Do you have a hybrid strategy in place?

As fall event planning ramps up, does your plan include a hybrid strategy? If not, now is the time to get one in place – and fast! A recent study by Northstar Meetings Group reveals 82 percent of event planners will hold live meetings this year. In addition, more than a third of respondents plan to accommodate both in-person and virtual audiences. There’s no denying that hybrid events have gained significant traction. As companies continue to announce their return to live events, a majority of these events will leverage a hybrid approach.

We’ve had several discussions with customers and partners surrounding the hot topic of hybrid events. As a result, here are some of the common questions we’re hearing: “What resources do I need to support a hybrid event?”, “How much does it cost to produce a hybrid event?” — and more importantly, “How do you measure hybrid event success?” 

Lucky for you, we’re here to help tackle some of the mystery behind the unknown world of hybrid events, starting at the very beginning – developing a hybrid strategy.

Your Hybrid Strategy: Piecing Together the Puzzle

Let’s talk strategy. In the hybrid world, it’s all about defining your audience, both live and virtual, identifying key areas of impact, and uncovering opportunities for engagement.

As you develop your hybrid strategy, you’ll want to acknowledge the following key pieces of the puzzle:

• Define how you’ll measure success. Every event is unique and has its own set of goals. Your goals may vary from audience attendance and pipeline growth to sponsorship engagement and interactivity. Clearly defining your key event objectives is the first step to success.

• Map out your attendee journey. Remember this is one event with two distinctly different attendee types – live and virtual. Each must be paid special attention to ensure their full engagement. To map out your attendee journey, first identify and chart key impact moments from the event’s beginning to end. For instance, highlight areas where you can use tactics that enable both audience types to maximize their connections, learning, and engagement. These tactics may include pre-event communication, content created uniquely for each group, and video-on-demand created to extend the conversation.

• Determine your hybrid event budget. A hybrid event encompasses the live and virtual experience and requires specific resources to enable this connection effectively. Here are five things to consider when assessing your hybrid event budget:

1. Project Pre-Production and Planning
2. Content Strategy and Execution
3. Virtual Event Platform Assessment and Implementation
4. Live Event Production
5. Virtual Event Production

Each of these areas are fundamental to the execution of a successful hybrid strategy.

When it comes to hybrid event production, there’s a lot to discuss and consider. The good news is you don’t have to navigate the complex unknown alone! Let’s work together to create a winning hybrid strategy. Connect with our team of event experts to discuss your next event.

Demystifying hybrid event budget requirements

Once your hybrid strategy is in place, next you’ll need to confirm your hybrid event budget and requirements.  Don’t forget that a hybrid event combines live and virtual experiences, so you’ll need to think with both an event planning and communication path mindset. In the world of hybrid, the goal is to strategically make two different audience types feel like part of one connected experience.

Solving the Puzzle

In our thirty years of event production experience, it’s safe to say we’ve seen a thing or two. Most companies roll hybrid event costs into a larger event budget. To save yourself some trouble, separate the costs so you can easily identify where you received the most business value.

Here are five hybrid event budget cost areas to consider:

1. Program Planning and Pre-Production
2. Content Strategy and Execution
3. Virtual Platform Assessment
4. Live Event Production Requirements
5. Virtual Event Production Requirements

Program Planning and Pre-Production

Use this time to identify essential resources and pre-event communications needed to support your overall event objectives. During the initial program planning and pre-production stage, focus on determining creative design requirements, assessing virtual platform options, scheduling site visits, and securing keynote speakers. 

Content Strategy and Execution

This is where your brand and message intersect to confirm how you’ll tell your story.  You can use your event to share information through videos, product demonstrations, live and pre-recorded presentations.

PRO TIP: Encourage your virtual attendees to participate in your event theme or messaging by requesting submission of video content.  These videos can connect to a theme, an idea, or action and can be incorporated into event media and social media channels. Here are more compelling types of content you can use to increase virtual attendee engagement.

Virtual Platform Assessment

If audience engagement is a key objective, selecting the right virtual platform shouldn’t be taken lightly. The platform is your connection point to the virtual audience – and these days, there are seemingly endless options!

The costs for a virtual platform can vary greatly based upon functionality, interactivity, analytics tracking, and reporting.  Again, here is where leaning into your hybrid event strategy is critical.  Engagement and interactivity are key and can drive your platform selection, along with price! For smaller scale, one-day virtual meetings, virtual platform pricing can range anywhere from $4,000 to $20,000. Larger scale events typically fall between $20,000 to $75,000, according to MeetingsNet. These are events that include keynote presentations, a general session, and multiple speaking tracks.

