Hybrid event is the event industry’s latest buzzword. Both live and event companies are re-equipping their solutions to include hybrid events for good. According to stats released by BizBash, 70% of the event experts believe that hybrid meetings will play a crucial role in the future.
If you are not well versed with what exactly you understand by ‘hybrid events’, we will help you dip right into it, and even if you know it already, here are a few things that you would want to consider about the conduct of hybrid events in the year 2022.
The onset of the coronavirus forced the world to update its operations across industries. This is when virtual events gained immense popularity. Still, now with the world reopening, the idea of getting a limited number of people together in a physical space is thrilling, which is why hybrid events have been such a trending topic over the past couple of months.
From what we understand, hybrid events are going to be the standard event type even after the global restrictions are lifted. Depending on their availability, they can attend the event remotely or in person.
This is because of the multitude of benefits that it offers apart from being versatile. Read the blog to know more about it.
What Are Hybrid Events?
Hybrid events are a combination of both in-person and virtual events, which is the most innovative way of hosting events, which is why a lot of corporations have begun using these platforms.
Moreover, they are beneficial because they offer the benefits of both; virtual and live events. Further, they can be divided into two categories:
Internal hybrid events
Internal hybrid events benefit the already existing stakeholders such as the employees and the staff. Many companies conduct such events to get along, engage and celebrate shared interests with their stakeholders.
Such events are rather important to keep up, share updated information, and motivate their workforce to perform better. Depending on their availability, they can attend the event remotely or in person.
Sometimes, you miss out on the best of speakers and entertainers due to travel restrictions. But, by adapting to a hybrid structure, you can overcome this restriction easily.
External hybrid events
External hybrid events mainly are conducted to attract the attention of potential clients. Conducting this event on a virtual platform makes it innovative, modern, and easier to use for the attendees.
Examples of external hybrid events would be conferences, summits, concerts, parties, virtual social hours, seminars, trade shows, or product launches.
Why Must Brands Consider Hybrid Events?
Apart from enabling seamless information between speakers and attendees, a hybrid event can help in several ways. Read to find out more:
Improved Attendance
The audience engagement opportunity provided by the hybrid events is amazing. By reducing physical and financial barriers, a hybrid event helps in attracting not only your primary but also secondary and tertiary audiences.
This means those who are not sure if they must attend your event or those living across borders, can also attend your event without any hassle.
Further, by promoting your hybrid event by creating a social media wall, event website, live streams on social media platforms, etc – you stand a chance to expand your reach – eliminating any kind of attendance limits and making it more accessible.
Creating Events That Leave An Impact
Hosting events that create an impact gets easy with a hybrid structure. This is because the speakers get a chance to attend the event from anywhere, which means you can collaborate with a great line of speakers for your event.
This means those who are not sure if they must attend your event or those living across borders, can also attend your event without any hassle.
This can alter the impact that your event generates on the audiences while efficiently scaling up the level of engagement that your event generates. Sometimes, you miss out on the best of speakers and entertainers due to travel restrictions. But, by adapting to a hybrid structure, you can overcome this restriction easily.
Additional Flexibility & Scalability
Hosting any event successfully cannot happen without considering the uncertainties. The good part about hybrid events is however that it provides flexibility.
Event organizers can completely cut down their dependability on external factors and conduct the event even if something unforeseen happens.
This means those who are not sure if they must attend your event or those living across borders, can also attend your event without any hassle.
And of course, when it comes to scalability, hybrid events are the best. All that you need to do is, set up tech, after which you can increase or decrease the number of attendees attending the event virtually. Additionally, you can also reuse the content in future events.
Tracking KPIs
Tracking the number of attendees and their engagement during the event can be difficult. But with hybrid events, you can actually track the virtual data and the KPIs of your event, which will eventually help you in your next event.
Imagine, if you could track the number of people joining your event, at what time, which session had the most people, along with the dropout time, instead of just keeping a count on the number of attendees?
Gaining insights into these event metrics will help you tweak your future strategy.
Tracking your key performance indicators is something that you cannot achieve with in-person events.
Over To You
Hybrid events are gaining populace, especially after the world began opening up back. They have proved to enhance ROI, and audience engagement for the organizers. If this blog gave you insights, it’s’ about time to give hybrid event a try!