Events have changed a lot in the past twelve months. With border closures, lockdowns, social distancing measures and visitor tracking apps becoming a normal part of life, events have had to adapt to ensure the health and wellbeing of speakers, delegates, and the wider community. Live events have been affected the most with the new changes, and virtual events have experienced a massive surge. But while some restrictions are easing and a new vaccine is on the way, ongoing border closures are increasing uncertainty and people are unsure what the best way forward is with their planned events. 

Live events offer clear benefits, including casual networking and live interaction opportunities, however they are limited to who can attend in-person, which is difficult in the current climate. Virtual events have their own distinct benefits, such as greater audience reach, lower costs, the ability to have a wider range of speakers, and ease of attendance for delegates, however networking opportunities can be more difficult in a virtual setting and technical difficulties can present an issue if you don’t have the right equipment.

To address these challenges, a new type of event is on the rise: hybrid events, which combine the benefits of both live and virtual events to create a future-proof, holistic experience for delegates, no matter where they are. 

Hybrid events might sound like the perfect solution, however a lot more goes into creating a successful and enriching hybrid event than many people realise – it’s not as simple as placing a camera in the back of the room and filming. Companies need to be aware that hybrid events can easily double the workload of a soley live or virtual event, so care needs to be taken to ensure all aspects of a hybrid event run smoothly. 

How to get your hybrid event right

When done right, hybrid events can make your event and message stand out. For a hybrid event to work you need to break down the barriers between the live and virtual portions, and facilitate participation and networking between both audiences. 

The key to successful hybrid events is to take the best aspects of both live and virtual events and tailor them to suit the needs of your audience and speakers. Let’s take a look at some of the most important points to get right with your hybrid event:

Tailor your event for virtual and live audiences

When running a hybrid event, you need to take into account your audience. There will be a mix of live and virtual attendees and possibly live and virtual speakers. It’s important to ensure that you have tailored your event to allow for optimum learning opportunities for each audience type.

One way you can achieve this is to separate portions of the event by time and location. This could mean having a virtual event during the day for all attendees, then facilitating a networking session at night in person. Or, you could start with a live event and record it, later turning it into a virtual event that people can access at any time throughout the future. This can be especially helpful for delegates from regional or remote locations, especially while borders are still uncertain. By staggering your event offerings you can ensure that your audiences are able to get the most value out of your event while also allowing you the time and space to make your event work for both platforms.

Choose the right technology

Finding the right technology to support your hybrid or virtual event is essential to achieving a successful outcome. There’s nothing worse than features that don’t work, glitchy videos or delayed live chats. This creates a divide between the in-person and virtual delegates that needs to be mitigated. 

To avoid this you need to simplify your planning and find a platform that can facilitate both the live and virtual portions of your event, which will help to break down the barriers between your audiences and encourage participation and networking. 

Some platforms also offer virtual audiences the chance to create personalised schedules, participate in live-streamed presentations, access pre-recorded content, as well as submit questions in real-time or ahead of time. These platforms are also able to facilitate virtual networking sessions which can bring together live and virtual audiences, adding tremendous value to your event.

Work with event specialists

If you’re finding it difficult to choose the right platform and technology for your event, or if you’re finding the workload of a hybrid event a bit daunting, there’s always the option of working with a specialised, dedicated and experienced event company. Working with specialised event companies can cut your workload in half as they take on the management and delivery of your event, saving you not only time but money as well.

Event specialists like Monkey Media already have the knowledge, expertise and equipment to run your event for you and are able to tailor your event to the needs of your audience. If you’re looking to hold a hybrid event in 2021 and are unsure where to start, event specialists can advise and support you so that you, your speakers and your audience can get the most out of your event.

Future-proof your event

Future-proofing your event means you need to be prepared, and have a plan, if the unexpected was to happen. With lockdowns, border restrictions and social distancing requirements changing frequently, being able to adapt your event at short notice is crucial. 

