Page 7 – 6Connex

Your Ultimate Guide to Hosting a Virtual Career Fair in 9 Easy Steps

We can all agree that hosting and preparing a virtual career fair takes a lot of hard work. Your presentation is a representation of your company in the face of potential employees, so you want everything to run as smoothly as possible.

Luckily, we’ve created the ultimate guide to hosting an online career fair, complete with a useful infographic below. Here we’ve outlined the 9 most important steps:

Choose a virtual career fair platform
Develop your event budget
Create an effective strategy
Customize your virtual booth
Form partnerships, set expectations
Staff your virtual career fair
Develop and implement a marketing plan
Launch your career fair
Follow up with attendees

Before you know it, you’ll be hosting a virtual career fair that attracts top talent from all over the world!

But first, if you’re still wondering “what is a virtual job fair, exactly?”, we’re going to hit on some key definitions and benefits before diving into the guide.

Virtual Job Fair Definition and Benefits

Online job fairs allow organizations to run elaborate or simple recruiting events with the help of virtual career fair software.

The perks? Branded e-environments with lobbies or welcome areas, video greetings from company executives, exhibit halls with booths, rooms where candidates can chat with recruiters to learn more about an organization in real-time, and the list goes on.

Are Virtual Career Fairs Worth It? Benefits of a Virtual Career Fair

Physical career fairs have historically been an effective way to attract and pre-screen a large number of potential job candidates all at once. Today, however, two major factors have lessened their efficiency:

Knowledge-Based Jobs Don’t Require Physical Presence: Technology and best practices for telecommuting have made the requirement to live and work in the same area less important for knowledge-based jobs than it once was, allowing organizations to seek out qualified candidates globally.
Travel is Expensive: Increased time and expense with travel and renting a space to hold a career fair.

But wait, there’s more…

You Can Reach More Candidates with Virtual Job Fairs

One of the lesser-known benefits of hosting a virtual career fair is the ability to attract hard-to-find “passive” candidates.

Passive candidates are those who fall into one of the following categories:

Currently Employed: Candidates who are currently employed and appreciate the ease of a virtual job fair because they don’t need to take time off from work.
Prefer Privacy: The kind of employees that prefer privacy and might have concerns about being seen at a physical job fair.

With online job fairs, you can reach potential talent anywhere, any time. So let’s teach you how to run one.

How to Host a Virtual Career Fair in 9 Steps

Here is your official virtual career fair checklist. From planning to follow-up, here are the best practices in the industry.

1. Choose a Virtual Career Fair Platform

There are two general types of virtual career fair software on the market:

Simple Webpage: One is a simple webpage with a chat window where attendees can chat with recruiters at a designated time.
Elaborate Design: The other is a more robust solution that mimics a physical career fair with branded exhibit halls, booths, webinars, and a resource center.

Budget-conscious organizations that want the basics can go with a chat-only solution.

Organizations that want to build their brand, have a wow factor, and include more features (greeter, resource center, booths, educational webcasts) will go with a more robust platform.

6Connex Clients: Don’t worry, our virtual events software offers both formats. For curious readers, check out our features by requesting a demo today.

2. Develop Your Virtual Career Fair Budget

The cost of a virtual career fair depends on several variables, such as:

The number of events you want to host
The features required
Scope of the event (i.e. local versus global)

While the costs range from $8,000 to $80,000 for a single event, a virtual career fair still generally costs a fraction of a physical event.

Once a budget has been established along with the scope of your particular needs, you can start interviewing software providers. Read more about guidelines on how to evaluate and choose a virtual conference provider.

3. Plan Out the Virtual Event With an Effective Strategy

Developing an effective strategy that covers the basics and sets goals for your event is crucial to succeeding as a host. Make sure you keep these important points in mind:

Dates: Find the best date(s) possible to host your career fair with a great turnout, allowing your team at least 2-3 months to plan
Content: Plan and schedule time for content creation (video, images, text) for event
Scope: Deciding on the ideal amount of companies to participate
Goals: Setting goals for expected attendance to attract companies and sponsors

More on the Scope of a Virtual Job Fair

The scope and size of an event are up to the organization hosting it.

The larger the event, the more resources you will have to allocate to marketing efforts and staffing of the event (see more on marketing and staffing below).

Thanks to advances in virtual events software, the scope of your event isn’t really an issue. It has never been easier to create an online career fair. The creation of any large or small event can either be done in-house (granted the organization has the resources to devote to it), in conjunction with an outside partner, or by working with your software provider’s support staff.

What if attendance exceeds your expectations during planning? No worries.

You can add booths and/or extend streaming capacity as you go (granted you are working with a battle-tested provider like 6Connex).

4. Customize Your Virtual Booth

The nice thing about the virtual booth is that it allows you to get creative with the kind of information you want to present to potential employees as well as the format you want to display it in.

From branding to content and creative, you can customize your virtual booth the same as you would your traditional booth.

No design experience? No problem.

Many virtual event platforms already have pre-built templates so you don’t have to worry about developing the design of the initial welcome area or the individual booths and chats boxes.

Must-Have Items for a Successful Virtual Career Fair Booth

Not sure what to stock in your virtual career booth? Here is a brief list of must-haves:

List of current open positions
Downloadable company benefits
Company locations map
Current company PR/news and stock information
Corporate or departmental videos

Don’t forget to staff your booth for all of the days that the event is live!

Standardize the Messages from Recruiters

Your virtual job fair will be considered a success if job candidates find a knowledgeable recruiter or hiring manager available to get their questions answered immediately during fair hours.

Recruiters receiving too many repetitive questions? Here’s the solution.

