5 reasons why people are not attending your online event

The world has shifted from in-person to online events, and it’s been interesting to see how event organisers have adapted their businesses and what challenges they face.

Since more and more organisers are venturing into this virtual world, we are wondering why some events are more successful than others? Are there any guidelines that were not followed, did your event not resonate with your attendees or the content they were looking for?

Here we look at 5 different ways to try and avoid the common pitfalls as an event organiser.

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Protectivity is a specialist in niche commercial, leisure, and lifestyle insurance. We cover thousands of individuals and small to medium size businesses across the UK, offering a range of tailored insurance products such as Event Insurance to protect our customers against unforeseen events.

1. Getting Content Wrong

One of the common mistakes when it comes to online events is the event program. It is either packed full of content or it is lacking content.

For virtual events, content is the main building block when it comes to catching the audience’s interest and retaining it. Put yourself into your attendee’s seat and decide what would hold your attention.

A long PowerPoint presentation and boring keynote speeches is unlikely to glue them to the screens.

Instead, find ways to engage your audience with useful examples, by using online polls or quizzes, by combining interesting visuals with key information, or by including pre-recorded videos during the live event.

2. Inexperienced Speakers

Speakers are crucial for delivering a successful online event, therefore inviting renowned keynote speakers is essential.

Combined with innovative discussions and industry leading insights, presenters are key for airing an unforgettable event.

However, speakers are as new to virtual events as event organisers, so they might lack experience and knowledge on interacting and engaging with an online audience.

Unlike with webinars, where people stop by to learn something new, with virtual events attendees come to be surprised and thoroughly engaged.

Doing a rehearsal, uploading content beforehand, familiarising themselves with all engagement tools and webcasting services will help your speakers achieve resonating impact and deliver memorable show.

Lack of Event Networking

Networking is the number one reason people attend events. Events offer great opportunities for creating and building bonds – and a strong network is essential for business achievement.

From finding potential customers and generating leads to chatting with industry experts about best practice, the possibilities for connecting are endless.

This personal element is not possible at a virtual event, but it does not mean that networking is not an option.

You can take the initiative of creating public forums where people can discuss a specific topic, introduce networking games in the event app, or use a matchmaking service to connect attendees with similar interests.

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4. Not Prioritising Questions and Comments

Ignoring your audience questions and feedback is another common mistake that has significant impact on the success of your future virtual events. Very often attendees submit questions or post comments that are not read out or acknowledged.

Make sure this doesn’t happen by implementing enough resources in place to deal with it. You can use a ‘moderator’ that keeps an eye on the questions or comments coming in and their job is to arrange for them to be displayed or passed to the virtual host. Leaving this important aspect to chance will affect your attendees experience and most likely make them never return in the future.

5. Technological Barriers

Online events are entirely dependent on technology. From the moment you reserve your place through the event booking software, to airing the event through webcasting platforms, everything happens through your chosen tech platform.

A virtual event platform helps you streamline the tasks associated with organising your online event, such as ticketing, attendee management, event planning, event scheduling, marketing, reporting, and analytics.

Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for event planners to go for a platform that delivers end-to-end solutions, with all the required functionalities under the hood. Choosing the best event management software will depend on your individual needs, but you can learn more and compare different functionalities here.

Avoiding these five pitfalls will not guarantee your event’s success, but it will give you, the event organiser, a better idea of the kind of things that can go wrong.

Interested to read more about online events? Check out our Most Popular Virtual Events in 2020 blog.

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Useful Resources:

https://www.zoho.com/backstage/thegreenroom/why-virtual-events-fail.html
https://www.eventsforce.com/us/blog/9-most-common-mistakes-with-virtual-events/