The best way to future-proof your event is by creating contingency plans for both your speakers and delegates. You need to have a plan for your speakers if they are scheduled to perform in person but are held back by restrictions. Supply your speakers with a detailed plan on how you will deliver their presentation virtually if needed and perhaps hold a test run before the event if it is looking likely that you will need to switch their presentation to a virtual format. This allows for a smooth transition for your speakers, letting them to focus on their presentation.

You also need to communicate a plan to delegates to ensure that if they are unable to attend in person, they are still able to participate virtually without missing out on any of the benefits of attending live. This could be done by including information in the welcome email to delegates, directing them on the health and safety rules of the event, and instructions on how to attend the event virtually. 

By getting these key points right, you will give your hybrid event the best possible chance of success and provide your delegates and speakers with confidence and the opportunity for a truly enriching experience.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD OUR CUSTOM VIRTUAL EVENTS BROCHURE TO FIND OUT MORE

It takes time and energy to turn prospects into paying customers. Often in business-to-business transactions the buying cycle is a long one, but a lead nurture strategy can increase the chances that a sale will be the end result.

Here are 5 of the best ways to nurture your leads.

1. Short term nurture track

This approach can be triggered by a particular event. For example, it could be when someone first makes an enquiry or gives you their details, or it could be sent to anyone who hasn’t done business with you in 6 months or a certain period of time after they made a specific purchase. There are lots of options, and it will depend on what works for your business.

The idea is to send them a discrete series of content to help give them some useful information, see where they are at in their buying journey, and identify or encourage the warmer ones to take the next step.

If you’re sending something to new sign-ups, you might want to introduce your offering in more detail and then perhaps find out more about them through a survey. You could use their responses to decide whether to take things to the next level now, or to leave them on a lower level nurture track.

2. Ongoing newsletter

This is the classic nurture strategy. You create and send a regular newsletter to all your contacts, by keeping in touch regularly you can remain top of mind when they do need your services, as well as giving you an opportunity to get your messages out. It can work well because it’s relatively simple to do compared to complex automations.

But with so many newsletters out there, it needs to be done very well to stand out from the crowd. Just sending out specials and sales offers won’t cut it, nor will making all your content just about your company (eg ‘we’ve upgraded to a larger premises’, ‘we’ve put on a new sales rep’ or even ‘here’s our latest case study’). As much as you’re burning to let people know what you’re up to, this approach tends to put off anyone who isn’t highly engaged with your business already.

On the other hand, newsletters that are still performing really well include those that:

• Are presented more as general industry news
• Contain useful tips, technical info and advice
• Are thought-leading or have key industry insights

Taking this approach maintains your audience’s attention and greatly enhances your reputation, so even if you do add in a more direct sell from time-to-time, you’ll be doing so to a much larger and more engaged audience.

3. Automation and personalisation 2.0

Taking things to the next level of sophistication, you can create different nurture tracks based on your customer’s demographics, actions or specific product interests.

For example, if you have an onboarding nurture track (see point 1), you could include a few different options in your introductory email, offering your prospects more information on various offerings or topics.

Based on what they click, you could then send them more specific information on that, or set them on a new nurture track based around that topic or product.

You can also use surveys or quizzes to get a more detailed view of what that customer might be interested in, or what their objections or buying criteria might be, and then target them with a specific nurture track on that topic.

This is obviously a more complex option than the first two, but can work particularly well when you have more leads than you can manually deal with, and need to automate the process of finding out more about them.

4. Round tables and webinars

While the previous 3 options have been based around email content, there are other ways to nurture leads as well.

In-person events, or virtual events in the age of COVID, can be a great way to deepen relationships.

As with email content, the information offered needs to be valuable to make it worth their time to attend or tune in, it can’t just be a sales pitch.

But when done well, events give you a great opportunity to provide more information and interact more closely with your prospect list. They also get a chance to meet, or virtually meet you, and you can increase the level of trust.

Lead nurture events can range from huge events with thousands of attendees to more intimate online roundtables with just a handful.

