How to Monetize Virtual Events? With the technology’s development through these past decades, the not so recent one is virtual events. That’s why it’s important for us to know the best ways to monetize your virtual events.
What Exactly Is A Virtual Event?
If your hobbies are surfing the internet, then you must know what virtual event, right? Basically, virtual events means online meet-ups that are well-structured and well-planned events that are transformed from traditional physical set-up and can host up to several thousand attendees at the same time off course with high scalability.
So, you can reach attendees from all over the world within one PC or laptop or smartphone, as long as you are connected with the internet. You don’t have to set-up a specific place or go all around the world to conduct an event, just set up your PC, internet network and what you prepared to spread to the world.
Best ways to monetize your virtual events
Why do we need virtual events? Has this thought crossed your mind? Well, According to Market Research Media virtual events will grow in the future. As shown in that data, virtual events can gain as much as $14 billion in 2018 and will continue to grow up to $18 billion in 2023 with a steady increase of 5% annually.
That’s one of the reasons big and well-known companies are moved from traditional set-up to virtual events. Because not only is it useful and effective marketing, but also it’s considered to be an excellent way to further monetize an event while efficiently reaching global attendees.
Based on data on Vplayed, there are some examples surrounding virtual events that have tremendous reach and are considered as the biggest virtual blockbuster of all times. One of them is Beyoncé’s Homecoming live stream in 2018 that can reach up to 41 million attendees from 232 countries.
And who can forget the first live streaming event that became a big hit from Apple when they launched the iPhone 11,11 Pro product in September 2019 that gained almost 1.8 billion attendees. These steps are also followed by Silicon tycoons like Google and IBM, when Google shifted their Google Cloud Next 2020 virtually while IBM digitalized their Think Conference this year.
This article also said that according to Cisco, nearly 82% of internet traffic in 2022 will be filled with videos. That data is backed with study conducted by Interactive Advertising Bureau that revealed 42% of attendees prefer to watch live streaming events on their devices.
Monetizing Various Multi Sponsored Virtual Events
Although physical events and virtual events both generate revenue through sponsorship, there is still one difference. That you don’t have to prepare a physical space like a booth for sponsors, you just need to set up a virtual space and multiple locations within the environment to place sponsors for monetization. Some of the most popular sponsorship options for virtual events are discussed below.
Monetize Your Virtual Events Through Games
Through games, you can engage attendees with your event’s content and also foster connections or networking not only among attendees but also between attendees and sponsors. How can you monetize this opportunity? Well, you can sell sponsorship packages around individual games. That way, you are enabling sponsors to promote their branding and messaging in the game. You can also offer an exclusive sponsored game that will enable the sponsors to determine the content that will promote the game, like a Trivia Challenge game, that contains questions and answers surrounding the games that are provided by sponsors.
Monetize Your Virtual Events Through Social Media Integration
As you may know, public events can generate a lot of fuzz on social media. It can benefit you to monetize virtual events, because this platform will allow you to integrate social media within your events. You can include a social handle or sponsors hashtag into events in social media presence or also link to a sponsor’s page via banner ads in Auditorium or Lounge areas.
Monetize Your Virtual Events Through Webcasts
There are at least four ways to monetize your virtual events through webcasts. First you can try to sell individual sponsorship of a webcast by allowing the sponsor to brand the console. Or you can try the second way by selling to groups of webcasts with similar content off course. Third way is you can include a list of attendees and exit action to direct viewers to the sponsor’s virtual booth at the end of the event. Last is by selling sponsorship of vendor-specific webinars that will allow exhibitors to take center stage and provide a presentation on their preferred topic.
Monetize Your Virtual Events Through Preferred Placement on Microsite or Registration Page
Since the registration page for your virtual events contains important information regarding your events, why not provide some space on it for your sponsors? That way they will get exposure from the attendees and their brand will be promoted. You can try to list their logo, and also publish a brief description of their brand and hyperlink to their website.
Monetize Your Virtual Events Through Email Blast Mentions
You can include a list of your sponsors on the email you sent to the targeted list of attendees you want to reach. So, you are not only promoting your virtual events but also featuring your sponsors.
Monetize Your Virtual Events Through Banner Ads
As one of the effective ways to promote your sponsors, Banner Ads can be served up in a continuous rotation. Either you can link to an external web page or to a digital space within the environment. You can also allow sponsors to reuse creative assets from their display advertising campaigns.
Monetize Your Virtual Events Through Video Ads
You can highlight a high level sponsor by setting up video to be played in selected environments like home lobby where attendees could choose to watch the video ads by clicking on the video player. You can also track the number of unique viewers who clicked to play the videos.
Monetize Your Virtual Events Through Marquee Messages
What are Marquee Messages? It refers to scrolling text that appears within the digital environments. You can use Marquee Messages to list and also promote sponsors, it will rotate throughout the event or scheduled to appear at specific times. You can also include hyperlinks to external digital spaces or web pages within the environment.
If you want to attract interest and also traffic to a particular sponsor space, then you can place a sponsor message in the main navigation of your virtual events since it usually includes hyperlinks to Lobby, Auditorium and Lounge. You can offer a package that includes a sponsor to have a direct link to their space from main navigation links.
Monetize Your Virtual Events Through In-Event Emails
If you want to push out a sponsor’s message to virtual events attendees, then you send In-show emails. Because it is considered as a highly valuable direct form of contact that many attendees will respond to in return. Sponsors will get an additional set of valuable contacts from attendees who choose to reply to the message.
Those are some of the best ways to monetize your virtual events, but remember in order to be successful, you have to leverage all the tools within your virtual events so you can provide the maximum value to sponsors while creating a memorable and impressive experience for all of your attendees.