Hybrid Events, You Choose How You Want to Attend
Originally Aired: May 18, 2022 | 2 PM
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Hybrid is the future, providing attendees a choice on how they want to experience events. Whether in-person or virtually, the choice is yours. While hybrid is the buzzword now, in the future there will only be “meetings”. These will have an in-person component or a virtual component, allowing attendees to consume the education and content in the way they so choose.
Join our expert panel as we discuss the importance of audience to audience engagement, having a singular ecosystem for both your virtual and in-person audience and the advantages of the new virtual components of events.
Topics covered will include:
The current state of industry events
Giving sponsors equal access to virtual and in-person attendees
Examples of how to leverage hybrid events
Expert panel Q&A to follow
Presenters
Mike Ciaburri
Scott Clelland
Patrick Upton
Welcome. Today's webcast will be focusing on hybrid events. I'm sure you've all heard that buzzword, especially as covid restrictions are easing. We're gonna be talking about best practices where you can still engage that audience that we've been cultivating for the past two years in the virtual environment. As on site events continue to pick up a little bit of housekeeping before we get into the program. I do, I hope you do see the submitted question button below. There will be a question and answer session at the end of this program that we hope to get to all your questions. But if we do not have a chance to get to them all, we will be reaching out personally to make sure that we answer all your questions in a timely fashion. They'll also be surveys and polls throughout this program. Again, we do engage, we hope you engage with those questions. Uh and again, get a sense of what interactivity can be like in a virtual environment. This also is a continuation of our webcast series from earlier in 2021. We took a little break in the winter and we do hope that you do have a chance to watch those. If you, this is your first event with us. Uh I do have my colleague brian's and body here. I just want to have you come out and say hello brian, Hi mike, I'm happy to be here. Fantastic for those that aren't familiar with broadcast med. Do you want to give you a little bit of a background. Broadcast med is a leading healthcare media organization where we produce, promote and distribute some of the most groundbreaking clinical content with a large physician audience. Uh as part of our membership, we, our mission is to engage, educate and inspire physicians to improve healthcare outcomes across the world. At the end of 2021 we did have an acquisition where we purchased digital, uh, that's where Brian's legacy company was. And with that we have made leaps and bounds in our virtual platform. And not only that we've come with years and years of experience in the hybrid space and virtual space, that's where the digital really lived in. And we're happy to share some of that knowledge that brian and his legacy team bring to the table is now the unified broadcast med company brian. You want to share a little bit of digital's background and some of the expertise that you guys have in the virtual and hybrid space. Sure. Mike. Um, so I'm a 20 year veteran in the event, really event engagement space or how we can take and engage an audience around event content and really looking at the last 10 years, focusing heavily on how do we engage with a hybrid and then in the last two years really focusing on that virtual audience. So really looking at the engagement that we can do with the audience during the events and then also how can we create and cultivate that future engagement with a 365 strategy around this audience. Thanks brian. Before we get into the program, we have two colleagues live at a conference in Chicago right now, Patrick Upton and scott McClellan. I'm gonna go out to them and kind of give you a sense of how we can bring in, not only virtual attendees such as myself and brian, but on site presenters and attendees such as scott and Patrick Patrick, give me a sense of what it's like. Uh, the on site event. I know it's the first one that we've been to in a little while. Hey, mike, yes, we are here on location at one of our industry conferences and we are, you know, it's great to be back in an in person environment. I think the exhibitors, the attendees here are all excited to kind of have a taste of being back to normal. I will say that one thing we've all been noticing here is that there is a, a in terms of traffic, it's, it's definitely down from in years past. Um, and that's why we've really seen and, and it reiterates a lot of the points that we're making in our conversation about how there is an importance to cater to your virtual audience as well, making sure that they're able to access your, your content, your conference and be able to have the same educational experience while, you know, ensuring that you're not hindering the experience of those that have made the decision to be on location, but by having that option of in person or virtual, it really gives all attendees based on comfort levels with changes in covid cases to be able to access and still be able to collaborate in educational manner whether they're on site or virtually. Thanks Patrick, I know a lot of these associations are an event planners might seem intimidating about the idea of, you know, kind of having that hybrid component. I know a lot of these people are completely tax and you know, full to the brim from a band with perspective, but you know, can you talk about how easy it is to maybe turn these virtual, uh, you know, add that virtual component to these on site events. Yeah, so really, you know, from the standpoint, if you look at when you're setting up for an in person the A v the infrastructure that goes into just pulling off an in person event, really, when you're flipping that switch to add the virtual component, It's really, you