Top 10 Virtual Event Types to Explore in 2024

Aug 14, 2024 Praggya Joshi

The rise of virtual events has been gradual. Most marketers and business owners realized their efficacy after 2020 and soon made them an integral part of their pipeline.  

Today, in 2024, the popularity of different types of virtual events makes it clear how indispensable they are for businesses of all sizes to build their credibility and reach. In fact, the global virtual events market is said to hit USD 366.5 billion by 2027! 

If you too, want to tap into this event format, here are some of the most prevalent types to consider. 

What Is a Virtual Event & How Do They Work?  
A virtual or an online event involves interaction and collaboration among attendees virtually via specialized technology. Such events require you to have a virtual event platform, which you can access from your computer, tablet, or mobile. Additionally, a virtual event needs stable internet, a camera, and a microphone to be executed successfully.  

A robust virtual event platform features virtual experiences that mirror in-person conferences or events. These include a virtual lobby, breakout rooms, virtual booths, and fully customizable default reception, stage, networking, keynote, sessions, and additional rooms. It has multiple modes to host any kind of virtual event, such as webinars, interviews with hosts, online workshops, and more. Virtual attendees register for the event and are sent a link that they can use to attend the experience. Since the event sessions are recorded, users can watch them even after the event. 

Most Popular Types of Virtual Events 
There are several types of virtual events you can host according to your goals and audience size. Here are some of the popular ones-  

1. Virtual Conferences 
Virtual conferences and conventions are among the most popular types of online events. This kind of event is majorly held in corporate settings and takes the form of trade shows, product demonstrations, and networking events. Companies rely on virtual conferences as a cost-effective tool to educate people about their offerings, introduce a new product, train their employees or promote AI-powered networking.  

Virtual conferences are held in different ways based on your objectives. For example, it can be as simple as attendees watching keynote speakers or as advanced as enabling attendees to interact and discuss specific topics in breakout rooms. Such conferences can also have live demo rooms that allow mutual engagement between attendees and exhibitors. 

Online conferences are cost-effective and easy to set up even for large-scale events with multiple tracks. This type of virtual event allows a company to easily communicate with their clients, partners, or staff on a record time without worrying about geographical barriers. Online events are also ideal for companies wanting to take up the global stage or those with employees distributed across the world.  

6 Tips to Make a Virtual Conference Successful 

• Ensure that attendees can interact with the hosts and speakers throughout the event. 
• Use an effective and feature-rich virtual event platform to maximize engagement and attendee participation. 
• Track attendee engagement during Q&A sessions, polls, and surveys. 
• Make the registration process easy and user-friendly 
• If the conference has a multi-track format, allow the attendees to create their own schedules and attend sessions they find interesting. 
• Use gamification to boost engagement and participation. 

Create a unique virtual conference experience for your attendees with unlimited custom rooms using Fireworks, our all-in-one virtual events platform.  

2. Virtual Trade Shows  
Maturing event technology has made it possible to translate exhibit halls, keynote presentations, and sponsor engagement with business buyers from offline to online. In a virtual trade show, visitors navigate around an online trade fair environment. They can move through exhibition halls, rooms for workshops, stages with speakers, and exhibition stands. Everything is like an in-person traditional trade fair. The only difference is that you do all the above from the comfort of your home.  

Some of the top examples of successful virtual trade shows are Intergastra and DMXCO. These virtual trade shows events featured various sessions and networking opportunities and could successfully engage participants with interactive features. 

These types of virtual events offer sponsors, exhibitors, and attendees many opportunities to connect, network, and gather leads. With evolving video conferencing capabilities, it has become seamless to book appointments on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis. Attendees and exhibitors can also pre-schedule appointments in a virtual trade show.  

5 Tips to Make a Virtual Trade Show Successful 

• Find trade show partners who understand your expectations and can help you strategize and execute the virtual event. 
• Provide clear information to the exhibitors about how attending your trade show will be valuable for them, such as the ability to hold live demos and presentations. 
• Make networking a core feature of the virtual trade show. 
• All the pre-planning, execution, and post-event tasks should be assigned to specific team members for smooth execution. 
• Don’t forget to promote the trade show on social media platforms.

3. Webinars
According to HubSpot, webinars are integral to the marketing strategy for as much as 95% of marketers. The reasons are obvious. These types of virtual events offer unprecedented reach through channels like social media, webinar emails, and influencers. Typically, webinars take the form of presentations from experts, which are followed by Q&A sessions where attendees can engage directly with the speakers.  

Through this format, you can show your industry expertise, get content for repurposing (X threads, blog posts, LinkedIn posts, etc.), and build your community. All this translates to greater brand awareness and high-quality leads.  

