Are you looking to organise a hybrid corporate event soon?
Corporate events are fundamental in establishing a profitable relationship with your employees and customers/ clients alike. A well-planned event helps organisations connect in a memorable way with their target audience, build brand value, and discover better business approaches for the future.
Hybrid corporate events offer an all-in-one platform for businesses, with its all-inclusive solutions that cater to both onsite and online attendees. Attendees can connect, watch presentations, and have an almost in-person experience. 59% of event organisers assert hybrid events are essential for their event strategy.
benefits of hybrid events
Hybrid events blend the best components of virtual events and in-person events, providing the best event solution.
cost-effective & budget-friendly.
Organising large events is quite expensive. When you want to gain a large audience and cut the cost of getting a large venue, a hybrid event is your best option. You get to sell lots of tickets too in the process.
location-agnostic attendance.
Hybrid events enable people to attend from different locations worldwide. It allows you to record presentation sessions for your audience to view on-demand. With hybrid events, you engage attendants across distinct time zones. It offers you the flexibility to connect with a wider audience who share a specific interest in your industry.
set up for success
Planning a hybrid corporate event can be complex, considering you have two distinct types of attendees. However, with the right strategies, you’ll get your corporate event up and running in no time.
A clear goal.
As you organise a hybrid event, think about and define why you’re hosting the event. Do you aim to promote your brand, improve your business, reward employees, or introduce a new product or service? Setting clear and well-defined objectives enhances your planning process, and gain a better insight into the best way to meet the expectations of your audience.
a practical budget.
Aim to plan within a budget. State the amount you plan to spend on your event. When you estimate the amount to spend on your event, factor in some extra, but reasonable amount for other (sometimes unexpected) expenses.
Your budget includes every part of your event plan—the location, speakers, recreation, equipment, and crew. Set aside a budget for each task phase to help you cover every area of the event, including the amount for your hybrid venue and the virtual platform is also crucial.
If you’re planning several events in a year, you’ll need to allocate and plan in advance to the budget required to cover each event – including your marketing strategy.
After calculating your budget, outline tasks with their deadlines. If your budget calculations are complex and daunting, adopt corporate event management tools with budget management features to ease your budget planning.
The right venue.
Your aim for organising the event influences the venue you choose for the event. If your team wants to impress clients, you need a more exquisite platform – both online and onsite.
Note the goal and requirements for your event to create a checklist and ease the search process. Checking on past event successes is a great way to select a venue. Ensure your team is actively involved in the search process, and get their ideas onboard too to make the best selection. The digital platform should have all the event features that make it easy for delegates to navigate and also allows easy management for your team. Create an outline of the necessary features you need from your virtual platform to help you assess and narrow down your search.
shorter segments & greater interactivity.
To avoid online fatigue and to keep all audiences engaged and interested, make sure your event committees plan for bite-sized segments to keep content slick yet informative. Ensure your speakers use videos, images, and polls during their presentations to help especially virtual delegates flow with the programme.
Better engagement and interactive event elements are especially important for online attendees who seek the same experience as in-person delegates. You need to aim to offer the same fun experience as in the physical event.
For example, offer quick entertainment activities like games and quizzes during breaks. Make sure you also allocate time for Q&A opportunities with presenters, and incorpoate quick polls after each session where attendees can share their end-of-segment feedback and to help keep everyone engaged and hooked throughout the segment and the overall event in general.
Virtual attendees may dip in and out of some of the segments, but the idea is to design a strong engagement strategy to keep the engagement levels up, to make the entire event as attractive as possible, and provide the same learning experience and information to all participants.
great content & line-up.
Nothing beats a great event line-up. Choosing your event speakers, and creating content for hybrid events demands time and careful deliberation, to help make it as relevant, diverse and inclusive as possible.
Make sure you equip your speakers with the right resources to deliver successful presentations. They may present to your physical audience or engage with online attendees. Factor in time for a practice run as required.
sponsorships & collaborations.
Sponsorships and collaborations are necessary and can boost your event in many ways. They can help you broaden your online reach and entertain and engage the attendees and speakers such as product demos, panel discussions, exhibition stands etc. both online and onsite.
Roles & responsibilities.
For a flawless flow of activities during event, put the right team in place to help manage everything – including the technical aspects. Partner with experienced event planners and managers. Having a excellent personnel helps set clear responsibilities for each team member and to guarantee en-to-end effectiveness.
Wrapping up
Hybrid events are the game changer. They bridge the gap between onsite and virtual events, where people can choose to attend in-person or join in from anywhere, and at anytime. Aside from their outstanding features and cost-effectiveness, they are easy to plan and manage. Moreover, business leaders recognise that travel expenses affect event budgets. However, with the right strategies, you’ll get to save money on business travel expenses. So, whether you’re planning to organise a large or small hybrid event, these strategies can help make your events memorable and set them up for success.
Author: Daniel Quintero – Content Partnership Specialist, Skale.
Photo credit: Alex Motoc on Unsplash
