With lockdowns and strict social distancing norms globally, business functionalities and marketing events have gone entirely virtual – and that has been beneficial to marketers.
The pandemic has forced businesses to operate remotely, calling off and postponing events. As a result, most marketing leaders choose the way of virtual events and meetings. And it has been useful for most brands while enhancing their revenue.
According to a recent study from Bizzabo, almost 80% of marketers could reach out to broader audiences, increasing their ROI by hosting online events. In fact, about 72% of marketing professionals have adopted engagement platforms and tools to succeed in a virtual event.
Basically, advanced marketing solutions are the need of the hour, as it helps the organizing body to augment the event quality as well as reach. The study indicates that the current state of event marketing sees the adoption of new technologies to manage the associated challenges.
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Like in-person conferences, virtual events are also driving value – boosting the social ties of professionals. However, there are certain challenges that marketers faced while hosting events online. Those includes:
- Problems with providing required networking opportunities
- Continuing engagement with the attendees
- Offering sponsors with valuable opportunities
- Creating desired experiences
Consequently, most marketers are switching to production service companies and advanced solutions in order to strengthen their virtual experiences. Some principal highlights from the report are –
- About 63% of the respondents collaborated with production service firms to help execute virtual events and seminars,
- Only 14% of the marketing leaders are hopeful in their ability to offer value for sponsors,
- Nearly 40% of the event organizers included prominent industry speakers for their events. This helped them increasing audience engagement and business partnerships,
- Around 59% of marketers noted about adopting a hybrid, virtual, and in-person solution to carry out their events,
- Almost 97% of marketers believe hybrid programs are the way of the future.
Again, experts noted that the in-person events are expected to resume by the fall of 2021. Clearly, with time, most of the successful marketing events will be the ones that are hybrid — the programs that purposefully integrate virtual experiences as well as in-person.
As mentioned by Alon Alroy, Co-Founder, CMO, and CCO at Bizzabo in the company blog post – “As we all know, COVID-19 hit the events industry with unprecedented force…To get a sense of how the industry is evolving; as a result, we surveyed event marketers from some of the world’s largest brands. Our analysis revealed that the category had been forever changed.”