know, you're, you're 99% of the way there and it's just that flip of a switch and you're able to access and expand that that reach beyond just the auditorium that those in person folks are and let those that are, would be interested in attending virtually be able to see the same content. So from a back end perspective, it's it's very simple and with when you're working with those and expertise, like with broadcast Met and our expertise in being able to do both in person and virtual learning, it's, it's as simple as possible. Thanks Patrick. Now let's go to scott uh scott, you know, thinking about beyond the association planning the events to sponsors and exhibitors themselves. It often seems that they may be neglected in the virtual side of things. Have you found that to be the case, you know, when you're talking to those exhibitors and vendors at these conferences? Yeah, that's that's a great point mike a lot of people when they are planning these virtual or hybrid events are really only focusing on the virtual audience, which is the physicians, the healthcare practitioners. And obviously that's that's very important. And sometimes good is good enough and we'll just put out a video stream or a youtube stream, zoom stream, which again, like you mentioned, we want to elevate above that and put it in a branded platform. Um, so that, so that people can feel like it's less than the same experience they're doing in their day to day business meetings. But beyond that physician audience that the most important thing as to not neglect your sponsors, obviously when you're an association and you're hosting an event, the caliber of this one. I'm at right now, a lot of the funding for that and a lot of the reasons that you're still able to grow and stay afloat is because of these sponsorships and exhibitors and one of the things that we're finding um as we're navigating the virtual world is the focus is obviously being put on given the physicians and HCPS access to these lectures and virtual components. Where is the people that are actually paying the, the sponsors, the exhibitors are kind of being forgotten about. They might get a quick splash page or visit them before five and that's really it. And these are people that are spending hundreds of thousands, if not, you know, seven figures on an exhibit in an event like this. And if attendance is down to attend even a quarter, they're not having a chance to really engage with the people that have came to engage with. So one of the things that you know, we broadcast med are doing with the digital platform is making sure that the hybrid experiences inclusive for the sponsors as well and not just the physicians viewing take for example, I am a sponsor here. I have an exhibit booth for company X and device. Why normally, you know, I'm completely separated from the virtual audience and I'm just having a, you know, go with foot traffic and people that are walking by whereas if um you know, if I was using the digital platform, the broadcast Medhat, one of the virtual surgeons that are tuning in and they have their lunch break, they can be like, oh yeah, I'm interested in, you know, Device, company X and their products, I'd like to hear more and rather than just having a banner or being told that, you know, visit them in above 2000 miles away. They can actually click a button that one in one network with me. And I can take a step away from my booth for being my little conference room. Like many of the exhibitors have here and connect directly with the surgeon almost the same way I would a surgeon walking by on foot here and we even have it so advanced that, you know, the surgeons coming from Rhode island, he presses a button to connect with me automatically connects me. Is that the Northeast sales rep rather than a West Coast sales rep and try and figure that out after the fact we have that engagement technology as well as being able to provide, you know, reporting of people that are engaging right down to the N. P. I. N. Number show. If I had some advice, it would be, you know, make sure you're you're not neglecting the people that are really paying for these events. And that's where hopefully we'll we'll move towards back to you mate. Thanks God, are there any limitations or regulations for, you know, featuring these sponsors in a virtual capacity? Yeah, obviously that is something taken in consideration, you know, that separation of church and state, especially if it's like a hospital or a specific, you know, association like here we have an exhibit hall that's in a separate location from where the lectures are taking place. So so much the same. And in the virtual world we can we can have a separate U. R. L. And make sure we stay above board where any regulations or you know mandates they are. But we can also have it so that if the main lectures for the physicians are happening from nine a.m. To noon and then noon to one PM is the lunch break, we can automatically push the audience through to the virtual symposia or the satellite symposia. You know, any of the virtual exhibits or that the one on one with sales reps and then automatically bring them back, you know, an hour later, once you know that the lectures are starting up again and again that kind of ties back to our earlier lecture and keeping things in an ecosystem that you know, obeys the rules but also you know, you're not getting dropped off those that are less tech savvy. So that's something to take into consideration and something that we've been very mindful of. Thanks scott. I appreciate you and Patrick jumping in here, you know, during that conference, I hope you guys get back to it. Um and yeah, right, let's get into this program brian. So you know, we talked about hybrid, you know, I know that's the big buzzword now, you know and with your background and expertise in the field, what do you see as the future of events in general? So many organizations have spent the last two years really engaging with their audience differently in a virtual capacity and even in a non