It’s true that recording video at your conference does require certain resources you may not have yet. This is a pitch for you to go on out and get those resources because the one thing more painful than not having a speaker show up is having that speaker show up, share some really valuable content, and then have an entire community miss out on it entirely.
In this article, we’re going to summarize the benefits of virtual attendance and provide some food for thought that could really electrify your growth this year.
There are two main reasons virtual attendance is worth the investment.The first is that it allows you to cater to and expand your audience. It allows audience members to reduce unnecessary travel and costs, and for the inclusion of people from other cities or countries that aren’t able to travel at all.Not only that, but it caters to preferences people may have for audio or video or even subtitles, all of which can be provided on the ConferenceCast platform.
Furthermore, virtual attendance has the potential to satisfy four key customer segments:
those who were interested in your conference but couldn’t make it to the event;
those who were able to attend but wanted to review content after the conference;
those who were able to attend but didn’t get to see all the tracks they were interested in;
those who were interested in your conference, weren’t planning to attend, but who like to learn things; e-learning is huge, with the global e-learning market projected to reach $325 billion by 2025;
The second key reason is that it allows you to generate more revenue to fuel your business. 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. This content can also be used for marketing and lead generation; it’s especially good for incentivizing speakers since having high-quality video of their talks to share with their networks is good for both their promotion and yours. Here are four more hidden advantages that I wanted to highlight:
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.
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.
Scale and grow your brand globally – videos 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 content.
Gain competitive advantage – virtual content is a great add-on that can increase the value of your tickets and allow you to differentiate yourself from other conferences.
We’d like to cite Julius from EventManagerBlog.com for three bonus reasons why video recordings are worth the resources:
Sustainability: Fewer people traveling means fewer carbon emissions from flights and a smaller carbon footprint for the event overall.
Reach: 74% of planners consider social media the most effective tool for event marketing, meaning there are valuable engagement opportunities online. Effective pre-event engagement online will give you an already captive audience that is more likely to be receptive to content (paid or otherwise).
Health and safety: As long as the coronavirus poses a threat, limiting in-person attendance reduces the risk of infection and spreading the virus, both through travel to and from the event and onsite.
And if you’re still not convinced, here’s one final reason from Chris Heilmann, from his article How can we make more people watch conference videos?” It’s one we wholeheartedly agree with – recordings of conference talks are great gifts to the community.
“Having recordings of conference talks is an amazing gift to the community. People who can’t afford to go to events or even can’t afford to travel can still stay up-to-date and learn about topics to deep dive into by watching videos. Easy to consume, short and to the point videos can be a great way to increase the diversity of our market.”
About ConferenceCast
ConferenceCast.tv is a marketplace for video content from business and industry conferences. We provide an ultimate platform that allows users to watch world-leading conferences on-demand and enables conference organizers to grow their reach exponentially.