With the global pandemic and its huge impact on the world, we all know how difficult it was to keep the business running. Last year, hosting virtual events was an alternative to on-site events. But, today organizing virtual meetings, conferences, fests, exhibitions, etc are everyone’s first choice.
Virtual events are a great option to promote brand awareness and expand their reach to global delegates.
Let’s go through some best ideas and practices that can be considered during virtual fests:
Have a Clear Vision
Firstly, you have to determine what kind of virtual fest you wish to host. With clear goals set in your mind regarding the virtual event, you can expect the proposed outcomes to fall in place.
Target Your Audience
This is a very important factor that should be considered especially during virtual fests. The attendees you wish to invite will depend on various factors – the quality of acts, date & timing of the virtual fest, the count of attendees you wish to expect at the event, etc primarily these are the factors to gauge the success of the virtual fest.
Create a business strategy. Are you intending it at the correct demographic? Are you adhering to the attendee’s expectations?
Once you’ve discovered your target audience, you have to ensure the audience who showed interest, stay till the execution of the virtual fest. This compels you to consider making your virtual fests extraordinary to recreate the experience of on-site fests.
Create a Compelling Landing Page
The foremost thing that you expect while hosting virtual fests, is maximum participation. To spread awareness about your virtual fest, make sure to create an exciting landing page that will draw more attendees. Consider including the date & time along with the registration link for your virtual fest to avoid missing out on any new registration.
Choose the Right Virtual Fest Platform
While determining the most suitable virtual fest platform, make sure to validate if the platform leverages the right technology. Since you’ll be having virtual attendees involved who are just one click away from getting sidetracked, ensure that the platform has the ability to keep your attendees engaged throughout.
Right from having dynamic banners, a 3D environment, boosted engagement, excellent networking opportunities to meaningful data collection, consider choosing a virtual event platform that can incorporate all these features seamlessly.
Customizable Interface
Virtual fests are all about connecting and interacting with new people. Keeping this in mind, Dreamcast includes an excellent DIY booth builder. This is an amazing virtual event booth that can be used by both attendees and sponsors to initiate relevant discussions and make the most of virtual events.
The customizable features also include designing dynamic banners, animated light at the lobby, or an immersive 3D environment.
Content Sharing
Virtual festivals are normally made on content, therefore, sponsors can easily display their organization’s visual components through the platform like brochures, videos, guide books, posters, keynote sessions, and many more. This should be downloadable content that will enable attendees to keep it secure for future reference; if they feel like getting in touch with any of them, post the virtual fest.
Live Chat and Video for Networking
By using in-built chat, audio, and video features, businesses can conveniently develop relationships with people of the same interest. This will eventually drive the way for more lead conversion and better ROI. Moreover, with group chat features delegates can interact with various prospects at the same time by communicating on a real-time basis.
Gamification
Keeping your attendees engaged throughout the virtual event is a very important task. Including exciting games such as spin the wheel, word games, crosswords, etc in your virtual event makes your task a lot easier.
You can also consider keeping a leaderboard challenge that will award points for each game you win. Keep an exciting giveaway for the one who scores the highest. This will raise a feeling of excitement among the attendees who will most likely take part in these games during the breaks.
Collect the Insights of the Attendees
Virtual fest platforms provide convenient access to real-time participant data right from the count of registrations, the navigation behavior, to the most liked features. Moreover, event planners can monitor the execution of their events via detailed reports and data obtained from the dashboard panel. These reports and insights will help estimate the ROI of the virtual fest. Along with that, organizers will come to know about certain pointers that did not work well. This will further help in making the necessary changes to host virtual fests even better.
The Right Marketing Efforts
How do you wish to promote your brand? Make sure to decide on a budget that you wish to spend for promotion. Make the most of social media platforms to spread the word regarding your virtual fest. Keep posting updates, pictures, and videos on channels like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Email marketing and paid advertisements are some other great options that can be exercised to promote and advertise your virtual fest.
Trade fests are an excellent way for companies to display their products and services. Be it a career fest, job, or youth fest, such virtual events help sponsors to find convertible leads from any part of the world. Since the virtual venue is the new standard, from convenience and inclusivity to reduced costs, virtual festivals hold immense benefits and vast scope for the future.
With a proper vision, strategy, and technology in place, you can consider the virtual venue a great chance to deliver engaging, informative, and remarkable experiences to attendees.
If you wish to expand the reach of your virtual fests, get in touch with one of the top virtual event platforms, Dreamcast!