demand capacity. And as we go back to on site events and go back to the buzzword hybrid, we really need to continue to grow and cultivate the audience that we've been focusing on for the last two years. The word hybrid in the future, we really feel is going to go away and we're going to go back to just having conferences and meetings and the way that people consume that event may be physical, maybe virtual and maybe a combination of both this new audience, this virtual audience. Um we need to continue to cultivate and grow that audience because that is our future audience. We're not replacing the physical audience with a virtual audience, but there's many reasons why an attendee couldn't attend your event. It could be because of the pandemic or it could because of family or it could just be time off of work. But that audience is important for the future growth of any organization. Looking at how do we engage with the audience at the same time as a physical audience, bridging the gap between the two audiences, cultivating them to create conversation, create communication and really create that engagement, utilizing our platform to bridge the gap, utilizing the production of how we bring the audience together all the way through how we're going to continue to engage with the audience after the events over the future engagement of a virtual attending isn't really around a two or three day event as it has in the past, where we want to look at this three year digital strategy and that's the focus is how can we look at our three year digital strategy and that digital strategy is a combination of the physical event and capturing that great content that you've spent all year to put out there, combining that audience with on demand content and supplementing that audience throughout the year with webcasts and webinars and courses and more of that blended learning. That's what we believe, the future of how we're gonna address this audience, grow this audience and continue to cultivate and engage the audience Yeah, that three year content strategy and an event strategy, I really, you know, that really resonates with me, and I know a lot of our clients really have kind of picked up on that as well. You know, what opportunities does that provide our clients from a content perspective? A revenue perspective. Yeah, mike, let's talk a little bit about that three year strategy of how we're going to continue to engage with this audience and we can look at it in a couple different ways. Some organizations are going to be, really want to look at it from a revenue perspective. How do we take and engage with this audience and generate revenue. But let's first talk about actually valuing the content and valuing the virtual audience. We want to ensure that the value that we're giving to the virtual audience is something that we value, meaning that the organization values its content. We recommend that if you're charging for your physical event, you should be charging the same amount for your virtual attendee. You want to look at it from the perspective of if you're not or if you don't believe you're providing enough value for your virtual event, then let's provide some more value. Again, the future is going to be one merging or one integrated audience together and less choices to that audience, meaning that they either can choose to attend physically or virtually, or they are choosing um Price X or price Y. Let's give the attendees less options and let's let them register to attend our events. So we were thinking about the strategy, we want to think about revenue generation, um non dues revenue. So capturing your event, streaming your event out, gives you the ability to then take that content and create on demand or blended learning where we're going to take some on demand courses and build it up or integrate in some live Q and A or looking at rebroadcasts or best up series where we can take the content throughout the year and create a whole another event a whole another virtual event to engage with this audience at the end of the year, that can generate new revenue that can create, create new CMi opportunities for the audience as well as just the future exposure of your content to the audience. So it's also Consider that your virtual event is the best marketing tool that you could do for your future physical event. So if we go before the pandemic and we look at some of the numbers in the industry, 70% of the virtual attendees out there had never been to your physical event before now for the last two years and through this pandemic, these attendees are attending your events virtually and they can't wait to get back to the hybrid event, but these attendees that you engage with virtually may never have been your physical attendees, so we don't want to leave them, but we want to grow them and we want to bring them to be future physical attendees. So what better exposure to your actually event than providing this virtual attending with a great experience, that they can only lead them to get excited to them, register for your event in the future. Yeah brian, you know, I'd like how you explain how you can create value not only for your organization, but the attendees to, through content through the different vehicles and and comfort levels to that they have, you know, in terms of willingness to travel, willingness to come on site or just learning at their own pace and discretion. Uh, the one component that scott had mentioned, how about the vendors out there? What about the sponsors? I know that they're being impacted and questioning whether they see the value with the lower attendance of on site events, you know, foot traffic is down. Um is it is it still worth me attending sponsoring, exhibiting at these programs? You know, how are we bridging that gap as well and providing value to the vendors and exhibitors and sponsors that have sort of been, you know, a lifeline from a revenue perspective to a lot of our organizations that we work with. Yeah, like very important to continue to address and