5. Content partnerships

Finally, you don’t have to rely just on our own resources or existing lists to nurture leads. Another very effective option to gradually build trust and recognition is to continue to be seen as a thought leader in other contexts.

This means you could partner up with a trade journal or website, or get involved with an industry event, or a sponsored social media campaign, to continue to get your message out through a series of articles across these platforms. It means that whenever your leads are getting industry information, they keep hearing from you.

If you partner with a publisher or other content provider, there’s also a good opportunity to tap their expertise on what’s resonating with people in the industry, or even get their support in creating co-branded content.

Keep it relevant

So there’s just a few of the main ways that we are seeing people effectively implement lead nurture campaigns.

The common element in them all is that you need to provide relevant and useful information over a long period of time. This is what builds the trust and engagement that ultimately leads to these leads becoming customers.

Firstly, nobody knows what the short term future holds. When even the world’s leading epidemiologists can’t agree on predictions for future outbreaks of COVID-19 or the likely timing of a vaccine, we can’t make any specific predictions. So what that means is the event sector is going to need to be patient and it’s going to need to be flexible.

People are rightly wary that even if the situation looks under control further outbreaks are very possible, which makes it hard to commit to run or attend large scale events, even 6 or 12 months in the future with the amount of planning they need.

But even in the ideal scenario where the pandemic is under control and there is a vaccine, I think people’s view of events will have changed forever.

There are plenty of people who are keen to get face-to-face as soon as possible, but a lot of organisations will have greatly increased the threshold for what requires travel. They will have learned that a lot can be gained by video meetings and virtual conferences and the justification required to get travel approval and budget will be that much stricter. As a company that loves live events it pains me to say it, but it’s important to accept reality.

In the space we are in, we work with a lot of government bodies, utilities, infrastructure asset owners, local government etc. As essential services, these organisations are likely to be particularly cautious about travelling for some considerable time.

That’s not what vendors and traditional trade show exhibitors and sponsors necessarily want to hear. From their perspective, they’re keen to get back to live events as soon as possible for the networking, the chance meetings, the face-to-face sales opportunities they get. But this is not primarily how utilities and asset owners justify their attendance at events, their main motivators are usually based around the information opportunities, and this aspect is comparatively easy to do online.

A lot of companies that have relied on live events have started to make the switch to virtual events and are finding ways to make them work. Others are saying that they’re not the same, so they want to hold off until live events return. Now of course they’re not the same, I understand as much as anyone the networking opportunities, the immediate feedback, the spontaneous conversations that you can get with a face-to-face event. But I think the danger here is that things will take a very long time to return to normal, and companies that can’t adapt their approach risk being left behind.

Event organisers need to adapt the way they do virtual events. The presentation and exchange of information is there, and that’s what still attracts delegates, but they also need to find ways to replicate the other benefits, the lead generation, the networking, as best as possible.

I think events will permanently change, it is much more likely that future events will be hybrid and include both live and virtual elements, allowing people to more actively participate without needing to travel there. We’ve talked about the downside of virtual events, but there are a lot of positives as well. The time and cost commitment can be considerably lower, and you can reach attendees or speakers from remote corners of the country or anywhere in the world much more readily than before.

Successful events will also shift from seeing what they do as a single point in time, to more of an ongoing process and community. For delegates this will mean an ongoing learning opportunity, with more ways to implement what they learn at an event, rather than just get out of the office for two days and come back full of ideas but then quickly file or forget them. From a sponsor point of view, it means there will be more ongoing opportunities to nurture leads and build relationships over time.

So it’s not all bad news, but I think anyone waiting for everything to go back to normal is fooling themselves, and they’ll benefit more by acknowledging the new reality, and finding ways to make it work for them.