Consider compiling a messaging sheet of standard responses for recruiters to pull from, to ensure similar responses and time efficiency.

Use Software Data Collection to Vet Through Candidates

Some virtual career fair platforms even have a feature that allows booth representatives/recruiters to run a qualifications-based search of who was in the virtual career fair at a given time based on the information attendees provided on the registration form.

The best part? Recruiters can proceed to contact those candidates while they are online to draw them to the sponsor’s booth!

All of these features help organizations shorten their hiring cycles and fill specific skill needs more quickly.

By using a virtual event platform like 6Connex to host your career fair, you can easily use pre-built templates to walk users through the virtual recruiting process step-by-step.

5. Form Partnerships, Set Expectations

As the career fair gets closer, take time to reach out to event partners, sponsors and/or speakers to educate them on the expectations and requirements for the event.

Make sure you’re all on the same page before the fair begins. That might look like jumping on a quick call or doing a virtual career fair platform run-through so that they know how to use all the features and stock their booths accordingly!

6. Staff Your Online Career Fair

More than anything, you want your career fair attendees to be able to find knowledgeable recruiters or hiring managers who can help answer their questions at all times during the fair hours.

Make sure you have the right amount of staff ready to help your job candidates, whether that be freelancers, interns, or employees within your own company.

7. Develop and Implement a Marketing Plan

As with any career fair, the challenge is getting candidates to attend. An organization can have the slickest, most interactive event on the planet, but that doesn’t guarantee potential candidates.

How do you do it? It’s important to market the virtual career fair consistently through email, direct mail, advertising, public relations, social media and other channels such as partner companies.

Integrated marketing campaigns work best for career fair promotion. The more diverse the selection of marketing vehicles used, the better the chances of reaching more potential attendees.

A full-time marketing person is not required for these efforts. However, it is best if someone involved with marketing takes charge.

Set Up Communications Channels With Attendees

Once potential candidates have registered, organizations need to set up a regular email drip, social media, and other communications schedule to keep attendees informed, with a final reminder going out the day before.

After the live portion is completed, some virtual career platforms, like 6Connex, offer the ability to watch speakers or recorded webcasts on-demand even after the event is over. These organizations should send out regular reminder emails that the virtual event is still open.

The reminders should include information about useful materials such as:

Recorded webcasts
Industry keynotes workshops, which are available on-demand or for download in the booths
Ability for attendees to ask questions and have them answered promptly

8. Launch Your Career Fair!

Now that you’ve done so much hard work, you can officially launch your career fair!

If your platform gives access to a resource center, make sure it is loaded up with downloadable content from the career fair. This is one way that companies use virtual events for lead generation.

Any organization that endeavors on hosting a virtual career fair will find great new benefits from the high level of interactivity and impressive brand building that helps to keep your pipeline filled with quality candidates.

9. Follow up with Attendees

Congrats! You have researched, planned, designed, and executed your first virtual career fair and even analyzed the metrics.

Now what?

Don’t forget to follow up with the candidates that your recruiters interacted with.

Use any contact information the recruiters received to reach out to the potential candidates that haven’t applied yet or may have more questions. You can even track candidates who moved to the next step in the hiring process to track the overall success of the event.

While face-to-face meetings are still important, now they can often be pushed back further in the hiring process when interest levels on both sides are high.

Until that time, virtual career fairs provide a high level of interactivity and impressive brand building that helps to keep an organization’s pipeline filled with quality candidates.

Plan Your Virtual Career Fair Today, Thank Us Later

Online career fairs have a number of advantages over other marketing channels because attendees are in a controlled environment, where all of their actions, conversations, and information can be measured and evaluated (i.e. views, click-through rates, etc).

These metrics and reports provided by your hosting platform’s technology are key to improving future events. Analyze your virtual event reports them to identify features that were popular or not so popular to the candidates and adjust for future events.

For more information on the 6Connex Virtual Career platform, go to www.6Connex.com.

The New Way to Present Benefits to Employees: Going Virtual

If you are creating an employee benefits communication plan, there’s a new way to think about how to best present benefits to employees.

In traditional benefits fairs, less than half of the working populace actually understand the benefits available to them.

If employees don’t understand benefits, then tons of goodies available to them can’t even be used. Due to this waste, a new way to present benefits online has emerged.

In this guide, we will go over what it is and exactly how you can host one at your company.

Let’s get started at the top with what benefits fairs are.

What is a Health and Benefits Fair?

Many companies strive to retain their employees by offering company benefits, such as health and vision care, membership discounts to local businesses, and great retirement fund options. However, not all employees may be aware of the benefits available to them, especially if they are new to a company.

Planning an employee benefits fair can introduce workers to all the extras that a company has to offer and are important in recruiting and retaining the best hires.

The Challenge of Communicating Benefits to Employees

Successfully educating your staff on their health benefits is no small feat, most notably when it comes to planning and setting up all of the logistics. Both employees and employers struggle with the effectiveness and outcome of a traditional benefits fair.

We will explain the struggle from both sides when benefits fairs are not planned effectively.

Employees

If you want employees making the most of the benefits you offer, you will find overwhelmed and disinterested staff skimming over the benefits plans available to them.

Let me give you an example:

The traditional approach involves handing out printed materials like brochures and packets about benefits to employees. These might be provided within the office or even at a benefits fair – in-person – with booths and representatives from different companies involved.

The down-side to this method is that many employees feel they don’t have the time to educate themselves on the benefits when just handed material. They might not even know which benefits to choose from with all the information they need to sift through.