support our sponsors. Um, exhibitors and sponsors have, have had challenges in the last two years really addressing and accessing this new audience. Um, so they're really excited to get back to the physical events and they can get back to the exhibit halls instead of addressing that physical audience. But until that physical audience has grown and even further more in the future, there is this new audience and as this new audience grows, the exhibitors and sponsors need to get exposure to that audience. Our recommendation is really to start with just sponsorship and exposure, you know, from the ability to have commercials and pre roll videos and sponsorship and graphics around any events. So we want to give value to your sponsors, even if they don't find the value just yet, they will find the value in the future as the audience grows. So we want to make sure we're addressing them, we want to make sure we're looking at giving them access to this audience now, as this future audience grows and as technology grows in the way that we can communicate with attendees improves utilization of things that are in our platform where attendees can engage with these virtual exhibitors is going to be invaluable because again, if we have 500 people on site and we have 1000 people online, the exhibitors are going to want to get access to those attendees, so we really want to look at these future sponsors and exhibitors um as an as an added value um to what we can supplement what we could add in, but also the exposure that they're going to have to this future audience. So like as we look at, you know, the whole picture from a virtual perspective hybrid perspective, the exhibitors and sponsors, we want to make sure everyone is involved in the future future ecosystem of how we're going to try to engage around our events. Fantastic. And the other thing too, we want to kind of reiterate there is the data that you can provide from a virtual perspective, you know, you're not going around, you know, dropping business cards and fish bowls or scanning badges or anything like that, you know, there's a lot of technologies that virtual can provide, that just, you know, while it might sound counterintuitive, that on site can't you can have transcriptions, you have a log of exactly the conversation that you know, an attendee had with a sponsor so that we sometimes might need to educate these sponsors on the value that we can have in this virtual environment. Again, to your point brian, they might not have seen the value, you know, scott had mentioned whether they're questioning coming back, but again, just leveraging the technology in the virtual space, there's so much data that there is available when we are basically having our attendees leave their digital fingerprints all over the event that the sponsor can kind of follow one of the things that we say, you know, it's just so what, you know, going to an on site event and again, collecting those bad scans or collecting those business cards. Great, what did that do for you? But having a transcript of a conversation you had with a physician or an attendee or a prime, you know, sales target from the sponsorship perspective, it could be invaluable, it's, it's really a quantity versus quality um approach there and again, I think that there's quality to be found in the VIRTUAL Again, just because of the data that you can take home with you, that historically you could never have in that on site event. So again, those sponsors just ways that we can get our platform is phenomenal for this, but just having those sponsors understand and see those value, the value and the data that virtual provides, I think will help again, encourage them to not only continue to sponsor, but maybe even sponsor more on the virtual side, you know, and again the lift and the the load and the cost especially for a virtual exhibit or virtual sponsorship is much less than dragging, you know booth and you know, they exhibit to a hall and traveling across country with a team of people when they can do it the same thing as your your attendees in the comfort of their own home. You know, maybe in sweatpants, you know, kind of having that same engagement, deeper engagement really with the attendees, again using that virtual platform and just having that hybrid component where you're not missing out on these people like. Great, my great point. Um one thing to mention there is just the future ai technology. So, you know, we drove attendees in a physical environment to the to the exhibit hall with with drinks with coffee, with doughnuts and that was the driver to get them there. And we hope that while they were walking around, they met some valuable exhibitors to further their really careers or further their products of what they were looking to to get access to Now in the virtual space, we have AI technology is going to actually match smartly match up an attendee to what they're interested in, what are they looking for to the actual exhibitors or sponsors, that's going to create more actual value rather than more quantity. That's going to be more quality leads that are coming in and as exhibitors get more comfortable with these types of environments and as attendees start to learn more that value is going to exponentially increase year after year. Yeah definitely. Again if we can tie that quality lead that quality, you know, experience to those sponsors. Again it's a it's a simple math equation, you know, that's where they're gonna be spending their dollars and cents when they can kind of prove that our ally and again that's something that I think the data will really help and some of those technologies that ai matching technology you mentioned brian will really really pack a punch from a again ry perspective and again if the dollars match up the results kind of are there, it's a no brainer in terms of again continuing to sponsor your events, continuing to be a again a contributor to the overall experience there. Um You know brian, well we've talked a lot about this, you know, hybrid, you