Enhance Your Virtual Event Strategy with Location Intelligence

April 9, 2020

Events are effective channels to connect and engage with your customers, especially for B2B companies. According to research from Demand Gen Report, over half of B2B marketers see their in-person events and trade shows as drivers for conversions. COVID-19 is changing the way events are being planned. Event organizers are getting creative and moving their events online. As more virtual events take place, it’s important to make sure yours stands out. This means that you need to revisit your event marketing strategy and tailor it to the digital world. 

When creating an online event marketing strategy, there are many things you need to consider including topic, format, and your audience. To get the most out of your online event, you will need to better understand what your prospective attendees are interested in. By understanding your target audience’s offline behavior through location data, event marketers can make sure that their digital events align with the needs and interests of their attendees.

Here are four ways event marketers can use location intelligence to create the best virtual event experience for their attendees:

Find the Best Topic

By understanding where your prospective attendees go in real life, you can determine what they are interested in. Location intelligence gives you insight into the events your target audience  has attended in the past. For example, if you are creating an online cooking class, you can determine what cooking classes your attendees have gone to in the past. This historical information gives you an idea about what types of topics your audience wants to learn about in the future.

Select the Best Virtual Event Format

Don’t just consider what workshops or conferences that your target audience has attended; you should also think about their interests outside of work. Visits to commercial locations can also give you insight into the hobbies and interests of your attendees. This can ultimately inform the format of your online event. For instance, if your attendees enjoy going to coffee shops, you might consider creating a digital coffee chat.

Event marketers also need to make sure that they choose the right host or master of ceremonies. Let’s say you are hosting an online Q&A session for local businesses and are trying to put together a list of potential hosts. By pairing location data with place data, you can see what types of businesses your attendees enjoy going to and use that information to create a list of business owners who might be a good fit for hosting the Q&A.

Determine the Best Time and Day

When you are planning an online event, you also want to consider the best time and day for your attendees. Using location intelligence, event marketers can understand where their target audience is located. Your audience’s location can determine what day or time would work for them. For example, it wouldn’t make sense to hold an early evening event on Eastern Standard Time (EST) if you find that most of your audience is on the West Coast. Location intelligence can help event marketers choose the best time and day to hold an event. This increases the likelihood of having more attendees sign up for and participate in your digital event.

Promote Your Virtual Event

With social distancing becoming the norm, more people are spending time on their smartphones in order to stay connected. To reach your digital event’s target audience, you want to make sure that you promote your event where your potential attendees are spending the majority of their digital time. Location-based advertising audiences allow you to target your digital event ads to your target audience on their mobile devices. This approach can increase awareness of your digital event and assist with driving conversions.

Location intelligence allows event marketers to get the most out of their online events.

References

https://content-na2.emarketer.com/coronavirus-is-changing-how-consumers-shop

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