PRO TIP: Look for an all-in-one event platform that offers registration and ticketing, event check-in, live engagement and networking, sponsorship and exhibitor management, data analytics, and post-event reporting.

Live Event Production Requirements

Venue-specific or regional regulations will inform design opportunities and attendance numbers. From a hybrid perspective, you’ll need to consider unique ways to bring the virtual audience into the ballroom. This is achievable through multiple camera views. A dynamic mainstage with great site angles and sound is key – and never underestimate the power of lighting to drive impact.

PRO TIP:  Punctuality is key – you must run your sessions on time to ensure a seamless connection between your live and virtual audience. Having an experienced live event production team on-site will help keep things on track.

Virtual Event Production Requirements

Connecting live to virtual is what production solves. Thinking like TV, enabling multiple camera views, keynote interviews from the show floor, remote presenters streamed with TV-like graphics are all examples of high-impact virtual production outcomes.

PRO TIP: Streaming and production services will likely be your largest costs, amounting to more than 50 percent of the total budget on average. 

When you spread attendees across multiple locations, new technology elements force changes in our method of communication. Different communication and participation environments for content delivery and collaboration are created.

Have more questions on building out a hybrid event budget? We’re happy to help. Contact us and one of our event experts will be in touch to get the conversation started.

With the CDC’s latest COVID-19 guideline updates, event leaders will soon be (if they aren’t already) planning more hybrid meetings, or meetings with a mix of in-person and virtual attendees. While many organizations have been holding hybrid meetings for the last several years, experts are still trying to figure out how to accommodate the varying needs of their audience.

So, whether your audience has a seat in front of the main stage, or they are viewing from the comfort of a home office, here are some tools of the trade to keep in mind as we start to see the demand for hybrid meetings and events pick up.

Invest in a virtual platform

If you’re relying on Zoom or Microsoft Teams to support the virtual component of your event, it may be time to explore other virtual hosting platforms if your end goal is to grow audience engagement. That said, virtual platforms come in all shapes and sizes, each offering its own level of flexibility and customization options. For those making their first investment in a virtual platform, creativity and flexibility in design are often overlooked. You’ll want to find a solution that gives you the flexibility to customize your brand and messaging for different event types.

PRO TIP: Before you invest, check to confirm the platform can customize the attendee experience with things like personalized schedules and agendas.

Hire an event production agency

The role of event production has changed as producers now have to oversee new components like platform build and technical requirements needed to support a virtual environment. If you’re lucky enough to have internal resources, the sky is the limit! Unfortunately, most companies don’t have the luxury of having an in-house production team.

PRO TIP: When looking for an event production partner, be sure to find someone who is capable of overseeing rehearsal runs, managing recordings, setting up and tests for broadcast quality and an internet connection, and can help manage features like polling, slide transitions, and other visuals.

Showcase your virtual audience

Have a big screen behind your main stage? Use it to showcase as many of your remote attendees as possible!  If some don’t feel comfortable being live on camera, provide an option for them to submit a photo. Adding this level of personalization reminds the presenter or emcee that they have another audience to interact with.

PRO TIP: Note that Zoom supports up to 49 members in gallery view. To accommodate a larger audience, you may want to consider a virtual platform solution or a custom built platform tailored to your specific needs.  

Create digital experiences

With two different attendee types, event leaders will need to think outside of the box when it comes to keeping the virtual audience engaged. Attendees are expecting a different experience from virtual events – live panel discussions and PowerPoint presentations aren’t going to cut it. The right content elements organized and delivered in the right way create a perfect union between the event and its virtual audience.

PRO TIP: Use this as an opportunity to explore new ways to create highly compelling product demonstrations with prospective customers. There are several product tour software tools worth exploring!

Planning your next hybrid meeting

Are hybrid meetings part of your future event strategy? We’ve helped several companies evolve their event experiences. We’d love to help yours too. Schedule a discovery call and let’s discuss your next hybrid meeting!

The Hybrid Event Model’s 4 Key Components

You’re probably familiar with what a hybrid event is, but do you know what it takes to execute hybrid events in a way that creates a meaningful experience for both virtual and live attendees? Creating a noteworthy hybrid event experience requires event planners to be involved in the event’s overall brand messaging, content, technology, and logistics.