maybe want to pull up an example of how we execute that maybe kind of showcase your platform a little bit and how we're able to kind of recreate that, you know on site experience virtually. Yeah mike I'd like to show a little bit about what our platform can offer. So our platform really is designed to integrate both audiences together. So completely customizable the ability to have all your events themed and everything from the way that the event looks to the way that the attendees are experiencing it from all the features are all customizable around every type of event. We have things such as interactive lobbies that can be built throughout the platform, full registration, the ability to have interactive session agendas. This gives the ability for both audiences physical and virtual to access all the educational content that you have. We want to think about actually our agendas a little bit differently in the future. We have our physical agenda where we have a keynote, maybe some breakouts and some exhibit hall, but the virtual attendee would have a similar pathway at kino virtual session with some breakouts but maybe during the exhibit hall, our they're attending our exhibit solutions. So the interactive agenda is the way that we can drive the attendees through the education and through the different engagements throughout our events. We have our interactive exhibit showcases feature where attendees can interact with these exhibitors by downloading resources or meeting the actual team that's on site full of virtual showcases where they can do product theaters all the way into special offers. So the ability for the attendees to get access to the exhibitors and the exhibitors to create valuable conversations with the attendees is very easy, things such as hand outs and resource centers. The ability to have cmi and evaluations around the content, these are all features that supplement and support the events and again think of this as both your physical and your virtual audience combined together. So not only can the attendees interact with these agendas and these live sessions and they can interact with the exhibitors but what they have access to to interact with each other on from setting their profiles to them making valuable connections through other attendees by going and finding attendees that they either know or that have like interest in making those connections. So really that's a quick breeze through of our platform. The ability to really engage with the audience, both audiences at the same time accessing your sponsors and exhibitors and bringing everyone together is really the future of how we're going to see and engage our audience around our advice. Yeah brian that's uh that's great you know thank you so much for kind of showing us our platform there to the audience and obviously anyone that wants to kind of take a deeper dive feel free. We have a request the demo button below, we would be more than happy to kind of take you through step by step and how we can kind of help you engage with your again virtual audience, whether you'd be on site hybrid, whatever the case may be, we can really kind of give you a deep dive into the platform and how we can help you again engage that virtual audience. Um you know I kind of talked about the data that vendors and supporters and exhibitors can get but from a, you know, a client perspective are the ones putting on the event themselves, those probably watching this show. Um you know, what kind of reporting can we provide them and what kind of insights can they kind of lean on and leverage to help themselves for future events or even the one that they're putting on currently? Yeah, mike the reporting is so important for event and I've heard so many times over and over in the last two years that there was no reporting or it took weeks to get reporting or even months to get reporting. Our reporting system is real time. You have access to everything and attendees doing from the registrants if they attended to the time. They all spend in each session to the chats and questions, the polling, the surveys and evaluations with the cmI certificates, everything that's happening in the platform, but not only is it what's happening in the platform, but it's how we can make changes during our events to increase engagement around something. So for example, in the exhibit hall, let's say we have one of our top sponsors that isn't getting the exposure that we want. We can actually look at that and and interject that with some ideas and and end the day emails too. Don't forget to visit our sponsors and to drive that audience to different things throughout the event. So not only can we affect the event live, we also can look at this data from a more holistic view how engaged was the audience through this event? Were they asking questions where they interacting, the polling, where they even they're listening our platform has the ability to look at engagement metrics from event to event and help strategic, strategically consult our clients on how they can have better speakers perform virtually or in a webcast and how to engage that audience better in the future. So reports are invaluable for how we're going to continue that digital three year strategy. So it's not only how we're going to address this audience, but it's how we're going to evaluate this audience in this engagement and make future improvements to continue the evolution of this audience. Yeah brian, you know, obviously broadcast Met is very big on data and you know, having that data help you kind of craft your content roadmap, whether again, you're you know primarily focused on on demand content, you know, small scale webinars, webcasts or you know, to some of the, you know, legacy clients that we have that have multi day multi track conferences, multi time, you know, multiple times throughout the year, that data and understanding exactly what your audience is looking for from a content perspective, what they find engaging, who they find engaging all of that information