16 Must-Know Virtual Event Marketing Strategies

Imagine, you wake up in the morning and see your computer screen flashing with registration requests for your virtual event and they just won’t stop. People are so eager to attend your virtual event that they are ready to book a seat in advance!

Who wouldn’t want that, right?

However, for that to happen you would need to create a compelling virtual event marketing strategy.

In today’s blog, I’m going to tell you 16 must-know strategies for your virtual event marketing that not only will attract a huge audience but also will generate leads for your business.

So let’s first understand what virtual event is…

What is Virtual Event?

In this digitally connected world, you might have attended online workshops, meetings, webinars using video conferencing software. These are all comes under the types of the virtual event. In simple language, it means experiencing the event online rather than attending it physically.

What Is Virtual Event Marketing?

Virtual event marketing simply is all about letting people know that you are hosting an online event. It can be for promoting your brand, products with your audience, or launching a new product.

No matter if you are a chef, software engineer, a small business owner, or a digital marketer, a virtual event is a good way to promote your business.

However, as the pandemic isn’t allowing businesses to organize real-life events to promote their brand, virtual events are becoming more commonplace to reach a global audience with hundreds of people in different places and different times.

Read More: COVID-19 Lockdown Marketing Strategy- How to Prepare for the Post-Pandemic Market Crisis.

Why Is Virtual Event Marketing Important For Your Business?

As modern marketing is becoming more and more digital over time, virtual events are getting on top of trends.

With events, a business can form strong and trustful relationships with prospective customers by offering a personal touch that other marketing channels can’t offer.

For customers, it’s an opportunity to directly communicate with their favorite brands.

Not convinced yet? Here is some data from studies on event marketing:

• As per a recent event marketing strategy, most marketers believe that events are 31% more effective than other marketing channels.

• 84% of event attendees confirm that they have a more positive view of a brand after attending events.

• Not only this, the most successful companies are spending 1.7x more time and budget on virtual event marketing.

So, after knowing how much important an event is for a business, let’s learn how to create a virtual event marketing strategy.

How To Create A Winning Virtual Event Marketing Strategy Online? 

Know Your Attendees

As a business, you should always keep in mind that knowing your niche audience and targeting the right people are the key elements of making a virtual event marketing campaign successful.

To know your target audience you first need to know the goal of your event. Because without knowing your objectives you will end up inviting irrelevant people into your virtual event marketing.

For example, if you are a digital marketer you want to target people who are looking to promote their business online.

Create A Compelling Event Page

The first impression is the last impression.

Your event page is the place your target audience will see first and decide whether to attend your event or not.

You need to make sure they are impressed with you at the first sight and won’t leave without signing up for the event. You can use some cool and eye-catching graphics images, engaging clips, and a brief intro to the event. Also, don’t forget to add a call-to-action button as well.

Here is what to include on your landing page:

• Important information like event topic, date, and agenda
• Speaker bios
• A clear and concise call to action
• Pricing info with cancellation and refund policy
• Some relevant information that might help attendees prepare
• Integrate target keywords to boost your search visibility

See this Web Summit event page as an example:

Create An Intuitive Registration Form

Your registration form will play an important role in your virtual event marketing strategy. It should be easy to understand, organized, and quick as many people will signup for your event.

Make sure it has a slot for user emails, names, and contact numbers. This information can help you in sending personalized notifications for your virtual event.

You can use tools like the WPForms plugin to build simple and elegant registration forms for your next virtual event.

Boost Your Search Potential By Integrating Keywords

If you are writing content for your virtual event marketing strategy, don’t forget to use relevant keywords in your blogs and articles.

Keywords can provide you deep insight into what your audience is looking for help you serve them what they want.

Use keyword planning tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to discover what relevant phrases people are looking for most often.

To Know More About Keyword Research Here Are Quick Links:

How to Use Google Keyword Planner to Rank Higher

How to Find the Right Keywords for Your Business?

Ahrefs Guide: The Most Comprehensive Guide Available on the Internet

You can also find out relevant keywords with a simple Google search.

How?

Suppose you plan to create a virtual event marketing campaign for ‘digital marketing virtual training’. Type this on the Google search bar and take note of Google to autocomplete suggestions. Look below:

You can use these suggestions to attract your target audience for your virtual event marketing. This way you will attract a truck-load of potential customers.

Socialize With Your Customers

So now you have your target audience and a lot to talk about your virtual event marketing campaign, it’s time to get socialize!

Do you know that 3.96 billion people use social media? Yes, that’s more than half of our world population.

Do you have any idea how many industry-related people you can get there? A lot.

On a social media platform like Facebook, you can find thousands of people that might be interested to attend your event. You just need to tell them about it. 

Read More: Facebook For Business: Everything You Need To Know In 2022

Go Live And Promote Your Event

One more chance to go social again!

You should leverage the Live feature on popular social media platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook to tell your event’s story.

Invite your audience to your virtual vent by going live and interacting with them. People love face-to-face invitations.

Give your community a peek into your event in an abstract and compelling pitch they can’t resist!

I believe this gonna make them want to attend your event even more.

Make Your Audience Feel Special By Sending Emails

Do you remember how would you feel when one of your friends comes to your house to personally invite you to the birthday party? It felt just so nice and valued, hadn’t it?

How about making your audience feel the same for your event?

Yes, you can do that by sending curated emails to your target audience.

40% of marketers believe that email marketing is the most effective way out there to promote your event.

However, when crafting an email campaign, think about:

• Your target audience
• How many emails to send and delays between each
• A mind-catching subject line
• Compelling body text
• Call-To-Action

Note – Make sure to craft your subject line very carefully. If you are stuck between multiple candidates, use an email marketing tool like Mailchimp.

