The Future of Event Marketing and What It Means for Content Marketers

Content marketing is a type of marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain the traffic of the audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media platforms.

This approach builds a relationship with your target audience, establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your business on top of mind when it’s time to buy your products or services.

During this pandemic, engaging in virtual conferences or events is slowly gaining popularity due to its convenience. In this case, content marketing also plays a very important role in uplifting the event industry.

Challenges of Event Marketing

People are wary of traveling, whether for enjoyment or business, which is likely to continue. The events industry has been hit hardest by the pandemic, with much of the air travel down and safety and social distancing measures being reintroduced and extended repeatedly.

The threat of future outbreaks makes it challenging to host live events during this pandemic.

There Are Also Several Other Challenges to Event Marketing:

1. A New Marketing Environment

As a result of the uncertainty created by the pandemic, however, industry professionals need to decide whether to invest in completely virtual events, gear up for live ones, or host a combination of both.

Still, several other factors beyond the pandemic can influence this decision. As an organization, you’ll need to ensure that your events are now more accessible and appealing to your audiences.

2. New Event Personas

Six universal event personas have emerged that are typically found in team events. These include:

• The experience seeker: They attend virtual events for the incorporated activities they get to attend.
• The internet socializer: They appreciate virtual events and prefer to socialize with other attendees during these events.
• The tactician and networker: They attend events primarily to make and sustain business relations and networks.
• The radical networker: These people attend events due to their social and networking prospects.
• The mandated learner: They attend events because their organization deems it necessary.
• The solo learner: These people register for several free or inexpensive to gain work and industry-related knowledge.

Each of these personas has different motivations, requirements, and perceptions. Virtual event creators need to understand their audience and adapt their content to appeal to their target personas.

See Also: How do You Use Transcription to Maximize Your Content Marketing Strategy?

3. Zoom Fatigue

Online events in the academic and industrial sectors now seem to be the norm. Nonetheless, there are indications of virtual event fatigue among audiences.

That’s partly because the market is already oversaturated, making it difficult for event marketing specialists to keep the content fresh.

Video conferencing platforms are the new and pretty busy spaces for meetings, activities, on-demand, and live-streamed events.

However, attending multiple daily events and meetings can be taxing and can fatigue the persons involved.

4. New Event Marketing Plans

Despite the widespread uncertainty due to the pandemic, the event industry is gradually adapting to its new reality.

With this in mind, industry experts and content marketers need to reshape their ways by going digital and holding virtual events to make up for missing in-person interaction and losses.

Doing so opens up new opportunities, bringing innovative concepts to life such as online events, meetings, etc.

5. Appealing to a Global Audience

Since virtual events can be accessed anywhere, it also opens the door for organizations to reach a wider audience.

This means they will need to adapt their event content in terms of context and language to appeal to a global audience.

Creating events in multiple languages and ensuring that the content of the event matches the regional sensibilities of the target audience can help create region-specific marketing and academic events.

The Future of Event Marketing - A Hybrid Marketing Landscape

Creating event and event marketing content at present and in the future will mean planning, creating, and distributing valuable and relevant content that helps you build a relationship with your audience and gain more traffic. It’s your duty to know who your customers are.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in changes to content marketing, forcing businesses and brands to rethink their current and future marketing campaigns to maintain a steady source of income.

Studies have shown that most audiences show a preference for in-person events. However, there is also a growing preference for virtual events.

Hybrid events are also being preferred more and more. In the future, it can be projected that instead of replicating the in-person experience, organizations will also need to make events appealing virtually and in real-time to cater to the audiences wherever they are.

Therefore, merely giving the event a “virtual” spin on your event to mirror the pre-COVID-19 experience is no longer enough.

The current event marketing scenario will require organizations to use a completely different approach to storytelling to appeal to their audience online and offline.

As an organization, you will also have to make the events more accessible for your audience by making them available offline and adding transcripts.

Doing so will allow your target audience to assimilate the knowledge they can gain from the event from a preferred place, at a convenient time, and in a simpler manner at their own pace. This will help you gain an edge over your competitors, increasing your organization’s appeal to your audience.

See Also: What Is Transcreation of Marketing Content, and How Is It Useful?

The Perks of Virtual Events

Remember that the fact that in-person experiences not being the norm in several sectors doesn’t always negatively impact your organization.

Several organizations realize that virtual events often mean substantial savings and a reduction of operating expenses if executed properly.

Simultaneously, well-executed events can still help organizations meet and exceed sales targets and revenues due to reduced spending on travel and related expenses. 

With the ever-changing digital landscape, communicating and engaging with your audience can remain undisputed if you have proper content marketing strategies.

In the pandemic, companies are using Zoom to hold virtual meetings as the rapid digitization of content is happening. Not only does this increase the profit of a company, but it is also efficient and easy to use where people can have meetings or events from a long distance.

Are you looking to transcribe and translate your virtual events? GMR Transcription Services, Inc. provides 100% US-based human transcriptionists with a knowledge of several industries and can give 99% accurate transcription quality.

Our transcription services include audio transcription, video transcription, business transcription, and many more.

Additionally, we offer business translation services in a wide range of languages, including Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, and more. Contact us for more information on marketing content transcription and translation services.