that we provide back is really crucial to help you kind of have that three year, you know, content strategy. Again, it's not just for the events, it's, it's, you need to be engaging your audience at all times throughout the year, uh constantly in the year with fresh new content and the data that we're able to provide back, you know, is very actionable. Again, whether you're putting on a program in in three days or three weeks, three months, the data that we're able to provide can really help you craft that strategy and really have a great understanding of your audience to again improve your organization and improve that content strategy for the future. And again with that content like brian had mentioned earlier on is new revenue opportunities. So again, if you have, you identify which content is resonating the most, doing the best, has the best performance of the attendees are interested in the most. It could be a great way to, you know, do non dues revenue is kind of have a best of series at the end of the year to have a on demand push. There's tons of different strategies that we assist our clients with two. Again, leverage that data and make it, you know, meaningful, not only the attendees, but impactful to the bottom line of our clients. So something to definitely consider and you know, don't discount the data and again, one of the benefits of virtual is the data is endless. It's, you know, reams and reams down to the attendee, down to the presentation, down to a asset that's on demand. Um you can really understand everything that's being done across the entire platform. Um and again it really helps, you know, the bottom line can really drive a measurable outcome for a lot of our organizations. Yeah, I'm like thanks for really, you know, stressing the importance of the data. The data is the most important thing that we can take away from all these events and all this audience and really the importance of this data and the importance of that three year strategy that I've talked about is having that data be consistent in the next three years. So when you're looking at evaluating your your partners in the platform that you're using, try to evaluate and choose one that's going to grow with you in the next three years. So not a company or a platform that's a virtual platform or a hybrid platform or an LMS platform or an app platform but a platform that's going to take you in the next three year strategy across all those different things Because the platform that has all the data in one place will allow you to make better decisions and as your future audience and as your future offerings, it's really that the data is the most important thing and thinking about that data and a three year strategy. Yeah, I agree with you 100% brian that data is really invaluable to a lot of our clients to be mindful of our time, let's let's try to get into the question and answer section again, we will try to get to everyone's questions today. But if we don't have a chance to get to your question, we will be following up with you personally in the coming days. So stay tuned. If you don't have your question question answered today, live by brian. And I um I see the first question coming in uh from a Jeff s um most hybrid conferences seem like a lot of work. How are you able to take that burden off of your clients brian? Don't know if you want to maybe take that one first. Yeah, great mike. I think that the last two years have really given people the impression that to execute a virtual event is very difficult and it has been, it's a new whole thing for us all to learn and as we go back into the physical events and add this hybrid component, is it going to be as equally as difficult as it has been in the the last two years in the virtual space and I'm here to share that. It really isn't as difficult as you may think and it's all about the provider and the partner that you choose. So that broadcast med, we help make your events easier. How do we do that by being an extension of your team, by being a strategic consultant about how do we engage with this audience? What are the best practices and how to engage with this hybrid audience? How do we merge them together? So if you think of your virtual program being a complement of your physical program, you don't have to think of it differently just yet. Again, you have a three year strategy to grow this hybrid component. So let's look at what we can do within our budgets and how we can target the most popular content from the event. And how do we look at the best practices of engaging with this audience with a partner? So it's to make the event easy, It's the partner, it's the production, the on site production of making the speakers look good and it's the platform that you're going to deliver to your audience. And it's those things that really makes the event easy. Yes, I do know that a lot of our clients do value the white gloves approach that we take to their events. You know, it really does make it easy to your point. Um and again, it's a tight wire, it's a high wire act. You know, it's there's a lot of things going on, a lot of balls in the air, sort of speak that you're juggling and the better your partner is that helping, you know, kind of help you juggle the better your event goes off unless you have to worry about. And that's one thing that I know that um we bring to the table is that support that, you know, white glove approach that we really, you know, clients really value because at the end of the day you have one chance, you have one opportunity, you're just as good as your last live event. You, it doesn't go off without a hitch, you might never get that person back. So that's why you gotta be, you know, kind of put your best face forward and having that partner who's there with you to help execute these events as flawlessly as possible is, you know, invaluable again to it, you know, that's revenue that out the door if you lose that attendee, it's, it's almost like annuity having that person come back whether they are virtual or