Top predictions for events

• Uncertainty will remain for some time
• Even after the pandemic, organisations will be more reluctant to travel
• Vendors need to recognise the different motivations their customers have for attending events
• Event companies need to adapt their offerings to better replicate the benefits of live events
• Hybrid events will become more common, ie events with a live and virtual component
• Forward looking companies need to adapt now to find the best ways to make the most of this new reality

There’s so much advice out there on marketing nobody can take it all in. To make matters worse, most of it is based around consumer and mass marketing. But the fact is, if you’re in business-to-business and trying to reach a specific niche, then a lot of this advice doesn’t apply. The key is understanding what does still work, and throwing out the rest.

Firstly, a quick definition, we are talking about business-to-business (B2B) marketing – marketing where you are selling to other businesses (including government organisations) rather than individuals.

1. Different demographics

When marketers are targeting the consumer market, they often base their campaigns on traditional demographics like age, gender and income level – and Facebook is excellent at targeting based on this.

But B2B demographics are very different. Usually you will know what type of company you are targeting, what sectors, what job roles. Often it can be even more niche and you’ll know the specific companies, and even individuals that you need to reach.

A scattergun approach simply won’t work and can waste a lot of resources. B2B marketing should be done through platforms where you can directly target these people. This could include meeting them directly at industry events, targeted campaigns through LinkedIn, where you can segment on appropriate demographics, sending newsletters to existing clients or lists you build yourself, advertising in industry journals that the right people actually read, and custom lead generation campaigns.

2. Long lead times

Many consumer purchases are made once and straight away, possibly in a physical shop or increasingly online. This is where Google Ads and other targeted digital marketing works well, you can drive someone straight to your site, see whether they buy or not, and measure your conversion rates, cost per click and know if this type of ad is worth it.

But many B2B deals involve a tender process, or protracted negotiations for high value deals – it’s not a click and forget scenario. As a result, it’s important to set the pace of your marketing to match the length of your sales cycle. This means that it’s ok to drive traffic to your site if that’s what you want to do, but if they’re not ready to buy that day, you should still have options for them to engage with you, such as a newsletter to sign up for or an eBook download or webinar registration for which they provide their details.

Effective B2B marketing needs to use different content and platforms to reach people at all stages of the sales cycle. This might include;

• Generating initial awareness and trust in your brand: this is where you need to leverage existing audiences, get involved in industry associations, sponsor industry events, have a profile in respected trade journals in print and online.
• Educating the market: If your solution is new and innovative, you may need to invest more in changing hearts and minds and creating demand. This can be done through useful content, technical papers, Ebooks and webinars, which can sit on your own site and be promoted through various industry channels.
• Pre-purchase research: These days, people are likely to do most of their research online before they even reach out to you. It’s vital your website includes answers to their most likely questions, as well as the opportunity to opt-in for more information when they’re ready.
• Lead capture and nurture: At some point you want to start getting these buyers into your pipeline. Here you need to ensure they can get in touch easily via your website, or if you want to generate more leads, you can work with an external supplier. At this point, many companies will have a sales team that gets in touch and hopefully closes that sale. But even opt-in leads aren’t always ready to buy, and this is where a lead nurture campaign, such as an ongoing series of emails sharing useful content, helps keep you top of mind until they are ready to buy. Maintaining a visible presence in other newsletters, websites, magazines and events that your industry engages with is also a great way to to keep visible with lukewarm leads.
• Closing: The closing process is often a lot more complex than your customer just clicking ‘purchase’ online or walking into a shop and taking your product off the shelf. Often there are contracts to be signed, detailed documentation and compliance, and an ongoing process. Even at this stage it’s important to have the right resources and materials to guide the customer through the process.

BONUS TIP:  At each stage of the sales process, your materials should help either nudge the customer along the funnel to the next step, or loop back to an earlier stage if they’re not ready yet.

3. Dealing with multiple decision makers 

When a consumer makes a purchase, they decide and that’s it. For larger purchases they might need to get their partner involved as well. In B2B, there’s often a whole chain of people who are involved in some way in the decision making process.

So it’s important that your marketing reaches them and addresses their different concerns.