In-person, it is great to have a short discussion with a rep about benefits, but it is impossible to review and understand everything in the short amount of time allocated for a benefits fair during company time.

In fact, employees admit they spend just 30 minutes on average thinking about their benefits choices when making decisions. The engagement is not there, so their attention isn’t either.

Employers

On the flip side, several employers may not have the resources or the know-how to educate employees on the benefits they’re offering. In fact, only 40% of employers help employees understand the benefits available to them. Yikes.

In addition, employers may have to keep spending excessively on the printing and re-printing of outdated educational material, racking up the costs to keep staff up to date on their benefits.

Add venue or location drama, organizing sponsorships and partnerships to show up, and you’ve got yourself a big plate of stress on your table. Nothing that is impossible, of course… but there is an easier way.

The Solution to Communicating Benefits to Employees

What about presenting this information in a place your employees feel most at home and can review their information in one easy place? How about eliminating the constant printing and in-person coordination, all while adding more engaged and happy employees?

This is where the virtual in virtual benefits fair kicks in. And data shows that it actually works.

Hosting a benefits fair pushed employees from spending 30 minutes revising their benefits package to up to an hour. Aside from the convenience that virtual benefits fairs offer, they also packed a punch in efficiency and effectiveness for employees when understanding their benefits. A win-win for employers and employees.

Need we say more? Of course, we do. Here are 10 more reasons why you should choose to go virtual when presenting benefits to employees this year.

More Reasons to Host a Benefits Fair ONLINE for Employees

The advantages are endless when deciding to educate employees on their benefits online. From location independence for employees to cost savings for employers, there is a win-win for everyone when going virtual with a benefits fair.

Here is a brief list of each reason with further detailed explanation below.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

Reach and inform all employees, no matter the location

Believe it or not, many companies spend thousands putting human resource managers on planes all over the world to meet with employees in-person. A virtual setup means saving all of that money, while still having everyone in the same room.

Employees take full ownership of their benefits package

In a virtual benefits fair, employees can visit the booths or watch the presentations that they need and only those that they need. They can download certain information and refer back to it whenever they need it. A great time and energy saver for your employees.

The convenience and comfort from doing it at home

Hosting a virtual benefits fair puts people in multiple situations where they feel comfortable — in an online environment, accessing information from wherever they work. This allows employees to better absorb the provided information.

New levels of engagement

A virtual benefits fair is new and exciting, and getting employees engaged may give them an entirely new outlook on wellness.

Direct access to representatives

No more playing a game of telephone with important information on health insurance. At a virtual benefits fair, employees can ask the questions they need answers for and they can get direct answers from insurance representatives.

Eliminates fixed costs

Virtual benefits fairs are cost-effective in many ways, from travel, printing, venue rental, and time spent organizing an in-person benefits fair.

Employers get immediate feedback

Employers can get statistics on what booths employees visited the most, or what presentation had the most attendance, which can help guide future communications.

Employees can involve their partner and/or family

Because employees can access the fair and any accompanying information from anywhere, it means they can include the people in their lives (whom will likely be affected by the benefits) that matter.

Employees will see (and feel) that their health and wellness is important to their employer

Virtual benefits fairs tend to show employees just how much they mean to their employer and to the company, and that’s likely one of the top reasons to host one!

But how do you even get started on hosting a virtual benefits fair?

How to Present Benefits to Employees Online

So you have decided to educate employees about benefits online? Let’s go over 5 quick steps you can use as a benefits fair checklist for when you host a benefits fair online. They are explained in detail below.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

1. Choose a virtual events platform that’s right for your benefits fair

A platform is going to do all of the hard work for you when it comes to any virtual event. This way, you can focus on areas of your expertise and leave the rest up to the platform. If you’ve already got an idea of what you want your virtual benefits fair to look like, make sure you approach different platforms with that in mind.

You’ll want to make sure the platform is capable of doing anything and everything in the benefits fair. Keep in mind that not every virtual event platform can be flexible with what you have in mind or includes the tools you need to make your benefits fair as effective as possible. So explore your options as much as possible beforehand.

It’s also a great idea to look for a platform that offers quality customer support. 6Connex has helped countless companies host virtual benefits fair if you’re interested in reaching out to someone who can help you get connected to a trusted virtual benefits fair platform.

2. Decide what elements you’ll include in your virtual benefits fair

Once you’ve chosen your platform and you know what it’s capable of doing, you can start to make a list of the elements you’d like to see in your virtual benefits fair.

This could be anything from:

1:1 chats
Booths for the different benefits providers and representatives
Live webinars
Pre-recorded videos
Downloadable collateral
Auditorium

This will all depend on what type of experience you want your employees to have.

Employee Benefits Fair Themes

You might also think about how different elements will fall into the employee benefits fair themes you have thought up. If you need help thinking up themes, ask our specialists for help. We can help you draw inspiration from other theme ideas we have helped clients build up in their benefits fair event.

3. Schedule a date and time for virtual benefits fair

Choosing the right date and time to host your virtual benefits fair is important. Questions you should ask yourself include:

Will you host your benefits fair during open enrollment?
Will it be an all-day event?
How much time do you need to plan benefits fair?
Are there any company deadlines or holidays you need to consider?

Part of the great thing about offering a virtual event is that it can cater to more people’s schedules, especially those working and living in different timezones.

Make sure you schedule your benefits fair far enough in advance that you can market it internally and give your employees enough time to plan to attend.

4. Internally market your virtual benefits fair to employees

After you’ve picked a date and time, you will have to think about how you will market benefits to employees. You should provide them with initial information so they know what to expect and so they can start preparing questions for the event.

