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Taking Your In-Person Events Digital
Taking Your In-Person Events Digital
In-Person
Events Digital
CREATE ENGAGING DIGITAL EVENTS THAT SCALE
As any marketer can tell you, few things are as effective in the sales process as human-
to-human engagement. Which is why, even in the world of digital marketing, in-person
events rank as the No. 1 demand gen tactic. But, with increased travel restrictions and
budgets requiring data-backed ROI, event marketers are looking to digital alternatives to
maximize event experiences.
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PHYSICAL EVENTS ARE LIMITED IN
THEIR REACH AND EXPENSIVE TO
PRODUCE
What are The Limitations of In-Person Events?
PWC saves 97% of event cost
• In-person events are costly in time, resources and money
by going digitaL
• Digital solutions can help you recover ROI from sunk costs
like branding and speakers
READ THE STORY
• They can also insulate your event from uncontrollable
events, like severe weather, travel restrictions and more
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TWO APPROACHES TO DIGITAL EVENTS
When creating a digital event strategy, there are two approaches: creating a hybrid digital and in-person event, or going all in with a digital
approach. Here are some items to consider when assessing whether you should complement your in-person event with digital experiences
or replace it outright.
Hybrid In Person + Digital Strategy conference. Here, using a variety of digital tools, such as special
landing pages, dedicated content hubs and commercial breaks
Hybrid events allow you to mix both in-person and digital throughout the course of your virtual event, can help.
experiences, giving your gathering a sense of immediateness
both online and off. With a hybrid event, you’ll need to identify Consider how to break up your event’s content into separate
the speakers and sessions you want to highlight digitally or experiences. Content hubs targeted landing pages can also
broadcast live. You’ll also want to consider how you can engage connect audiences with topics and tracks by industry, position
and communicate with your virtual audiences during sessions, or interest.
much like you might in an in-person event. It’s relatively
simple to have speakers respond to Q&A sessions from digital Plan ahead and use simulive features as often as you can. Since
audiences. They can also push polls and surveys. Both options your speakers will be distributed across various networks,
allow you to easily capture engagement information. there’ll be more opportunities for things to go wrong. Have your
speakers record special virtual presentations ahead of time and
Also consider offering downloadable resources in your virtual save yourself from last-minute catastrophes.
event. Both online and in-person audiences will want copies of
the slides, reports, whitepapers and case studies that a As a side note: If you decide to take advantage of simulive, make
speaker presents. sure you educate your speakers on how to engage a virtual
audience throughout a webinar with polls, surveys, social and
If you go a hybrid route, make sure you maintain your event’s Q&A tools. This helps draw virtual audiences in, provides a more
branding experience. This way, both in-person and virtual engaging experience and generates engagement data.
attendees get a similar experience—and, if an in-person
attendee visits your on-demand virtual event, they get the same Decide if you’ll use broadcast video for your keynote speakers
branded experience as they did in-person. ahead of time. This brings HD-quality video to your experiences,
but it does require a good deal of planning between you, your
On that note: make sure your in-person attendees are aware of speakers, your venue and your webinar provider.
your virtual event. Coworkers and peers who couldn’t attend
may want to tune in. And if you’re making your event available To add another layer of engagement for your virtual audiences,
on demand, in-person attendees can refer to your digital library gamify events and presentations by offering contests and
of other sessions they may have missed. rewards for attending specific presentations. At the end of each
session, easily lead each attendee to another, review related
Increase the value for your sponsors by giving them dedicated material or contact you with call-to-action (CTA) tools.
areas to promote their content or participate in conversations.
Virtual chat rooms are a great option. So are targeted landing Finally, get audience feedback: Ask your attendees how the
pages created specifically for an event or presentation. event went before they log off, this way you can understand
where you succeeded and where you can improve on your
next iteration.
Creating a Fully Digital Conference
Once your event is over, push it to on-demand so attendees can
Running a fully digital conference or trade show means taking
come back and reference your sessions or attend sessions that
a creative approach to how you run a physical event. You
may have overlapped in a live event. Virtual events are a great
need to organize sponsors and partners and decide how to
way of providing attendees with the opportunity to view
split up leads, promote sponsors and more during a virtual
every session.
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GIVE SPONSORS WHAT THEY NEED
Incorporating sponsors into your event is a great way to
demonstrate your brand’s inclusivity into a broader ecosystem.
And particularly with in-person events, it’s a great way to help
offset some of the expenses. So when event marketers are taking
their events digital, many ask the question “can I still plan for
sponsorship revenue?” Absolutely.
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LEVERAGE THE ON24 PLATFORM TO
EXECUTE ENGAGING DIGITAL EVENTS
Just like your in-person event, hosting a digital event with ON24
allows you to easily capture registration and attendance data, plus the
added bones of capturing detailed audience engagement and content
performance insights.
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LEVERAGE WEBINARS TO STREAM AND
PRODUCE ALL YOUR KEYNOTES AND
EVENT SESSIONS
ON24 Webcast Elite
• Whether your event is hybrid or fully digital, you can deploy • Engage and communicate with your virtual audiences during
a host of video options including broadcast quality video sessions like you might at an in-person event through Q&A,
streaming from a live in-person event or easily use webcams polls, surveys, group chat and more
to connect speakers to present their sessions
• Leverage CTAs in your webinars or at the end of a session to
• Host your conference sessions Live, Simulive or On-demand! promote your next session, send audience members back to
the main digital experience, or send them to contact a sales
» Live—host a live speaker or panel session rep or to a sponsors website/content
» Simulive—pre-record sessions and host them as live • Make your event highly accessible with automated
sessions for the audience captioning. Scale programs globally with flexible, multi-
language captioning capabilities. The ON24 Platform
» On-Demand—pre-record sessions for audiences to supports the ability to auto-translate captions into more
access at any time than 60 languages.
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HOST YOUR EVENT IN AN ON24
ENGAGEMENT HUB OR VIRTUAL
ENVIRONMENT
ON24 Engagement Hub
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CUSTOMIZE CONTENT LANDING PAGES
TO PROMOTE EVENTS AND SHOWCASE
KEY SESSIONS
ON24 Target
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