Virtual Events began in the early 2000s. However since then, they have grown quite a lot in terms of ease-of-access, technological advancements, quality, connections, networking opportunities, & engagement potential.
However, at that time, most virtual events were just a means to fill some gaps in physical event strategies, or to make up for a cancelled live, in-person event in the first place.
The virtual aspect of the event was just to maintain the integrity of the event, & not to provide the attendees with any ‘experience’ of any sort.
However, since the great recession of 2009, most companies & organizations around the world began to look for aggressive cost-cutting strategies. Some of these included slashing expensive travel budgets, & even more ridiculously expensive physical event budgets.
In their quest to look for cost-effective measures, companies stumbled upon virtual events.
Virtual Events were essentially virtual extensions of physical, in-person events. They would, if executed properly, provide all of the engagement opportunities, networking features, & interactive experience of attending a physical event to the attendees.
Hybrid Events are another kind of events that were popularized by the virtual event fad of the 2010s. But more on that later.
In the B2B market domain, there is a huge chance for virtual events to succeed based on their promises, offerings, & potential for customer engagement & lead generation.
In this article, we’ll tell you how exactly virtual events can help & add impact to B2B marketing.
They Help Set You Apart From Your Competition
A well-executed B2B virtual event helps you appear different from your competition, & also helps increase your credibility in the eyes of your clients.
In particular, virtual events are very helpful in the ‘evaluation stage’ of your sales funnel.
Once your clients understand that they are in dire need of your services, then all it takes to sign them up is simply a well-executed, outstanding virtual event.
This also ensures that you cinch your potential clients faster than your competitors, through a well-thought out & seamless virtual event that has everything they are looking for!
Product Showcase Features
More so than a traditional physical event, virtual events help you out forward your best foot to potential clients. Most virtual event platforms have specialized features to allow technologically advanced display of your best products to potential clients & customers. Virtual Events like webinars, trade shows, virtual exhibitions, all help with product showcasing.
More Opportunities For Attendee Engagement
Virtual Events are also more personalized & customizable to suit the needs of your potential clients & customers. This way, you can design customized branded booths & product demo designs to attract the attention of your attendees in a better way. This also allows you to give them a more personalized & tailored experience to your potential customers.
Increased Personalization
Virtual Events are especially well-known for their ability to customize, personalize, & change the track of events in real-time.
You can change or switch up the course of the event flow as & how you see it impacting the attendees in actual real-time.
This opens up avenues for many real-time conversations and an efficient lead-nurturing environment to generate even more potential leads & future customers.
Maximized Outreach
Virtual Events are by nature much more global & scalable than physical, in-person events. By virtue of their virtual nature, they can easily be made available to anyone & everyone who wishes to attend.
Virtual Events, for this reason, are truly global events, & are a great way to maximize the outreach of your event even without adding anything extra to it.
This helps you get the word out about your brand to as many people as possible, & in-turn, generate more leads.
Easy-to-Track
Virtual Events, being held via technical dashboards & management portals, are easily traceable. Each login, registration, sign up, outbound click, forum click, live chat response, poll response, emoji reaction, & action taken in the virtual event, are all trackable.
They allow organizers to have more power over their event & give them the free agency to utilize the data generated in their event to their benefit.
This data then forms the basis for targeted email campaigns, calls, & other personalized marketing approaches.
Driven by Data
As pointed out in the fact stated above, virtual events are exclusively driven by data. Measures of revenue, the number of attendees that engaged with the event, the number of attendees that raised a query, as well as the number of attendees that downloaded the resources or signed up for any services/subscriptions during the event, are all important parameters that form the future strategy for B2B marketing.
These numbers can easily be translated into potential leads & increased revenue with appropriate marketing strategies being devised on their heels.
The Opportunity for Two-Way Communication
Unlike physical events, where to get in touch with an organizer or brand the attendee had to fill up a form & then wait for a reply indefinitely, virtual events provide instantaneous feedback loops & two-way communication.
Infact, today’s virtual events are all about increasing the opportunity for instant, fast, & seamless two-way communication via high-touch interaction points.
You have networking tables, 1:1 video conferencing, business card exchange, AI matchmaking, & live chats as all examples of this over-reliance on two-way communication in virtual events.
Each of these methods help ensure that any communication that needs to take place, takes place right then and there.
Attendees also have the option to take their conversations outside the realm of the virtual event, via third-party communication app integrations like whatsapp click buttons, IM buttons, etc.
All this shows that engagement, more so than ever, is of utmost importance to virtual events today.
Ease of Attendance
Unlike physical events, where your attendees have to book a particular time & slot to attend the event & have to show up at the venue all dressed up, virtual events can be attended from the comfort of their home.
While virtual events still have a live concept to them, webinars can easily be recorded & streamed on-demand to your attendees on a timely basis.
This also solves the problem of differing time-zones & unavailability on the part of your attendees, as they can stream & view the webinar as & when they like, on-demand.
Also, unlike physical events where long queues & documentation is required to get entry into the event, virtual events require just a quick login for your attendees to enter the event experience.
Virtual Events are a Great Source of ‘pull’ Marketing
In this age of constant bombardment of products straight into our conscience via billboards, bus & truck ads, YouTube ads, ads on any other website/service/app etc, virtual events provide a great way of ‘pull’ marketing.
Push marketing implies a sort of marketing where you’re basically ‘pushing’ the customer to like, checkout, or buy your product/services.
Whereas pull marketing allows your customers to be enticed by the premise of your product/services enough to actually come to you themselves wanting to know more.
Granted, pull marketing only works when you have a product/service that is especially great, easy to use, comfortable, & helpful to your potential customers.
A well-executed virtual event, with all the above mentioned interaction & engagement elements, serves as a great format for a successful ‘pull marketing’ campaign. Not to mention that it also helps you get the word out about your product/services to potential customers.
How can Mixhubb help?
Mixhubb is a new age, innovative, & easy-to-use virtual event platform that helps you host virtual events, hybrid events, virtual trade shows, webinars, annual general meetings, web conferences, etc.
In todays’ age, where customizability & scalability are every virtual event organizers’ chief demands, Mixhubb is a flexible, scalable, & highly customizable, branded virtual event platform.
It offers you, the event organizer, more power to create, design, & customize your virtual event your own way with highly interactive features & tools at your fingertips.
You can design & customize your very own booth, auditorium, lobby, & stage, as well as easily manage registration, logins, & attendee experience all through an easy-to-setup & use, intuitive backend.
With Mixhubb, you get to brand your event the way you want to, with advanced customizability options at your disposal.
What’s more, you get advanced, in-depth attendee analytics that helps you better understand the impact of your virtual event on your attendees. This helps you devise better strategies for your next event, & also allows you to follow up on potential leads & customers that engaged with your event in any capacity.
Simply visit the website, select the best-suited plan from the subscriptions plans available, & create your very own branded, customized virtual event, your own way!