Your event strategy lives and dies by the success of your events. The key to a successful virtual event is effective marketing. Here are four ways to get the most out of your efforts and generate leads, sales, or other benefits that will help grow YOUR business!

Timing

As with anything with your events, timing is critical. As you plan out your event, make sure that all pieces of your event are on a calendar with enough lead time to make it all happen. Before you can market your event, you must have some basics locked in. Attendees will often base their decision to attend on information such as: 

• What days are your event?
• Who are your speakers? 
• What is your event schedule? 
• What can I anticipate learning from this experience? 

Attendees don’t like when significant aspects of the event change without warning, so make sure that these main pillars of your event won’t change much. Once these are locked in, it’s time to start marketing your event. 

Maybe. 

If you start marketing your event too early, your attendees may register, but you’ll end up with a high percentage of attendees that don’t attend because it may have been on their calendar, but ‘something came up.’ 

We have found that the sweet spot for virtual event marketing tends to be about one month out. This gives attendees enough time to make plans to attend without giving them the time to forget about you and your event! 

Speakers

As you solidify your plans, you’ll want to consider your speakers. Great speakers can be one of your best assets in generating excitement for your event. Ensure that the landing page you use to market your virtual event includes each speaker’s name, bio, and picture to help your attendees see the great speakers you are bringing in! 

Here are three ways that speakers can help you with the marketing of your virtual event: 

• Seasoned speakers are more likely to give an engaging session. This will capture your attendees’ attention and get them speaking about your event. Organic marketing is priceless, and your buzz during your virtual event will help bring further awareness to your events!
• High-profile speakers typically have large social media followings. These large followings allow your speakers to assist with your event’s marketing to a broader audience without increasing costs. Your marketing efforts should include tagging your speakers on social media so that you can leverage their network while also providing your audience with an awareness of who they are. 
• Well-known speakers provide credibility to your event and organization. This credibility is crucial for organizations working to become thought leaders in their industry. You don’t need to be the expert yet – bring in the experts! 

There are tons of ways to attract high-profile speakers to your events – make sure to put together great speaker packages to attract the top talent for your organization’s event! 

Teaser Videos

One of the most effective ways to talk about your event with potential attendees is to create a teaser video. These are great ways to inject humor and personality into your brand to allow some human connection. 

It’s essential not to give away much content from your event, so here are some ideas to consider when brainstorming your teaser videos: 

• “Behind the scenes” look at creating your virtual event. This can be videos of your team staying up late, drinking lots of coffee or tea, or early morning meetings about the schedule. Have fun with it! 
• Speaker interviews provide great content for teaser videos for your event! This lets you put some of their most potent snippets or candid comments together to get people excited for your virtual event! 
• Allow your sponsors to help out. Your sponsors are looking to increase awareness about their brand and generate leads. Allowing them to power their sales funnel with your virtual events will lead to great appreciation from your sponsors and will have them coming back for more! 

These teaser videos are great for email blasts and to be put up on your site or landing page. These can also be powerful introduction videos inside of your event to create some connection with a familiar face once the attendees enter the virtual environment. 

Social Media

The best place to market your event, by far, is social media. You might be asking, “Which platform is the best way to reach my audience?”

All of them. 

Facebook. TikTok. Instagram. Twitter. LinkedIn. Don’t discount any of them. 

There are tons of options for how to maximize social media, but here are a few ideas to help you get started: 

• Create a hashtag for your event. Use this whenever you discuss your upcoming virtual event and include it in your pre-event communications. Have your attendees start talking about what they are excited about or learning from your event using that hashtag, and watch your audience grow!
• Paid ads may be a great option depending on your marketing budget. Facebook and LinkedIn offer fantastic reach with lower costs than some search engine advertising. With the rapid growth of TikTok, you should also look into advertising there if possible. 

Find your audience, and spend the time to see what they are following and looking into on social media. By creating this awareness, you will likely find new ways to engage with your attendees on the various social media platforms, which can only help grow your audience! 

Ready to start planning your virtual event? Our team of experts at vConferenceOnline can build your event for you so that you have the time to focus on your marketing timing, getting phenomenal speakers, creating compelling teaser videos, and maximizing your social media reach. You have other things to worry about – building your event shouldn’t be one of them. Click below to learn how much time you can save!