Virtual Event Lead Generation Excellence

Looking into the near future, the trend towards digital and hybrid events will continue in 2021, when companies need to count even more on technology-fueled experiences. New strategies and concepts are required to transform virtual event formats into high-performing lead generation engines.

Faced with the pandemic, many companies switched their live marketing strategy quickly – some of them overnight. What used to happen face-to-face now moved to digital environments. For both buyers and companies, this represents a new experience.

With budgets fairly under scrutiny, the challenge is to take advantage of digital event opportunities and realize the full value that can be achieved with digital event formats in terms of lead generation.

Successful companies don’t wait, they take action.

Our long-standing experience in lead management for global companies is the cutting edge for you to revolutionise your demand generation processes.

YOUR CHALLENGES

For business leaders and marketers, it is extremely hard to predict what exactly is going to happen in 2021. What will follow the sudden and profound disruption in 2020? Will face-to-face events and trade shows ever return the way we have known them before? How can organisations reach webinar-tired audiences? What impact does ‘social distancing’ on the buyer side have on the way how companies should communicate with their audiences? And how can you eventually reach the number of leads you have generated with traditional measures before the pandemic?

Engagement marketing will be key in 2021. Successful demand generation remains a major challenge.

Especially in the area of digital events and congresses, where the focus is still strongly on technology instead of relevant business processes. While dashboards of currently available virtual event platforms only show limited or even biased performance data, relevant success drivers are often neither measured, nor considered.

Typical questions of our customers

• How do we choose the right platform for our virtual and hybrid events?
• How can we generate more and better leads with virtual and hybrid events?
• How can we use the level of engagement of digital and hybrid event attendees for lead qualification?
• How do we transform our previous lead classification and follow-up model to fit the assessment of digital data?
• What does actually drive digital event success, i.e. in terms of customer experience, brand communication, knowledge transfer and demand generation?
• What can we learn from customer interaction during a virtual event? And what does it mean for the follow-up phase?
• What can we improve to achieve better results with our next virtual or hybrid event?
• How do we process and transfer data and insights from a virtual event platform into our CRM?

OUR SOLUTION

In order to exploit the full potential of your virtual or hybrid event / congress, you need to align all event objectives and relevant business processes during the setup phase in good time before the event registration starts.

Especially third-party (virtual event) platform providers need to be clearly briefed and thoroughly guided to focus on relevant and insightful data rather than collecting a bunch of data that is technologically possible but not necessarily meaningful with regards to your information needs. To make good use of event interaction data for example, you need to define upfront what counts as a ‘meaningful interaction’ – i.e. exclude non-relevant activities automatically logged by the platform.

Lead generation and lead classification measures need to be strategically defined and implemented in the event design to optimize all lead generation touchpoints pre, during and post digital event. A reliable lead process and a user-oriented and interaction focused storyline that includes smartly placed contact points for ‘handraisers’ is a basic requirement.

Clever insight reports based on behavioral event attendee data and targeted surveys shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of your concept – both in terms of customer experience and demand generation measures.