Businessman pointing at a digital board of people icons as he plans his virtual event marketing strategy

Virtual Event Marketing

So you’ve decided to run a virtual event—great call. But it’s one thing to host a webcast; it’s quite another to have a buzzing audience that’s eager to engage. Let’s dive into the world of virtual event marketing, where the right strategies can turn your webcast, kickoff, or town hall into the talk of the… well, into the talk of the town.

 

Virtual events are exceptional tools for leading-edge businesses, but captivating performances, exciting brand presentations, and flawless virtual events are essentially useless if no one is there to soak it all in.

 

Virtual event marketing encompasses a range of tactics and methodologies designed to promote online events, webinars, and conferences, ensuring maximum participation and engagement. With platforms like GlobalMeet, organizing and marketing these virtual events becomes a streamlined, efficient process tailored to meet the diverse needs of today’s digital audience.

 

In this article, we’ll cover how to:

  • Understand your virtual event audience

  • Identify the optimal marketing strategies for your virtual event

  • Leverage a wide range of platforms and channels to promote your virtual event

  • Utilize GlobalMeet’s demand generation tools effectively

Understanding Your Virtual Event Target Audience

When it comes to identifying and understanding the ideal audience for virtual events, it’s essential to begin with a clear definition of your event’s objectives, ensuring they align with your broader business goals, such as lead generation or enhancing brand awareness. Delve into past event data to gather insights on attendee demographics, their interests, and feedback, which can be crucial in shaping your approach. Developing detailed audience personas is also key; consider aspects like job roles, industry sectors, and specific pain points that your event can address.

 

Further enrich your understanding through market research techniques like surveys, interviews, and competitor analysis, while also leveraging social media and web analytics to discern prevailing trends and traffic patterns. Engaging with online communities and industry groups can provide additional insights into potential attendee interests and expectations. This phase of audience analysis is foundational in creating a marketing strategy that resonates with your target demographic and drives event success.

  • Data-Driven Insights: Use past data and market research to build a comprehensive understanding of your audience.
  • Persona Development: Create specific audience personas for targeted marketing strategies.
  • Feedback and Iteration: Continuously gather feedback and adjust your approach for maximum engagement.
  • Internal Collaboration: Leverage insights from internal teams for a well-rounded understanding of customer needs.

By leveraging tools and insights offered by platforms like GlobalMeet, marketers can gain a comprehensive view of their audience, allowing for more personalized, impactful marketing strategies that truly speak to the needs and expectations of potential attendees. Our expertise enables you and your team to effectively bolster brand visibility, amplify lead generation, and accelerate the customer acquisition journey whether you have an audience of 50 or 100,000+.

Strategies for Effective Virtual Event Marketing

Crafting a successful marketing plan for your virtual event demands a blend of creativity, strategic thinking, and data-driven insights. This includes developing compelling and engaging content that captures the essence of your event, personalized messaging that resonates with your target demographic, and leveraging various digital marketing channels for optimal reach.

 

Utilizing GlobalMeet’s analytics and customization features, marketers can better understand attendee behavior and preferences, allowing them to refine their strategies for maximum impact. From social media campaigns to targeted email marketing, each tactic should be designed to build anticipation, encourage registrations, and ultimately drive attendance to your virtual events.

 

Below, we’ll cover the following strategies and channels:

  • Social Media
  • Email Marketing
  • Content Creation
  • Paid Advertising
  • Partnerships
  • Demand Generation with GlobalMeet

Leveraging Social Media for Promotion

Social media stands as a powerful tool for promoting your virtual event, providing a platform for wide-reaching promotion, audience engagement, and community building. Additionally, GlobalMeet’s integration capabilities make it easy to share updates and engage with your audience across these platforms, ensuring a cohesive and consistent promotional effort. By incorporating the following strategies, social media becomes an invaluable asset in promoting your virtual event, enhancing visibility, and engaging potential attendees effectively.

Diverse Platforms for Broader Reach

Use platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Instagram to reach different segments of your target audience. Each platform offers unique ways to engage users.

Post interactive content like live sessions, event countdowns, and behind-the-scenes peeks. Use these to engage your audience and build excitement.

Create a unique event hashtag to foster a branded experience and make it easy for attendees to find and share information about your event. Consistent posting helps maintain event visibility.

