Everyone knows that events are a great way to bring people from around the world together to share knowledge, make connections, and find opportunities.
What we didn’t know in 2019, though, was how vital virtual events would have become in a world taken over by a pandemic.
It was initially predicted that virtual events would only be popular in 2020 and during the first few months of 2021. However, newer COVID variants have caught the world by surprise, proving that virtual events are still needed.
At Aurum, we believe that virtual events are here to stay. That’s why we even created a dedicated section at our website to list our top virtual keynote speakers. Even once Covid-19 is wholly eradicated, these types of events will bring more people together than face-to-face conferences. This is because individuals from all over the world can easily attend them. It is also much easier to measure the ROI of the event and collect any essential data.
But how are successful virtual events organized? We’ve included some helpful tips below.
Step 1: Identify Goals and Objectives
First and foremost, you must clearly identify the event’s goal and objectives.
Are you looking to gain new clients? Would you like to improve your brand’s image or launch a new product? Or maybe you want to retain those valuable clients who have been with you since the beginning—getting them thrilled about how much their loyalty has helped you grow over time!
Whatever your goal, don’t skip this step because it’s the foundation of a successful virtual event.
Step 2: Define Your Target Audience
The objectives and purposes of an event, as well as the event’s characteristics, can help define its target audience. This is a vital step that should not be overlooked, because an informative event may not be suitable for an audience that prefers more entertaining events, and vice versa.
You must also consider the approximate number of attendees, as this will determine the resources required to organize a successful event.
Step 3: Choose a Hosting Platform
A virtual event cannot take place without choosing a hosting platform. But with so many options out there, how do you know which one to go with? At Aurum, we thoroughly recommend Zoom. It is even one of the most used platforms by world-class speakers!
Our top marketing speaker Seth Godin is one of them – he’s always telling us that’s his favourite platform! Zoom also has many cool features that can turn a standard virtual presentation into a fully interactive and immersive experience. Customer experience speaker Duncan Wardle takes fully advantage of that – look how much fun his audiences have:
You may find that other companies recommend more expensive solutions. However, we often find them complicated to use, which makes the investment utterly unworthy of the cost. Zoom is easy to use, extremely popular, stable, and reliable.
Our second choice is Microsoft Teams, which offers videoconferencing, workspace chat, file storage, and application integration.
Step 4: Craft The Right Event For Your Chosen Audience
As previously said, the format of an event should take into account a number of factors such as the objective and target audience. Let’s look at a couple of examples:
Virtual Event For Employees
What can you do to keep your staff interested and motivated during the event? Perhaps you could make the event more enjoyable by inserting a few jokes in your presentation! A dynamic, high-energy and entertaining speaker is what you need for those events. We’ve had amazing feedback from clients booking speaker Erik Qualman for those events.
We recommend that you make use of short talks because keeping things brief and to the point will help everyone stay focused until the end.
Virtual Event For Clients
Due to the busy schedules of senior executives and CEOs, an event between them may want to take a more serious tone and be shorter and to the point. For those events, we recommend you to take a look at our top business speakers and CEO keynote speakers.
Virtual Event to Attract Potential Clients and Retain Existing Ones
Nothing beats a well-known famous speaker for attracting new clients and keeping existing ones intrigued!
It should be mentioned, however, that a virtual event featuring a speaker should not last as long as its live counterpart. In fact, at Aurum, we recommend keeping the keynote length between 20 and 30 minutes (maximum 45 minutes) and the total length of the session to 1 hour.
Allow up to 15-30 minutes for questions and answers with the audience or discussions with the moderator. We’re sure your audience will have million questions to our speakers!
Whatever type of event you organize, the key to success is to keep it engaging and interactive. Always strive to make the audience feel as if they are a part of the event!
Step 5: Select The Appropriate Time and Date
Virtual events can open the door to many opportunities, with people all over the world being able to attend them. For this reason, it is vital to choose a time and date that will allow as many people as possible to participate in the keynote lectures.
Imagine having New York, London, and Shanghai all in the same rooms! With virtual events, this is absolutely feasible!
We have asked our largest clients what their preferred days are to attend a virtual event. Here is a list in order of the best day to worst:
- Wednesdays and Thursdays – studies have shown that they are the best days of the week for webinars.
- Tuesdays – a good alternative should the first option not be feasible.
- Mondays – usually a bad day for events since people tend to be busy getting back to work, catching up with emails, and so on.
- Fridays – people may be too tired to remain engaged throughout an event. It is also a day where they usually leave the office earlier.
Step 6: Find The Right Speaker For Your Needs
Now that you have all the basics sorted, it is time to choose and book the star keynote speaker.
This is where we at Aurum can help you find the best virtual keynote speaker for your event. We represent speakers from any possible topic and theme. Our team will send you personalized proposals that take into account your objectives, purpose, audience, and event format.
Not only will Aurum guide you in selecting the best speaker for your needs, but we will also help you with the initial setup should you have not taken care of steps 1 to 5 yet.
We have clients who base the entire event on the keynote speaker and adapt everything else around it (especially for ticketed events, where they may be very flexible about the date to get their “ideal speaker”).
Step 7: Make Marketing a Priority!
The saying “if you build it, they will come” could not be further from the truth. Unfortunately, setting up an event won’t turn into a success unless you have a marketing strategy in place to go with it.
Make sure you promote the event via mailing campaigns, newsletters, paid advertisements, blog posts, and so on.
Step 8: Keep The Engagement High
On the day of the event, attendees should feel as if they are having the best time of their lives.
Allow them to interact with other attendees and ask questions to the speaker. Overall, you should try and maintain a high level of engagement throughout the event.
A memorable and interactive event will boost your chances of success. Today’s technologies and platforms make this really easy to achieve!
Step 9: Follow Up
Don’t let the event be forgotten! You should always do a post-event follow-up, and this should be done as soon as possible while the attendees are still buzzing from their experience!
Ask for feedback by sending surveys and find out what was liked and what was not.
You could also offer discounts for the next event or work on the concepts learned from the speaker’s talk with their employees so that the motivation brought on by the speaker is not lost.
Conclusion
Virtual events are becoming more and more common and are here to stay! The success of virtual events is based on their ability to engage people who may not be able to attend a physical event due to time or location constraints. For this reason, you must create an engaging experience through content designed with your audience’s needs in mind.
If you are looking for your next star speaker but are unsure who to choose, don’t hesitate to contact Aurum. We will ensure your audience gets the memorable experience they deserve!
