Implementing virtual events is challenging

Anh Do December 19, 2023

Implementing virtual events is challenging

At the present, technology has become a vital part of our everyday life and its growth is increasing rapidly. Do you know that globally, there are almost 5 billion internet users, and 600,000 more join that total every day on average? Furthermore, it is said that in the past 2 years, 90% of the world data was created. Those numbers really tell us how technology involved significantly in our life. As for the event industry, technology also effects on how events operate, especially since the Covid 19 pandemic. With the appearance of artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid events, virtual reality, event planners have to adjust and change for those advanced technology in order to organize events. In this paper, I will focus on virtual events.

Virtual event

First, let’s get to know what virtual events are. An online meeting that happens virtually rather than in person is known as a virtual event. It is also recognized as virtual conference, online event, or streaming experience. Another term for "virtual event" is an online gathering that takes place in an augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) environment (Optimizely, 2023). Some examples of virtual events are virtual conference, virtual summits, hybrid events, webinars, online product launch and so on.

Virtual event types

As mentioned before, when Covid 19 happened, there has been a rise in virtual events. According to a ResearchAndMarkets report, between 2021 and 2028, the global market of virtual events is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.7%, with a potential value of over $500B. This is probably because of its advantages, especially during the social distancing period. Accessibility is a strong point of these online events. Virtual events can overcome the barriers of time, distance, and mobility that may prevent some people from attending in-person events. To participate in a virtual event, simply click on the provided link. That really shows us how easy and simple to join in virtual events. One more impressive benefit of online event is cost effectiveness. Virtual events can reduce the expenses associated with travel, venue, catering, and other logistics. Compared to live events, it might be up to 75% less expensive. Data collection is also a benefit brought by virtual events. Event organizers can monitor and examine how attendees engage with the hosts, content, and other partakers with the use of virtual event data. The value and impact of the event can also be measured. The information can be used to assess how well the networking, content, and marketing efforts are functioning (Jain, 2021).The challenges, however, also come along when organizing online events. Insufficient technical expertise and support is one of the difficulties. One in five event planners stay away from virtual events because they need the necessary infrastructure and technical expertise (Khan, 2023). Virtual events require reliable and user-friendly technology to deliver a smooth and engaging experience (Virtual days, 2022). Merely 30% - 35% of registered participants in the Asia Pacific area attend a 60 - 90 clinical webinar because they may face technical difficulties or challenges in accessing the event platform. With not enough knowledge and support from technical experts, it may lead to bad audience experience, which resulted in a bad image of that event agency. With that small number of attendees in virtual events, we can see another problem is the lack of audience engagement. As opposed to in-person events, attendees are twice as likely to find virtual events uninteresting, and over 25% of attendees only watch 20% of the online session (Bizzabo, 2022). I think there is a low engagement because the content of virtual events doesn’t stand out. The content may be too long and boring or even irrelevant to the audience. Lacking interaction among attendees and presenters can also results in this issue. In reality, 90% of respondents to a survey acknowledged multitasking in online meetings.

To solve these problems, it’s the event manager’s duty. These are some possible solutions. As for the first one, which is related to technicalissues, the manager should have his/her employees to join in some online events to know how they operate. Learning from reality is a good experience for event organizers. Event planners should also search for suitable platforms to hold virtual events smoothly, such as, Zoom, Hopin, Gatherly. In my opinion, hiring video production specialists is a great option. Experts in video production are knowledgeable about every aspect of livestreaming. Moreover, they can organize pre-event rehearsals for your events’ speakers, emcees, and other involved parties. This may suit best for events on large scale. To increase the audience engagement, preparing a decent content strategy is needed. Event workers should adapt the content to the online format, making it shorter, more visual and more tailored to the audience. Create each part with goals, event professionals can consider breaking up virtual events into categories based on their objectives, like lead nurturing, lead conversion, and lead creation. Applying online engagement tools, such as, polls, surveys, Q&A, live chat, can also be useful for interacting among participants. Effective networking opportunities are essential for virtual events to ensure success and engagement. One way to establish connections is to provide people a list of other attendees before the event so they know who to watch out for (Chazen, 2023).

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