Once you identify the types of posts that resonate with your audience, consider boosting them through paid ads. This can expand your reach and attract more attendees.

Utilize GlobalMeet’s features to seamlessly integrate your social media efforts with your overall event marketing strategy. This ensures a unified approach and maximizes the impact of your social media campaigns.

Email Marketing for Virtual Events

Email marketing offers a direct and personalized way to communicate with your audience. It goes beyond mere invitations; it’s about creating a compelling narrative that resonates with your recipients. Effective email marketing for virtual events involves several key strategies, and by leveraging these tactics, you can transform every email into an opportunity to captivate your audience and drive event registrations.

Segmentation

Tailor your messages to different segments of your audience—such as customers, prospects, partners. This helps create relevant and engaging content for each group.

Craft emails that tell a story about your event. Personalize these narratives to make each recipient feel uniquely addressed.

Start your email campaign about two weeks before the event and increase the frequency as the event approaches. This helps keep your event top-of-mind and builds anticipation.

Include sneak peeks, exclusive offers, or special guests in your emails to spark interest. Timely reminders can also help boost attendance.

Utilize GlobalMeet’s CRM integration to track the effectiveness of your campaigns. Analyze open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to continuously refine your strategy.

Content Creation for Virtual Events

Content is the lifeblood of virtual event promotion. It’s what tells your story, showcases your value, and keeps your audience intrigued. Creating compelling content for virtual events involves a mix of creativity and strategy. This includes developing engaging landing pages, crafting informative and enticing blog posts, producing promotional videos, and utilizing interactive infographics. These content pieces should not only inform but also entertain and engage your audience, keeping them hooked and eager to learn more about the event.

 

With GlobalMeet, integrating this content into your virtual event becomes seamless, enhancing the overall attendee experience. From the initial announcement to the post-event follow-up, every piece of content should be aligned with your event’s goals, designed to inform, engage, and convert your audience into attendees.

SEO Strategies for Virtual Events

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a pivotal role in enhancing the online visibility of virtual events. It’s a strategic process of optimizing your event website, landing pages, and content to rank higher in search engine results, thereby attracting more organic traffic.

 

Effective SEO for virtual events involves keyword research tailored to your target audience’s search habits, optimizing website content with these keywords, and ensuring your site is mobile-friendly and fast-loading. Don’t overlook the power of backlinks from reputable sites, as they significantly boost your site’s authority and search rankings.

Paid Advertising for Event Promotion

Paid advertising is a potent tool in the arsenal of virtual event advertising, offering the ability to target specific audiences and achieve immediate visibility. Platforms such as Google Ads (PPC) and social media advertising enable marketers to reach a broader and more diverse audience.

 

By crafting well-targeted ad campaigns, you can effectively drive traffic to your event registration pages. Utilize demographic, geographic, and behavioral data to tailor your ads to those most likely interested in your event. The key is to create compelling ad copy and visuals that resonate with your target audience. GlobalMeet’s analytics can assist in tracking the performance of these campaigns, allowing for real-time adjustments and optimization for maximum ROI.

Partnerships in Virtual Event Marketing

Strategic partnerships to promote your virtual event can significantly amplify your event’s reach and credibility.

 

Collaborating with influencers, industry experts, and other brands can open up avenues to new audiences and add a layer of authenticity and trust to your event. Influencers can leverage their followers to generate buzz around your event, while partnerships with industry leaders can lend expertise and thought leadership, enhancing the overall value of your event.

 

Consider co-hosting webinars or creating joint content to maximize the impact of these collaborations. GlobalMeet’s platform is designed to facilitate such partnerships, offering features that make collaboration easy and effective. From co-branded event pages to joint presentations, the possibilities are vast and can be pivotal in scaling your event’s success.

Virtual Event Marketing and Demand Generation with GlobalMeet

For brands looking to enhance their demand generation efforts, GlobalMeet offers a comprehensive solution. This platform is designed to simplify the process of engaging potential customers and increasing lead generation, regardless of the audience size, ranging from a small group to over 100,000 participants.

 

Key Features of GlobalMeet:

  • Branded Virtual Events: Create customized events that resonate with your brand identity, fostering meaningful connections and starting conversations that build lasting relationships.