If you are dealing with a large organisation such as a utility, there may be more hands-on employees that use the product and recommend it, senior management that have ultimate sign off, or even external stakeholders like engineering consultants who make recommendations. 

Good marketing needs to reach all of these people with different variations of your message that are adapted but of course consistent. Hands-on employees will be more interested in details around functionality and usability, engineers may need more technical detail, senior management will be interested in the financial impacts and bigger picture benefits.

4. Personal relationships

Lots of consumer businesses rely on personal relationships too, your local cafe or tradie for example, but most consumer marketing is more based around the impersonal, mass market nature where someone makes a purchase and moves on, the ongoing message is more based around identifying with the brand than any individuals at the company.

In B2B, it’s often necessary to have ongoing, long-term relationships with the individuals at the companies you sell to. Not just that, these people move around over time and it’s not uncommon for the people you know to pop up at a new company, or even cross the boundaries between working for suppliers and customers.

This means that consistency and reputation are key. This matters in all marketing, but with consumers this is tied more to the product, in B2B it’s as much about your personal integrity and reputation as anything else. People buy from people and they need to know they’re working with people who know what they’re talking about and do what they say.

Of course the best way to deliver on this is by living these values. But the perception can be further enhanced with the right marketing and communications. In B2B there’s often great scope to build up the profile of your key staff as experts or thought leaders, the more they get quoted on a topic, speak at a conference or be seen in trade media or on social media the more that trust will be reinforced.

Keep the best, throw out the rest

Consumer marketing tends to lead the way and be more experimental, so there’s lots that B2B marketers can gain from studying mainstream trends. But it’s important to be aware of the differences, and not get caught up in trying to do something not suited to your industry. By working with agencies and channels that specialise in B2B marketing you can avoid many of these pitfalls.

1. One step at a time

Resist the temptation to jump all over your new leads straight away. As in any relationship, if you rush things you might put the other person off.

Of course, if you’ve got people inquiring and wanting a response on your website, or you met them at a trade show and they were keen, you should get in touch straight away.

But if they tell you they’re not ready yet or just browsing, or you’ve a bunch of leads from a raffle you held on your expo stand, or an online lead generation campaign, then you need to take it back a step.

A really good nurture track should take people on a journey. The starting point is when they first engage with you – for example, when they gave you their details at a trade show, or when they downloaded your white paper. Your end stage is to get them to become a customer. So your lead nurture process needs to provide a path from the first step to the last step. Like any sales funnel, you will lose people along the way, but at the end of the process, you will be left with the people who are most interested in working with you.

An example nurture track for leads generated from a whitepaper might look like:

• First, you could follow up with another related piece of content that ties in with the white paper
• Next, if they engage with that article, you could then provide a case study showing your expertise in that area
• Then you could ask them to take a quick survey on that topic
• Then finally, provide an offer to get in touch or make a purchase

2. Track, measure, repeat

By looking at how often, and what, your leads engage with, you can get a good sense of how keen they are.

Seeing how many links people click, and what they click, is a great way to determine not just their level of interest, but specifically what topics or products are resonating with them. If they regularly click links on a certain offering you have, this could be a good indicator this is what they’re most interested in, and you could then send them more info on this.

The number of opens can also be a good indicator of interest. Often a large number of opens on an email will mean that it has been forwarded to someone and has kicked off an internal conversation. Each time someone replies to that email it will register another open.

Also watch out for both false positives and false negatives. Some email programs will block any tracking of opens and clicks, so just because you can’t see someone has clicked, it doesn’t mean they definitely didn’t. Other programs will register a click for every link, so they can suggest people are keener than they look. If you’ve someone who looks like they click each link in an email exactly once every time, it’s probably the email program doing it automatically.

3. Closing techniques

So you’ve been patient, you’ve sent more quality content, but at some point, it doesn’t hurt to push a little, to find out who is ready to take the next step. Some of the most common ways you can do this include:

• Asking directly

Have a link they can click to book an appointment or get a call if they’re ready. You could offer a free consultation to qualified leads for example.

