Now that the public health crisis is improving, marketers can start to make strategic digital decisions with more experience under the belt.

Digital experiences in the event industry continue to improve

For over a year and half, marketers have been wondering what the future of events holds. 

BlueJeans and Forrester partnered to survey 200 North American decision-makers of marketing event strategies in order to understand how they were leveraging virtual and hybrid-event technology. 

The research found that marketers were optimistic about platform improvements. And with these improvements, 86% of respondents said they were confident that their virtual and hybrid events could achieve more success than in-person events. The large majority believed they would see more revenue and greater brand awareness using these virtual platforms.

Though event marketers have a wide range of virtual components to choose from, one of the most essential is online content.

“Industry conferences need to adopt a Netflix-like approach and think of content not as live events they sell tickets for, but as on-demand, must-watch sessions that are available for years to come,” writes Maura Rivera, Chief Marketing Officer at Qualified.com. 

Pointing to the new Salesforce+, Rivera explains how leading corporations need to make their conference content long-lasting and accessible on-demand. Similar to Disney+, Hulu and Netflix, the streaming service will make helpful B2B content easy to consume. 

Salesforce’s large annual conference, Dreamforce, will be available on the platform for anyone to view, from wherever they are, at any time. In contrast, The Web Summit, hosted in Portugal will have 40,000 in-person attendees, but all the helpful content will be lost after the conference is done.

It’s not a surprise that the future of events is digital. Digital experiences, enabled through VR headsets, mobile devices or web-based 3-D environments, are and will be a part of the business event industry. The metaverse is already here and it is growing more sophisticated with every major conference. 

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Even with a limited cap on participants, the marathon will attract 33,000 runners from around the world. 

It’s not just a celebratory moment for the running community, but it’s a hopeful sign for others ready for in-person events to return. 

In the business world, conferences and trade shows are already gearing up. 

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In-person events are waking up, but the virtual element continues

In-person events are returning with limited capacities and safety measures in place. 

Tobacco Plus Expo was one of the first trade shows to return to Las Vegas in May. It attracted more than 4,000 people and went off smoothly. 

“Everybody’s hyped to be here,” said Ryan Puentes of Afghan Hemp to Las Vegas Sun. “I think a lot of people are happy to have that vibe of getting out and doing stuff again. It’s good to see it.”

Even though businesses learned how to switch to virtual events last year, online experiences can’t fully replace the buzz, networking and element of discovery that in-person shows offer. At the same time, industries want to hold onto the benefits that virtual events offer.

Virtual events are more cost-effective for the organizers and participants, they allow more people to join and, with well-designed UI, they enable participants to attend more keynotes and to select more meaningful sessions. 

Because virtual events proved effective last year, leaders believe that digital events are here to stay—even if it’s in a smaller capacity (e.g. hybrid trade shows). 

Tech consultant Tim Bajarin has attended over 30 virtual events and explains why he thinks online conferences will outlast the pandemic. 

“After attending so many virtual events that have been well produced and highly successful, it leads me to believe that many companies will continue with this format,” he explains. “In the future, some may find the need to add an in-person event too, but that may be smaller than the large ones they did in the past and include virtual access to broaden their audience of attendees.”

Businesses—trade show organizers, sponsoring companies, participants and virtual event platforms—will be reimagining their event world over the next year.

For most, the return to in-person will be slow

Though professionals are ready to connect with their peers again, most companies are not rushing the process. 

“With an extended lead time to plan, we’re definitely taking a walk-before-we-run approach—we want to use this time to think through what we had been doing in the past, what worked and what could use improvement,” said Hilary France, Co-founder and CEO of Brand Assembly. 

Her company recognizes that the world has greatly changed over the last year and they need to continually prioritize safety for participants in a ‘COVID-sensitive’ world. 

CES—Las Vegas’s biggest annual trade show—is coming back in 2022. In 2019, the event brought in 182,000 people to the city. For the 2022 event, many questions around safety, capacity and digital options are still up in the air, but organizers have nearly a year to plan for the highly anticipated event. 

Because most physical events will come back towards the end of 2021 and in 2022, planners are working to determine how virtual platforms can enhance the physical experience and safety measures needed in a world less threatened by COVID. 

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We’re counting down to the end of 2020 in the style of the traditional Christmas carol the 12 Days of Christmas.

In the B2B space, government-issued lockdowns, curfews, and stay-at-home mandates meant that the industry lost out on one of their most important tools: in person events. Instead, many events went virtual. 