Use your internal marketing campaign to get employees excited about attending and getting the information they need. Create benefits fair flyers and other marketing material to distribute everywhere your employees eyes are, including:

E-mail
Internal networks
Social media
Around the office

5. Evaluate how the benefits fair went with data

Once you’ve held your event, it’s not entirely over. Use this time to take a look at the data you were provided from the platform you chose for your virtual benefits fair so you can answer important questions like:

Which booths were visited the most?
Were there tons of questions in the chats?
What presentations were well-attended?
What downloads were the most popular?

All of this information can help you guide year-long communications within the company as well as help you plan next year’s virtual benefits fair.

Pro-Tip to Mastering a Benefits Fair

Once you host a virtual benefits fair during open enrollment, you can make it an annual tradition. This way, you can do two things at once: help and encourage your employees to participate in open enrollment, while helping them make decisions that will truly benefit them and their families.

The Easy and Effective Answer: Host a Virtual Benefits Fair

A virtual benefits fair is global, engaging, informative, cost-effective, and it boosts employee morale, among many other pros. They help employees feel connected and give them access to the information they need at any time.

At 6Connex, our platform allows companies to host virtual benefits fairs that look a lot like an in-person benefits fair, complete with booths, presentations, and even an auditorium.

Don’t worry, we’re not leaving it up to you to figure it all out – that’s what we’re here for. Continue browsing our site to learn more about going virtual with your benefits fair or reach out to our specialists to get started on a demo today.

Demand Generation Solutions: How Virtual Summits Can Drastically Drive Results

I can almost hear your marketing team gathering around their round table and discussing “What are the best demand generation solutions of 2020?”

That’s when they come across the results-driven phenomena that are virtual summits, which includes benefits like:

Expanding brand awareness
Enhancing network opportunities
Saving on physical event costs
Increasing value and ROI

But how exactly do they do it?

Keep reading to learn more about how a virtual summit software can help your company build a solid demand generation strategy.

But first, a quick definition.

Definition of Demand Generation

What is demand generation?

Simply put, demand generation is the process of increasing awareness and building excitement around your product. It’s more branding-focused, which is the major difference between demand generation vs lead generation, the latter tending to be more customer-focused.

Demand generation strategies like using a virtual summit software can help with various aspects of marketing, including the ability to:

Reach new markets
Promote product features
Create consumer buzz
Generate PR
Re-engage existing customers
Build a loyal customer base

If you’re creating a demand generation plan for your business, virtual events should be at the top of your list.

Why Virtual Summits are the Most Powerful Demand Generation Tool

Let’s get into the four ways that virtual summits help your business generate demand.

1. Virtual Summits Increase Brand Exposure

When hosting a physical event, attendance is often limited by the amount of physical space available and the number of representatives each company can afford to send.

By switching to virtual summits, you can reach thousands of attendees and potential leads, especially if you have speakers self-promoting and attendees helping spread the word about your event.

But here’s the best part.

Virtual events can be attended both live and on-demand afterward, so attendees can avoid conflict obligations and more of them can attend. This convenience is integral to any demand generation strategy.

2. Virtual Summits Create Better Networking Opportunities

Multi-sponsor virtual summits are becoming a more popular way to conduct virtual events.

These summits allow companies to connect with attendees through virtual booths and sponsored sessions, creating new networking opportunities for your attendees that aren’t as widely available at physical events.

Hosting a multi-sponsor virtual summit can also help your own business build and strengthen valuable relationships with your event sponsors.

3. Virtual Events Save On Physical Event Costs

Historically, businesses have only hosted physical events in order to generate demand.

Hosting and attending physical events and conferences can cost companies thousands, even millions of dollars for large, company-wide events. Direct event-related costs like travel, venue rental, hotels, decorations, food, and more all add up fast – not to mention the cost of lost productivity from being out of the office.

While hosting virtual events can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000*, it still saves a considerable amount on costs over hosting physical events.

Here’s the real kicker – you can host more events for the same price, and charge less for entrance.

This generates demand because entrance fees are much lower (often free), making it more popular, scalable, and budget-friendly.

4. Online Summits Increase Event Value And ROI

Virtual summit software has the ability to keep the event running so attendees can rewatch a session or catch up on one they missed. This is also a useful feature if an attendee wants to find key collateral to share with their CEO.

To create even more hype around your content, you can sell exclusive All-Access Passes to specific content and valuable industry insight.

Whatever the case may be, the online summit software can create an environment that attendees can revisit whenever they want.

Amazing, isn’t it? If your team already plans on investing their time to create valuable content and conduct speaker outreach, then a virtual alternative would make the SAME content exponentially more valuable.

The Ultimate Demand Generation Tool: Virtual Summit Software

If your marketing team is planning on making virtual summits their next demand generation effort, then the 6Connex virtual event platform is the tool for the job.

Why? Our strategic partnership with the marketing agency Demand Frontier.

This is the new demand generation frontier— when clients choose to enter in partnership with the 6Connex family, they also have the opportunity to bolster their marketing efforts around their virtual events and improve demand generation efforts in the process.

For more information on how 6Connex and Demand Frontier can help you build the perfect virtual summit for demand generation, schedule a 6Connex demo.

Start Seeing Real Results for Your Demand Generation Efforts

Virtual summits are one of the most powerful demand generation tools in the digital marketing arsenal to date. Don’t waste any more time chasing after leads– let them come to you, and start learning how to nurture them more effectively.

Visit the 6Connex blog to learn more about how to start planning your own virtual summit today.