Before you commit to a hybrid event, it’s important to understand the key components that make up the hybrid event model as it exists today and how they influence your overall plan.

Strategy Development

As you begin the planning process, develop an event business plan to help you focus on the event’s purpose and goals. Once you’ve shared this plan with key internal stakeholders, you can use it as a strategic roadmap. Here are some things you’ll want to include:

• Event Objectives: Whether the goal is to expand reach to a broader audience or generate revenue, a clearly defined event objective will help you keep the focus on prioritizing deliverables that support the end goal.
• Event Budget: As we navigate this new world of hybrid events, you need to be able to identify the expected value of your event, including your revenue stream and losses.  How will the event be paid for? Identify income stream opportunities such as ticket and exhibition space sales, funding, grants, and sponsorship.
• Audience Analysis: Before you can dive deep into content development for your event, you’ll need to have a clear idea of exactly what your audience looks like. For hybrid events, you need to consider in-person, virtual and on-demand attendees (if offering access to content after the event – which we highly encourage!)

PRO TIP: Each of these attendee types will have different expectations. For in-person attendees, details like lighting, sound, stage design and onsite visuals will influence the overall experience. Virtual attendees will be more impacted by connectivity quality, on-screen content, animations and seamless transitions. If you map out the needs and experiences of these attendees ahead of time, you’ll save yourself a lot of last-minute fire drills.

Pre-Production

Pre-production planning begins once your event strategy and plan are in place. Consider the various digital touchpoints for your attendees before, during, and post-event. This is the time when you’ll want to clearly identify the various roles needed to support your hybrid event. These key players will have a big impact on event execution and bringing your content vision to life.

Speaking of content, event planners often miss out on opportunities to use content to generate excitement leading up to the event. Pre-event communication is your time to shine and get creative.

Here are some ways to generate excitement leading up to your hybrid event:

• Conduct a quick pre-event poll to find out what attendees are looking forward to and encourage participation. This gives you quick results so you can take appropriate actions on what you may have missed.
• Announce the launch of a new product or that you have an exciting keynote speaker people will be thrilled to hear and watch.
• Create educational and fun videos to define event topics or goals. Share these short videos socially to give prospects and attendees a sneak peek at event topics and speaker lineup.

Other items to focus on during pre-production include speaker selection and briefing. In today’s world, event speakers need to be able to engage both in-person and virtual attendees. Choosing the right speakers will make or break the success of your event. While some may be familiar with presenting on stage, encourage your speakers to rehearse in advance so that they feel comfortable acknowledging your online audience and looking at the camera.

On-site Event Production

Ah, finally…the moment we’ve all been waiting for! Live event day. Whether broadcasting from the main stage in a ballroom or shooting in a studio, this is the moment when you’ll work with your hybrid event team to ensure all the logistics are tested and in place to enable smooth connectivity from the live event presentation to the virtual event platform.

The key to hosting a successful hybrid event is to ensure your virtual attendees are provided an engaging experience that feels like they are viewing a TV-like broadcast. 

Here are just a few items that you’ll need to consider in order to pull this off:

• Stage set up
• Presentation rehearsals 
• Lighting (appropriate for in-room and camera capture/stream)
• Event décor and fabrics
• On-site AV production and streaming solutions (you’ll need multi-mics and stream support to virtual)
• HD cameras (you’ll need more than one for switching, playback and recordings)
• Custom livestream graphics
• Internet connectivity
• Venue logistics
• Team and content coordination

Do you see why having the right team in place is essential to hybrid event success? This list just scratches the surface! (hint: this is when that technical director becomes your new BFF)

Post-Event Production

Whew! That’s a wrap. Your first hybrid event was a huge success and attendees are raving about the quality of content and overall experience. In fact, they are already asking when your next hybrid event is taking place. Congratulations! But before you pack your beach bag for a well-deserved vacation, there’s still work to be done. Post-event production is a great time to continue the conversation with attendees and show prospects what they missed. It also provides an opportunity to take a deeper look at event metrics to see how you stacked up against your goals.

Here are some post-production tips to get you closer to that beach vacation:

• Make sure post-event content is available
• Email outreach sharing the content with attendees
• Promote the event on social channels highlighting access to on-demand recordings
• Prepare and review post-event metrics

Now that you’re familiar with the four key components of a hybrid event model and the various items that need to align for it to take place, you should have a better idea of how they can work for your company.

Want further insight into what hybrid events are and how they can be used? Contact us today and speak with one of our event experts!