The Definition of a Virtual Event Changed and We Completely Missed It

A few years ago, if the phrase "virtual event" had been uttered in a business context, there were only a handful of things the person who said it could have meant: an online conference, a virtual trade show, or the basic educational webcast that enterprises have been delivering since GoToWebinar was released in 2006. Outside these three examples, virtual events were infrequently leveraged and mostly avoided by communications professionals, marketing teams, people operations staff, and anyone else looking to disseminate information inside or outside the four walls of their organization.

Fast-forward to today, and the definition of a virtual event in the enterprise has expanded dramatically, primarily due to challenges like remote employee communication, office virtualization and global reductions in business travel. To be fair, event platforms themselves have come a long way as well, with customizable event portals, breakout rooms, attendee engagement analytics, CRM and MA integrations, real-time social media clip publication, and the ability to mix both live and VOD content becoming standard functionality. And the combination of these two things—the need to solve new communication challenges and rapidly improving technology—has caused dozens of new virtual event use cases to emerge while most of us weren't even looking.

Virtual Events for Internal Communications

When it comes to maintaining engagement with and disseminating information to global employee bases, many executive teams still avoid true virtual event technology in favor of a meeting solution—a Zoom, WebEx or MS Teams front end with a simple streaming engine added to accomplish delivery at scale. But now that departments like HR, Marketing, Legal, Finance and Product have the need to reach and interact with large groups of distributed employees as well, true virtual event technology has become a critical component of the enterprise technology stack.

Beyond the basic CEO Town Hall use case, virtual event technology is actively being used by innovative organizations to run internal educational conferences, host design sprints, introduce new hires, deliver compliance training and even manage company-sponsored clubs and common-interest groups for distributed employee bases. Why? Because the additional features virtual event technology brings to the table—many of which I covered in the introduction—allow organizations to offer employees much more than a framed talking head with Q&A in the sidebar.

Virtual Events for Marketing

As the original creators of virtual events, you rarely need to explain the value of video technology to professional marketers. In fact, it should be no surprise to anyone that the need to generate demand, collect leads and drive brand awareness has sprouted some of the most creative uses for virtual event technology to date.

With a single virtual event platform many marketers are now skipping the traditional "Product Roadshow" and announcing, rolling out, demonstrating and taking orders for new products without leaving their (mostly home) offices. Those same platforms are also being used to brief the media, enable sales teams, and manage post-rollout thought leadership on a global scale. If your marketing team didn't know there were video platforms out there specifically designed to generate demand, build pipeline, accelerate channel activity and even close deals, they've definitely missed a few things over the last 18 months.

Virtual Events for External Communications

Two years ago, not many enterprises would have considered using virtual event technology for things like shareholder meetings, user conferences, sales kickoffs, career fairs or partner training activities. With many people having (and fully taking advantage of) nearly bottomless travel and event planning budgets, the first response for most event owners was to book a meeting hall in a more favorable climate, grab a block of hotel rooms, get everyone on a plane, and allow attendees to rack up loyalty travel points for use on their next family vacation.

But as I mentioned in a previous article, the year 2020 gave organizations the opportunity to not only reevaluate travel investments, but also move some travel dollars to video technologies—technologies that help accomplish the same goals at a significantly lower cost to the organization. With the right virtual event platform, enterprises can not only extend both the reach of and participation in annual and quarterly events, but also archive event content for on-demand use long after the event has concluded. And because of this, virtual event platforms are permanently at the top of the "Technologies Enterprises Can't Live Without' list, right next to CRM platforms and expense management systems.

What to Do Next

Today, enterprises are actively seeking platforms that allow them to reach employees, customers, partners, prospects and other stakeholders via video in new and creative ways—which has not only expanded the definition of virtual events forever, but also reduced the number of technology providers who offer a platform with the flexibility necessary to handle them. So to me, getting your arms around ALL of your event-based use cases before shopping for virtual event technology is a great first step.

With the above in mind, as some additional (and fun) reading, I encourage you to grab a new infographic titled 31 Creative Uses for Virtual Event Technology in the Enterprise. It's free, it's a quick read, and it may help you justify the enterprise-focused virtual event platform we all know your organization needs.

Look for my next article soon, and thank you for giving me five minutes of your day. Have a great remainder of your week!

About Eric

Eric Rudolf is the VP of Go-to-Market (GTM) Programs for Brightcove, the industry leader in empowering organizations to touch audiences with video in bold and innovative ways. With nearly 20 years in SaaS-based Enterprise Technology, Eric has led GTM strategy for multiple Gartner-named leaders. You may connect with Eric on LinkedIn, or send him an email any time at [email protected].