The rapid shift toward virtual events was accelerated by the pandemic, but they've since proven their staying power. With at least 83% of marketers saying they find webinars effective, it's probably safe to assume virtual events should be a cornerstone of your marketing strategy.

With the rise of remote and hybrid work, people are no longer feeling the pressure to travel for events; they may not even want to attend many local events, for that matter! Attendees like the convenience of virtual events, and B2B marketers can capitalize on that by creating value-packed, engaging events that inform and nurture audiences.

But, how do you actually get the attendees to find out about your event and show up on the big day? We're betting you already know the answer is "marketing," and we're here to illustrate how you can supercharge your virtual event marketing efforts to get the right butts in (remote) seats!

Today, we'll discuss:

• 12 Winning Tips and Ideas to Supercharge Your Virtual Event Marketing Program
• Benefits of virtual event marketing
• Virtual event marketing vs. in-person event marketing
• How Goldcast makes virtual event marketing easy

Whether you're a seasoned marketer or new to the realm of B2B events, here are some great tips that will help you create a winning marketing strategy for your next virtual event.

When it happens: pre-event

So much rests on honing in on who your ideal audience is. The people you want to attract will drive everything from the channels you use to promote your event to the messaging you use to appeal to that audience.

You want to tailor your event content and promotional budget allocation to maximize impact with your target audience. This also requires that you have a good understanding of these customer personas: What are they looking for? What challenges are they seeking to address? Where do they look for information?

Once you know your target audience, you can be sure that your promotional and event content is relevant to their needs. And, assuming your target audience is the one that will be most interested in your offering, you boost the chances of a future conversion!

When it happens: pre-event (typically you'll create even your post-event content beforehand)

Your marketing work doesn't stop once the online event is happening—far from it, in fact!

Before the event, your goal is to raise anticipation for the event and convey the value people will receive by attending. In this stage, you'll create all of your actual promotional materials. This might include fun teaser videos that give folks a sneak peek of your event, your event landing page (more on that soon!), email messaging, and any social media campaign content.

During the event, your focus is on making it easy for people to get the value you've promised them. Perhaps that's with in-event polls and fun quizzes to allow people to share knowledge and network with each other. You can even raise hype on social media and get people to join mid-session by sharing quick snippets from the event or doing shout-outs when a particularly hot take gets dropped!

After the event, show people you're still there for them. Send them the on-demand version of the event, as well as a follow-up survey and any other downloadable resources that might help them on their journeys.

When it happens: pre-event

One thing we kept top of mind when designing the Goldcast platform is the ability to design customized, on-brand landing pages. Your event page is the first chance to make a big splash of an impression, and it doesn't do much good if the branding feels totally off!

For many people, your event landing page is where they're looking to learn more about the event and see if it's right for them. They're getting a feel for the tone of your event and the culture of your company. An attractive, well-designed, easy-to-navigate landing page builds credibility and holds people's attention.

Be sure that your event landing page contains all relevant information, including the date, time, speakers, sponsors/partners, and topics of the event. If you're using SEO keywords, build them into your page.

You might even include LinkedIn links for your speakers, so people can learn more about the exciting lineup, or full session details so they can browse through and discover what they'll be hearing about. Here’s an example from our upcoming AI Summit:

Discover how to best use AI in your marketing by attending our AI Summit: How Marketers Can Harness the Power of AI (link to the reg page https://www.ai-summit.goldcast.io/

F

Remember to make it easy for people to sign up! If you have a scrollable landing page, create several CTAs to register so that people are never far from one. And don't forget to include social media links to make it easy for people to share with their own networks!

When it happens: pre-event

Coordinate with your internal teams, as well as any sponsors and partners, to do a simultaneous push to drive registrants. The benefit of having a lot of people talking about your event at the same time is that it creates a sort of "surround sound" effect that can encourage a lot of sign-ups during a concentrated period.