• Special offer

Include a discount, which may be for a limited time, or limited to a certain number of customers. Depending on your offering they may be able to click through directly and buy, or click to get more information, giving you a warmer list of people to follow up with. 

• Survey or quiz

You can also use surveys or quizzes to get a more detailed view of what that customer might be interested in, or what their objections or buying criteria might be, and then target them with a specific nurture track on that topic.

• Follow your leads

In order to make the most out of your leads, you need to tread carefully, and make sure you nurture appropriately. And using the tips outlined above, you might just find the golden lead that becomes your next customer.

One of the most common mistakes we see is people getting it backwards, starting by choosing the platform or the content type. We often hear things like “We need to do facebook video!”, without much thought behind the message or the “why”. When there’s a mis-match between your goals and the marketing platform or action you choose, you are less likely to get the results you want.

What are your goals? 

Instead, start with your purpose. What results do you hope to get? Look ahead to the end of the campaign –  what will make it worthwhile for you? Usually it’s going to be an increase in your business, through more sales. So take it back one step from that and ask: What can marketing do to help you achieve this?

Some of the most common goals are:

• Building your brand –  this includes introducing a new brand, or improving your reputation and perception, and generating demand for your brand in preference to others
• Educating the market –his includes letting current customers and new prospects know about your products and services, including the ways they are unique, and generating demand for a particular product or solution
• Generating new leads for the sales team to use

Different marketers will sometimes call the above a range of different names, but we’ve tried to simplify things as much as possible.

Other goals we hear about will often end up fitting into one of the above goals. For example, sometimes people tell us they want more click-throughs, or to drive more traffic to their website. But it usually pays to dig deeper and work out why this is. Do you have information you want them to read when they get there? Do you want to capture their details? Do you make sales directly on your website? 

Other goals that business-to-business (B2B) marketers might have include:

• Nurturing existing leads 
• Supporting your sales team by increasing recognition, or providing materials

Or, of course, one of the most common answers we get is “all of the above”! That’s fine too, you might want a combination of the above, and you might even be able to break it down into rough percentages, like 75 per cent brand building and 25 per cent lead generation.

Once you know what you want to achieve, your campaign has a much better chance of success.

Who is your audience?

Next you need to work out who you want to reach. Are you targeting existing customers, or new, or both?

What demographic segments do you want to reach? While consumer marketers often look at gender, age group and income, B2B demographics more commonly include things like job role, company type and industry sector.

Having worked this out, you can then start identifying the best platforms. If you’re just targeting existing customers, you might be able to reach them via your own website, email lists and social platforms. If you’re looking to reach beyond your existing customers, you might need some external help, which could include anything from industry magazines and websites, to events, to paid search engine marketing or social media. 

The key is to work out where you can actually reach the demographic you’re targeting. You need to understand where they get their information from, and how you can become part of that conversation.

But remember, distribution matters! The best marketing campaign in the world won’t have an impact if it sits unviewed on your company website. Leverage the opportunities available to reach your target audience.

What is your message?

Next, what do you want to tell them? Again, this will be driven by your purpose.

You need to use different content for branding as opposed to education as opposed to lead generation. Branding can be very powerful, and is often best done in a more subtle way, such as stylish print ads in respected industry journals, but at the same time, this sort of content on its own is not going to generate direct leads.

If your goal is to educate the market, then well-written content is going to be key. Rather than just going for the hard sell, talk about your customers’ pain points, show how you understand the industry, and only then show how you can help them.

If you are looking to generate leads, you need to offer valuable content return for details. This could be a white paper or eBook or a webinar offered in return for someone’s email address.

Measuring success 

Only once you know your purpose, your message and your audience, should you start choosing your platforms and your copy.

Now, maybe you still need to do a Facebook video after all that, and if you do that’s great, but at least you know why.

