychographic profiles, including your audience’s interests, hobbies, and behaviors.
Immediate Results With Useful Insights
Immediately upon launching your social media marketing campaign, you can acquire valuable insights. The precise data on these platforms lets you build your ideal attendee persona. It helps you learn how people interact with your event promotion ads.
Communicate the essential details of your upcoming virtual event to the public with an officially written or recorded statement. An event press release is a formal announcement detailing the event’s purpose, date, time, venue, notable participants, and other relevant information contributing to its significance.
Simply put, it conveys the “Who, What, Why, and Where” of the event and gauges interest, increasing awareness through media coverage. A well-crafted press release offers the intended audience a comprehensive overview of the upcoming event.
Here’s how to craft the perfect press release to promote your event online:
You can check out this press release example prepared for the DiscoverNext User Conference 2024 in Toronto.
You can offer your virtual event attendees a memorable brand experience with live event marketing. It helps businesses connect more directly with their audience, building trust, loyalty, and advocacy.
You can use several effective strategies to market a virtual event while it’s happening to engage attendees and maintain momentum online:
Share live content on platforms like YouTube, Instagram Live, or Zoom. Keep both attendees and onlookers engaged with a dynamic feed. Switch between sessions, showcasing live reactions, or providing exclusive behind-the-scenes glimpses. This strategy will show potential attendees what they’re missing, increasing FOMO.
Real-time tweeting keeps remote attendees updated. Use your official event hashtag to share essential takeaways, speaker quotes, and live reactions. Retweet comments from attendees to foster engagement.
Share Instagram Stories and Reels for quick updates. For virtual events, this can include live speaker introductions, event highlights, or attendee shout-outs.
Ask attendees to share their experiences via social media using the event hashtag. Reposting their content during the event can help spread the word and build a sense of community.
For example, at DiscoverNext User Conference 2024 in Toronto, attendees used several hashtags to share their highlights and connect with others, amplifying the event’s reach.
Use platform features like live polls, Q&As, and chat rooms to keep participants engaged. Virtual platforms like Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook Live offer these options to boost real-time event engagement.
Use tools like vFairs Walls.io to showcase live social media posts from the event. Combining Walls.io with your virtual event boosts engagement. It displays attendee, speaker, and sponsor posts on a social wall, builds brand awareness and collects authentic content.
vFairs Walls.io integration boosts event engagement by showcasing user-generated content from platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Setup is simple: create an account, select sources, assign moderators, and embed the wall into your virtual event by sharing the Iframe code with your vFairs project manager.
Customize it with hashtags, tracking tags, and design options for a unique experience. With full support from the vFairs team, Walls.io makes it easy to plan a highly engaging event.
Every post-event marketing strategy differs from the next and depends on the event’s goal. However, there are certain elements every successful post-event strategy should have, including:
A post-event page lets attendees relive the event experience. All you need to do is to edit the landing page and add event content. Showcase every aspect, from the presentations, panels, workshops, and entertainment to live performances.
Here are a few things to spice up your post-event page:
Your virtual event was a success, drawing a large audience and quality leads. But the excitement can fade fast without ongoing engagement. Following-up with your leads after the event ensures that you stay on their radar. It shows that you value their interest and helps build stronger connections.
Here are some ways you can follow up with your guests:
Send a Thank You Email
Thank the attendees for taking time out of their busy schedules to log in to your event. A simple follow-up email right after the event is a small gesture that goes far. It also allows you to connect with your target audience again.
Send a “ We Missed You” Email to No-Shows
Use follow-up emails to reach out to those who planned to attend the virtual event but didn’t make it. Direct them to the post-event page to share relevant event content they missed.
Post-Event Survey
Request event attendees’ feedback by sending them post-event surveys. Learn what worked, what didn’t, and their favorite parts to improve your future event management strategy. You can send an email stating something like:
Have Your Sales Teams Personally Follow Up
Your sales or customer team should contact the guests to continue conversations with prospects or maintain customer engagement. They can contact attendees via phone or email with relevant, helpful, and non-sales information.
Share Relevant Content
Email your attendees any relevant event content, including presentation slides, recordings, or resources. Repurposing event content as a nice touchpoint is an ideal approach to post-event marketing. Your guests might also appreciate having any content presented or mentioned during the event in their inbox.
Invite Them to Another Event
If you have an upcoming event similar to the one your target audience just attended, you can build off the momentum from the latest event and get people excited for your next one.
Test and Track Everything
Understanding what works and what doesn’t is essential, especially when following up your audience with emails. Try different subject lines, email formats, and calls to action to see which ones get the best response.
Use tracking tools to monitor open rates and engagement. Improve your approach based on what resonates most with your audience.
Event planners can reuse virtual event content for different mediums to maintain engagement post-event. This prevents potential audiences who missed the event from missing out on the value it provided and also works as a reminder for those who attended.
Here are some tips for repurposing your event content:
vFairs AI suite has tools to repurpose your event content and maximize its impact efficiently!
Depending on your business and the length of your sales cycle, nurturing your leads after an event is crucial. Here’s a list of factors to consider when building a longer-term strategy.
KPIs and metrics are invaluable in predicting virtual event success. However, they don’t tell the complete ROI story when measured individually. Here are some of the most effective KPIs and metrics to track for virtual events:
Track how many C-level or key decision-makers join your virtual event and the ratio of new leads to existing ones. Determine how many new press contacts have shown interest.
This is particularly important in B2B virtual events, showing the reach within key accounts. Measure active participation (e.g., Q&A, polls).
Identify how many vital accounts are represented in your audience. Track how long attendees are engaged in different sessions and measure how many attendees return for multiple sessions or days of the virtual event.
Capture the number of fresh leads generated from your event, and track how many demos or sales meetings were scheduled as a result. Assess the volume of marketing-qualified leads and identify any new sales opportunities or deals initiated.
Also, evaluate the engagement levels of key accounts with the event content to measure its overall impact.
Track how much pipeline was touched or influenced by the event, and measure how quickly leads progress through the sales funnel afterwards. Observe any positive changes in your conversion rates resulting from the event. Finally, keep track of closed deals attributed to the event, both overall and by individual sales reps.
Compare the satisfaction levels of attendees versus non-attendees by utilizing the Post-event NPS (Net Promoter Score). Also, look for new opportunities or deals generated from existing customers and assess how the event impacts customer retention and renewals. Finally, track the number of attendees who become advocates or reference customers.
To evaluate the effectiveness of your virtual event in terms of financial investment, consider the following metrics:
While many companies focus on top-of-funnel metrics (like the number of attendees or brand awareness), virtual event technology allows for tracking deeper business metrics. Advanced tracking includes:
vFairs reporting chatbot makes data analysis and reporting much easier. With the right tools, businesses can track important metrics like sales pipeline, lead progression, and customer loyalty.
Instead of spending time sorting through data to create reports, the chatbot automates the process for you. These reports give you helpful information for evaluation and future planning, and let you quickly see what worked well and how you can improve.
This blog offers helpful tips and insights to support you through all three stages of your event marketing strategy. You want to make sure you plan out each stage in advance to avoid missing out on any opportunity to market effectively. To recap:
Having a clear idea of your audience and your event goals will help with planning. However, you need the marketing tactics to focus on engagement and promote a two-way interaction in a virtual setting.
Planning and amplifying marketing efforts takes work. Running an event using multiple tools can be a hassle. Virtual event platforms like vFairs streamline your marketing efforts by providing built in marketing tools or integrations with marketing tools you need. You can do everything within one platform.
Book a demo now for more information.
Shehar Bano
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