After a whirlwind of a year, the dust is finally beginning to settle. So many things have changed, and are continuing to change, in the world of marketing, with events being the first thing on everyone’s mind. The fact is that virtual events are here to stay and embracing this new normal is crucial to staying afloat.
The content you’ll need for virtual marketing is a little different than in “normal” times because you’re losing a huge asset: in-person communication. But, there are ways to make up for this missed aspect of networking and brand building. We’ve put together a list of five types of content that are at the center of virtual events and may need to be reworked to get the most out of the events you’re hoping to (virtually) attend in the coming year.
1. Sales collateral
Sell sheets, whitepapers, eBooks and everything in between.
Getting a prospect in front of your sales team is increasingly more difficult in a virtual environment. Your sales collateral should be doing the heavy lifting by speaking for itself when your sales team can’t. The key to great collateral is providing value that the prospect can’t get on their own. Your collateral should be both easily accessible at the “event” and easy to comprehend by all attendees. For many prospects, your sales collateral will be their first look into your brand, so you want to make sure anyone who visits your exhibit knows exactly what your brand is and the story you’re trying to tell.
Using visual elements in your sales collateral is crucial to engagement as well. We’d all love for attendees to spend 30 minutes at our virtual booths, but that’s just not realistic with people navigating other sessions at the event, not to mention dealing with unhappy children or barking dogs on the other side of their screens. Utilizing infographics and images will help capture people’s attention and make it easier to view your collateral in a shorter amount of time.
2. Videos
Take your collateral one step further by bringing the human element back into it.
At in-person events, you would likely be interacting face-to-face with the attendees, and therefore creating personal relationships with them. Videos are a great way to spotlight your sales team without actually meeting anyone in person. These videos could be as simple as the sales representatives introducing themselves like they would at a regular event or explaining products and services that are not as easily digestible on a sell sheet. This will save attendees time and bring back the human element to doing business that we’ve all been missing.
Here’s an example of a video we made explaining one of our newer offerings, the Premium MAT Release. This video explains the whole process of this distribution service in an easy-to-understand format:
Another way you can utilize videos at events is to incorporate a way for visitors to schedule a short video call with one of your representatives as if they were speaking in person. If there’s one thing we’ve all gotten a lot better at this year, it’s video calls. Create a simple way for prospects to quickly schedule a 15-minute call to go over any collateral that interests them or to just learn more about your brand in general.
3. High-quality landing pages
Let your website do the talking for you.
Your website is the one asset that is available to attendees before, during and after an event whether or not a visitor has interacted with you at the event. Developing a landing page for the specific event is a great way to route traffic directly to your website and put all your relevant collateral in one place.
Include a prominent call-to-action to either get the website visitor to sign up for emails, set up a meeting with a product expert, or anything else that you see fit, to entice prospects who maybe didn’t have the chance to interact with any of your content at the event itself.
As you can see in the landing page we recently developed for the PRSA ICON event this month, we included a CTA button at the top that leads to a pop-up contact form, as well as information attendees would find useful about our company.
4. Blog posts
If you have valuable takeaways from the event, share it!
We all know how useful blog posts can be in attracting organic traffic, but don’t stop there. Create pre- or post-event blog posts that add value to attendees who are also navigating the virtual event environment. These types of articles are extremely valuable to marketers right now and make you look like the event expert you are. (What’s not to like about that?) Virtual events are new to everyone, so any insight you take away from the event is likely to catch someone’s attention.
For last year’s PRSA ICON, our team created event-specific content before and after:
- An interview with two of our team members on why they were so excited about going to the event, including pictures of the team so they’d be easily recognized and to personalize our company.
- An event round-up article, featuring thoughts on the conference itself from two of our VPs.
Secondly, if you know that there will be specific conversations and topics presented at your event, start developing content that relates to that now. That way, your sales team will be able to direct potential leads to content that answers relevant questions. Think of this as packing a toolbox for your sales team, so they have the perfect article for any situation. This post about getting coverage during the elections is a perfect example — a topic we’re sure will be brought up this year!
5. Email programs
Continue the conversation after the event.
Email programs aren’t anything new to event marketing, but without the sales team networking with other attendees in person, emails are more important than ever. This is a great way to build a one-on-one relationship with the prospects you did and did not get a chance to interact with throughout the event. Follow-up emails can redirect prospects to your event-specific collateral and tailor your messaging toward anything you took away from the event.
Nurture programs are also important after an event because not every prospect will be ready to talk to a sales representative and/or make a purchasing decision immediately after the event is over. Of course we know these things take time, but in the moment, it can be really frustrating to not get any leads moving through your sales funnel right away — trust me I’ve been there too. Use your email nurture streams as a chance for prospects to get to know your brand a little better over time. Hopefully you’ll stay top-of-mind, and eventually something you send their way will pique their interest enough to get the sales ball rolling.
Don’t let your event marketing slip in 2021!
The truth is: no one really knows what we’re doing when it comes to virtual events; for the past eight months everyone has just been figuring things out along the way. However, what we do know is that the most important tool to your virtual marketing strategy is to make space for real, genuine connections.
You may be a thousand miles and two computer screens away from each other, but it’s still very possible to make worthwhile connections. Let your content speak for itself and strategically plan when your sales team will step into the picture to take things from there.
If you’d like to learn more, check out Brandpoint’s creation and distribution services to start making a plan for your new and improved virtual marketing strategy!