Spark FOMO Effect (Fear Of Missing Out)

In the recent blog, about marketing psychology I’ve talked about how people react more to losses than gains. If you show them what they will lose if they don’t do this or that thing, they will freak out and do that.

You have to use this marketing psychology trick in your virtual event marketing planning.

Show your audience what they are gonna miss out on if they won’t attend your virtual event.

Suppose if you are hosting an event on, let’s say ‘how to write and publish a book’ then you can make a short video, presentation, or content copy saying they will miss the free sessions on the book writing process hosted by famous authors.

This will make them more curious to attend your event.

Ask People To Tell Their Friends

Nothing can beat word-of-mouth to boost your event marketing success. People get more curious about things they hear from their friends, workmates, and relatives.

You have to convince your audience to tell their friends or co-workers about the event and, also invite them.

So how to do it?

When someone signs up for your virtual event online, provide them some kind of offer they can’t ignore. Use affiliate links or other tools to help them invite their friends.

Also, ask everyone to use your social media hashtags and sign-up links when they share the invitation.

Then offer special discounts or some perks for the people who shared your event with others.

This gonna help you a lot in your virtual event marketing program.

Be Consistent With Your Promotions

Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.

Dwayne Johnson

No matter how compelling your marketing copy, blogs, and videos are, if you don’t serve them to your audience consistently, it doesn’t matter.

Your audience is persons like you and me. They have a personal and professional life. Maybe they got too busy with some other work and forgot about your event. That’s why you need to tell them about your event every now and then.

If you truly desire that more and more people attend your event, then you have to keep working on your virtual event promotion up to your event start.

Yes, you got to keep them engaged and excited – or they will just like your Facebook post and leave. They won’t show up to the event.

How to drum up the excitement:

• Promise a secret giveaway to attendees after the event.
• Put a count-down clock of days/hours/minutes on your event page.
• Keep sharing the related posts on social media to keep it top of mind.

Offer Early Bird Discounts

I love discounts! Do you? 

So do the people.

What about offering an “early bird discount” to the people who book your event in advance? Sounds great!

You can also set a deadline for the early bird discount or only put a limited number of tickets on offer.

Believe me, this can be a great part of your virtual event marketing strategy.

Sending SAVE-THE-DATE Email

After so much effort you don’t want your people to forget about it. 

Why not send them a Save-The-Date email so they can set a reminder for your event? That will also help them to complete the pending tasks and be ready for your event.

Announce the Program

Let’s announce your program!

Get sure about your special guests and notable speaker and note their names. Save this list and create an announcement post for social media, send emails, or go live to announce your event. Also, let the people know what you are offering in it and who gonna be your speaker. Tell people how they will benefit and, once more, what they will lose if they don’t show up.

Keep Your Sessions Short

Do you what’s the most difficult task of virtual event marketing? – Holding the attention of the audience and keeping them connected to the event.

You need to keep your session short. If, however, you want to keep it long then you need to break them into few parts. This will help the audience to stay connected with your event.

for example, a good event can be a 25 minutes program, but if you want it to be 1 hour long, you should break it into two parts of 30 minutes each.

Stay There For Your Audience After The Event Is Over

Imagine you have just finished a live virtual event and you want to ask some questions, you want to do confirm few things or maybe ask the event organizer for some tips.

The same goes for your audience.

They are still processing the event talks and might want to ask some questions or tips. Maybe they want to ask about a topic it wasn’t covered. You need to be there for them.

It would also be an excellent opportunity to make some new connections and leads for your business. Plus, you will also receive immediate and honest feedback.

Set Up A Link With A Full Recording Of The Event

Your event has ended. People are so excited about attending it and leaving nice comments. 

Some of them will want to watch it again. Or maybe want to share with their friends and co-workers. Setting up the link to the full recording will be a great help for these people.

Furthermore, you will also be able to share the event with the people who expressed interest but couldn’t attend.

Include a timestamp menu so people can jump to their desired topic in the video.

Not only this, but it will also allow you to watch and analyze your event to determine what you need to fix next time.

How To Get More Sales Via Virtual Events

No doubt, events can boost your product sales like no other channel if you do it right.

You can organize an event in many forms such as live fireside chats, seminars, or conferences.

You can show your products and their advantage to your attendees at the event. There are many who might be looking for the info before making a purchase decision. 

Launch your product in the event and create buzz among your audience. This may cheer up your audience and make them buy your products.

Read More: Learn 11 Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks & 6 Avoidable Mistakes to Skyrocket Your Sales

Conclusion

I’m sure your event is gonna be exceptional. You have 16 really amazing event marketing steps that will houseful your event with a lot of attendees.

This virtual event marketing strategy will allow you to make an impact on your overall business and help boost sales after the event.

Use this opportunity to show people that you care about your audience’s needs above all. Start planning your next virtual event and use these steps to make it highly successful.

Level up your business to be on the top among your competitors. And if you need any kind of help, just ask me in the comment box below.

Let’s meet in the next blog. Happy Event-ing!!

FAQs

How do you market a virtual event?

To market a virtual event, you need to do research on your target audience, set goals that you want to achieve via the event, and create engaging marketing copy and share them with people on social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.

How long should you promote a virtual event?

It depends on the scale of your virtual event marketing planning and budget. However, you should start promoting it before 2-3 months prior to the event date.

What are the types of virtual events?

There are many types of virtual events like virtual conferences, webinars, seminars, online training, and product launching.

Where can I advertise my virtual event?

You can advertise your virtual event on places like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Websites, Youtube, or via email marketing.

How to promote a virtual event on social media?

Simply create catchy social media posts with images and infographics and share with your audience. Engage with them by responding to their queries and confusions.