  • Data-Driven Insights: Leverage powerful analytics to track attendee engagement, behavior, and demographics. This insight helps in understanding your audience better, leading to faster lead conversion and a robust sales pipeline.

  • Flexible Management Options: Choose between a webcast subscription for the self-serve enthusiast or opt for a professionally managed event service for a hassle-free experience. GlobalMeet also offers comprehensive training to ensure you can utilize the platform to its full potential.

  • Seamless Integration: The platform integrates smoothly with most CRM systems, ensuring that your valuable data is readily accessible and usable.

  • Unlimited Event Hosting: With no limits on the number of self-serve events, GlobalMeet encourages users to maximize their outreach efforts, translating into unlimited opportunities for lead generation.

  • High-Quality Streaming: Enjoy flexible HD video streaming capabilities without any bandwidth interruptions, ensuring a professional and engaging presentation for your audience.

Measuring Success in Virtual Event Marketing

Measuring the success of your virtual event marketing strategies is crucial in understanding what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as registration numbers, attendee engagement levels, conversion rates, and post-event feedback play a pivotal role in this analysis. Utilize analytics tools to track these metrics, providing insights into attendee behavior and the effectiveness of your marketing channels.

 

This data-driven approach helps in fine-tuning future strategies, ensuring your marketing efforts are aligned with your event objectives. GlobalMeet provides robust analytics and reporting features, enabling you to measure the success of each aspect of your virtual event campaign, from initial outreach to post-event follow-up.

 

GlobalMeet not only aids in crafting an impactful first impression but also supports in nurturing these connections for a filled sales pipeline. It’s a tool designed to make your demand generation less demanding, yet more effective, offering the perfect blend of technology and ease of use for successful virtual event promotion.

 

Ready to elevate your virtual event marketing strategy? Explore GlobalMeet’s comprehensive solutions and discover how we can help you create unforgettable virtual experiences that resonate with your audience.

 

Request a demo today and take the first step towards redefining your virtual events.

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7 Webcast Marketing Strategies

Ready to get the word out about your next press conference, investors meeting, or an informative event for lead generation? It’s a noisy online world, and virtual events quickly get lost in the shuffle without a solid webcast marketing strategy.

 

From spreading the word through email marketing and public relations outreach to ensuring proper follow-up nurture with attendees, webcast marketing is most effective when you implement a variety of strategies across the entire journey. Leverage some of the below marketing webcasts tactics along with real-world promotions for the best results.

 

Also, don’t forget to closely track conversion rates, open rates, impressions, sales, and more along the various marketing channels. This will help evaluate the success of your marketing campaigns in driving awareness and, ultimately, generating more revenue.

1. Marketing Webcasts: Warm Email Marketing

While some consider email marketing “old school,” it’s still one of the most direct ways to reach consumers. While 99% of people open their emails every day, the average person also receives an average of 121 emails per day. Your email marketing strategy must be sophisticated and personalized, which helps you avoid the dreaded “delete button.”

 

Segment your list into specific audiences (think customers, prospects, partners, and more) to generate engaging content specifically suited to their needs. Kick off your email marketing roughly two weeks before the webcast and increase the email frequency as the day and time get closer.

2. Social Media Advertising (Paid and Organic)

Utilizing hashtags, emojis, posting consistently, and leveraging the power of the algorithm on top social networks is another effective strategy for getting your webcasts in front of the right audience. Use a specific hashtag to create a branded experience around your event and help potential attendees find more information. Also, don’t forget to constantly include a link to the registration page.

 

Once you’ve determined the types of posts and graphics that perform best, consider putting some ad spend behind that winning content. Social media ads are often more effective than other forms of advertising, and 72% of marketers regularly use paid ads.

3. Display Ads

Display ads are excellent ways to drive top-of-funnel awareness. When consumers constantly see your webcast advertised on third-party websites, on Google, or in other apps, they’re reminded to sign up for your event. The “Marketing Rule of 7” states that people need to hear about something at least seven times before they consider taking action, and display ads are an excellent way to increase the frequency of your drumbeat.

4. Content Marketing

With 70% of consumers preferring content marketing to traditional marketing, its vital to utilize this element in getting the word out about your webcast. Content marketing can range from long-form to short-form content or even simple repurposing of social or email content. Blog posts drive traffic to your website, and with the right keywords, your content marketing efforts can drive you to the top of Google search results. Over 25% of people click on the first Google search result, so making sure your events rank highly is important.

