Tips to Host a Successful Virtual Event

As the global pandemic has forced people to stay-in-home and follow the best practices of social distancing, hosting an in-person event is unlikely at the moment for event organizers across the world. As a result, virtual events have become their only way to keep going for the next few months or might be until this year ends. 

However, virtual events are not as easy as it looks. To create a successful online event, you have to change your way of approach and planning. So, we’ve put together some of the best ideas to incorporate in your upcoming virtual events.

Find an Expert Virtual Speaker

When you’re hosting an online conference or any online meetings, you must find a well-known expert in your industry as a guest speaker to attract the online audience. Also, you must ensure that you pick a profile with more experience in presenting virtual events. 

Here’re some resources to help you find the right speaker for your next virtual event,

• Linkedin – Being the most preferred social networking site for professionals, you can surf through your network contacts to identify potential speakers.

• Sites with Speaker Profiles – There are several websites to find a certified speaker for your online event. Some of them include espeakers.com, speakerhub, and more.

• Call for Papers – You can source appropriate content and virtual event speakers with a call for abstracts. Our tool, Eventzilla Abstracts helps to receive speaker proposals.

Apart from these resources, you can also reach out to your friends or colleagues to refer to a guest speaker, as they might have attended any conference recently. 

Virtual Gifting

If you want to promote your virtual event, then virtual event gifting is certainly one of the best ways to boost your ticket sales. You can announce a virtual gift for each registration and mention them on your marketing emails, event registration page, and social media. Apart from promotion, virtual gifting also creates a great networking opportunity and engages your attendees before, during, and after the event.

Here’re few virtual gifting ideas

Get them an Apple Itune gift card, Spotify or other music gift cards 

Send Apple Store Gift Card and Google Play Store Gift Card

Offer Amazon eGift cards and any other shopping gift cards from your preferred e-commerce sites.

Use PayPal Digital Gifts to generate Netflix gift cards and choose eGift cards from best buy, eBay, and much more. 

Make Money out of Event Sponsors

When it comes to a webinar or live streaming event, there are plenty of opportunities for event sponsors to expose their brand. So, it’s a great opportunity for you to monetize your virtual event through event sponsorships. You must prepare a sponsorship package and propose it to the sponsors to partner with your virtual event. For instance, you can charge money for displaying the event sponsor’s logo on your virtual meeting. Besides, you can also offer an email package for sponsors to include their details like the website and social media links on the emails that you send to your attendees. 

Prefer All-in-One Event Technology

Instead of preferring a webinar or live stream provider alone, you must choose an event management software that helps you to automate the entire lifecycle of your virtual event. Right from creating video content to managing registrations, it will help you to seamlessly centralize all your tasks in one place. Eventually, this will save you more time to focus on creating a great virtual event experience for your remote audience. 

While choosing an event technology platform, ensure that it integrates with all the major virtual meeting providers like GotoWebinar, Youtube Live, Zoom, etc. Also, ensure that it connects with your existing CRM and event marketing tools.