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How to use virtual and hybrid events for lead generation
Events are an essential part of the B2B marketing toolkit for generating qualified leads. And today, many of these events are offered in purely virtual or hybrid formats.
By using technology to deliver digital events, marketers can expand their audience reach, save costs, increase engagement, and improve convenience and accessibility.
These are all valuable benefits of virtual and hybrid events, but the most impactful results for marketers are the digital touchpoints and data that can be used to identify high-quality leads, accelerate the sales cycle and drive business growth.
Here are some of the best ways B2B marketers can leverage the power of events to convert event attendees into sales leads.
Captivating content
Creating relevant and compelling content with educational value increases lead generation potential. Virtual and hybrid events are ideal platforms for creating and delivering content that significantly increases participant engagement.
Advances in digital event technology make it easy to present visually appealing images and infographics, videos, live demos and interactive presentations for a highly immersive experience.
Event sessions and footage can also be used by marketers as on-demand content to increase engagement long after the event ends. Additionally, event content can be repurposed as blog posts, short videos, and social media content to generate interest and leads.
To act as a lead generation engine, virtual and hybrid event content should focus on audience pain points, challenges and interests and provide actionable insights and insights. Addressing each of these areas grabs participants’ attention and increases the likelihood of conversions.
Interactive features
Interactive features – such as live chat, Q&A sessions and polls – integrated into digital event platforms improve the attendee experience, increase engagement and encourage participation.
These features help brands engage with attendees more effectively and increase lead generation potential by allowing marketers to gain valuable insights that can be used to design highly personalized follow-up campaigns.
Gamification is another tactic that can be integrated into virtual and hybrid events to drive lead generation. Gamification elements include challenges, quizzes, and leaderboards that incentivize participation through rewards. More and more marketers are using gamification to learn more about participants’ interests, goals and behavior patterns.
Data and analysis
Event data collected by webcasting technology platforms is a great resource for identifying qualified and potential sales leads. Marketers can use this data to build a solid list of marketing-qualified leads to create ongoing touchpoints with prospects, fill sales pipelines, and drive faster conversions.
Events can provide a wealth of data, often collected through the use of analytics tools, allowing marketers to gather valuable insights in a number of ways:
- Registration pages. Event registration pages are a goldmine for creating detailed sales lead profiles. They can be customized to collect all relevant data points, such as demographic information (gender, age, race and region), in addition to the usual job title, name and email address.
- Attend the meeting. Analytics tools can display both individual and general attendee attendance patterns. This information tells marketers which topics were most popular and which session formats were most attractive to guests (panels, presentations, Q&As, etc.). This data can be used to inform marketers what challenges or interests potential customers have and what communication methods are best suited to reach them.
- Commitment over time. Event data allows marketers to see how long attendees attended a session and which periods had the highest overall attendance throughout the event. This can help them plan future events by ensuring that the sessions most important to the organization, such as: B. New product announcements see the greatest engagement from attendees and potential leads.
- Interaction and responses. Marketers can see how attendees respond to surveys and questionnaires presented during an event. These answers provide invaluable insight into a participant’s pain points, opinions, and preferences. During the sales lead outreach process, marketers and sales teams should work together to add engagement features and questions that help address these pain points.
The insights gained from virtual and hybrid event data and analytics help marketers gain a deeper understanding of their audience and drive strategies for future events.
And when integrated with CRM and other marketing platforms, virtual event data allows marketers to segment their audiences, optimize real-time lead generation strategies, personalize follow-up communications, and generate a robust sales pipeline.
Digital event platforms
Today, digital event technology is designed to handle the digital logistics of an event from registration to post-event analysis. Today’s technology provides the engaging content, interactive features, networking opportunities, and data and analytics capabilities that marketers need to help their brands increase engagement and build stronger connections with key audiences.
From conferences to product launches to trade shows and other events, marketers can harness the power of virtual and hybrid event formats powered by digital event technology to streamline the lead generation process and build robust sales pipelines.
More resources on virtual events and lead generation
Cracking the Code: Top Tactics for Virtual Event Success
Arguments for integrating external events into your media mix
How to run your own successful virtual conference
B2B Virtual Events: 12 Ways to Create Impact and Drive Sales Growth