How to Create Content for a Virtual Event

What you say is obviously important. Sometimes, however, it can be just as crucial to work out how you say something – and where you say it. These factors are what will ultimately determine the success of your content strategy, it’s not all about new content all the time.

By looking over your existing content marketing materials and finding new avenues for connecting them with your ideal audience, you can repurpose it to generate demand, increase conversions and deliver a better overall ROI than spending all your time creating new content. To identify new areas of potential for your content, you’ll need to conduct a content audit.

How to carry out your content audit

In this content audit, you’ll want to map your selected content against your current KPIs and your audience’s most pressing needs. Your content might have been created some time ago, but that doesn’t mean it can’t offer value to potential leads. Think about how to make it accessible to the most people possible; is it available in various formats (video, infographic, pdf etc.), and downloadable?

Next, is it relevant to the current market? You don’t want to come over as tone deaf, and the content is going to need to be useful to your audience in the short and medium term.

If you want to accelerate results from your content even faster, you could partner up with subject matter experts to deliver it in new, exciting and engaging formats – such as online events – that can deliver real value for you and your customers or clients.

In the wake of the pandemic, with offices shut down and live, in-person events cancelled for the foreseeable future, more attention is being paid to what virtual events can offer. With this in mind, it’s important for B2B marketing professionals to make sure their existing content is up to scratch and able to stand out to the right audience.

How to choose the right content for your virtual event

Virtual events can offer you the chance to reach a broader audience than live events, and that audience is going to be made up of industry insiders, professionals and partners on the lookout for engagement and solutions.

Understand your audience

The key to choosing content for a virtual event, or getting existing content ready for a new platform, is in understanding the audience for it. This stretches from the number of attendees your event is likely to attract to what their different roles and motivations are for being there.

Set objectives

You also need to set objectives and work out how it fits into your broader content strategy. Are you looking to share knowledge and build community, demonstrate products or increase revenue?

Content delivery

Once you’ve established these, understanding your audience will assist you in determining everything from the timing and structure of your event to the hosts you choose and how you’re going to deliver all that content.

For example, if your event is on a small scale, such as a meet and greet between senior decision makers, your audience is going to want to feel involved and able to add their input, so the best type of event for this scenario is an interactive one, similar to live panels you’d see at in-person conferences.

Alternatively, if you’re opting for a digital summit that brings an intimate audience of industry insiders together for longer presentations, your content will need to grab attention and keep hold of it. You can do this by breaking your presentations up into segments, allowing the attendees to ask questions and tailoring it to the challenges they might be facing in their day to day work.

Maybe it’s more of a roadshow or showcase that you want to use to promote a specific message en-masse. If this is the case, you need to think about the ways digital technology can help you reach larger audiences at the same time.

Choose the right people

Once you’ve worked out the right platform to gather your audience together, it’s crucial to pick the best possible speaker(s) to deliver your message or manage your forum. The event will have much more credibility if you’re able to involve subject matter experts from around your industry or sector, in addition to those within your own organization.

Finding these speakers is something you could do yourself. It may involve tapping up existing contacts or doing a bit of networking before you start putting the event together. This research and contacting phase can take up a good deal of time and resource, and you’re not necessarily guaranteed to find someone who’s willing or able to take part.

A good way around this is to partner with a live event provider. B2B-focused virtual event providers will often have a roster of experts on hand to assist in delivering content for your own online summit, which can save you the hassle and uncertainty of doing it yourself.

In addition, virtual event providers have delivery platforms ready to go at a moment’s notice and an established, often senior or C-suite audience. Partnering with one of these providers to either host or sponsor an online event will allow you to tap in to highly-engaged, prequalified attendees who all have the power to make decisions within their business. A GDS and IFP survey of over 200 high-level executives and directors found that 60% saw sponsored virtual events as being highly effective in driving highly qualified leads.

That means better quality leads and high conversion rates. It’s a no-brainer - the same survey revealed that 80% of respondents were planning at least six virtual events in 2021. With a virtual events partner in place, all you’ll have to worry about is going back over your existing content and tailoring it to the needs of your audience. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to reap the many benefits of virtual events.