With organizations pivoting from physical to online, most of them have shifted to virtual events and meetings to save time and money while leveraging digital transformation.
In fact, 55% of virtual event organizers plan to invest more in virtual events in 2021. Online events show incredible growth potential when combined with thoughtful strategies to connect with new individuals and drive member engagement.
In this article, we will discuss the 7 benefits of hosting a virtual conference to your association, as you continuously engage with members through online platforms.
Quick Reads
- Increases attendee count
- Saves a lot of time
- Expands global reach
- Gets insights automatically
- Reduces expenses significantly
- Offers plenty of networking opportunities
- Generates ideas for content creation
1. Increases attendee count
Virtual events record a higher attendance rate compared to in-person events. More participants are inclined to participate since they can conveniently join from anywhere, no travel is required, and on-demand materials are readily available.
Compared to physical events, data retrieval is easy during an online event. Receiving and doing follow-ups with important leads tend to be quick as well and can be automated.
Keep in mind that event strategy planning should take place, especially when you have a larger audience to engage and with a higher potential ROI.
It’s highly advised that you get attendee information, especially from those interested in learning more about your organization and its offerings.
This approach can help you get leads that will be beneficial to the sales team when doing follow-ups.
On the other hand, keeping the audience engaged during online events can be challenging for most event organizers with increased attendance rates.
Therefore, it’s essential to follow some engagement strategies that can make virtual participants excited and interested in events.
2. Saves a lot of time
Virtual events require some preparation before going live, but it’s not time-consuming compared to physical events.
That being said, you still need to make time for marketing, registration, and promotion when hosting an event online.
But since it can help your organization save more time, employees who typically attend your live event can shift their time and focus on driving sales instead while the live event is ongoing.
3. Expands global reach
Virtual events can have a worldwide reach that assembles maximum attendees with one single click. In contrast, in-person events are restricted to the radius of a business or an event venue.
The logistics of gathering an audience from various locations is simple in an online event. With attendees on the virtual event platform, you can reach more people who can either be your potential clients or customers.
Additionally, virtual events are not limited to the pool of attendees. They now provide access to a broader selection of panelists, speakers, and content.
Attendees can now hear valuable insights from world-renowned speakers. They can also enhance their knowledge and skills from international events and educational programs.
What’s also great about this is you can easily promote an online event by using an event website, social media, and email marketing tools to expand your reach more.
4. Reduces expenses significantly
Physical events are more expensive than virtual events. You should allot money for venue, travel, food, and accommodation with the first.
On the contrary, hosting an event online means that you don’t need a shedload of money to spend, and you can expect lower overhead costs.
Considering that virtual events tend to be cheaper but deliver much higher ROI, you can use the money you save in increasing your organization’s budget for purchasing the most reliable online event platform.
5. Gets insights automatically
Getting people to take a survey during in-person events can be a daunting task. But it’s always important to get feedback right after or even during the event.
This is critical to event success since it lets you know the improvements you need to do next time around. Also, this is one way of making your attendees feel valued and appreciated for their insights.
With online events, you can get more specific and real-time feedback. Recording sessions in a virtual event platform can be invaluable to the sales team when following up with prospects and marketers.
Furthermore, it can help you when developing campaign strategies and new events.
You can easily ask for attendee feedback with our Event Management solution. With it, you can create surveys, quizzes, and polls to measure and understand feedback to improve and gather meaningful insights from your event.
6. Offers plenty of networking opportunities
Research says 80% of people participate in virtual events for educational purposes. As people become more interested in building new relationships and strengthening business connections, professional networking is the next reason for joining online events.
Building these new connections through virtual meetings can lead to business opportunities and increased leads. Moreover, it can help you stay ahead in the industry and keep up with industry trends.
With a virtual speed networking event, the event host and attendees can now conveniently interact and mingle with each other from the comfort of their homes. Everyone can easily connect to anyone within a short amount of time.
Glue Up offers a full-suite networking platform for professionals. Our Speed Networking solution is for anyone looking to create meaningful relationships virtually, network with other event attendees, and participate in a one-on-one chat.
It comes with state-of-the-art features like an event room, a community hub, a direct messaging capability, and a meeting request functionality, to name a few.
On top of that, administrator privileges can be granted to make adjustments on the length of sessions, manage roles and permissions, and moderate content.
7. Generates ideas for content creation
Events can be a great source of content ideas. You can turn every successful event into blog posts, whitepapers, or even use it as an inspiration to enhance products that can serve a new use case.
When creating content, evaluate every online conference session and choose the topics that interest you the most. Learn the event agenda and session tracks to understand industry challenges more.
Conference keynotes and sessions revolve around trending topics that you can include in a whitepaper or a blog post. They can also show you the related keywords to have in your copy.
If your association produces webinars, they're excellent reference materials to use when writing posts. You can develop pre- and post-event content to increase event mileage, gain recognition, and build industry authority.
How will your virtual event look like?
Virtual events can be a practical addition to an association’s event strategy. Other than increased flexibility, they are not as time-consuming for speakers and attendees.
Furthermore, they are cost-effective and you can save more money compared to physical events. For this reason, the saved money can go to purchasing a virtual event management platform instead, which can help automate and simplify the entire event planning process.
We hope this article has helped you understand the benefits of online events. Next time your association is planning an event virtually, make sure to book a demo of the Glue Up platform. We can streamline and modernize processes and ensure your online events are a success.