What makes webinars unique is the emphasis on giving value through insights and expert knowledge. Through webinars, you deliver insider secrets, showcase the breadth of your knowledge, and foster real-time connection. This is why webinars have become a vital tool for impressing target audience and building genuine connections with them.  

5 Tips to Make a Webinar Successful 

• Anticipate questions ahead of time and prepare well for answering them. 
• Provide a practical understanding of a complex task, such as using a particular software. 
• Use jokes or memes to renew the attention of attendees periodically. 
• If possible, try incorporating technologies like AR and VR to make the webinar more immersive. 
• Allow the attendees to download the webinar afterward. 

Try Eventcombo's webinar platform to manage registration, send reminder emails, gamify your event, and execute a top-notch webinar.

4. Virtual Networking Events
Networking is a universal socio-economic activity with several benefits. It allows corporate professionals to connect, collaborate, and find innovative solutions to an industry-specific problem. This activity, done through event management platforms, enables people to expand their horizons as they engage with many perspectives of diverse people 

To understand a virtual networking event better, think about what people do on LinkedIn. They show their accomplishments, and expertise, connect with others, and find new opportunities. This is what happens at an online networking event.  

Such events are highly cost-effective than traditional in-person events. You can discover plenty of ways to keep attendees engaged when using a dedicated event tech platform. Moreover, such platforms also enable data collection after the event, so it becomes effortless to gauge the performance of the event.  

Virtual networking plays a key role in helping you gather leads and improve brand awareness. Companies can also uncover highly qualified candidates for their open positions through it.  

4 Tips to Make a Virtual Networking Event Successful 

• Keep the virtual networking sessions not more than 90 minutes long. 
• When someone agrees to attend the event, send them a calendar invite. It should have the link to the app you’re using.  
• Make a clear agenda with planned activities to increase engagement among attendees  
• Use a virtual event platform with extensive features to create the event and facilitate maximum networking. 

5. Internal Hybrid Events  
Companies with a very large footprint usually have employees all over the world. For such corporates, internal hybrid events, which combine in-person and virtual participation allow clients and partner employees to get together. Team members and internal stakeholders from different locations can easily collaborate through in-person meetings and remote virtual conferencing.  

One of the best examples of an internal hybrid event is a sales kick-off. A large company can organize its sales kick-off in an internal hybrid way if it is not possible for groups of employees to join physically. Team meetings, training sessions, and company-wide announcements are some other examples of internal hybrid events.  

These types of virtual events have become important in the corporate world to cultivate an inclusive culture, promote transparency, and boost employee morale. When conducted properly, they can also attract potential clients and investors. All this paves the way for organizational success. 

4 Tips to Make an Internal Hybrid Event Successful 

• Pay attention to graphics, videos, lighting, and cameras while hosting the event. If these elements are not looked after, attendees will not feel engaged. 
• Create a dedicated event website and put all the details for easy access.  
• Use a scheduling tool to enable smaller group meetings and one-on-one appointments  
• Ensure that the virtual event platform you use has strong registration, data collection, and report-sharing features.

6. Virtual Job Fairs 
Do you know that by 2031, the Virtual Career Fair Platform market in the US will reach a multimillion mark? This is because of the increasing adoption of advanced technology and large players who will generate ample growth opportunities. 

Virtual career or job fairs have now become one of the dominant types of virtual events for various sectors. The events connect a broader audience of job seekers with employers and have greater accessibility. Event tech platforms that host such events offer a variety of features like virtual booths, live chats, webinars, and networking lounges. It makes the overall recruitment experience seamless and successful.  

A well-organized virtual career fair benefits HR professionals, employers, academic institutions, non-profit organizations, and government agencies in various ways. It helps attract highly refined talent, conducts interviews, assists in brand promotion, and facilitates seamless communication exchange. You can even combine virtual and in-person elements and make your career fair hybrid if your platform permits.  

3 Tips to Make a Virtual Job Fair Successful  

• Select a robust virtual event platform with flexible features and integrations. 
• Create customizable workflows for candidate registration, interview scheduling, and hiring. 
• Ensure that the virtual event platform you use has strong customer support so you can resolve glitches that may occur during the event. 

7. Virtual Summits 
Virtual summits are today one of the best ways to grow your business and become undeniable thought leaders in your field. This online event brings together experts who share industry-specific knowledge and help attendees find answers to their major problems. A typical virtual summit features live-streamed keynotes, and expert-designed sessions that  provides many opportunities for collaboration.  

The best part is that you don't need to be highly experienced in your field to host an online summit. You just need to be knowledgeable in your area so you can collaborate with other experts and offer valuable knowledge and guidance to attendees. This boosts your reputation and makes you a go-to expert in your domain.  

