Top 3 Tips To Make Money From A Virtual Conference

Before COVID, conferences were almost exclusively in person. If you were lucky enough to have a good one in your area or in your sector, you’d pitch up and network the hell out of it. You’d be exhausted at the end but (hopefully) have made a raft of good connections.

The lockdowns showed us that, while not the same, it is possible to run a virtual conference and give your guests a good experience.

Virtual conferences have a number of benefits over in-person ones. You don’t have to eat cheap canapes and awkwardly hold a glass of wine and a plate of food while trying to exchange business cards, for a start. Attendees can also choose to go to a conference anywhere in the world without giving travel a second thought.

From an organiser’s point of view, anybody can attend regardless of location, you don’t need to hire expensive venues or caterers, and you don’t need to cap numbers.

Any business can run a conference. If you’ve got expertise to share and an engaged audience, why not see it as part of your content strategy? You could start small with a workshop or webinar and then build up to a bigger event.

Virtual Conferences
As Money-Makers

Conferences can be great opportunities to add an extra revenue stream to your portfolio. Looking beyond basic ticket sales, there are many different strategies to maximise profits from an event. Here are our top tips.

Mix Up Your Ticket Offering: Ticket sales are usually a key part of any conference business model. Online, the sky’s the limit when it comes to numbers. It pays, therefore, to think smart about ticket revenue because it can be a big earner.

Offering different tiers of tickets gives you an opportunity to sell at different levels, opening up different customer segments to you.

Some customers on a budget might be put off by your full ticket price, but you could still capture them with a lower-tier ticket — access to keynote speaker sessions only, for example.

Conversely, some of your customers might have a bigger budget to play with. You could offer them a VIP ticket, where they get full access plus a recording of all the sessions that they can revisit as many times as they like.

Other ticket tiers could include:

Full access plus bonus materials

• • Full-day or half-day tickets
  • Member-only discounts
  • Tiered tickets — consider upsells to enhance your guests’ conference experience, such as:
  • An intimate breakout session with speakers
  • A 1-2-1 coaching session
  • A pre or post-conference event

Get Sponsorship: Selling sponsorship packages to other brands in your space is another great virtual conference revenue stream.

If your products or services complement each other and your audiences align, then they can get a

lot of value from associating their brand with your event. For example, if you’re a property investment consultant and you run a conference for property investment first-timers, lenders would make ideal sponsor partners.

When creating a sponsor offer, create a brochure that highlights the benefits of the offer. Include the

potential audience size and segments you’ll target, as well as any speakers you’ve got secured, to show off the calibre of the event. Include information about your business, too, and highlight the expertise and track record you have. Sponsors agree to be part of an event based on the idea that you sell them. So you need to make them excited about the potential benefits they’ll get from it.

Just like ticket tiers, you can offer tiered sponsor packages. The entry-level tier could offer a logo on the slide deck and a mention at the beginning of the event. The highest tier could include a speaker slot, interactive breakout session and the opportunity to invite all attendees to a 1-2-1 session after the event.

When you’re creating sponsor packages, think first and foremost about the value you could provide potential sponsors, and package it up. It’s no sweat for you to add an extra logo on the website or schedule a speaker slot, but to them, it could be worth a goldmine in future clients.

Make It Immersive: Your virtual conference will have one thing missing from it — face-to-face human

interaction. Because of this, you have to go that extra mile to create an immersive experience.

Creating a stand-out virtual conference experience will help you generate revenue because your

reputation will grow and future events will attract both attendees and sponsors with less work.

Focus on making your event fun and engaging using these strategies:

1. Virtual Exhibitions — There’s no reason why you can’t have an exhibition space, where other businesses and sponsors have the opportunity to interact with attendees. Event platforms provide the facility for exhibitors to host virtual rooms, where they can chat to attendees or run through a presentation and invite discussion afterwards.
2. Think Outside The Box With Breaks — You’ll need to factor in breaks throughout your event, but why not make them fun? You could challenge attendees to find an object in their home or create something to share in the next session to stand the chance of winning a prize from one of your sponsors. It doesn’t have to be compulsory, but it gives people the chance to bond over a bit of fun.
3. Social Media — Ramp up the hype around your event with social media hashtags and conversation starters before, during and after. Encourage attendees to post during the event and engage with your channels by way of polls or other types of interactive content. This will extend the experience beyond your virtual event and out into the big wide world of social media.

Final Thoughts

Chances are you haven’t thought of running a virtual conference. But if you’ve got an engage audience and you think you can put together an event they’ll find valuable, there’s no reason why it can’t be a highly profitable part of your content strategy. And you won’t even need to worry about juggling canapes, wine glasses and business cards.