Make sure you measure your campaign based on what you wanted to achieve. Often the things which are easy to measure, such as banner clicks or impressions, are not necessarily the best ways to assess branding or education campaigns. If your goal was to change the perception of your company in the market, or to increase demand over time, statistics like clicks and likes can distract from this goal.

For more information on specific ways you can work with Monkey Media to achieve your goals see our fact sheets here on:

Build your Brand

Educating the Market

Generating Leads

Or, if you have a range of goals, then you can talk to one of our consultants to help create an integrated marketing package that’s just right for you.

Top tips

• Identify your purpose first, then your target audience and messages
• Distribution matters – regardless of which platforms you use, find the ones that best reach your target audience 
• Make sure your copy matches your goals –  if you want to educate the market, create something educational. If you want leads, you need a strong call to action
• Make sure the way you measure your campaign matches your goals

So it’s worth investing now in better ways of communicating with industry and potential customers.

The pandemic has highlighted that webinars aren’t just a substitute for live events – they have their own benefits when it comes to branding, customer engagement and quality lead generation. You can read more about how they can benefit your business on this blog post.

If you’re thinking about reaching potential customers with a webinar, here are five key tips to help you better connect with your audience and for your event to run as smoothly as possible behind the scenes.

1 Audience

The main purpose of any webinar or Virtual Conference is to provide information to your target market – the people you want to engage with your product or service. Firstly, you must decide if your target market includes people you already know, or if you want to reach a whole new group of people.

This is important because while you can easily market to your existing audience, reaching a new market requires additional marketing activities.

To find out more about how you can identify a new audience and foster these relationships, read our blog post on audiences here.

2. Content

People say content is king, and for a webinar or Virtual Conference, content is the main driver of registrations. Webinar content must be high value for your target market and address an issue that they are interested in or currently dealing with. In order to create high quality information, the choice of speakers – from your company, independent experts, or both – is key.

Read more about how to choose the best speakers and content for your webinar program here.

3. Format

The format and running time for your webinar or Virtual Conference is important for keeping your audience engaged. There is not a hard and fast rule that all webinars need to be a certain length, but they do need to be fit-for-purpose and suit the content you have chosen.

Monkey Media learnt some key lessons around format when it had to move its Digital Utilities 2020 Conference from a two-day live event to a fully digital conference in less than a week, due to COVID-19.

See how Digital Utilities 2020 was turned into an online success, and find out more about determining the optimal formats for webinars on this blog post.

4. Technology

Technology is the main difference between creating a live event and running a webinar or virtual conference. Not only do you need to choose the most suitable platform and applications, but your production team must be across the technical components for the event to run smoothly for attendees.

If you’re unsure of where to start, what tech is available, and how to best optimise it, read this blog post on getting the technology right.

5. Follow up

One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to run a successful webinar or virtual conference and then just move on to the next thing. There are so many opportunities to use the leads and content created to keep in touch with your target market and ensure you are continually front of mind.

This blog post explores how you can foster ongoing engagement and get the most out of the webinars, long after they are over.

If you’d like more information about Monkey Media running a webinar for your businesses, or sponsoring a future Virtual Conference, get in touch at events@monkeymedia.com.au.

It’s one of the most powerful and results-driven marketing options, and it’s important to remember that to make the most of it you need to be offering something of genuine informational value in return for those details, such as a white paper, eBook or webinar.

When is the best time to run a Lead Generation campaign?

Lead generation usually works best towards the end of a campaign. A company with a strong brand or profile already can conduct a lead generation campaign on its own, but if you are not well known in this market, then lead generation on its own without supporting branding will not get as many conversions and those that do convert will tend to be less warm as well.

It’s important to remember that leads have shown some interest in your business, but they may not be ready to buy yet. The most successful lead generation campaigns are then followed by ongoing nurture of those leads to better educate them and lead them along your sales funnel.

Many leading companies use our publications to capture leads by: 

• Custom EDMs
• Content hubs on our news websites
• Custom webinars
• Content partnerships to create eBooks or white papers
• Hosted landing pages

What sorts of results can we get?