Businesses of varying sizes are capitalizing on virtual summits to build their brands and boost credibility. If you are a startup and don't have many resources, your virtual summit can be as simple as a webinar with a few attendees. But businesses with good budgets can organize online summits using advanced event tech that creates realistic 3D environments, gamification, on-demand access to sessions, team building, and networking activities. 

4 Tips to Make a Virtual Summit Successful 

• Keep activities like breakout rooms, virtual concerts, and speed networking for greater interaction. 
• Try to find experienced speakers or influencers in your niche for increased attendance.  
• Create an appealing virtual summit landing page where people can register and learn more about the event details. 
• Partner with well-known sponsors and keynote speakers to lend credibility to the summit and boost your chances of revenue generation.  

8. Virtual Product Launch  

Showing off your newest offerings to the whole wide world is no longer a hurdle with virtual product launch events. It is among the most popular types of virtual events in 2024 because of many reasons. By introducing your product online, you can boost brand reach more than in-person events, and that too, cost-effectively.  

Moreover, there are plenty of ways to conduct a virtual product launch and promote it. Successful businesses worldwide use a variety of ways, such as live streaming on social media platforms, using webinars, or hosting the event through a virtual event platform. Immersive product launches using aAugmented and virtual reality technologies have also become prevalent today.  

Just look at the IKEA Place App which allows people to virtually place furniture in their homes using AR and the L’Oréal Paris Makeup Genius App which facilitates virtual try-ons of different makeup products through AR. Such innovative techniques make virtual product launches and announcements highly exciting.  

4 Tips to Make a Virtual Product Launch Successful 

• Make your virtual product launch engaging by keeping polls and quizzes. 
• Ensure that your customer-facing teams are well-versed with the new product and features.  
• Share customer stories and talk about the product benefits more than delving into technical details. 
• Keep the event content available on demand on your product landing page. 

9. Online Training  
Online learning has exploded in popularity for both corporate professionals and students. This is because it is highly convenient and not any less effective than in-person learning. Virtual training and professional development in the form of workshops and seminars help individuals to upskill themselves and access rewarding career opportunities.  

For companies, online training can be given to cultivate work-related skills or make a group of employees proficient in using company-specific technology.  

In fact, according to the latest study, 94% of employees would prefer to stay at a company if it invested in their learning and development. 

Online training events became popular in 2021 and since then have been embraced by companies of all sizes. Such events eliminate the logistical pain points of in-person training and have greater flexibility. They especially benefit remote employees for whom traveling across the globe is not impossible. Through online training, companies can create a highly skilled and competent workforce and stay ahead in the constantly evolving business landscape. 

4 Tips to Make Online Training a Success  

• Set accountability standards for online training completion and performance. 
• Provide additional online learning materials like articles, videos, and quizzes to employees. 
• Break training into shorter, manageable segments. This will prevent mental fatigue and keep up the attention. 
• Hold training sessions at a frequency which is manageable for employees to balance with their workload.  

 
10. Virtual Sales Kick-off  
Sales kick-offs get your teams ready for crushing new goals. The event is marked by a variety of activities, product demonstrations, training, and reward ceremonies. Virtual sales kick-off is quite like its in-person counterpart except for the length of the event, structure of the sessions, activities, and of course, cost. 

Today, with the help of cutting-edge technologies, businesses of all sizes can create immersive sales kick-off experiences that enable maximum engagement and knowledge retention. In addition, organizations are increasingly using AI to streamline the various aspects of virtual events. From creating product pitches, and presentations for keynote speakers to finding ideas about team-building activities that align with company goals, technologies are making the shift toward virtual mode more attractive. 

5 Tips to Make Virtual Sales Kick-Off Successful 

• Choose a theme, tagline, and visuals that align with your brand goals. 
• Use user-friendly event technology with features like screen sharing, live chat, and polling. 
• Incorporate breaks after every 30 to 40 minutes to maintain participants' energy. 
• Follow up post-event through surveys and assess what could be improved.  
• Make space for online networking in the event's schedule so people of different seniority levels can become more familiar with one another.  

Summing up
Delivering value and building meaningful relationships with the target audience has ceased to be challenging with virtual events. On the contrary, they provide many ways to create impactful experiences without budget constraints.  

No matter your industry and the scale of your business, you can explore the popular types of virtual events and tailor one as per your goals. With the right event technology, the sky's the limit for creating the best experiences.  

Eventcombo's virtual event platform will make your task of setting up a fully branded virtual event stress-free. No matter the type, size, or format you choose, our solution will assist you in delivering the desired experience. Schedule a free demo to learn more.