You’ve planned a virtual event, you’re sure it’s going to deliver value and now the only thing left to do is to promote it and get an audience to attend. There are, thankfully, several different promotional avenues.
How To Promote A Virtual Event in 2023
Address Your Audience
If you’re hosting the event, it might feel like all eyes are on you, but it is important to remember that the event is about the audience attending it. They’re the ones you’re doing the event for. It only makes sense that you take the time to consider who they are, what they like, and how they’re likely to interact with the event.
This might sound obvious, but a lot of information about your audience is already at your fingertips. You can leverage this when promoting the event. Gauge who your typical audience member is, what their interests are, what ways they might typically engage at the event and what products they might like.
Take, for example, if they’re the type of person who engages in seminars and talks, then make sure to tell them about talks happening at your event. Even go so far as providing them with a timetable.
Craft A Landing Page
Designing a landing page with your audience in mind is a surefire way to increase conversions and deliver more attendees to your event. Firstly you’re able to share the reasons why people should attend (what’s in it for them, what they can expect, why it will be beneficial for their business, etc), and secondly, it’s a great position for you to send them towards your registration page.
Ensure that it’s on brand, has all of the correct information, provides information in a number of accessible ways (text, video, audio), and is easily shareable. This will be the first step onto your website for most of your attendees, so it’s worth spending time on.
Social Media
There’s no hiding from the social media beast when you’re promoting an online event, it’s a mandatory part of a promotion campaign. Simply sharing with your followers, hoping for further shares, and using hashtags is a good foundation, but you might want to consider stepping up your social media game to include paid promotions.
Both Facebook and LinkedIn have sophisticated advertising channels businesses have used for years to promote their events. It is, as said above, important to consider your audience. Are these the platforms that they hang out on? Would you be better off advertising on Instagram or TikTok instead?
Email Marketing
It’s easy to write off email but it’s still an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Segment your audience and create invites based on their likes and tastes. A “catch-all” newsletter-style campaign isn’t going to deliver results on the same scale as a personalized, focused campaign. Plus, once you’ve captured data from the event (including attendees’ emails) you can follow up by email too.
Get Support From Sponsors And Partners
You’re not in this alone! If you’ve partnered with another company or have managed to secure a sponsor, get their help too. It’s in their interest that the event goes well after all! There will likely be some overlap between your audiences, but by pooling together, you will have a far greater reach than going it alone.
If you’re selling tickets, you could encourage them to promote by using an affiliate link so that they get a cut of any tickets sold through their promotional channels.
External Promotion Channels
Beyond your own channels, it can be lucrative to consider external promotional channels. One of the best options is to look to blog and website owners and ask them if they accept guest posts.
As long as you can provide a quality article that appeals to their audience many will happily take your content. These pieces shouldn’t be straight pitches about your event, rather they should deliver value to the readership. For example, let’s say you reach out to a financial website. You can pitch them an article about the best debit card for teens in 2023, they will definitely approve that and in that article, you can explain how launching a new debit card via virtual event is beneficial to them. There’s no harm in a small mention of your event, just be sure to include a link to your landing page. Including a link is great for traffic and your SEO strategy, which should include link building as standard.
How To Follow Up After A Virtual Event
Completing the event will feel like you’ve climbed a mountain and reached the summit, it’s definitely time to congratulate yourself, but there’s still work to be done. Ensure that you follow up with all attendees to give yourself the best opportunity to offer your services or sell your products.
- Don’t disappear – at the conclusion of the event, don’t just log off and pour yourself a drink. Instead, offer to stay back and talk to people individually. There’ll be plenty of questions that people might want to ask you directly.
- Send a recording – people might have missed the event, want to revisit a part, or simply missed a bit. Send a recording with notes for them, this is a nice personal and helpful touch.
- Ask them for feedback – people like to feel their opinion matters so canvas your audience for feedback and then let them know the overall results.
Key Takeaways
The first step is always to understand your audience and what they want from the event. Once you’ve secured that, leveraging guest posts, social media, and your own website is the perfect way to promote your virtual event.
- Get into your audience’s mind and consider what it is they want.
- Think about where they hang out online and approach them there.
- Don’t forget to follow up after the event for maximum value.