To do this, you not only need to promote your virtual event. You also must give people a reason not to miss it out!
A clever event marketing tactic you can implement is teaser advertising.
Unlike most marketing techniques, teasers don’t reveal everything about the virtual event to the audience. Instead, you give them bits and pieces of information one at a time.
By slowly unraveling what will take place, you build anticipation and increase interest in your event, resulting in higher attendance and greater engagement.
Of course, this is easier said than done. One wrong move in teasing out your event, and you might lose your audience along the way.
To avoid this from happening, below are tips on how to launch teasers for your virtual event.
Keep Your Invite Speakers a Secret
Using influencers is what e-commerce sites do on their way to becoming a global brand.
In this case, you want them as guest speakers so you can tap into their audience and get the attendees to your virtual event as possible.
Most organizations show their hand immediately by promoting who will join as speakers at the event. To be fair, this makes sense because the speakers can move ticket sales, depending on their popularity and fanbase.
But revealing everything about your event from the get-go loses the event’s mystique and removes the intrigue factor. Instead, people will simply look at the speakers and decide from there whether to join your event or not.
In this case, consider keeping some of your speakers a secret until days before the event.
You can reveal other speakers as part of your event to establish what the topics of your event are. But you want to keep your more popular guest speakers under wraps.
Reveal your special guests one at a time by dropping subtle hints about who they are via emails and social media. You can also send them a mass text message if you have their numbers.
Keep your audience guessing who the guest is to get people talking about your event.
Then make a big reveal on who the guest is at the end of the week before moving on to your next guest if you have more.
At Agorapulse’s Agency Summit, for instance, the keynote speakers Andrew Davis and Jonah Berger were kept secret and revealed in live video interviews broadcast to social media.
Let Your Frequent Guests in on Your Virtual Event Details
The success of your previous virtual events wouldn’t be possible without the same guests who keep joining them. As fans of your events, it’s high time to reward them by asking them for input on your upcoming event.
Ask them what topics you want to discuss and who to invite as keynote speakers for your upcoming event.
To be clear, just because your power guests sent over suggestions for your event doesn’t mean you have to fulfill each one of them. But giving them the power to make inputs helps strengthen your relationships with these people.
So, how does this exactly help tease your event, you ask?
In exchange for giving them exclusive access to your event, you can get help from these guests to promote on your behalf!
Just like above, you want them to share bits and pieces of the event to help drum up interest in it. It would even be better if they have many followers to whom they could directly promote the occasion. By marketing your virtual event successfully, they could increase visibility and signups.
Share Testimonials About Your Previous Virtual Events
Those hearing about your virtual event just now are probably still on the fence about whether to attend or not. This is because people probably have no idea who you are and why they should trust you.
It’s one thing to tell introduce yourself to them because, just like everyone else, you’ll put your best foot forward to make a good impression. Unfortunately, people want more than that.
In this case, throw an arm and a leg their way in the form of testimonials from attendees of the previous events you hosted.
Since reviews from attendees are ideally unbiased and objective, what they have to say about you bears more weight to people. And if you have many testimonials from satisfied attendees, the more reason for them to join your upcoming affair.
If you don’t have reviews yet, you can launch a campaign asking your previous guests to give a short review about your events. Then, post their testimonials using your favorite social media management tools to help spread the word about the quality of your launch events.
This means your event not only covers the topic in-depth. It also is moderated professionally and has no “dead airs” and technical difficulties. These factors are in your control, so you ensure to deliver the goods for attendees to give you a good rating.
Or you can set up a fun quiz for them to answer using a star rating system and publish the average score on the channels above.
Use Content from Previous Virtual Events
Instead of sharing what people think about your past virtual events, share the actual event itself, or at least snapshots of it.
When hosting your event, you should have recorded it using your tool of choice. From here, take its best parts and create 15-30-second marketing videos for each that you can promote on social media.
Use the videos as part of your retargeting ads campaign. For example, people who visited your site about your event but didn’t sign up yet should be able to view the videos on their social media feed.
The length is short enough that people will stop in their tracks to check it out but not long enough not to finish it all the way through.
Also, creating these videos give people a taste of what to expect from your virtual event. They should be able to see the quality and care you put into the virtual event and leave nothing to the imagination.
If they enjoyed the videos, there’s a good chance they’ll be pumped up for your upcoming event.
Document Your Journey Leading Up to Your Virtual Event
You want your audience to be engaged with your virtual event even before it starts. So posting updates about it leading up to the actual date will keep them on their toes.
In this case, you must be transparent with your updates to let people in concerning how the event is shaping up. That means you may have to share some mistakes along with the successes you’re going through with the event.
This practice is also called creator marketing, a term referring to collaboration between brands and creators for promoting products and services.
For instance, share with them the equipment and software you’ll be using to ensure that the event will be in good hands. At the same time, you may discuss how spent you are working on the event and getting more people to join.
Post them daily on social media, so people know the event’s progress.
This approach may not be for everyone, as some would want to keep this side of virtual events private. The same goes for your audience—they’re probably interested in what will occur during the event, not before it.
However, this method of providing methods could work if you fully commit to it.
Transparency opens the doors to vulnerability, and if you allow yourself to be exposed without fears, you can get more people on board with your cause.
In fact, this could help your audience get a better understanding of what it takes to launch big virtual events from a technical to logistics standpoint. In addition, their appreciation of your commitment to delivering the best possible gathering will possibly lead to them joining the event.
Conclusion
Teaser advertising is part of what makes a virtual event successful. They can increase interest in your event and get more people to sign up for it.
At the same time, relying on them won’t always lead to more attendees. So you also have to consider developing a virtual event marketing strategy consisting of other tactics that will maximize the visibility of your virtual events.
For now, consider the tips above to help you leverage teasers properly in your promotions campaign.