9 GREAT NEW IDEAS FOR VIRTUAL EVENTS YOU CAN HOST

- Bill Gates

The above quote was said in the year 2013, but I guess it has become a reality now more than ever. With a deadly virus spreading around the world, people are restricted from leaving their houses. With social distancing becoming a norm, now, more and more companies are shifting to virtual events to ensure that business still goes on as usual.

Why conduct virtual events you ask? Firstly, by organizing events online you are ensuring that you companies employees stay in touch and keep refreshing their skills. Secondly, online events are a lot cheaper to organise for the simple reason that you do not have to spend on an expensive venue, everyone attends from their own homes. No travel costs of sending your employees to fancy places for conferences or off-sites. Lastly, since everything is happening online, you can focus on organising sessions or getting quality speakers and experts to speak to your employees from any part of the world! Hence conducting online events not only increases your reach but also offers you a much better return on investment (ROI). This keeps you as well as your employees happy.

Mentioned below are some interesting virtual events you could conduct, especially as the covid-19 lockdown keeps us all restricted to our homes.

1. WEBINARS

While employees are forced to work from home, you could organise webinars and online training sessions for your employees. In this way you could ensure that employees stay updated with your skills and knowledge of the business, while sitting in the comfort of their homes.

2. ONLINE WORKSHOPS

Engage your employees in online training sessions and workshops. Not just talks related to your business, you could also organise workshops for photography or music. Creative sessions will help keep your employees refreshed especially when they can’t get out of the house.

3. VIRTUAL PRODUCT LAUNCHES.

Don’t put your business on hold just because of a lockdown. Launch your company’s new product online instead. This way you can launch your product to a global audience rather than staying local. You get a larger audience and your brand and product get more exposure. It’s a lot more cost efficient and fun.

4. VIRTUAL CONFERENCES

Use virtual platforms to organise conferences for your employees. You could get a good list of speakers and resource people to speak. An all in one event app such as Mavent Tech can be used to organise the conference. Speakers can share their sessions’ information and documents with attendees. You could either make the sessions free from your employees and make outsiders pay for it; or you could make it free for all, it's really your choice. It would also be extremely easy to see who all have checked into the conference because it’s all happening online.

5. Q&A SESSIONS

A Q&A session is an extremely good chance to let your employees clear doubts about the business or anything else. It is basically an interview organised, where employees can ask questions to industry experts. Best done in small groups, Q&A sessions are a great opportunity to get you and your employees to stay on top of the up and coming trends in your industry.

6. LIVE GAMES

Instead of just having sessions and meetings the entire day (which can just as easily become really boring) organise some fun and virtual games for your employees to play. You can probably organise them once a week or once in 2 weeks to keep your employees motivated, fresh and enthusiastic.

7. ONLINE CONCERTS AND COLLABS

Yes! These too can be done online!! Get in touch with some local bands or musicians and ask them to collaborate and put up a show for you. If any of your employees are singers or instrumentalists, get them to perform for the rest of the team! The only difference between this and an actual concert is that here, the audience will be comfortable at home, and even the performers will be recording from the comfort of their own homes or studios.

8. ONLINE PRODUCT DEMOS

You can still on-board customers by giving them virtual or online demos. In this way you could still keep in touch with your potential customers.Yes they are just as effective.

9.VIRTUAL QUIZZES

Engaging your customers is the key factor of CRM especially during unprecedented times like these. Quizzes are a great way of getting your customers/ clients to keep in touch via social media platforms. Ask questions relating to your industry, latest trends, or pop culture in general. All of this will help you understand your consumers' perception of your brand, company and industry at large. Pop in a bit of trivia in those quizzes as well and make it a learning experience for all. This continuous customer engagement would increase customer loyalty which is always good for business.

And don't forget, you could also...

You could incentivise your event attendees to engage in your online events. You could send physical goody bags by mails to the winners’ houses. While doing this would keep customers involved with the brand, it would also increase brand awareness drastically.

In this way it’s extremely easy to keep both employees and customers engaged with the help of virtual events. While virtual events aren’t completely new, they definitely are catching on now more than ever. Who knows, they might just become the new norm!

Do you want to organise a virtual event online? Contact us and we’ll be able to help you out!