Why You Should Host A Virtual Benefits Fair For Your Employees

Offering a virtual benefits fair for your employees has several pros, aside from being cost-effective. We’re outlining several great reasons your company should host a virtual benefits fair.

Outlining the many reasons for hosting a virtual benefits fair

When choosing a job, the benefits package is a large factor for many employees. Even current employees consider their benefits as a pro — or perhaps even a con — if they are ever questioning a job change. But, many employees may not even know the details of their current benefits package.

To resolve this, many companies make it a point to host a benefits fair for their employees. Many employees may feel they don’t have the time to educate themselves on the benefits, or which benefits to choose. On the flipside, several employers may not have the resources or understand how to educate their employees on the benefits they’re offering.

An initial approach to employee education is often printed materials: brochures, packets, and handouts. These could be provided within the office or even at a benefits fair with booths and representatives from different companies involved in the provided benefits.

But what about presenting this information in a place your employees feel most at home? Online.

Hosting a virtual benefits fair online for your employees has several benefits, including:

Being able to reach and inform all employees, no matter their geographic location

Allows employees to take complete ownership of their benefits package

In a virtual benefits fair, employees can visit the booths or watch the presentations that they need and only those. They can download certain information and refer back to it whenever they need it.

Allows employees to get educated from the comfort of their home or office

Gets employees engaged in a new way

A virtual benefits fair is new and exciting, and getting employees engaged may give them an entirely new outlook on wellness.

Allows employees to get answers straight from representatives’ mouths

Eliminates fixed costs associated with benefits, such as printing

Virtual benefits fairs are cost-effective in many ways, from travel, printing, venue rental, etc.

Allows employers to get immediate feedback

Employers can get statistics on what booths employees visited the most, or what presentation had the most attendance, and this information can help guide future communications.

Allows employees to involve their partner and/or family

Because employees can access the fair and any accompanying information from anywhere, it means they can include the people in their lives (whom will likely be affected by the benefits) that matter.

Employees will see (and feel) that their health and wellness is important to their employer

Virtual benefits fairs tend to show employees just how much they mean to their employer, and that’s likely one of the top reasons to host one!

A virtual benefits fair is cost-effective, global, engaging, informative, and it boosts employee morale, among many other things.

One big pro for hosting a virtual benefits fair is that it helps employees feel connected and gives them access to the information they need at any time.

At 6Connex, our platform allows companies to host virtual benefits fairs that look a lot like an in-person benefits fair, complete with booths, presentations, and even an auditorium. Don’t worry, we’re not leaving it up to you to figure it all out, that’s what we’re here for!

How To Create An Engaging Virtual Environment

Creating a comfortable, engaging environment is vital for a successful virtual event, but how? We’ve put together eight ways you can create an interactive virtual event that will get attendees excited and engaged.

Virtual environments are great for saving time and money, while having a broader reach. But the goal for creating a successful virtual environment is to make it engaging for attendees.

The more engagement and interaction you’re able to create, the more your attendees will listen to what’s being presented, retain the information provided, and enjoy the environment you’ve created!

But how? We’ve got eight ways you can make any virtual environment engaging for visitors.

1. Invest in Reliable Technology

Finding the right platform to host your event is a top priority. Look for a platform that is able to accommodate the event’s needs, including all of the event elements you’re looking for and the number of potential attendees. If the platform has a good team behind it, they’ll also be able to help you build an engaging environment.

2. Seek Energetic Speakers, Presenters

If your event plans to have presentations, webinars, or speakers, make sure you choose people that will captivate your audience. Any presenter, webinar facilitator, or speaker is going to be the main focus for your visitors, and this can make or break your event.

If it’s a person you’ve never watched present before, see if they have presentations online you can access to make sure they’re a fit.

3. Schedule a date and time for your virtual benefits fair

Take great care in the marketing for your virtual event so you can drum up excitement. Traditional and digital marketing efforts do apply, but you may also consider giving registrants a sneak peek of event elements. Perhaps you’ll provide an agenda or a preview video of the featured speaker to get attendees really excited about the event.

4. Create a Comfortable Environment

It’s important to remember that virtual environments are still new for some people, so keep that in mind when you’re designing it. You don’t want people to feel lost or overwhelmed by the environment so much they don’t receive the information you’re putting out there! Make it as a familiar and as easy-to-use as possible.

5. Decide on Live vs. Pre-Recorded Webinars

If possible, go for the live presentation or webinar. Live presenters are more engaging for an audience and they can gauge the room and adjust accordingly. However, if you have to go with a pre-recorded session, make sure the speaker is energetic and exciting to watch.

6. Prepare for Technical Difficulties

Of course, technical difficulties aren’t likely to occur, but it’s better to be prepared, just in case. This goes back to tip number one, when you’re choosing your platform. Choose a platform that has great customer service that can help you at any time, especially during the event.

7. Leverage Interesting & Relevant Content

Avoid building a virtual environment only to talk at your attendees with a plain presentation. Make sure to plan engaging events, discussions, and activities. If possible, encorporate video, downloadable collateral, and live chat sessions. Allow areas where participants can talk to each other, too.

8. Ask Attendees to Provide Feedback

Once the virtual event is over, follow-up and ask attendees to provide honest feedback so you can improve for your next virtual event. Depending on the platform you’re using, you can also look at the data from your event to see where participants spent the most time and how they interacted.

Interested in seeing a demo? Contact us today!

Must Have Elements In Your Virtual Environment

You can choose from so many different types of virtual environments, making any of them look as life-like as possible. But there are five elements you must have in your virtual environment to insure it’s a successful one.

