Event industries have seen a pivotal change to the virtual sphere since 2020. To ensure the continuity of their businesses, today everyone hosts an online event. There are numerous types of events that are held globally. It includes virtual fests, virtual conferences, virtual expos, virtual trade shows, and more. The motive of events like an online fest is to boost the brand value and showcase their products and services to a large spectrum of people. But, the question is how to ensure that your event stands out among so many?
Let us walk you through the essential tips and ideas to host a successful virtual fest;
Step 1: Identify the event goals
The first step to hosting any successful event is strategic planning. To ensure that you begin in the right direction, it is vital to recognize the goals of your event. Why are you hosting this virtual fest? Is it to enhance your brand’s global reach, generate more revenue, or obtain more leads.
Being familiar with the event’s purpose will help you begin with fruitful planning.
Step 2: Choose your virtual fest platform carefully
Today, there’s an abundance of virtual event platforms but, to select the right one, you need to confirm if the platform features can resonate with your event needs. An event solution that has incredible tools and features can make your online fest super engaging and memorable. The primary features of an all-in-one online event platform include;
- A seamless navigation
- 24/7 customer support
- 100% safe and secure
- The ability to create a customized venue
- Can include interactive tools (live polls, Q&As, surveys)
- Can drive audience engagement
- Several networking tools for attendees to engage and connect
- Can help event planners with detailed insights of the fest
- Leverage feedback forms to know if the event met the expectations of the audience
Step 3: Customize your event venue
For a virtual event, the online stage plays a significant role in creating impactful experiences. So, ask your platform provider to get a little creative and add innovative ways to make your fest stand out. You can create an immersive virtual lobby, add attractive 3D designs, GIFs, dynamic banners, clearly titled virtual event spaces, and more. These notable ideas are effective ways to recreate the experience of a physical event. Booths are one of the unique selling points for events like online expos, trade shows, fests, and more. It is an opportunity for exhibitors to gain more leads and expand their brand globally. So, they can keep downloadable content, videos, PDFs, and presentations as a valuable source of information that attendees can access to know more about the enterprise.
Step 4: Promote attendee engagement
To increase the ROI of your online fest, it is essential to hold on to your attendees. It can be done in several ways, but to make this happen, it is a must to choose an advanced and latest virtual venue partner.
- You can add on-event announcements and use pop-up features and push notifications to give regular updates to your audience regarding the live and upcoming sessions.
- Get noteworthy speakers and exhibitors on board. It is a great strategy to stimulate more excitement among the participants.
- Leverage a virtual photo booth and a digital signature wall that will replicate the feels of an on-site event venue.
- Consider gamifying your virtual trade show, exhibition, or fest to increase the platform stay-time of the attendees. Some popular online games are spin the wheel, online bingo, tic-tac-toe, temple tun, etc.
Step 5: Add valuable networking tools
The online fest platform your select should be highly capable of letting attendees and exhibitors connect and engage seamlessly. Therefore, try including features like real-time chat function, AI matchmaking tool, virtual networking tables, business card exchange, and B2B meetings scheduler to can serve the purpose of virtual attendees and exhibitors joining the event.
Step 6: Strategize your marketing efforts
Marketing is the key to letting more people know that the event is happening on the selected dates. Hence, leverage Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn as they are the most popular social media platforms, that are accessed by millions of individuals. So, uploading impactful content, images, boomerangs, stories, and videos with event-specific hashtags on the platforms can help you increase the count of registrations.
Another distinguished tool is SEO marketing. For brands wanting to expand their global reach, they need to post interesting content about their products, event, or services on third-party websites. And, the best way to do this is by writing guest posts or blogs with trending keywords that will rank and people would love to read it. Also, you can make the most of email marketing by notifying, inviting, and setting periodic reminders to your potential attendees. While writing these emails, make sure to write a catchy headline that will gain the receiver’s interest.
Step 7: Collect attendee feedback
Besides hosting a successful event, it is also essential to understand the attendee reviews. Audience review or feedback gives a better understanding of the event’s success. It will help you learn about the features that worked well along with the ones that did not bear fruitful results. To bring this into practice, you can add a signature wall or feedback form on the platform.
Step 8: Detailed analytics
Gaining all minute and detailed analytics of the event and attendee footprint is like a win-win situation. It will help your measure the success of your virtual fest. Top virtual event platforms are competent in providing planners with the count of registrations, the number of booths visited, messages exchanged between a sponsor and attendee, the count of downloaded content, and more.
Step 9: Perform a dry-run
With tools, features, and guest list in place, do not miss out on doing a thorough rehearsal with the speakers and the platform features. It is an excellent practice to ensure no glitches or errors occur on your event day. To cut down on the possibility of poor event and platform experience, you should look for platforms that are supported with 24/7 technical support functionality.
We hope these above-mentioned steps will help you conduct and execute your virtual fests even more successfully.