• Custom EDMs regularly can get over 50 leads or as many as 100
• Custom webinars can easily attract over 200 leads
• Virtual event sponsorship can generate between 20 and 50 leads

How do we measure this?

Lead generation is of course one of the easiest types of campaign to measure as you directly get leads. 

Tips to make the most of a lead generation campaign:

• Offer genuinely valuable content in return for contact details
• If you are new to the market, build your profile with a branding campaign to increase results
• When you get your leads, don’t jump all over them, nurture them first until they’re ready to buy

Why does branding matter? 

Multiple studies show that the single biggest predictor of whether people will become a customer is whether they have heard of you before.

Humans are naturally afraid of the unknown. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that this is because, in many scenarios, ‘the unknown’ may pose some sort of physical threat. 

Consequently, we tend to favour people, places, and things that are familiar to us. Researchers, and marketers, refer to this phenomenon as the familiarity principle, also known as the mere-exposure effect.

As a marketer, establishing familiarity is one of the most powerful ways you can increase your conversions. If a potential customer is familiar with your brand they are much more likely to convert. However, many brands make the mistake of focusing too heavily on one distribution channel, leaving their brand to be quickly forgotten after just one or two interactions. Establish familiarity by reaching your customers through multiple touchpoints and watch your conversions rise.

What does a brand mean?

A brand is about what you stand for. Your promise, your unique selling point, your values can all be built into how the market sees your brand.

A brand also means trust. When a company has a strong brand, customers know what they are getting. It shows that the company has some skin in the game and something to lose if they don’t deliver, and this instinctively means people feel they can trust you.

While there is a lot of focus on the last click, it’s important to remember that:

• Consistent branding leads to 2-3 times greater conversion rates on campaigns
• 82 per cent of people searching choose a familiar brand for their first click

By aligning your company with respected titles like Utility, Infrastructure, Energy and Pump Industry, you can build your brand and increase your recognition, prestige and level of comfort with our audience.

Many leading companies work with Monkey Media to build their brands with:

• Thought leading content in our magazines and newsletters
• Print advertising –  is read by the most senior people in the industry and continues to have the highest rates of recall and deepest attention span
• Web banners –  appear alongside our trusted web content
• Remarketing –  reach the widest possible audience of industry professionals even when they are not on our website

What sorts of results can we get?

• Remarketing campaigns can deliver over 20,000 impressions each quarter
• Increased recognition from key industry players
• Research studies show improved perception and trust
• Increased response rates on direct campaigns
• Increase in branded search (ie people searching for your company)

How do we measure the success of a branding campaign?

• Long-term research on your marketing perception
• Google Search Console –  track searches for your business name
• Google Analytics –  track changes in your overall web traffic
• Feedback from your customers
• Impressions on web banners
• Increased response rates on direct campaigns

Many companies also find that their customers have ‘pigeon-holed’ them for a particular product. An education campaign can help show existing customers that your offerings are much broader. It’s also important to let the market know when you have a new product or service available.

We can help you educate both your current customers and new prospects about what you offer. 

B2B buying decisions often involve numerous decision makers, so it’s also important to be able to communicate different but consistent messages with different levels.

Some of the sector’s most innovative companies work with Monkey Media to educate the market with:

• High level content focused on topical issues, strategic benefits and cost savings in the print magazine to communicate with industry leaders and decision makers
• Case studies and technical content on the website and newsletter to reach engineers and project managers
• Video content on the website and social channels to reinforce your message
• Custom content partnerships to work with our editors and use our data and insights into what people are responding to
• Nurture campaigns to send a series of emails and pieces of content over a period of time

What sorts of results can we get?

• Increased demand at the top of the funnel – more searches for your company and solutions
• Increased comfort from new customers with your solutions
• More interest in your other solutions from existing customers
• A shortened sales cycle

How do we measure this?

• Increased acceptance or understanding of your unique solutions 
• Greater recognition and responses from industry leaders
• Feedback from your sales team that the sales process has shortened