There are so many different ways you can approach a virtual environment, from all of the visual elements to downloadable collateral. But there are certain elements you should include in your virtual environment in order for it to be successful. We’ve picked the top five elements you should include in your next virtual environment.

1. Showcase great content

No matter what you’re using your virtual environment for – a career fair, a summit, a training – you must show off great content. This content can be in the form of a presentation, a webinar, or even useful downloads such as recent company press releases or stock information.

2. Use effective storytelling in any presentations

If you’re planning on putting any sort of presentation in your virtual environment, utilize effective storytelling to get your message across. Storytelling is often used in marketing and can work very well to get a message across, and also speak to pain points to get qualified leads. With practice (before the event), you can perfect your storytelling capabilities to engage your audience and retain the information you’re presenting.

3. Provide interactive activities

Just as with an in-person event, you have to work to make sure people are finding ways to interact in a virtual environment. It’s easy for participants to get distracted and wander away from their devices, so you’ve got to keep them on-point! Using presentations, live video, live chat, and networking opportunities will keep participants engaged in your virtual environment.

4. Incorporate social media

If you used social media to promote your virtual event, you should continue to incorporate social media into your environment. Encourage participants to use the event hashtag to promote it while they’re participating. Depending on the virtual platform you choose to use, you’ll be able to integrate social media channels into the event so participants are further distracted.

5. Include live video wherever possible

If possible, do include live video into your virtual environment in some form. If you’re planning to have a webinar or presentation, go for a live one instead of pre-recorded (but use pre-recorded video over nothing at all). No matter the capacity, a live presenter is always more engaging than one that’s pre-recorded. Your virtual event team can assist you with any questions or hesitations you have about including live video.

Interested in planning and creating a virtual event? Contact our team today!

Virtual Sales Conference: Meet, Educate and Collaborate in An Instant

Nowhere else is the saying “time is money” truer than when you are dealing with sales teams. With sales, time is literally used to gain money for your company, as they close deals and grow the revenue of a business. That’s why nowadays, with workforces increasingly moving away from centralized offices and into the home or on the road, sales kickoffs are luckily moving into the digital realm.

Don’t get us wrong, the networking and socializing part of in-person sales kickoffs are great. But unfortunately, those two don’t mix well with learning, and we’ll bet that open bar doesn’t help with knowledge retention either!

By going virtual, the experience enhances the kick-off, with a lot less overhead and money spent to get it done. Virtual SKOs allow for new information, speakers, and important updates to be shown live, and stored for later visits.

So, whether you’re replacing in-person meetings or adding to your educational lineup, virtual is the way to go. By paring your SKO down to the virtual environment, you can expand your reach, lower your expenses and your employees have no excuse not to sell with the best information available.

Want to learn more about Virtual Sales Conferences? Complete the form below to get the full eBook!

Download the e-book

Taking Your Sales Kickoff Online: How to get 4X the Value and 4X the Reach

taking your sales kickoff online ebook cover

Virtual Sales Kickoffs: The New Way to Connect and Inspire Your Sales Team

There is no doubt that sales can be considered one of the main lifelines of any business- it’s mostly thanks to the sales team that revenue comes in to keep a business profitable. Which is why sales kickoffs (SKOs) are so important. Nowadays, companies use them to give their sales reps the tools and motivation they need to divide and conquer for the upcoming year. Although unfortunately, sales kickoffs can sometimes be inefficient for businesses when they’re done in-person.

That’s mainly because many organizations still fly their entire sales team to locations across the nation or the world to teach them about new tools, programs, and to have trainings together every year. From guest speakers, entertainment, travel expenses, and accommodations, these conferences can become very expensive; and sometimes not very effective. Research shows that salespeople lose 80-90% of what they learn after just one month, diminishing the long-term value of an expensive event down to… virtually nothing. This can lead to the question, ‘where did my money go?’

But don’t panic, we have good news: the new strategy for sales enablement is here… and it’s virtual! By going virtual and having your SKO in a digital platform, you can save money while simultaneously improving what the purpose of the SKO really is – to train, to learn, and to sell more.

Want to learn how to get 4X the value and 4X the reach by taking your sales kickoff online? Download the full eBook.

Download the E-book

How to Create a Virtual Conference in 7 Steps

New Year, new marketing strategies.

The creative senses of marketers everywhere are tingling with innovative ideas to add value and generate leads this year. Virtual conferences are popping up everywhere as more B2B & B2C marketers are discovering their inherent value.

Unlike in-person events that go deep into topics with only a few select individuals, online events allow you to reach a large pool of self-qualified leads while offering them valuable content that they can digest at their own pace.

But how exactly can you pull off a massive lead-generating and value-driven event?

In this article, we share virtual event best practices and inside scoop on how to successfully create a lead-generating summit in 2019!

1. Create a Vision & Gameplan for Your Virtual Conference Event

To the drawing board! Wonderful, you’ve decided to plan your first virtual event. First, you need to lay a foundation that will attract the best speakers and most qualified attendees through your vision.

When setting your vision, make sure you have the answers to these questions:

What do you want to cover?
How do you want your event to look?
Who is your audience?
How many attendees are you expecting?
Will you optimize the event for mobile?

Contributing to relevant, cutting-edge topics while using innovative platforms is great for branding and even potential sales for your conference. To organize your vision when planning your virtual conference, check out our virtual event tip sheet here!

Make Sure Your Message Reflects Your Brand

If you are the host, attendees will remember your brand and associate the theme with it. Make sure the topics you choose align with your values and service to promote stream-lined brand awareness.

2. Layout a Timeline for Your Virtual Summit

How much time does it really take to plan out all of the aspects of a virtual event? Check out our virtual summit timeline tips from experts and download the relevant tools.

