Complete Collapse for the Event Industry or the Beginning of a New Era?
That’s a first thought that comes to mind when you see the large list of canceled events impacted by a global pandemic.
“Coronavirus has taken the event industry by storm. Many events have been canceled and sponsors are pulling out of their commitments. Is cancellation the only option?” — Julius Solaris, Founder and Editor in Chief at EventMB
Crises can lead to new opportunities
In a 1959 speech, John F. Kennedy famously said: “When written in Chinese, the word "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">‘crisis’ is composed of two characters — one represents danger and one represents opportunity.” Although today it is widely recognized that this is "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">not the correct interpretation of the Chinese characters, President Kennedy’s wisdom about a crisis yielding unique opportunities may be more important than ever.
Sometimes the world needs a crisis to show us how challenges can be turned into opportunities.
The event industry will never be the same and will have to re-adjust for the new reality. However, as always, crises can lead to new opportunities and whether you’ll be able to sustain your event business or not is the matter of being able to navigate the changes and making a pivot quickly. Events can move online and gladly there are many opportunities and services to do a really fantastic virtual event with networking, Q&A and many more other really great benefits that a virtual event offers.
“Now it’s time to learn these things that we’ve been talking since 2008” — Julius Solaris, Founder and Editor in Chief at EventMB Any marketing expert or executive will tell you there is simply no substitute for in-person. There are many events that simply have no good alternatives, either. Most trade shows, product demos, user conferences, etc are a hands-on model, and this can not be replicated virtually.
However, other types of events like business conferences, summits, meetups, presentations and panel discussions can be easily turned into a virtual format. Some large organizations like Google (with their cancellation last week of Cloud Next ’20) and Collision are able to seamlessly transition their events into an online-only format due to their robust process for hosting hybrid events, while other smaller companies more unfamiliar with the use of live streaming are having to drink through a firehose.
They now have to research and try to migrate their committed event scope, agendas, speakers, sponsorships and communication strategies into an online format while mitigating the loss of their overall event impact [financial, strategic, benchmark growth, etc.] No small feat.
Live stream components have been well established as a useful event tactic with solid ROI, becoming an expected event offering by event attendees, even before the looming pandemic. But now, within the confines of the health crisis, several event planners and organizations are having to hurriedly turn to an “online-only” format for the first time.
New opportunities for the event industry
Opportunity to benefit from many great virtual tools and be creative
Just remember that it is possible to go full-scale with an interactive virtual event that mimics a physical conference in terms of layout, design, navigation, and engagement. Although this is a slightly pricier alternative, it offers a variety of highly useful features that contribute directly to your virtual conference success for a minimal price. There are virtual events platforms that deliver immersive virtual conferences where users can leverage live webcast, Q&A, polling and forms to network and exchange ideas.
You can also be creative about planning digital sponsorships and organizing virtual booths.
Opportunity to scale and grow your event globally
Virtual events are easy to distribute and scale worldwide. Just imagine how many people from Eastern Europe or Australia might be interested in your conference but aren’t really able to travel halfway around the world to participate. I’d bet they’d be willing to pay for virtual attendance.
Other benefits that virtual events have include: greater reach since the barrier to entry is low. It allows you to cater to and expand your audience. It’s accessible to people with mobility issues, introverts, there are no plane tickets, hotels, babysitters, missed work, etc).
It’s easier to recruit speakers since they can be anywhere in the world. Certain formats permit ongoing Q&A so the engagement skyrockets when attendees can have ongoing conversations together and with speakers during the entire event.
Crowdsourcing ideas or polling attendees is easier when they’re all already sitting in front of a computer (sponsors love this too).
Videos can provide measurable analytics — being able to see what content gets more views and more traction can help you understand what your audience is really looking for, helping you produce a more targeting marketing plan. Sure, you can survey your live audience at or after the event, but chances are that’s a lot more costly and time-consuming.
You can get insights and valuable feedback directly from your audience — analyzing the comments section to see what people liked, didn’t liked, or wish they could see allows you to produce more valuable content in the future.
Opportunity to do on-demand streaming
Virtual attendance allows you to rework and share content long after the event has ended — just consider how many resources you invest in each event. This creates a recurring stream of revenue.
What’s great about live streaming and virtual conferences, is that the event can be recorded and you get a video recording almost immediately with your valuable content that can be shared with more audiences globally. By re-using your conference videos and streaming them on-demand behind the paywall you allow participants the chance to see and experience what they missed by not attending the live stream and also you’re leveraging your existing content to grow your event business.
You can stream your conference on-demand behind the paywall long after the event ended through the ConferenceCast marketplace and our white-label solution.
You can read more about how you can extend the lifecycle of your event by streaming your conference videos on-demand with ConferenceCast solution here.
Opportunity to position your content as a new form of e-learning
When you think about the target audience for your conference videos try to look beyond your current audience and conference attendants. There are people who like to learn things (growing e-learning numbers are proving this fact). They are looking for online courses, podcasts, books, and other resources to learn the latest trends, tools or interesting cases in their industry. Moreover, they are willing to pay for the knowledge and content that could help them grow as professionals.
Before many conference organizers were not recording their events and believed that their audience would not see the value in the talk videos. However, there are millions of professionals looking for the tools to stay up-to-date with their industries and conference talk videos is a perfect resource for that. Potentially tapping into a self-paced eLearning market of $34M could be a great opportunity to grow.
Opportunity to explore new models and markets
Moreover, there is a tremendous potential for conferences to explore opportunities in the Corporate Learning sector (if not immediately, then later on). Conference videos can fit very nicely in Corporate Learning & Development (L&D) departments. Many L&D and HR departments seek this type of platform to reach their remote staff as well and ensure their staff gets the latest learning in the industry.