Use social media, word-of-mouth marketing, and email content marketing for your registration drive. You can also incorporate marketing tactics like countdowns (to create a sense of anticipation and urgency) and sneak peeks of the event content. And if you've decided to do giveaways during your event, now's a great time to tell the world!

When it happens: pre-event, post-event

You'll likely be sending out many different emails through the lifecycle of your event.

To start, are there any segments of your email marketing list that you want to notify about the upcoming event? If so, create messaging that lets them know why this event is relevant to them and gives them all the details they need to sign up. Link to your landing page and registration CTA within the email so that people can find more info if they need it, but are also empowered to sign up right there without leaving the email.

You can also leverage your sponsors' and partners' email lists at this stage, if possible. This allows you to reach a new audience that may not be as familiar with your brand, while still enjoying some level of credibility since you're partnered with a company they do know.

Use personalization and branding to your advantage here! Just as we talked about with your event landing page, your emails should feel like they're coming from you. Emails allow you to take it a step further and add in people's names, job roles, or other specific info, refining the messaging to be more 1:1 than the landing page is able to be.

Once people register for the event, they should be enrolled in a separate marketing campaign. Send a confirmation email with the link to join, as well as reminder emails leading up to the event. Then, after the event, everyone who signed up (regardless of whether they attended) should get the on-demand recording and any other valuable resources.

When it happens: pre-event, during event, post-event

It's time to get social!

Here are some of our best social media tips:

• Select the social media platforms that make most sense for your audience. We know that most, if not all, of the Goldcast target audience hangs out on LinkedIn, so we lean on it heavily as a promotion channel.
• Use your target audience data to create the content that will resonate with those folks and then schedule it to go out on the appropriate platforms. That might be a Facebook event, a hashtag on Twitter (now called X), a post within an industry forum, or another way.
• Create social proof posts by using customer testimonials! People love hearing from their peers and often trust what they have to say.
• Work smarter, not harder. Repurpose content whenever possible for different social media platforms. For example, if you've created a video to go out on Facebook, maybe you trim it down to become a quick IG story as well.
• During the event, use social media to share any top moments or standout quotes! You can even let people join in on the fun, mid-event.
• If you've got strong visual assets, social media is a great place to use them. People respond well to highly visual posts, whether that's a graphic, a video, or an infographic.
• Be sure to respond to any comments you get on social media; this helps build relationships and can continue to boost the visibility of your post over time.
• Tag your partners, speakers, and sponsors to expand the reach of your posts.

When it happens: pre-event, during event, post-event

A key benefit of partnering with others for your event is that you can also reach their audience. Don't let that opportunity pass you by! Encourage our sponsors and partners to reach out to their audience on as many channels as possible; promoting the event is a win-win for both of you.

The benefits of having the sponsor themselves handle some of the promotion are many. They've already built trust with their audience, so folks will believe what they say. They also understand the messaging that will resonate with their audience and can craft content that will draw people to the event.

However, that doesn't mean you can't create awesome assets for cross-promotion and share away! As long as you and your partners are on the same page about the promotional plan, you should be able to boost your signal during this phase.

🤝Activate Channel Revenue: 5 Tips for Wildly Successful Partner Events

When it happens: pre-event

While organic social media promotion works well on its own, paid search and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can take you even further.

These advertising campaigns (think: Google ads) allow you to target certain demographics by job titles, company size, industry, and other factors. You can include keywords you want to focus on, set a specific budget you want to stick to, and even choose to remarket your event to people who have interacted with your event content or website in the past.

When it happens: pre-event

Make sure the right people know about the event, so they can tell the world!

Timing is everything here. You want to give industry publications enough time to publish the press release and allow interested people to sign up, but also make sure you're close enough to the event that it's relevant and can be quickly added to the calendar.

In your press release, highlight what makes your event unique and why people should attend. Once again, this can be another place to optimize for SEO, if that's part of your strategy. You might send it to industry-specific publications, blogs, and even influencers, and ask them to share. The hope is that your press releases help generate more buzz for the event and drive registrations!