Give Yourself a Few Months

Even though the majority of attendees will only sign up a couple of weeks before your event, that doesn’t mean you can put off your planning! Kara Widdison, Marketing Manager at Snapapp, told us that her first virtual conference with 6Connex took 2-3 months of planning to execute. Marketo estimates that the time it takes to run larger virtual events can be up to 4-6 months.

Use Time Management Tools to Track Progress

Use a virtual conference project management tool like Trello to track your progress and goals. Click on the link to see all of your goals lined out over a 3-month period.

3. Get the Right Speakers: Strategies for Speaker Outreach

Not only do quality speakers make your event more valuable, but they also allow you to crowdsource your marketing efforts. We cover how you can attract the best speakers to your online conference by being mindful of the vision you cultivate, your onboarding process, and the incentives you offer!

Reach Out to Speakers That Align with Your Summit’s Vision

In order to get great speakers for your virtual conference, you need to get your vision set. You can save time and money promoting your event by reaching out to speakers who

Believe in your mission and
Want to associate their brand with it.

Speakers will want to contribute to your online event if they feel that your vision aligns with their own brand for their own marketing and professional goals. They will naturally promote your event and bring their following with them.

But how do you secure quality speakers for your virtual conference?

Facilitate Onboarding: Make it Painless for Sponsors to Commit

The one thing we know for sure about thought leaders in your industry is that they are extremely busy. Some speakers are skeptical about agreeing to speak because they don’t know how much of a time commitment it will be. If you use an awesome e-mail template and offer to create their promotional material, you can make onboarding a breeze for potential sponsors.

Give Potential Speakers the Proper Incentives

One way to make virtual events exciting is by gamifying the experience. Challenge speakers or sponsors to some friendly competition by telling them that whoever brings the most attendees will win top prizes! You can facilitate this process by creating each speaker an individual virtual event landing page for sign-ups and by providing them with social media copy and visuals to launch their promos! Let the games begin!

Remember This!: People will sign up for your virtual event because they want access to valuable content or to get closer to industry leaders in a no-strings-attached environment. Make sure to let your speakers know that they shouldn’t pitch directly to attendees to avoid any awkward situations.

4. Create Virtual Summit Landing Pages That Converts Readers

Your awesome event is in the incubator! Now, to make your online event irresistible, you need to make sure your landing pages and informational pages excite your users to smash the registration button.

Your virtual event landing page is bottom of the marketing funnel material. It should be sharp and aesthetic enough to convert both speakers and attendees. The page should highlight the benefits of attending.

Hubspot’s virtual event experts suggest adding agenda and session pages as well. In a separate URL post the agenda of the event and for additional converting content you can include session pages with speaker’s bios and short videos explaining what they will cover.

5. Get the Word Out There & Start Collecting Leads

Teaming up with industry leaders gives you access to their loyal followings. Make sure to make it as easy as possible for them to collaborate and post about your event. Get your marketing hats on and follow these tips to promote your event!

Create SEO-Friendly Emails, Blogs, and Social Media Posts

Start creating a pipeline of promotional marketing material and offer it to speakers to exponentially increase your reach.

Research blog posts related to the topics each speaker will cover. Then, create SEO proofed copy that you can give speakers to post for free. You can also write them e-mail drips and social media posts.

To facilitate the posting process (and to make sure it’s not overwhelming their subscribers) you can create a content calendar for them with posting dates, graphics, and times. The easier you make it for them, the better for your event and your brand in the long-run.

Time Your Promotions Strategically

You can send out as many invites as you want several months in advance, but because virtual events don’t require attendees to book flights or accommodation, they won’t know their availability and simply won’t bite. If possible, try to funnel the bulk of your marketing material out a couple weeks before the event up until the launch date.

Bonus Tip: Add a Question Submission Form for Attendees

When attendees sign up and you get that self-qualified lead in hand, add a Google question submission form so that you can use their inquiries to help guide conversations. This bonus tip also increases UX and shows that you are trying to provide the most value possible.

6. Before Launching Your Virtual Summit, Check Twice!

Measure twice, launch once! Here’s your countdown list for the week of your virtual event!

One Week Before the Event You Should…

Have a chat with speakers to make sure that you are on the same page and that they are more than comfortable using the software.

The Night Before You Should…

The big moment has arrived! Check all landing pages to make sure there are no bugs in the system. It is also a nice touch to send out a reminder e-mail to those who registered to build up hype and secure attendance.

The Day of You Should…

Send out a pre-scheduled notification to speakers letting them in it’s time to shine!

Social media posts should also be monitored. You can have an interactive slideshow at your virtual event to showcase those who post and hashtag your event. If you’re being tweeted at in real time, make it interactive!

Finally, on a more technical note, stay on top of e-mail to see if any users are having technical difficulties.

7. Use a Virtual Event Platform with First-Rate Tracking Tools

So, you have the number of attendees and a solid e-mail list. Now what? Put that empirical evidence to good use to get the most ROI from your virtual conference.

Stats Help Determine Top-Notch Leads

Make note of the content views, volume and value of transactions performed, download volume, and the number of interactions with the staff. Analyze this data to gauge the quality of the leads generated and pass it on to your sales team. You can use participation spikes to nurture leads by creating content that your users find useful.

Find a virtual conference platform provider that offers intuitive tracking tools or you’ll miss out on a great data generation opportunity. Use data tracking to identify hot leads and disqualify others so that you can focus your efforts on putting the right users down your sales funnel. Don’t worry, 6Connex has you covered with top-of-the-line tracking capabilities.

