With everything moving online and with savvy organisations standing to gain online event advantages, there has indeed been an influx of webinars. So, how can you cut through the noise and stand out in such an over-saturated market? Josh King, head of marketing and business development at emc3 states that the key to a successful webinar lies in the understanding of the audience:
“There’s a lot of webinar white noise at the moment, so it’s important you make your virtual event stand out from the crowd. Positioning, messaging, and delivery are all key. Take time to understand what problems your audience needs help solving and make your virtual events a source of inspiration and insightful learnings that help people to progress in their careers.”
Leverage LinkedIn for Social Selling
Aside from executing the standard activities in your digital event marketing strategy (email marketing, landing page optimisation, etc.), letting go of the sales-focused narrative, and rather employing a social selling approach can make your event truly stand-out. It’s important to remember that an online event is just like any other service or product – it needs to be of value to a target audience. To pull off a successful virtual event, the secret lies not in creating just more marketing content in a bid for attention, but rather producing content that builds connections and is truly helpful to the customer. Customer needs should be the integral pillar to pre-event marketing, and at its core, the aim of social selling is not to produce sales-focused content, but rather to provide a point of entry to your business by nurturing connections, showing innovation, expertise, and superior know-how.
“We believe the key to winning in the social space is by leaning into change and adapting to it with a strategic, top-down approach that upskills everyone in your line of business – not just sales. By adopting an inclusive, digital, and social selling strategy – merging it with updated company priorities and aligning it with key departments – everyone in your company can grow to become an influential part of your online presence, aligned on a clear objective, to meet your existing and potential customers where they are: social B2B platforms.” – Javier Dominguez, Marketing Manager & Business Coach, Tricycle Europe
Exercising social selling tactics in your pre-event marketing strategy can over time cultivate long-term relationships, convey authority and credibility, and appear on decision-makers’ radars to encourage event attendance – and if social selling content is king, then LinkedIn is the perfect medium for delivery.
Being effectively utilised by only a small percentage of savvy executives, LinkedIn provides tremendous opportunity to show an authentic, empathetic point-of-view that can help facilitate conversations that lead to more attendees. With 500m total users, the network is primed for having conversations that solve professional needs and gives businesses the opportunity to conveniently and seamlessly incorporate social selling principles into event marketing strategies like never before. Five key social selling tactics to consider working into your pre-event marketing to increase registration and attendance are:
Create a professional brand
A strong professional brand shows you are an active and trusted participant in your industry. Consistently sharing useful thought-leadership content leads to more inquiries from prospects and more responses to your communications.
Harness the power of networking
Seeking out decision-makers and new prospects through existing mutual connections can transform cold outreach into a warm introduction. Hint: LinkedIn groups you actively participate in are also an excellent place to find these prospects.
Build trusted relationships
Build trust with potential attendees by sharing your perspectives and how your event addresses and/or solves pain points.
Turn employees into advocates
Research by LinkedIn recently found that on average, employees have a network that is 10x the size of a company’s follower base. Asking employees to actively and meaningfully engage with any event assets posted can magnify brand presence, enhance the reputation and increase awareness of your virtual event.
Tap into the Potential of LinkedIn Events
The above tactics used in conjunction with one of LinkedIn’s newly updated features is a perfect recipe for ensuring that your event gets the exposure it deserves. LinkedIn’s recently updated Events feature, allows businesses and individuals on LinkedIn to tap into its networking power to organise and manage virtual events natively within the platform. Both organizers and attendees are able to send event invitations to their connections, creating an element of personalisation that email invitations may fail to deliver. The feature also offers increased connectivity; as attendee lists are visible, this gives the opportunity to connect and converse with prospects prior to the online event.
Bonus Tip: Utilise LinkedIn’s Paid Advertising to boost your online event
LinkedIn has a variety of paid advertising options that can help to boost event registrations, and tracking the engagement rates of organic activity can inform which assets are worth promoting. From using Sponsored Content to scale the reach of content, to creating laser-targeted campaigns through Dynamic and Text Ads, LinkedIn has all the tools needed to get your event in front of the right audience.
So, why does social selling on LinkedIn work so well in building awareness of online events? The answer is simple. While it may be a process that takes time, social selling is rooted in two key sales principles – trust and building relationships. Only once this is realised can businesses unlock the doors to planning truly successful webinars and events that engage and convert attendees. In today’s ‘new normal’ where customers are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of online webinars taking place, now is the time for teams to embrace online event opportunities to reach their audience, build relationships and truly be of value during this global crisis.
With the pandemic fast-tracking the inevitable large-scale uptake of technology, only those that think outside the box and provide compelling ways to execute and market digital events will immunise themselves against future crises, stay ahead of the competition, and be in the vanguard of digital transformation.
To be truly adaptive, the world of B2B must maintain a successful, seamless strategy that covers both the physical and digital world. At Tricycle-Europe, we help companies achieve more by combining new technology and tactics and can help to plan, produce, and execute digital events. Does your business face the challenge of moving to online events?
On December 9 at 16:30, we will be hosting our last 2020 edition of the Tricycle Meet the Masters of Social Selling. Are you curious to know the attendee experience we mentioned above in one of our events? Join Rene Eres – Head of Medium Enterprise at A1 Austria Telekom, and Sarah Loessner – Tricycle Digital Business Coach, to learn how Rene, his sales team and A1 Austria Telekom is winning in the digital space by implementing the right social selling strategy.
BOOK YOUR FREE SEAT HERE TO ATTEND OUR NEXT MEET THE MASTERS OF SOCIAL SELLING
We believe the future will be shaped by how people use digital tools and platforms. Therefore, we are supporting organizations to set the foundation to win in the digital space.
