Onsite gatherings have seemed to lose touch as event planners are now looking for new experiences for their audience from around the world. With the rise in online human interactions, companies look for advanced solutions to carry on with their business activities. Be it an online conference, career fair or launch event, virtual webinars are considered ideal for keeping attendees well-informed and entertained. Only recently, it was deduced that virtual webinars had outperformed traditional online seminars. This is a significant discovery for the corporate business world. Let’s face it; bland online meetings fail to offer an immersive experience. It may get boring ogling at the screen and attending continuous presentations and lectures. Whereas the current webinar trends convincingly hook attendees to their screens.
So whether you are hosting an official meeting, online lecture or business event, a video conferencing tool helps connect with an audience residing across the globe. Today, webinars are considered an accessible and practical approach for businesses to connect with industry professionals, drive leads and retain customers globally. As of current trends in video conferencing, webinars work wonders when familiarizing the target market with your brand, products and services. The virtual space provides room for anyone and everyone to engage in 1:1 or group discussions to benefit most from the event.
Although before rushing into hosting a webinar, you need to define the purpose and plan your event.
Why Host Virtual Webinars?
Simply put, webinars are events held online through a virtual events platform. It allows hosts and speakers to address the sessions with live or recorded presentations aimed at informing and educating the audience. Mainly, it welcomes a global audience onboard where they get to connect, interact and engage with each other. These sessions encourage attendee participation through icebreaker activities, live polling, Q&A sessions, quizzes and more. As a result, your company learns about the interests of your target audience and offers a direction for you to continue with business activities.
Today, webinars are being held worldwide to educate the market about your business, enabling them to interact with your brand and services. That is how most organizations today are expanding their reach and receiving global recognition. We know for sure that virtual webinars are dominating the scene today. It has become the ultimate video conferencing tool that fuels customer interests and interaction. Without a doubt, webinar platforms that extend tons of networking and communication features have proved to be the most credible.
Let’s now explore what makes webinars so special. By hosting webinars, you can:
- Set up 3D animated and designed webinar rooms
- Use multiple presentations hosting options
- Live stream of events across social media platforms
- Quick attendee engagement activities such as live polling and Q&As
- Unified communications as a service platform for live conferencing
- Multilingual features facilitate people from vast backgrounds
- Customizable attendee experience created with unique agenda
- Multiple platform integrations such as zoom, Vimeo, Youtube or WebX
Once you have shortlisted a platform that offers endless features, it is time to adopt the current webinar trends to win at your efforts.
Wow Audience with 3D Virtual Venues
Instead of welcoming your audience directly in the webinar rooms, it is suggested that you make their experience worthwhile with 3D virtual venues. You can bring your webinar sessions to life with complete branding of the environment. As soon as the audience steps onto the landing page, you can direct them towards 3D-designed lobbies and halls. This offers them a chance to explore the venue, interact with your brand and connect with company rep avatars at the booths to decide on the webinar session they wish to attend.
Basically, a virtual platform allows you to replicate the environment where your attendees come to terms with your business. There’s not much to miss when you allow the audience to have a real-life experience. Thanks to digital technology, tools and software for elevating digital human interaction.
Easily Converse within the Metaverse
At present, technology is guiding us towards creating alternate realities that combine our digital and physical life. It is the ultimate revolution for businesses aiming to tap into a global market. Altogether, the metaverse facilitates real-time human interaction where millions of people converse simultaneously. For instance, the gaming industry has welcomed people in an immersive virtual experience for a long time.
Picking on the same approach, the metaverse environment has changed how people work, connect, and engage. For instance, if you wish to market your new product before the world, the best strategy for you to go for is a virtual product launch webinar. This way, you can present the product with all its features, give a demo, and educate attendees on the benefits of using your product. Using the attractive visuals and graphics, you can design the webinar rooms. In fact, virtual platforms also gives you an option to select the webinar rooms from the available templates.
Similarly, the 3D animated avatars within the metaverse help attendees represent themselves in a digital environment. These human rep avatars walk around and interact with your brand. Thus, when hosting a virtual webinar within the metaverse, make sure you fully represent the company culture for people to understand your brand.
Entertain the Audience in Multiple Webinar Sessions
Before, zoom meetings only allowed accommodating up to a hundred participants. But now, with the integration of a virtual platform, you have the option to host a larger audience in multiple webinar sessions. With this, the opportunities for your brand marketing have expanded exponentially.
Now at a single event, you can host multiple sessions simultaneously. For instance, you can either offer live entertainment through guest speaker sessions or create informative B2B webinars. Research shows that 73% of the B2B webinar session attendees turn into permanent clients. For sure, webinars are the direct approach to business marketing where attendees get to interact with your brand directly in a formal environment. It is unlike any other marketing approach.
Therefore, businesses opt for webinar sessions that fully hook their target market to their product and services. Today, companies easily host a number of webinars, such as;
- Virtual Conference
- Virtual Product Launch
- Virtual Trade Show
- Virtual Exhibition
Not just that, live or recorded webinar sessions are presented to the general audience. Like, the audience can either switch to live sessions or request on-demand sessions for further assistance.
Onboard Remote Influencers and Industry Speakers
Educational webinar sessions can get boring with continuous presentations. Your attendees might drop out of the sessions if nothing is holding them back. For that matter, you can create a perfect blend of segments to keep your attendees entertained and engaged during the sessions. For example, you can incorporate influencer or industry speaker sessions into your webinar sessions.
With a virtual webinar, you can onboard speakers and industry leaders from any part of the world. They need not fly down to a physical location to address the audience. Rather, speakers easily sign in to the sessions using just an internet connection and their computer devices. Following this webinar trend, you can attract most people to the event. The speakers come up with engaging content and speeches to influence their audience. Basically, the industry thought leaders offer insights that spark valuable discussions among the attendees. This way, your webinar sessions go from one speaker to the next, glueing the audience to HD broadcasting.
Focus on Industry Specific Subjects
Who is your target audience? What are they looking for? Why are you hosting the webinar? What are you hoping to accomplish with a webinar? The answer to these questions lies in the webinar program. A personalized program with direct message is what keeps your audience most attached. Therefore, people are more interested in events that fuel their interests.
So if you wish for your target market to sure short attend your webinar event, then focus on your industry-specific topic. For instance, if you wish to target the customers of your brand, the best strategy is to go for B2C promotional webinars. However, you must not forget that you deliver the webinar to prospective customers. So an audience-focused approach is the best. Or if you aim at gathering fresh grads to your institution, then it is best to host a virtual career fair where you can educate them on the available career opportunities.
But what is the point of focusing on industry-specific topics? To better connect with your audience, you need to address them on the subject of their interest. Here’s a series of industry-specific webinar trends you can adopt;
- Educational webinars
- B2B webinar events
- B2C webinar events
- How-to-webinars
- Career advise and mentorship
- Corporate events
- Healthcare recruitment
- Skill enhancement
Whichever idea you choose for your webinar, make sure you attract the right audience because the success of your event is directly dependent on the webinar program.
Also, consider these tips to host a great webinar.
In Conclusion
Webinars allow attendees to conveniently gather in a virtual space and flexibly engage with one another. The informative presentations manage to grab the audience’s interest and better educate them about the subject matter. In this text, you will learn about the current webinar trends that helps create an unforgettable experience for your online audience. Now, it is time to go in the other direction and leave your competitors behind in the race.
Remember, the more creative you are with your webinars, the higher your ROI will be. So, if you are looking for a complete virtual event solution provider platform for your next event, then look no further. Join Virtual Days to host your next remarkable virtual webinar. You can also sign up for a demo and explore the potential of our virtual and hybrid events platform.
