Some reports note that associations make 41% of their non-dues revenue from their events. With changing attendee expectations and uncertainty around requirements and travel associations worldwide are looking for more ways to increase their virtual event revenues. Are you one of them? If so, you’re in luck! We’ll share four tips to boost your bottom line. So read on and start planning today!

Charge more for your events

The obvious answer is to increase ticket prices for your event. But before you run off to increase your ticket prices, you need to make sure that the value of your event matches the cost of the tickets. 

The first thing you want to do is ensure that your content is made for a virtual audience. You’ll want to ensure that the sessions are shorter than your in-person events and that you are getting high-energy speakers that will attract your attendees. You’ll quickly gain a reputation as someone who knows how to put on high-quality events, and people will gladly pay the extra cost to attend your conferences. 

You will also want to ensure that your event has features that will be attractive to your audience. Items like conversation halls, easy-to-navigate expo halls, welcome videos, and other features will help attract attendees and generate an excellent reputation for you and your organization. 

Offer premium content or add-ons.

One of the best things that you can do to promote your event is to offer premium content that attendees can add to their tickets. While many options are available to you to create premium content, the first thing that you must verify is if your platform natively supports different ticket types that will automatically provide access to those features for your premium-paying attendees. Imagine how painful it would be to manually provide access or email out individual gifts to your attendees because your platform didn’t plan for you! 

Once you’ve verified that your platform supports ticket types, you’ll want to think of some premium content that you can provide that will not increase your costs drastically. Here are some ideas that have worked well: 

• Speaker passes where the attendee will get a one-on-one Q&A session with a speaker of their choice for 30 minutes. This is particularly common with keynote speakers or other high-profile speakers you may attract for your event. 
• On-Demand passes where the attendees can access the On-Demand recordings of your event after the event rather than providing them complimentary to all attendees. 
• Audio/Podcast downloads of crucial content to allow your attendees to listen on the go using their mobile devices. 

Increase the number of sponsorships you sell

Sponsorships are the lifeblood of conferences and events, and virtual events are no different. The revenue generated from sponsorships can completely offset the cost of your virtual event platform, including any potential additional support costs associated with your event tech provider building your event for you. 

To increase the number of sponsorships you sell, you’ll need to provide attractive sponsorship packages. Here are some options that have worked well in building ideal sponsorship opportunities: 

• Sponsor logos in all pre-event communications. This will bring awareness to your sponsors and allow them to promote any specials that they may bring to your conference. 
• Session sponsorships are a great way to bring attention to your high-level sponsors and provide them with a list of attendees that attended the session. Ensure that you inform your attendees that their information may be provided to your sponsors using any privacy policies when they register for the event. 
• Video ads are still one of the greatest tools that exhibitors and vendors have, yet they seem to be one of the least leveraged items in sponsorship packages. Help them create compelling 30-60 second ads that show how they can solve the problems your attendees face and have banner ads that direct them to speak to a representative. This will dramatically increase your sponsors’ booth traffic! 

Get more people to attend your events

The final powerful way to increase your virtual conference revenue is to increase your registration counts. The more people you have coming to your event, the more tickets you sell and the more money you make for your organization. 

There are tons of ways to market your event widely, and you need to pick the right option for you and your team. Use as many channels as possible, including email, social media, snail-mail, video messaging, and more! You can even offer discounts to people to entice referrals, so make sure that your platform supports discount codes to make your life easier. 

While you focus on driving additional traffic to your registration site, setting up new ticket options and prices, and selling more sponsorship packages, don’t forget to build your event! Increasing revenue from your event will only happen if you have a high-quality event to back up the promises you are making to your attendees. If this seems like a lot, that’s because it is. But vConferenceOnline can help you. For a limited time, we are offering a free Fully Managed event with the purchase of any Amazing Service annual agreement. Click below to schedule a demo to see vConferenceOnline in action and put “Wifflesnargits” in your note section to get your free Fully Managed event and go from an Accidental Virtual Event Organizer to a Virtual Event Hero.