Frequently Asked Questions to Host Immersive Hybrid Events

Hybrid event is a mix of both the virtual as well as the physical element of an event. It brings both the set of attendees i.e. virtual as well as in-person attendees together under the same frame.  It offers flexibility to attendees to attend the event either virtually or by visiting the event venue. This is a fruitful alternative to target a global audience and host impactful as well as informative sessions. Virtual hybrid event platforms empower you with a chance of getting creative. This is so because you are free to modify and alter your hybrid events to match it with your expectations. With the help of hybrid event platforms, you can host effective conferences, fairs, fest, townhalls, AGMs, product launches, award shows, meetings, webinars and a lot more. 

A virtual event is an entirely online session that does not involve any physical participation. On the other hand, hybrid events are a fusion of both virtual as well as physical elements of an event. Hybrid events involve some sort of physical participation from the speakers or the virtual attendees.

Hybrid events have been gaining significant popularity for the last few months. There are a lot of aspects behind the huge success of hybrid events. Most importantly, hybrid events are extremely budget-friendly and cost-effective. Therefore, they offer an increased return on investment. Furthermore, hybrid events are perfect for hosting conceptualizing sessions as they empower virtual attendees to join from any corner of the world! This feature helps in eliminating the location barrier with the utmost ease. Here is more about hybrid event benefits.

Hosting a hybrid event can initially be a complex task. One of the most common challenges faced by the organisers is to keep the audience engaged. Oftentimes, organisers are unable to focus on the virtual participants along with the physical attendees. This creates unnecessary chaos during the hybrid event and distracts the speakers. It also has a negative impact on the entire event. Therefore, it is important to lay out a strategic plan in order to keep your virtual as well as the physical audience engaged and satisfied.

This is an extremely important question that you need to ask yourself. Based on your requirements, you must analyse whether it is suitable to meet in-person even for your hybrid event. The answer may vary from organisation to organisation as all of their objectives are quite distinctive. Nevertheless, you must never compromise on your mental and physical well being. Thus, it is important to keep an eye on the physical condition surrounding your organisation. If you happen to find out that hybrid events are indeed not the best alternative, you can easily switch to hosting virtual events as they also maximise your reach.

Analysing the participation limit is another important factor for a successful hybrid event. To avoid all the hindrances during your hybrid event, you must focus on the participation limit. For instance, you might want to incorporate a small gathering for in-person meetings of your hybrid event. Your organisation should emphasise more on virtual participation as this will ensure maximum safety of each and every individual.

Defining your target audience will undeniably help you in a lot of aspects. In order to analyse your audience, you might want to properly examine their age as well as profession. For example, while hosting a hybrid event, there are chances that all the millennials would find it too risky to participate in any event physically. Whereas, the younger generation would be more open to this idea of physical participation. Therefore, you must analyse your audience based on your organisational objective.

There is no denying the fact that hosting hybrid events usually involves serious brainstorming. Therefore, you must be careful about picking your sponsors as well as event planners. Opting for the right partners will help you accomplish your organisation objectives without any major challenges.

While the maximum participation will be via a virtual medium, you must never forget the wellbeing of your physical audience. Thus, you must incorporate maximum safety measures and maintain social distancing. In order to achieve that, you can modify and do some adjustments to your sitting arrangements. When hosting in-person events, you can adjust participants and make them sit at appropriate distances and take proper care of sanitization as well. 

Effective marketing strategies help you host a successful hybrid event that can reach a global audience. Thus, it is important to carefully analyse the various marketing strategies available at your disposal and implement the best one. You can opt for digital media marketing that involves social media marketing, email marketing, and so forth. These types of strategies are quite effective in the long-term. Moreover, they are also quite budget oriented as well.

This is one of the most common misconceptions faced by organisers. It is not necessary to carry out simultaneous activities while hosting a hybrid event. If you opt for hosting simultaneous activities, you might end up in chaos because it is difficult to pay attention to different aspects at the same time. Therefore, organisers have started to utilise pre-recorded videos for hybrid events. This allows them to focus on both their virtual as well as physical audiences with the utmost ease.

In order to maximise audience participation, you can incorporate numerous tools and equipment. For instance, you can incorporate a lot of engagement features in order to uplift the ambience of your platform. Furthermore, you can include effective promotion tactics as they will help improve your audience reach. 

Networking is an important aspect for your virtual participants as well as sponsors. Therefore, it is important to come up with distinctive networking ideas to boost up your audience’s interaction and satisfaction. In order to do so, you can utilise key features of hybrid events like, B2B meeting, networking tables, one on one meeting, business card exchange, and so forth for seamless networking. This will allow you to exchange vital information with the interested candidates and schedule a meeting with them as and when required.

For a successful event, it is extremely important to inculcate numerous engagement features. Engagement features are specially designed tools and equipment that focus on audience interaction and motivate them for participating in your event. For example, you can utilise tools like gamification,  live polls, live surveys, and so forth. This will boost up the audience engagement and help them feel more involved. 

Whether you are hosting a virtual or a hybrid event, it is important to focus on your sponsors. Brand sponsors usually have their own set of objectives that they want to achieve with the help of your hybrid event. This can be anything from educating the audience to attracting more clients. Thus, it is important for you to cater to all the requirements. Look out for right sponsors that goes hand in hand with your hybrid event. It will help them to achieve their objective by reaching the right set of attendees thus strengthening your relations with them. 

Hybrid event platforms allow you to get creative. Therefore you can utilise numerous features provided by a hybrid event platform and enable your exhibitors to customise their exhibition booths. Moreover, you can empower them with AI matchmaking that enables them to find out all about the interested candidates. This empowers them to schedule a meeting with different individuals as and when required. Apart from this, various other features like dynamic lobby, dynamic branding, B2B meeting, digital footprinting, custom booths, access management, teleportation, buyers seller meet, e-poster, networking lounge and more can be offered to exhibitors to deliver immersive experiences to attendees. 

Collection of adequate data plays a major role in measuring the success of the event and generating real-time analytics reports. In order to ensure maximum accuracy, you can utilise digital attendee footprinting, access management and so on. It helps organisers to keep a track of all number of participants that opted for a particular segment. This is extremely helpful as it allows organisations to know the most engaging hotspots at the event and which area does not hold the interest of attendees at all. 

While hosting a hybrid event, your main intention is to deliver your message and reach the organisation objective. Nevertheless, you must always prioritise your participants. In order to do so, you must carefully analyse their experience in your hybrid event platform. You can opt for useful features like feedback forms as they help in extracting useful information from the virtual as well as physical participants. This is a great way to analyse their experience and take corrective measures on time.

Promoting a hybrid event is an important aspect of the success of any event. There are numerous promotion tactics available in the market right now. Your organisation can also opt for Digital Marketing as it is quite budget-oriented and effective. Moreover, if you want to target the millennials, you can opt for traditional promotion strategies that focus more on your preferred audience. In order to promote your hybrid event effectively, you must analyse the target audience first and then take appropriate measures for the same.

Last but not the least, one of the most important questions is to ask yourself when to host your hybrid event. Hybrid events are a perfect way to reach a global audience without facing any heavy expenses. Hybrid events are the perfect opportunity that allows you to showcase your product and services to a global market. If you successfully incorporate all the essential elements in your hybrid platform, you are bound to attract more customer base. Additionally, this also helps you to host an astonishing session for your sponsors and exhibitors. It will help you foster relations with them and enable you to benefit from the same in the near future. Therefore while planning to host a hybrid event for your organisation keep the time zone considerations and national holidays in mind.