To celebrate the innovative minds and solutions behind some of this year’s new virtual events, we’ve foregone the traditional five golden rings in favor of five events that went virtual in 2020.

5 Events that Went Virtual in 2020

Virtual events have certain drawbacks, but they also proved advantageous in many ways. 

Attendees had more flexibility with how their days were structured and when they attended sessions. With no travel involved, virtual events were more cost-effective. Additionally, hosts and sponsors could more easily track connections, impressions, and results with the digital tracking tools available to them.

While virtual events are definitely taking their place as a beneficial and cost-effective tool in the B2B industry, no one’s quite ready to say goodbye to in-person events. The future of events will most likely be a blend of online and in-person trade shows, once vaccines fully begin to end the pandemic.

Adobe Summit 

The Adobe Summit was one of the first events to go virtual as the pandemic spread. The original Summit was planned for the end of March, the same month in which COVID-19 was officially declared a crisis in the US.

The event itself was sponsored by Accenture Interactive, Publicis Sapient, Deloitte Digital, and Cognizant Interactive, and targeted towards B2B marketers. The event itself—originally the Omniture Summit—has been held annually since 2003.

In 2020, Accenture spent $2.09 million in the digital space, and $335 thousand in events. Their spend in events occurred entirely between January 1 and March 1, dropping off just as the pandemic made events an uncertain investment.

Digital Sales & Marketing World

Early on in the pandemic, HubSpot, Vidyard, Petra, and iMPACT rescheduled Digital Sales & Marketing World that ended up taking place November 30th-December 2nd. The goal of the conference is for marketing, sales, and leadership teams to “get aligned on digital and ignite true business transformation.”

This year, Hubspot invested $1.04 million in digital media advertising, 70% of which went into podcasting. 

Sirius Decisions Summit

In May, Dun & Bradstreet, Highspot, Pathfactory, and Acoustic sponsored the Sirius Decisions Summit, another marketing conference put on for leaders in the B2B industry. 

Forrester, who acquired Sirius Decisions at the beginning of 2019, took full advantage of the range of options made available by the new virtual format. The event offered a virtual marketplace, flexible and customizable schedules, and a full docket of sessions targeted at attendees in a variety of roles.

Dun & Bradstreet only invested in the digital and event spaces in 2020, opting to avoid television, print, and other ad options. In fact, they placed a full 75% of their annual ad spend in digital. The remaining 25% went towards events, such as the Sirius Decisions Summit.

Inbound

In September, several months into the transition to virtual events, HubSpot hosted the Inbound conference. The event was sponsored by recognizable brands such as Slack, AWS Business Solutions, Atlassian, LinkedIn, Porsche, and Snapchat, and offered a lineup of speakers including notable marketing executives and celebrities.

In 2020, Slack spent $10.63 million on digital campaigns. 2020 was a good year for Slack, leading it to eventually be acquired by Salesforce earlier this month. Their 12 million daily users will allow Salesforce to rival Microsoft in workplace collaboration tools.

Dreamforce to You

Dreamforce, a Salesforce event marketed to industry “trailblazers,” took their place in the 2020 virtual event lineup by making sure that their event was specific to the current B2B climate. They offered sessions on topics such as “working in the new normal.” The content from the event is available online now for those who couldn’t attend.

Event sponsors included IBM, Accenture, Deloitte Digital, Capgemini, and PWC. In the B2B space, IBM invested $2 million into digital campaigns and $303 thousand into print publications this year, despite print’s decreasing popularity.

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In response, 2020 was marked by a quick shift to virtual events. What have we learned from a year full of virtual events? And are they here to stay? 

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4 Lessons Learned After Months of Virtual Events

While those in different industries have found different benefits and roads to success in virtual events, some lessons have been true across the board. Consider the following:

Lesson #1: Virtual Events Allowed Companies to Stay Connected with Buyers

By nature, virtual events have the potential to draw larger crowds. Attendees don’t have to spend extravagant resources to travel and attend the event, and there is essentially no cap to the audience thanks to virtual event platforms.

Virtual events make inviting international visitors much more accessible. Instead of needing to cross borders and spend time and resources on attending a three-day event, international audiences can engage with other companies from the comforts of their home office.

“Our virtual platform allows our international exhibitors to remain relevant in the marketplace through significant matchmaking and product displays, while this same virtual option expands our buyer market past local borders to visitors traditionally unable to attend the three-day event,” explained Jennifer Bacon, Show Director, Texworld and Apparel Sourcing New York City. 

