Virtual events can be amazing opportunities for brand exposure and more sales. But waltzing in the camera shot with no plan might be the biggest mistake of your business career. Besides, it would waste your time and budget for less than acceptable results.
Luckily, you can decide your event’s success before you even hit the virtual doors. Here are practical insights, including event management tips, how to plan and manage an event from scratch, and productivity secrets.
Whether your goal is to meet new people to find lucrative partnerships or get more clients, you should focus on making connections. You can learn all the tricks of the trade, but your reach will depend on how well people will welcome your ideas. So, make sure you align your goal(s) with the audience’s objective.
To improve the chances of a successful event, consider using technology, such as event planning and organizing apps, event badge design apps, marketing platforms, or streaming services.
Event Management Tips How To Plan and Manage an Event
1 – Avoid Distracting Offers
In every industry, most business ideas do not work. Roughly 80% of the things an entrepreneur tries do not work. Why? Because testing ideas takes a lot of time. So when someone decides on hosting a virtual event, the first step is to create a clear message and offer for the intended audience.
In the face of widening opportunity, narrow your focus. The internet gives you plenty of openings when it comes to age groups, niches, and social media. Who are you trying to attract to your online conference? Before you can create a deal or a message for your audience, you need to restrict the number of distractions.
If you single-mindedly work every idea deeply before going on to the next one, you will not have any problem creating (sales) pitches your audience will like. In fact, most offers are confusing and try to sell products or services the audience does not need.
Planning an event is a bit of an art. But it cannot be done without a precise model. So this is what we are looking into next.
2 – Take Time Off To Relax And Recharge
The best way to plan your event is to establish some breaks ahead of time. Here is the checklist of essential activities you need to do to design an event from scratch.
The six steps you need to accomplish for a successful event are the following:
- Constantly re-evaluate what is critical as soon as you get better data from research and analysis tools.
- Focus on increasing website traffic, subscribers, and feedback.
- Get every specialist involved as soon as possible. (Of course, this includes panellists, special guests, marketing experts, and social media managers.)
- Improve your communication skills through books, classes, and rehearsal.
- Keep running your business. Sometimes, this step is essential to provide up-to-date social proof or information.
- Plan action steps to get the audience where you want to take them.
Most beginners cave under the pressure. So, take your time by planning daily breaks. As soon as you get more experience, try having fewer breaks. But never forget to take time off from time to time.
3 – Have Yearly, Monthly, And Weekly Tasks
Managing an event can be tiresome. This is why most professionals use an advanced online registration system like Eventtia to streamline their event operations. Such solutions have every digital knick-knack to make your audience feel at home. But if you want to go the old-fashioned route, this is what you should do.
On a quarterly basis, outline projects you want to accomplish. At the same time, grade every project based on its potential profit and ease of setup. Setting priority is helpful to identify business goals and thresholds.
Every month, look at your schedule and determine what activity you need to do for the upcoming event. For example, hire a copywriter to write content for your email contact list. Or set deadlines for booking specific locations and equipment.
A weekly breakdown should help you understand what to improve and change during the next event. If you planned enough virtual events, you could also analyse attendees’ data to anticipate the best streaming days and isolate hot buyers that keep coming back to your online meetings.
4 – Create The Ideal Client Profile
You probably know that the secret to a powerful pitch is to focus on the customers’ benefits. But what are those in your case? If you struggle writing down what you will talk about during your event, the problem lies in the lack of the ideal client profile.
Most likely, you are more than prepared to explain the benefits of your services and products. But once you are live, you have to push the right buttons to connect with your audience immediately. Otherwise, viewers will doze off or go away.
Virtual events have to be entertaining. But above all, they have to hit the nail on the head at the start. Verifying that your audience is a perfect match for your product or service is another crucial step during your conference.
It is better to assume that the viewers do not know how the product or service works. Be aware of the ideal client profile but explain everything like you would if you were unsure.
You cannot see the attendees’ faces and expressions when doing online events. In that case, the best you can do is to monitor the chat or have some mods report back to you to adjust to some factors like speed, interest, or doubts.
5 – Create Some Bonuses
Most hosts rely on freebies and sales-like funnels to increase the number of attendees. But occasionally, this strategy does not work. So switch to risk reversal offers that may spark curiosity.
Send an email to every attendee once the conference or webinar ends. In general, a thank you note with an attached summary of the most critical takeaways works better than a freebie and can lead to upselling more products.
Wow the customers who bought during the event by sending them a short video you recorded shortly after. Say their names and use the attendee’s data to further customise your message and/or sales pitch.
Lastly, you can provide discounts and promotional codes for completing survey questions after the show. No matter how, get feedback to know what to keep and discard for the next event.