5. Partnership Marketing

Are you having well-known thought leaders speak at your event? Tap into their powerful network to broaden your reach and bring their audience into your webcast. Hand them a speaker’s media kit with graphics, digital flyers, pre-written social content, and other assets to make it easy for them to share.

6. Public Relations

Public relations can be as simple or complex as time and budget allow; craft a newsworthy press release and send it out on the wire for some extra visibility. You can also reach out to reporters and journalists who cover webcasts and other virtual events in your industry and offer them a compelling statistic or insight to write about.

7. Follow-up Marketing

Once the event is over, you still want to engage with these attendees. Make sure you gather the appropriate permissions to continue follow-up on other events and future webcasts. The marketing consent tracking tool in GlobalMeet helps you share privacy policies and terms of service and allows attendees to opt-in to hear from you in the future.

Market Your Webcast with GlobalMeet

Whether you’re reaching 50 people or 100,000+ attendees, GlobalMeet Webcast is here to power your successful virtual events strategy. With custom branding opportunities, attendee engagement tools, and robust analytics, GlobalMeet makes virtual events a key pillar in your webcast marketing strategy.

 

Check our checklist for promoting your events and contact us for a demo today.

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3 Best Practices for Driving Inbound Leads in 2023

Inbound marketing is one of the most powerful marketing levers to pull in your business. Inbound marketing involves crafting high-quality, targeted content that attracts your ideal audience and builds a long-term relationship with them. This might be an annual e-book that is free to download once an email address is given or an on-demand video series. On the opposite hand, outbound marketing involves proactively reaching out to a customer through paid advertising or direct sales messages.

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Businesses love inbound marketing for various reasons; first of all, the ROI is high, and companies can see a solid return. Also, there are tons of automation platforms to make inbound marketing “always on” and easy. 76% of companies use some sort of automation to streamline, increase efficiency, and automate manual, repetitive tasks. Additionally, inbound marketing brings the customer to the business, allowing them to interact on the website, sign up for free downloads, register for online events, and more. It captures the audience in the content marketing flywheel and increases the frequency of exposure to the company.

 

When executed with a strong plan in place, inbound marketing can be one of the most profitable tools for your business. If you’re looking to polish up your inbound strategies, here are a few tips.

Best Practices for Driving Inbound Leads

1. Host a Variety of Webcasts

Webcasts help you attract, nurture, and retain customers cost-effectively and efficiently. A well-planned virtual events calendar throughout the year is constantly peppered with relevant educational topics your audience is interested in. For 45 minutes to an hour, attendees are actively engaged with your company, brand, and message. In the digital world, that’s a long time! When the average person only reads about 20% of a webpage or a blog post, capturing undivided attention for an hour is highly beneficial. Experiment with the format and style with an innovative webcast solution like GlobalMeet Webcast to see what resonates best with your audience.

 

2. Increase SEO Presence

SEO is one of the most significant drivers of inbound leads and revenue; after all, these are highly qualified, ready-to-buy users who are actively searching for a business or product like yours. 91% of businesses find SEO “very profitable,” so make sure your top-ranked pages include clear call-to-actions to demo or buy.

 

3. Repurpose Video Content

Video content is often long-form and requires more intensive work in editing and production; that being said, don’t just use a video once. If your business hosts an hour-long webcast, chop that up into digestible 10-minute videos and host them behind a gated form. Repurpose them into email nurture content or a welcome sequence when someone signs up for your newsletter. You can even re-post them on social media like LinkedIn or YouTube. Extend the shelf life of your webcasts by analyzing audience engagement metrics to see what topics resonated best with your audience, and dive deeper into those niches in new content down the road.

GlobalMeet Webcast for Inbound Marketing

Webcasts and videos are one of the most popular tools in inbound marketing, and an innovative webcast solution is critical to getting a virtual event strategy off the ground. GlobalMeet Webcast allows you to dive deep into robust analytics to measure your webcast’s effectiveness and helps you extend the shelf life of your content by creating on-demand recordings. For global inbound marketing, utilize live event translations and captioning to increase accessibility, and rest assured, knowing your inbound marketing webcast strategy is working when you’re not. Schedule a demo today to learn more.

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