Have you ever wondered when this global pandemic will end?
People from all around the world are still asking when exactly the pandemic will completely vanish.
During this pandemic, the digital industry are growing stronger, especially the virtual event industry. Virtual events industry forecasts are such an interesting topic to discuss due to the outbreak and the high demand of virtual event. To give a clearer vision on how virtual event industry will look like in the future, many of people looking for sources of virtual event industry forecasts.
Based on the market size analysis of Grand View Research, virtual event market size will grow up to 23.2% from 2020 – 2027 from its initial value of USD 77.98 billion in 2019. During this forecast period, the virtual event market growth will hit its highest rate in 2027. Hence, virtual event industry will last as a trend for the next few years in the event industry.
Are you one of those people who are curious about the opportunity and the forecast of virtual event industry in the next few years?
If yes, you are in the right place!
Here, we will discuss about the prediction of the virtual events industry from now until the next few years. Let’s check this out!
Technology will evolve to adapt in the rapid change of event industry
As the higher demand of virtual event industry in this year, event planners are challenged by the growing expectation of attendees to experience a better virtual event environment as their experience attending physical event, whether in a small event or large event with more than 1.000 attendees. To make it happen, the technology will continue to evolve time by the time to adapt with the demand and necessity of people in virtual event industry.
Attendees and speakers will demand digital infrastructure to make them more comfortable and easier to join and participate in the event itself. Therefore, the event planner must consider the best platform which applied the best digital technology.
One of platforms which provide great technology in virtual event industry is Whova. You, as the event planner, won’t suffer in preparing the logistics needs because Whova will give 60% time of managing event logistic for you. According to one of Bizzabo’s event industry statistics, up to 97% of professional event planners use agenda features in an event app to improve their performance. Here, Whova has the agenda feature to support you in holding the best event.
Don’t worry if you demand networking ideas for large groups such as exhibitions, job fairs, and education fairs, and business networking ideas such as office team buildings and annual conferences, Whova can do it all. Whova is also available in mobile and desktop version. It will increase the satisfaction both from the attendees and the event planners.
By the application of the right and newest digital technology, you, as an event planner, can obviously compete with other event planners from all around the world in living your online events ideas.
The quality competition is getting tighter
The outbreak of virtual event industry can’t be separated with the growing of conventional industry into digital industry transformation. Various companies compete with each other to win people’s heart. Those who can provide the best technology and the best quality of their event will be in the top.
What does it mean by quality of the virtual event?
The quality of virtual event is not solely about the technical aspects of the event, such as the technology used and the quality of the device such as camera quality and microphone quality and the platform, but also the quality of the event’s content, environment, and how the event planners manage to deliver the value and the content to the attendees virtually.
According to event industry outlook from Wild Apricot, event planners are facing a hard time when they try to deliver the value of their event in virtual environment. Therefore, one of important factor to win the competition is how you can keep the same standard and value of your event when you transforming your physical event into virtual event. Having various innovative events ideas have to be followed by the right application of high quality content to make your customer happy.
Doing a strong attendees’ profile analysis in your event will make it useful for you and the speakers to identify the best method to deliver the content for the audience and approach them whether it is in presentation or in discussion. You will find out what program and technique to deliver your value if you know your audience first.
The growth challenge in audience engagement
As the increasing of companies in delivering their virtual events ideas to society, event planners will face some challenges when they hold their virtual event during the growth of virtual event industry. One of the biggest challenge faced by event planners is the participants’ restless feeling of online calls.
It’s getting harder to get the attention and support of your attendees due to their boredom in attending a virtual event, perhaps every day.
To overcome this challenge you need to highlight the engagement of the attendees if you want to compete with other companies. Keeping the engagement does really take a big part in your attempt to gain their attention during your event. Give your audience a higher engagement experience.
How?
You can manage to insert live polls, Q&A sections, or mini virtual team games during your virtual event.
Managing engagement of your audience is easy to do. Using Whova will help you engaging your audience. What will Whova offer as their engagement features?
Whova gives an excellent way to update and engage with attendees through their Announcements features. Here, you can also use Live Polling, Community Board to do carpool and Q&A, Gamificatin, and other features to get your attendees’ interest and attention.
The engagement among the attendees is also the thing you should really consider in your event. Event industry are challenged in maintenance the engagement and networking of their attendees during their event since they can’t meet in person.
With Whova you can create great virtual networking event for your attendees through Attendee SmartProfiles, Group Chat, and One-on-One Chat features that can be accessed online or offline. You can also het other interesting features from Whova by clicking this.
Marketing will change their strategies
Through the changes of event industry, event marketing and promotion team will soon adopy the new event marketing strategies for their virtual event. Innovation must be included in the making of event marketing plant.
After doing some experiential marketing strategies, here are some event marketing types in virtual event as the adoption of in-person event marketing strategy:
- Signing your event in free event listing website – If you have less budget and still want to cope with the development of event industry, listing your event in website is one of the right choices to have. Besides it cost zero money, your event will have a bigger chance to be seen by people from all around the world.
- Hosting live stream in social media before the event – one of event marketing statistics said that 60% of people success holding their event when they approach social media users. Therefore, social media is the right way to promote your event. One of the types of event marketing you can do with social media is doing a live stream video in various popular social media platform such as TikTok and Instagram .
- Email Marketing – Email marketing still become the potential event marketing example for you. You can send your pre event email marketing to remind your audience and get their attention, then send post email marketing to express your gratitude and also to invite them to your next event.
- Online sponsor – Looking for online sponsor can be done easily through Whova which provides interesting features in sponsorship.
Event marketing companies will continue to adapt with the growing of virtual event industry. As long as event marketing team have the creativity and unlimit themselves, marketing will be such an easy thing to do.
The culture change
Yes, of course the culture of attending in-person event soon will be replaced by virtual event. As the habit of virtual event become the normal way to enjoy an event, people will get more comfortable attending the virtual event.
It’s important for event planners to understand the needs of the participant when everything finally gets normal in the future. Attending in-person event will be considered as an exclusive experience for people. It might cause people are too comfortable with virtual event and in-person event will experience the decrease of people’s demand.
Therefore, event planners should adapt with this condition. Hybrid event can be one of solutions for this issue. The audience now doesn’t want to attend event that last for few days. The demand of content that can be live streamed and saved will be predicted to touch its highest demand. This types of events model can replace the virtual event industry since event industry won’t stay the same forever.
Virtual event industry will always change and elevate through the time. The ideas for virtual events will also develop due to the demand of society. Therefore, event planners should adopt and adapt with the changing environment. After reading this article, now you know how you should act and react to the forecasts of virtual event industry.
Do you start to feel that virtual event industry takeover of your in-person activities completely?
Let us know through the comment section below!