There aren't too many B2B marketers that would have told you in January 2020 they were confident in their ability to pivot from a traditional slate of physical trade shows and conferences to a virtual agenda without missing a beat.
The reality is that marketers have historically depended on physical events to build awareness, launch products, generate leads, and boost customer loyalty. In the blink of an eye, the pandemic drove a massive behavioral shift in how marketers were forced to execute their jobs — and the reality is that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.
BlueJeans partnered with leading analyst firm Forrester Consulting to evaluate the shift to virtual and hybrid events over the past 18 months and to unpack opportunities for how organizations can leverage this evolving medium to meet their marketing objectives.
This custom survey asked 200 North American decision-makers of marketing event strategies for insights into their experiences with hybrid and virtual events and how they plan on leveraging this technology going forward. The findings fall into three sections: virtual readiness, current event effectiveness, and future expectations.
Virtual readiness
When the pandemic forced organizations to cancel their physical events, marketers were required to immediately jump into action and build out a mitigation plan to stem the wholesale loss of their event schedule. In fact, 61% of survey respondents reacted by purchasing a virtual event platform directly in response to their shifting strategy, whereas 25% of respondents used their existing video conferencing platform to fill the gap for their virtual events.
Only 14% already had a platform on hand that they could use to conduct virtual events. In hindsight, 57% of respondents said they didn't have enough time to vet their options and go through their traditional solution selection process. They simply needed to make an urgent decision.
Additionally, only 40% of respondents admitted that their virtual events strategy was an area of focus pre-pandemic, compared to 62% recognizing it as a critical initiative mid-pandemic. This suggests that the groundwork for successful platform selection was limited by the reactionary nature of the situation. Net-net, it appears that most firms got caught a little flatfooted when the time came to make the switch from physical to virtual.
Current event effectiveness
With the "rush to pivot" as context, it's not surprising to see that marketers feel underwhelmed with their current virtual and hybrid events experience. Only 51% are currently satisfied with their virtual events platform, and 94% have experienced issues with their current setup. The top three issues are troubleshooting technical difficulties, difficulty personalizing aspects of the event, and difficulty managing and delivering event content.
Overall, 66% of firms struggle to achieve the same success from virtual events they would receive from physical events. Seventy-one percent agree it's hard to make virtual events resemble the human-to-human elements of an on-site event, and 67% say it's hard to bring their products and brand narrative to life through the virtual form factor.
Future expectations
Even with some of the drawbacks marketers have experienced with virtual and hybrid events, they still plan on adopting this medium more aggressively in the future, with 66% of their overall event mix existing in a hybrid or virtual format, up from 53% pre-pandemic. The benefits of audience flexibility, event analytics, and overall increased attendance are primary drivers contributing to continued investment.
Ultimately, marketers are optimistic about the technology delivering against their requirements. With platform improvements, 86% are confident their virtual and hybrid events can achieve more success than in-person events. And maybe most interesting, roughly three-fourths of respondents feel that better virtual events will lead to more revenue, greater brand awareness, and more significant competitive advantage.
At BlueJeans, we are optimistic that with more time to evaluate virtual event solutions , make the audience experience more engaging , and gain production support, marketers will be able to realize their ambitious virtual and hybrid event goals.
To learn more about these research findings, download the study or watch our webinar recap featuring Art Schoeller, vice president and principal analyst of Forrester.
Discover how BlueJeans by Verizon can fulfill all your hybrid event needs.
This post was created by BlueJeans by Verizon with Insider Studios .
Via PakApNews