to your point brian from earlier. If if, if the virtual is the appetizer to future on site visits, um, you know, don't let your, you know, make sure you have the right partner to go in this, don't go it alone sort of speak. Um yeah, that's I think that's good and you know, I don't know any other questions we have out there well, mike before we get to the next question, I just want to mention one more thing as you were talking is, is our organizers should be focusing on their physical event and let us focus on your hybrid event and that's really another way that we can help make it easier is your on site as an event organizer and you're working on your physical event, making sure the speakers are there. Let us worry about the production value. Let us help support the virtual attendees. Let us help engage with this audience and merge this audience into your physical audience. And if you don't have to do it all of yourself and you have a partner that's helping with you, then the events really start to become smoother and then the attendees feel that they feel the smoother event. We're constantly getting positive feedback from our attendees that this is by far the best virtual or hybrid experience I've had in the past two years. And why is because we have 15 years into executing and engaging with this hybrid audience. We have 15 years and how we can help support you the organizer in making this easy for you And we have 15 years of helping the attendees experience this the best way possible. So I did want to mention that, um but let's get into the next question mike, um what type of split have you been experiencing or has been seeing in between in person events and our virtual attendees. Yeah, the split that we've been seeing between on site and virtual uh from, you know, feedback that we've been getting from clients, there's about 25% of pre pandemic numbers, so that's essentially one in four that they were experiencing before the pandemic, but ways that we can supplement that drastic decreases again by catering to that virtual audience, which we've seen a growth in over the past three years. You know, again, meeting those, those attendees where they want to be seen at their own comfort level. Again, whether it be concerns about the pandemic, that's that are still ongoing, uh logistics traveling again, it's been a nightmare from news reports about how, you know, flying and traveling has just been hectic and over packed airports and canceled flights. Again, it's not an easy, you know way the world has changed. And again, I think that we have to adapt to that and again, catering to that virtual audience is very key. Um I don't know if you have anything else to add to that brian Yeah. And let's also say that it doesn't always have to be a virtual audience or hybrid audience or physical audience. As your three year digital strategy grows, you will evaluate whether you end up having one price point and one option to go to your event. We have many organizations that are working with us that over the last 10 years have been doing hybrid events and they've gotten to the point where it's attend our event and you can experience it however you want. So we've seen attendees on site that are going into the room and then going into the hallway and viewing parties and watching together as a virtual attendee or maybe not coming down for the early riser sessions and they're staying in the room and watching it virtually and even some are watching it from the pool well they can experience the event and still like mike said experiencing it where they want to be met or where they want to experience your content. So when you're thinking of this, don't segregate the audience, integrate the audience, allow them to experience your event however they want. And again, going all the way back to the beginning segment that I mentioned about less choices and less options. If an attendee is making one choice to come to your event for a price point and they can choose how to experience it, you can offer your registrations earlier, you can get more registrations in earlier and those tendons can experience the event as the event comes closer of how they feel more comfortable. So really looking at these audiences and not segregating them, but just going back and creating an event again and then addressing the audiences which where they want to be met with your content. Alright brian, I have one more question here from a Brittany. Um you know, we've had some poor experiences for our virtual events. How are you able to overcome that with your attendee experience on your platform? I know you probably have a good answer for this one here but maybe want to take the first swing at it. Yeah, great question, let's let's talk about the attendee experience a little bit further. I know earlier in this segment I showed our platform and I quickly went over that attendee experience, but the attendee experience and the importance of having everything in one place is going to be really what's invaluable for that attendee, so they can go and attend the sessions and they can chat with other participants, they can take their evaluations, they can get access to the on demand platform, they can they can interact with the exhibitors. All of these things are included in our platform networking together, um forums and discussion boards. All these things I'm mentioning are all separate products that many, many hybrid event companies are really pulling things together and attend. He has to go here for this and registration for this and then over here to get their on demand content and that disjointed experience just provides them that feeling of a disjointed experience. So really again, thinking about your three year strategy and finding the right partner, the value of having it all in one place and looking at all the tools that you're going to want to engage with your audience as this audience grows, are going to be important for you to evaluate and really important for the detainees experiences so they can want to come back for