Bonus: Have a hugely successful event? Create a second press-release highlighting the results and pull out some of the best content to give readers a taste of the event. This is an especially smart move if your event will be hosted on-demand.

When it happens: pre-event, during event, post-event

We're a big fan of making your life easier and, when used correctly, AI does that.

Here are a few ways to use AI, chatbots, and automation throughout the process:

• Experiment with AI writing tools like Jasper or Writer to help you create promotional event content—from social media posts to your headline, it can be like adding a couple more writers to the room!
• Chatbots can help you answer questions about the event. You can set them up on your event website and registration pages to offer instant help. They can also come in handy during the event, when your team will be busy and questions are likely to be similar.
• Automate all of your (personalized!) email marketing campaigns so that you don't have to think about them again after you create them and set them up.
• Similarly, automate all of your social media campaigns to schedule posts, share updates, and keep up the momentum.
• AI tools can transcribe your event afterward and make it easier for your team to repurpose event content.

You can see how these tools allow you to streamline tasks and reduce your team's workload!

When it happens: pre-event, during event, post-event

Technology should make your life easier—and when it comes to virtual events, Goldcast is the only platform that's built just for B2B event marketers!

That means that at every step along the way—including all of the ones we've discussed today—the Goldcast platform makes your job easier. Ready to build your branded landing page? We've got you covered. Looking for info on past events you've done that did really well? We can do that!

We can also help you prove event ROI with the help of our ROI Dashboard for Event Performance. You'll be able to understand how each event did—including how much pipeline and revenue was influenced and sourced—and easily compare events side-by-side.

When it happens: Post-event

Now it's time to tie up those loose ends and nurture leads down the funnel!

Here are some post-event marketing tasks to add to your list:

• Send out a post-event survey to collect feedback and gauge how the event went
• Send emails to thank people for attending and provide them with the on-demand recording and other relevant resources
• Repurpose event content to be shared and used across your website, social media, and other channels
• Use attendee feedback to create testimonials to build your brand and promote future events
• Thank your event sponsors and partners and share any feedback with them
• Analyze post-event data to identify what went well and areas in which you can improve
• Start promoting the next event in the series, if applicable!
• Share any data with your sales team so they can follow up. Goldcast's suite of integrations can help automate this process!

Post-event marketing helps maintain engagement between you and your audience. Even though the event is over, you're still connecting with your audience, providing value, and building excitement toward the next upcoming event.

Marketing and promoting your upcoming virtual events is important because you want your events to do well! Getting the word out about your event helps it gain visibility and traction among your intended audience, which directly impacts your ROI.

Throughout the virtual event marketing process, you're building brand awareness and credibility, strengthening your existing relationships with sponsors, partners, and your current audience, and attracting new leads and participants to your brand ecosystem.

Strong event marketing can even help attract new sponsors and partners that want to work with you because they can tell you care about the events you put on.

The bottom line: without a thoughtful event marketing strategy, no one will know about your event, which means everyone misses out!

There are several key differences between virtual events and in-person events, and each type of event has its own set of pros and cons.

Here's a quick breakdown of the major differences:

The event type that is "right" for your event will depend on a number of factors, including your target audience's location, your event budget, and the timeline for your event. We see a lot of companies leaning on a hybrid events strategy that allows them to reap the benefits of both virtual and in-person events throughout the year.

If you're looking for a virtual event platform that will streamline your event promotion process for upcoming events, Goldcast is the obvious choice!

With Goldcast, you can create beautiful, branded experiences that engage attendees and amplify their experience. The Goldcast platform integrates with your favorite CRM and MAP systems, meaning you always have the data you need to follow up and close the deal.

Even better, you'll finally get all the insights you need to firmly point to event ROI and prove the value of your event marketing program. Every B2B marketer's dream!