Though virtual events don’t replace in-person connection completley, they provide a sufficient space for meaningful interactions and education.

Lesson #2: Not Every Industry Is Cut Out for Virtual Events

Some industries are better suited for virtual events than others—especially when it comes to trade shows.

There are some products, like textiles and apparel, that can only be experienced with all the senses. It’s difficult to communicate such details as texture, stitching, and durability through video and audio alone. Food or Baking Tradeshows, like Cake International, simply aren’t the same when done online. 

“You can’t ‘Amazon’ the events business,” said Marcus Diebel of JPMorgan Chase to The Economist. This doesn’t mean that future shows won’t have digital elements—but many leaders expect that events and trade shows will largely return to a normal feel within the next few years.

Lesson #3: All Events Require Appropriate Planning

Many of those responsible for planning events in a brand new format were struck by the amount of planning that goes into virtual events.

“The lesson we learned is that each event, no matter if onsite or digital, needs time to be prepared,” explains Marco Weichert of Performance Days.

It sounds like common sense, but it can be surprising to think through all of the details of an event, whether in person or virtual. The organizations that were simply speeding up a pre-existing process had an easier time transitioning to virtual events than did those companies who were starting from scratch.

Lesson #4: Virtual Events Improve Metric Tracking

One of the great downfalls of events is that it’s difficult to accurately measure their impact. The programs and processes involved in virtual events help solve this enduring problem and provide solid and specific data before, during, and after an event.

Metrics aren’t everything, but especially in a time with strained budgets, having the numbers to back up ideas and plans is valuable. 

Looking Ahead

While 80% of B2B marketers expect to see a return to in-person events in 2021, virtual events aren’t going anywhere. 

Across the board, the B2B industry has seen success and shortcomings of virtual event formats, and many agree that hybrid events offer the value of an in-person experience along with the metrics and availability of a virtual event: a win for hosts and attendees alike.

Virtual event-hosting platforms such as Hopin are banking on the same thing. Hopin founder and CEO Johnny Boufarhat says that the company is, “investing quite heavily into hybrid events to make it a new experience for people.”

The heart of the lessons COVID-19 has taught the B2B marketing industry is simple: marketers must, and can, adapt to changing conditions and find new ways of doing things. And they can maintain or even increase success by staying prepared, responsive, and flexible.

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But while industries looked different this year, they certainly didn’t stop moving. B2B marketers have adapted and thrived with a full docket of virtual events and digital advertising.

How have these changes impacted B2B spending across event sponsorships, digital ads, and print? Keep reading to find out.

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B2B Marketers Get Creative With Virtual Gatherings

Virtual events weren’t unheard of before stay-at-home orders, but as limits on crowds became widespread, the B2B industry began to rely on them more heavily. 

Advertisers moved past traditional webinars and began hosting “Ask Me Anything” events and virtual coffee hours—any number of online get togethers designed to provide face time without being together in person. 

Industry leaders quickly experienced new benefits using virtual events, such as:

• High cost effectiveness
• Global reach
• Easy and instant insight and analytics

The flexibility of virtual events allowed marketers to show off their creativity and truly engage attendees in ways that aren’t always feasible in person. Online and remote events allow organizers and hosts to cater to individuals and provide feedback in real time in an organized way.

In the long run, virtual events likely aren’t going anywhere and will instead simply grow in popularity, effectiveness, and adaptability as both organizers and audiences become more accustomed to the new format and increased possibilities.

B2B Ad Spend Grows

As the year’s gone on, B2B ad spend has been heavily directed at digital advertising. 

“The conditions of Covid-19 are really forcing B2B marketers to realize that they need to accelerate their transformation into digital,” says Jillian Ryan, eMarketer principal analyst. B2B digital ad spend is expected to grow 22.6% YoY by the end of the year

Ryan points out that this digital ad spend has been on track to increase for several years, though 2020 brought about an unexpected shift: audiences were spending more time on laptop and desktop computers, and less on mobile phones. 

Working from home changed the devices that audiences used, so advertisers had to make quick decisions to target them where they found them: on the larger work devices that they used for Zoom calls, rather than the cell phones they formerly scrolled on their commute.

Of course, the increase in digital spend wasn’t visible across the board. Industries such as healthcare increased digital ad spend by 41.2% YoY, while harder-hit industries such as travel decreased by 44.5%.

MediaRadar Insights

With virtual events on the rise, it would make sense to assume that the same sponsors of in-person events would simply shift their attention to webinars and online conferences. This isn’t necessarily the case.

