5 Virtual Events Tips From Our Client Services Team
2020 saw virtual events being adopted across the globe. While virtual events weren’t a completely new phenomenon, there had never been the need that we all saw last year. Many event professionals had to upskill and adapt to bring their in-person events into the virtual world. Our event operations team was no different. In the latter half of 2020 we successfully managed and executed up to 20 virtual conferences and events and boy did we learn a thing or two. Here 5 virtual event tips from our Client Services team.
Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse
We asked our virtual events team about what their number one tip for virtual events was and rehearsals was the top of everyone’s list. For an in-person event, you might set aside two or three days for pre-event preparations, set up, rehearsals and sound checks. It’s easy to think that because it’s now going virtual that you don’t need as much time as before, but remember, your speakers and guests may not be used to virtual events and engaging with a virtual audience. They may not know how to naturally address various cameras if they’re in studio, or if they’re joining remotely, how to angle themselves correctly onscreen. Rehearsal time is really important to iron out any technical issues and to plan for any connectivity or dial in issues for speakers.
Event Running Orders Become Technical Running Orders
Before the pandemic, in the in-person world of events, we would arrive onsite each morning with a binder full of information for the day ahead. Our event bible, our ERO (event running order). We would have an hour by hour run of events, know when transfers were due, rooming lists, tee-shirt sizes, and much more.
Pivoting to the world of virtual meant fine-tuning this process down further. We need to be second by second to ensure important cues arent missed, speakers are on time, briefed and brought live on stream at exactly the right moment for the show flow to run meticulously.
Change Your Speaking Slots for Virtual Concentration
Virtual event fatigue is a real thing. People are in front of their screens for the majority of the working day and attention spans are shorter. While keynote talks of 30 minutes used to get great feedback from your delegates, 30 minutes is too long for the average virtual event attendee. For an in-person event, delegates are away from their desks and normal day to day work. They have to bandwidth to sit and listen for longer lengths of time. For virtual event attendees, they’re on their work computer with emails and calls still coming through.
We’ve seen great success from giving speakers a 15-minute speaking slot. It makes the speaker be more concise and careful with their words resulting in higher satisfaction scores from attendees.
A Great Virtual Event Needs A Great Budget
The most common misconception with virtual events is that it is cheap. Venue rentals, accommodation, transport, catering, and entertainment costs are swapped out for studio rental, production facilities, technical event engineers, virtual event software in order to provide a flawless output to your delegates.
If you want to replicate a high-quality in-person event in the virtual world, you need to budget for amounts close to your last in-person event for similar production quality. If you want to include audience engagement and entertainment, you need to budget for that. If you want your sponsors to have the best experience, you’ll want to give them sponsor areas and booths that encourage attendees to engage, so you need to budget for that.
Innovative uses of technology are worth the investment.
Start Your Sponsor Planning Early
If your event has sponsors, start the planning process early and include your sponsors where you can in order to keep them happy.
Let them know what booth options are available so they know exactly how their content will be displayed and how they navigate their online booth and the opportunities they have for connecting with attendees during the virtual event.
Where you can, ensure sponsors all have the same set up e.g. booths and booth features are all the same, don’t offer to change one element of a booth for one sponsor and not another, this creates differentiation and can leave other sponsors feeling irritated and they complain.
Unless you have a gold sponsor, for example, where they are paying a lot more than then rest of the sponsors, they yes, they might have a different booth a more branding across the platform but generally speaking, if you sponsors are all on the same level – limit what you say yes to.
Keep them looped in at all planning stages and set expectations with sponsors early, so they know what is expected from them, clear timelines and what is and isn’t possible in terms of branding, content, booth design and even analytics.
