As the spread of coronavirus grows rapidly, its impact on the economy and on the event marketing industry is becoming more adverse with every passing day. Business travel, trade shows, and conferences have been cancelled. A strict exercise of social distancing has compelled event marketers to replace in-person meetings with virtual event apps and conduct video conferences through events apps that are intuitive and technologically diverse.
Events are the crux of business communications and the global economy cannot afford to cancel all events in 2020. Event marketing professionals need to figure out how to keep people safe and connected under these highly complicated circumstances.
Here’s a comprehensive event marketing guide for 2020, tailor-made with some innovative ideas to cope up with the global COVID-19 pandemic.
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Event Marketing Strategies for 2020
To guide you through an effective event marketing plan under the COVID-19 public health emergency, you need to implement some new strategies. Event marketing strategies that worked in 2019 would not work for 2020 as the dynamics of social communications have changed drastically.
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Set Up Virtual Events and Online Meeting
First, you need to consider all of the financial aspects. Since in-person events are not allowed, you need to save costs and invest in the alternative option – virtual events. With omnipresent internet connectivity, you can host successful virtual events through real-time video conferences, webinars, and live streaming shows. Even if the attendee rates are not high enough, you can promote how these virtual events play an instrumental role in protecting the health of attendees. With forefront messaging and convenient rescheduling, attendees can get a clear idea about each one of your virtual events for 2020.
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Go Digital with Event Mobile Apps
Video calls from smartphones and desktops can’t deliver the same experience as live events. But, you need to use web technologies for ensuring none of the attendees come in contact with the virus. You can use event mobile apps for paperless registrations. Virtual events platforms can help you host smooth webinars and digital demos of business expos. By creating dynamic content on these virtual event apps, you can keep all parties tuned in to the upcoming events.
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Increase Event Engagement with Online Interactions
Virtual event mobile applications can also help you connect with vendors and keep the conversation going. You can upload new policies for educating your event marketing for any on-site setups. Online communication channels can keep the conversations more open and frank, which would proactively increase the engagement of attendees in the event. Update your virtual event websites with interactive online activities such as quizzes, games, and trivia. You can also leverage the power of outbound messaging through popular social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The key part here is to provide attendees with a wide range of platforms to express how they felt about the event. Analyze the most common themes from your past event feedback. These will help you plan better for upcoming events. Incorporating these valuable insights into your event will make attendees feel that they’re as much in charge of the event as you are and make them feel valued for their opinions.
Managing Virtual Events and Meetings
Virtual events, however, need some high-level management. Large corporations build their own virtual events platform to manage their online shows, webinars, and video conferences. Similarly, you can adopt a virtual events platform and keep a track on:
- Event registrations
- Special invitations
- Alignment of event itinerary
- Rescheduling
- Follow-ups
- Event cancellations
This will not only help you control the costs but also improve the relationships of attendees with your events/brands considerably.
Facilitating Event Engagement
Why should attendees only hear from you when you have an event on the way? An engagement strategy that takes into account engagement all-year long is going to be your friend in order to gather a large number of attendees when the time finally comes for your event to be live. Regular updates to your members that deliver valuable content in what we in the events industry know as the ‘snackable proportions’ of information.
In order to help you ensure attendee engagement, here is a list of high impact assets you can use to keep your attendees engaged:
Resource Library: Dedicating a page on your event site for resources might help. Use of hyperlinks and index information by subject matter might help to make navigation easier.
Webinars: Educate and put a little inspiration for the attendees out there
Content Offers: Checklists, templates, and ebooks are great tools for content offerings. Only tip: stay relevant to contextual.
Micro-Moments: Encourage your audience to post-event photos and quotes across social media channels. Social Media is a great influencer for people of all kinds.
Gamification: Your events will probably be filled with ambitious and highly competitive people. Give them something they care about and they will be tied to your event like moths to a flame.
What to Expect from Event Marketing in 2020?
All industries are riding a wave of digital transformation. On the other side of that transformation lies a digital-first world in which business must adapt or risk obsoletion. The same is true for events. Looking ahead in 2020, many best practices for successful virtual and hybrid events mirror those of distance learning and member engagement in general.
Due to the unexpected turn of events, no one can come up with an official playbook on how to plan and promote events for 2020. As a responsible event marketer, you can make informed decisions and plan properly for handling events this year.
You should avoid suspending events unless deemed necessary. Instead, you should opt for alternative measures such as virtual events and keep the shows running for attendees at the convenience of their homes, mobile phones, and computer screens. While doing so, you must also develop intentions to promote public health and safety.
In 2020, every event marketing professional must pledge to promote awareness about the coronavirus and promote the authentic developments of its prevention and cure. By staying abreast of the World Health Organization, event marketing companies are expected to spread the correct knowledge of battling this terrible pandemic through their events.