a future event. Yeah brian, we really always strived to kind of kind of say exactly that we've always kind of considered it a global ecosystem well, you know, kind of keeping everybody in one place, don't make it a disjointed experience, nobody likes that, Nobody likes to search, this isn't a scavenger hunt. You know, I'm gonna register here, go here to actually watch the program, I want to come back. How do I go back to that same program? I just enjoyed watching, you know, having it on that singular ecosystem that they can, you know, it's almost like a point of truth for this event or for your, you know, content in general is very key to, you can have that constant engagement with your audience, your attendees, your membership. So it's just something that we really like to, you know, kind of practice and and have our clients practice as well. Again, it's keeping everything in a centralized ecosystem. Again, whether you're thinking about a hybrid event, a virtual event, enduring content. Having that brand centric ecosystem that you can have your attendees engaged with on a recurring basis or throughout the event itself, again, leads to the better experience ultimately, and the better experience an attendee has the higher likelihood that they're going to come back to you again, whether for future events or for on demand content mike, I think we have time just for one more question, I have a question here from Carrie and she's really asking, how do we dr the virtual audience to our events? What are some best practices that broadcast med uses to help drive an audience even from the physical to the virtual events? Yeah, that's, that's a simple one here. Um, you know, one of the things that we have, obviously if you're looking to engage healthcare audience, you know, we have that physician membership, a lot of our clients leverage our position membership to engage and drive that virtual audience, but it really comes back down to best practice cadence and you know, marketing practices, you know, if you have an own internal, you know, membership or attendee list from the past, start early and start often. So really, you know, it comes back down to best practices, get on a sustained cadence. Don't wait till the last minute. We typically like to strive for an on site event, you know, traditional live in person conference. You want to start as early as six months out. You know, you want to really be hitting the ground running, again, factoring in the logistics of having to travel, give your attendees enough ramp up time to book their flights and get their plans coordinated and take the appropriate amount of time away from work for their practice if they're a physician. Um, if it's a virtual audience again, starting earlier, the earlier, the better you don't want to kind of ever, you know, wait till the last minute, obviously because there's other things life happens. Uh, so starting, you know, our best practice recommendation is about six weeks for a virtual, so again, six months for an on site, six weeks or so for a virtual, but again the sooner the better. Um, the other item two is other channels. Don't forget social, don't forget other, you know, forums or message boards that your attendees would be at, uh, utilize memberships yourselves, you know, organically on social media such as linkedin or, you know, boosted posts there, there's, there's tons of avenues there, but it really becomes back down to a cadence. So start hitting your again your members and your target attendees early and often and use a sustained cadence and basically, uh, you know, get them to arrive and engage with that, you know, event as soon as possible. Mike, that's great. And one more thing I wanted to mention around really the, the cadence and the exposure to these types of registrations. We don't want to hide it. We want to have it open and available for attendees to utilize either the physical or the virtual or if you've gotten to the point where you have just one option, let's put it out there for him. Cannibalization is a thing of the past. We shouldn't be afraid to cannibalize, cannibalize our physical event because the future event is going to be growth and grown by your virtual audience. Yeah, I I agree brian, I think something you said earlier on to just to kind of wrap this all up is I honestly, I agree with you. I don't think that there's going to be hybrid, Hybrid is going to be a buzzword for a short period of time. I think it's going to be just a meeting, a event. Uh and again, to your point earlier on, the attendee will choose whether that they want to come on site and sit through these courses, whether they want to have it be virtual where they're at the comfort of their own home or office. Again, I think they're just, they're just going to be a singular event wherever it is, the learning will be the learning and it doesn't matter whether you're again in a conference hall in a lobby and auditorium or you're the comfort of your own home. Uh, that's the future I believe, of, again, events in general. Um, so again, don't get hung up on the cannibalization to your point really. Um, you know, focus on getting the attendees to engage with the content. The content is really why they're there, they're not there to enjoy the hotel, uh, you know, conference hall or anything along those lines. They're there to engage with that content and education that you're putting out there. So kind of focus on that factor and don't worry about where you capture them as long as you are capturing them in some medium in some form or fashion, good point mike that wraps it up for today. Again, if you didn't get any of your questions asked, will be reaching out and we'll submit those answers directly to you and stay tuned for a future broadcast of virus. Thank you everyone for joining us. Like BRyan said, we're gonna be putting these on regularly, on a monthly basis. So stay tuned. And uh, we hope to see you on the next program. Have a great rest of your day. Goodbye.
Mike Ciaburri
Scott Clelland
Patrick Upton