Our favorite word around the office lately has been “pivot”. Now more than ever, digital event strategies and digital pivots are trending. How do you create a digital experience that compares to a live event? What approach do you need to take to translate your live event messaging into an impactful digital experience?
Because event activation and event marketing has experienced a digital transformation, businesses both big and small are transitioning to online events and virtual practices. While your digital event strategy will be the cornerstone of building, engaging and retaining your audience, you can’t forget to take it back to the basics to sharpen your digital event strategy to ensure you maximize your impact.
Have Answers to the Right Questions
When you’re gearing up to deploy a virtual event, there are a multitude of questions you must be prepared to answer. One key question you need to answer is, “What are the critical aspects of your live event that you want to preserve and carry forward?” The foundation of any virtual event needs to be built upon delivering as much value as possible to your audience. Whether you are planning and executing a global conference, product launch or virtual event series, be sure to be proactive in every touchpoint in the digital event journey. By anticipating questions, needs and desires you will successfully capture a purposeful narrative that elicits emotions and fosters a genuine connection.
Create the Digital Experience
Once you’ve identified what you want to carry forward from the physical event, the next step is mapping the experience. In addition to enhancing the vision to go virtual be sure to create a robust blueprint. From pre-event planning, on-site logistics to the run of show and post event data capture, determine the goals and let those objectives drive every element of the virtual event journey. Some of the most important aspects to address include content design (keynotes, sessions, demos), theme and brand development, visual look and feel ideation, user experience design, and production design.
Optimize, Optimize, Optimize
Once you reach the content creation and speaker preparation phase, planning ahead is critical. Plan the setting for your live stream, book your production crews and prepare your speakers, sessions and activities. This is the foundation and a valuable tool for evaluating success and optimizing your virtual event during and following each digital activation.
Make sure your speakers record any virtual presentations well ahead of time and ensure they’re educated on any digital tools you plan to deploy. Do they know how to engage audiences on webinars with surveys, polls, Q&As, social media? These not only boost engagement but provide important outlets to measure engagement and collect data.
The most important thing is ensuring your digital experience is meeting the needs of your audience. Does it accomplish what they’re looking for?
Avoid Mistakes
Despite existing circumstances forcing brands to make quick decisions to pivot to a digital event strategy, it’s dire to have a digital plan in place well in advance. Approach the virtual experience from multiple lenses to mitigate unforeseen challenges.
While digital events should be part of every brand’s strategy, it could be detrimental to go in blind. Ensure you execute with precision. Success is key no matter if the event is digital or in-person. So, don’t just dream up an event and expect it to go flawlessly. Plan and prepare for every event element down to the most minor detail.
Brands Doing it Right Now
Allison Transmission, Inc.
Delta Faucet Company
Barilla
Adobe Summit
The New York Times
As a marketing agency, KM&A is uniquely qualified to help our clients swiftly and pivot their experiential plans. If you’re facing challenges due to the cancellation or postponement of a trade show or an event, contact us today to discuss how KM&A can help you connect with your clients and reach your goals in these arduous times.
If you or your company is looking for assistance at this time, you can connect with us to learn more about our marketing and advising services!