3, 2, 1…Ready to Launch Your Virtual Conference?

If quantity and reach are your goals, then it is definitely time for virtual events.

Click here to see how 6Connex can offer you more resources to get your virtual conference off the ground!

I think that we could write an article about the pros and cons of charging entrance for a virtual event and eventually include it in this section as something to consider.

How to Launch a Virtual Event for Lead Generation

You’ve heard correctly: Virtual events generate tons of leads.

How do virtual events generate leads?

While virtual summits offer the traditional benefits of trade shows (accelerating brand awareness and marketing your product/service), they also cast a larger net to your pool of prospective clients, have fewer time restrictions, and improve the quality of leads through data collection. It also doesn’t hurt that they save you a big chunk of change and time in the process!

Here is our step-by-step guide on how to launch a virtual event for lead generation so you can get a head start on planning yours today!

How do I Launch a Virtual Summit to Generate Leads?

Here, we break down the areas you need to focus on to launch a successful virtual event with the goal of generating more leads.

1. Create a Vision and Attract Industry Experts to Your Virtual Conference

To create lead generations, you first need an audience. Use the following tip to design a dynamic virtual event that incites participation from both sponsors and attendees.

Set a vision: Start out by asking yourself five key questions:

Who is your audience?
What are you offering?
Where is your remote audience located (local, global)?
When will you go live and for how long? Most importantly, why?
What goals or sales targets are you hoping to achieve? (Use your tip sheet to help organize your thoughts).

Knowing the vision for your summit and the number of potential attendees is indispensable to have when approaching speakers and/or sponsors.

Attract industry experts to speak: Your next step is to invite industry experts. Not only does this help you attract a large number of potential leads, but it simultaneously allows you to create a lasting connection with experts in your industry. As an added bonus, your brand will be associated with industry expertise, which provides long-term ROI that goes way beyond the summit. Here are some great tips to consider when planning your agenda.
Find speakers who want to reach your target persona: Really narrow down your target persona and then find speakers who want to reach the same market.

*Insider Tip: Pre-registering attendees will be a good selling point to speakers so you can give them an indication of their potential reach.

Host an editorially driven event: Multi Sponsor or Single Sponsor events can drive revenue for a virtual summit. Limiting the number of offers will help sell them up front.

2. Prepare a Solid Sales Demonstration

If attendees have registered for your virtual summit, you already have a list of qualified leads to pull from. This means, you better bring your sales A-game. Try the following sales-minded preparation when planning for your virtual summit:

Create a sales demo: You have the undivided attention of a large group of potential buyers, so make sure your sales demo is ready! Having an informative and attractive sales demonstration can significantly speed up the sales funnel process and is much more efficient than taking several weeks of back and forth phone calls and e-mails.
Increase UX: Recent studies about UX clearly show us that 1) video helps persuade 73% of people to buy a product or service and 2) 8 out 10 consumers who signed up for emails from a brand over the past six months made a purchase based on what they received. Make sure your product is easy to access and understand, and that your sales demo has a great UX so you do not miss out on potential high-value leads.

3. Establish Low Barriers of Entry to Cast Your Net Wider

Virtual events trump brick and mortar events because of their inherent accessibility and low barriers of entry. Capitalize on this for more lead generation by doing the following:

Offer free or small admission: Encourage more people to join all over the world as well as more downloading/sharing of your content by making your virtual event free or available for a very small admission fee. This is the way to cast the widest net.
Create exclusivity by limiting access: With the wide net option, there is always the chance of 1) landing non-quality leads and 2) possibly making the event or content seem too broad or uninformative. Alternatively, you can charge a small fee for access to the event or just to specific content inside the event to propel interest, create an alluring exclusivity, and make some revenue on the side.

4. Enhance Lead Tracking Through Extensive Data

Lead generation continues long after the event closes its virtual doors. The data collected at virtual summits and conferences can help you nurture current leads and generate future ones. Here’s how to actually use it!

Use data to evaluate leads: We know that the success of a virtual summit is not merely based on the number of attendees, but rather on the more substantial stats: content views, volume and value of transactions performed, download volume, and the number of interactions with staff, to name a few. Analyze this data to gauge the quantity and quality of leads generated.
Discover what content is most valuable to nurture leads: You can see where participation spiked throughout an event and focus on gearing your content strategy in the future towards more of the content that your users find valuable.
Indicate quality leads to your sales department: Your sales team will thank you! From the initial data collected by visitors when they signed up to data-driven reports on attendees engagement throughout the event, your sales department will be able to glide through the lead qualification process and go straight to maximizing ROI.

5. Leave Virtual Event Open Past Publishing Day to Generate More Leads

Here’s the biggest perk: Your event doesn’t have to be limited to just one day. Here is how going virtual enhances your engagement and boosts your possible leads.

Keep event open longer: Keeping your event open for days after the live broadcast can substantially increase the number of times your content is seen, downloaded and shared.
More attendees, more data: More attendees rolling in overtime means more:

Information you can collect further down the funnel.
E-mails to send valuable information to.
Data on engagement, and finally,
HIGHER ROI.

Create a sense of community: You can host a year-long event that creates a sense of community for attendees and enables the development of a content hub of valuable information for your clients.

Time restrictions are non-existent when you go virtual – you just have to choose what style best represents your brand.

Take the Next Steps to Launch Your Virtual Summit

Now that we’ve learned all about how virtual events can generate quality leads and sales, are you ready to make the most of virtual events? Here are your next steps to a successful event:

Find out which type of virtual event you want to host.
Download our 6Connex Playbook to planning your virtual event.