5 reasons that will make Hybrid Events the favorite weapon for ROI driven marketing in 2022!

Dec 16, 2021 Ayushi T

The ever popular ‘h’ word - ‘hybrid’ has been cropping up frequently, and has become relevant in all discussions related to event planning and marketing. Now any tradeshow, conference, fair, seminar, workshop or meeting that hopes to draw in wide audiences, and offer a "live" in-person event experience, will inevitably include a "virtual" online component in their event plan.  

Good quality event tech platforms can make or break your event planning. Your event venue setup should have features that offer live participation for event attendees. Good platforms allow one or multiple groups of event attendees to stay connected with remote participants virtually. This requires glitch free live streaming and audience management tools for a smooth interaction with remote participants.  

Why are hybrid events becoming popular? Attendees feel connected with everyone concurrently (at home and in person) This helps boost engagement, reach out to remote audiences and provides access to real-time data for instant follow ups. Let's have a closer look at some of the benefits which have made hybrid events popular.  

1. Eliminating the hassle of a purely physical event 

An event organizer wouldn’t want to miss on potential business stakeholders due to factors like different time zones, commuting costs or travel restrictions of event attendees. In order to maximize the ROI of any event, adopting to a hybrid event model is the most feasible option. This way, one can eliminate the hassle of conducting physical events and in-person events separately. This can sometimes save over half the cost of the event as compared to hosting multiple events, one at a time.  

Hybrid events enable marketers to tap in to more leads thus enable more participation. The only requirement for a hybrid event is getting an event venue which provides ease of planning and execution. Fireworks™ by Eventcombo has been the platform of choice for thousands of event planners and marketers and has the ability to offer some unique features like integrating with any A/V switch to allow streaming of an in-person experience for virtual audiences.  

2. A wider digital visibility 

Hybrid events enable a far higher digital visibility, as compared to in-person events. This gives event planners the golden chance to expand the audience reach to global levels. In-person events are limited to physical event venues and there is often a restriction of time and space. When the barriers of geography and time zone are removed people are more interested in participation due to access and ease of joining.    

3. Tap in to a bigger audience 

The most amazing part of investing in hybrid events is the ease of pushing that content on various social media platforms. Supply and demand generation is an age-old tactic and event tech platforms are going to be a major game-changer in the year 2022 as a result! With the help of social media algorithms, not just attendees, but their friends and their followers will become target audiences. This means one can easily promote event content to them for sales purposes and generate additional demand.  

4. Data is king/queen! 

In the event marketing industry, event data is the most important aspect of measuring ROI. When planning a hybrid event, one needs to answer a few questions like: how many people will be attending? Who are they? Where do they come from? And what should be the length of social networking event sessions? What will be the themes of the sessions? These parameters determine the content of the event, which further translates to event data and helps event organizers gather insights.  

5. Now is the time to invest in great hybrid event platforms  

Remember Apple’s special product launch event? Apple has been hosting hybrid events for a few years now. Another famous example is that of the Growth Marketing Conference, which organizers had planned to host physically in December 2020. Due to covid restrictions, a huge gathering was not possible. However, later, they created a virtual experience and were able to give their attendees special bonus content, that included 250 webinars! Something not possible with a physical event without increased time and cost. These and many other examples make a strong case for hybrid events. 

Go ahead, host your own hybrid event and judge for yourself the value created.