Of all event sponsors and exhibitors who attended B2B events in April through September of 2019, only 43% sponsored virtual events in the same time frame in 2020. Those who did return were big spenders, who made up about 50% of total spend.

Even though the majority of event sponsors didn’t make a direct switch to virtual events, they began to invest more in digital ads across websites. Between April and September, event sponsors and exhibitors from 2019 spent 35% more YoY on digital ads, even as the total number of digital advertisers only increased slightly.

The same can’t be said about print, however. 

When advertisers left events behind, they didn’t flock to print options. Overall spend on print advertising options from this group decreased by 40% YoY. This constitutes more stability than the print industry’s 45% drop overall, but still doesn’t look bright.

As face-to-face events remain limited, big companies shifted sponsorships to virtual events, while many others reallocated their budgets to advertisements across B2B websites. Digital buying is up and print buying is significantly down. 

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Even though 70% of event budgets are spent in Q1, event planners and publishers are eager to get the ball rolling again.  

“We are exploring smaller, regional events in experiential spaces including outdoors, VIP/high quality attendee experiences and hybrid events,” says CEO of information and events company Questex Paul Miller. “We have also launched a number of virtual events in the short term that we expect to remain ongoing.” Questex has at least 14 upcoming virtual events planned between May and July. 

Some companies have quickly pivoted towards large streamlined events, while others are using an ad hoc combination of solutions to bring people together in smaller webinars and events.

While virtual events are still a work in progress due to rapid changes, it is likely that the importance of online events is here to stay long-term. We dive into how brands are using virtual events, what they are learning from the changes and how this affects advertising. 

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The Sudden Shift From In-Person to Online Events

It is unlikely that full trade shows will return by August (or even later), but there is still a large need for companies to generate leads and strengthen their brand in the meantime.

Informa plc, the world’s largest exhibitions firm, has had to reimagine how large trade shows could be executed online. Trade shows cannot fully be replicated virtually, but the firm has found new ways to create advantageous virtual experiences.

“We try to package sponsorship offerings around branding opportunities, lead-gen and education, and then how we facilitate networking where you can actually go into chat rooms and have one-on-one conversations,” says President of North America for Informa Markets Rick McConnell. Exhibitors ultimately want qualified leads.

With new virtual events technology, companies can be matched with the right leads based on specific demographics — much like programmatic advertising. 

The other benefit the firm is seeing is that the event can be stretched out over time and participants can connect throughout the year rather than in one intensive weekend. 

Brands Face New Challenges

Virtual events are not an exact replication of in-person events — and brands have new objectives for participating.

Reuters Events found that sponsors find virtual events favorable for developing their role as thought leaders, lead generation and brand recognition. Participants primarily attend for learning purposes. 

With these new objectives, brands have to rework how they plan and create their promotional material. Companies must focus on quality because the content is competing with everything else on the internet. 

“Attention spans online are undeniably shorter than in person, resulting in the need for a faster-paced program,” explained Managing Director of Reuters Events Piers Latimer. But the flip-side is that the content can reach a limitless audience at any point in time, rather than a small room of executives during a one hour session. 

There is now a sea of virtual events. Executives will now be more picky about which events they choose to attend, and the ones in which they don’t pull out early. Publishers are experiencing a steep learning curve as they implement best practices and try to create the most value for stakeholders. 

New Solutions Here to Help

LinkedIn has made changes to their platform to make virtual events more doable for companies. They have created a tighter integration between LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events to “help you connect with your community through virtual events, share important updates, and rally them from afar, all for free.”

Publishers are adding events to their service offerings. Government Executive Media Group, Inc. (GEMG) recently launched GovExec Virtuoso to facilitate virtual events. 

GEMG was already in the hybrid in-person/digital event space for eight years, but this new launch is making more virtual events happen. Between January 2019 and March 2020, the company facilitated 75 digital events. From April to the end of May, it will have hosted 50. 

Penske Media also recently made investments in event capabilities. 

MediaRadar Insights

The number of B2B brands running ads promoting webinars has drastically increased. 

Since January, the ads have more than doubled — highlighting the significance of this new trend. 

Starting in April, the number of brands advertising on B2B websites was down about 15%, and spending had dropped 6%. The number of brands running webinar ads significantly increased while the number of brands across the board decreased. 

Virtual events will not replace in-person events long-term — people are too social for that — but they are proving their value in the marketing playbook. For now, this is where B2B advertising is seeing a major shift. 

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