4 Inconvenient Truths Virtual Event Platforms Wish You Would Never Learn About
Each issue could be hurting your conference ratings and event registrations right now
Introduction:
As human beings, we love live events, the physical type. This instinctual love for group gathering dates back to our tribal ancestor days. They provide so much value to the attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, speakers, and everyone else involved. However, during this pandemic year, we were forced to live with a less awesome alternative: virtual conferences.
In this special report, I will reveal to you 4 inconvenient truths that most virtual conference platforms wish you would never learn about. Each issue could be hurting your conference ratings and event registrations right now.
Inconvenient Truth #1: Low user engagement sucks the life out of any virtual conference
Have you accidentally attended a boring virtual conference before? We have all been there and skipped out after the first 15 minutes. The moment you saw that it looks like another video call or another webinar, you wondered to yourself, “Why can’t I just watch this at a later time?”
Imagine you are the event organizer on the other end. You may not even know your event was boring because those people who left early would rarely bother to tell you about it. You just have a hunch that something was not quite right.
Low user engagement often has its roots in the event format. In a webinar, information flows one-way, making attendees feel powerless. People don’t respond to private messages or invitations to chat because they are multitasking or away from keyboard. Then it starts a vicious cycle. The less engaging the experience appears to be, the fewer attendees will stick around and pay attention. With no one around to interact with, there is even less of a reason to be there live.
Inconvenient Truth #2: There is almost no value for sponsors and exhibitors
Many virtual event platforms are simply displaying a sponsor / exhibitor’s logo, text, and media information in a small square, along with pages and pages of squares. They often look very condensed with little room for interaction or creativity. The attendees might as well just google the exhibitors’ websites themselves.
As far as incremental lead generation goes, these formats often:
- Fail to achieve an ROI on par or higher than pay-per-click digital marketing
- Fail to move prospects further down the sales conversion cycle
In other words, there is almost no value-add for sponsors and exhibitors if the virtual event platform doesn’t offer real-time interactions and creative virtual show floors.
Inconvenient Truth #3: Speakers hate talking to a wall
The typical silence of the audience at these virtual events make speakers feel like they are talking to a wall. Speakers used to be able to gauge audience interest by their reactions and adapt their speaking style accordingly. Subconsciously, speakers want that feeling of speaking to a crowd of attentive listeners. The energy of the audience pushes speakers to deliver higher performance. Unfortunately, with the current 1-way broadcast in many virtual event platforms today, the speakers are struggling to get that energy. They often feel like their words weren’t heard by enough people and start to question whether speaking at the virtual event was worth their time.
Inconvenient Truth #4: Real attendance is often much lower than registration numbers
Some virtual event platforms today seem to bridge the gap and have similar or even higher levels of registrations than physical live event counterparts, but here is the other elephant in the room: the real live attendance is way down. Because the tickets are cheaper or free, because there is less perceived value or reasons for being there live, many people end up missing the event they registered for.
Event organizers are struggling to get enough people to show up at virtual events, even though there is no travel required! Also, what’s the point of showing up anyways? It’s not like you could see the crowd or feel the vibe. Some event organizers opted for quantity over quality approach, but this really diminishes the prestige of each single event, making them less appealing and result in fewer repeat customers.
Summary:
Many virtual event platforms today happen to be fixer-uppers put together in a rush to capitalize on the pandemic opportunity and as a result were poorly-designed. They are often plagued with the 4 inconvenient truths: low user engagement, low value for sponsors and exhibitors, low energy for speakers, and low attendance.
As an event organizer, you should be aware of these issues when selecting your virtual event platform partner. There are great technologies out there today that could solve some of these challenges, but you must choose wisely. In a future post, we will do a market landscape analysis of the virtual event platforms and provide further insights.
Want to learn more? Download the “5 Secret Sauces of a Successful Virtual Conference” eBook for free at this link.
