How to Maximize Virtual Attendance and Participation
Stacey Trunnell, former Consultant
Boulder, CO
Scenario: you’re responsible for convening stakeholders as part of delivering success for your Federal government program when suddenly disaster strikes and you can no longer facilitate critical discussions in person. Not to worry - this is the time of virtual engagements!
Adapting your conference, workshop, or event to the digital landscape is entirely possible. The question is, given the change in circumstances, how can you ensure your virtual engagement is well attended? Looking a step further, what value proposition should you promise to truly maximize participation that makes an impact?
If you’re like a lot of government program managers, you don’t have a generous budget to pay for advertising. You may not have an ad budget at all! As good stewards of taxpayer dollars, it’s difficult to justify allocating funds on flashy media campaigns when that money could better be spent on stimulating research and development.
Moreover, you may be used to successfully recruiting attendees via in-person events. However, the circumstances of 2020 have shown that reliance on in-person events alone is no longer viable. The handshake may be a thing of the past. In the current climate, it’s likely your outreach efforts will be with people you’ve never met before.
At Corner Alliance, we’re familiar with increasing virtual engagement reach and awareness despite these obstacles. No ad spend? No problem. Event marketing options fall through? Time to lean on partners and influencers. One of my favorite sayings is, problems are opportunities in less attractive packaging. In other words, it’s time to embrace the opportunity in these new challenges.
Read below for our suggestions on successfully engaging and attracting stakeholders to your virtual engagement. You may find, as we have, your virtual engagement sees participation that far exceeds that which has taken place in-person.
Part 1: Know Who You’re Talking To, Why, and What You Want Them To Do
If there’s one thing I’d like to stop at all costs, it’s this: stop starting with tactics. You need to have a well-informed plan to solidify success. What I find is that it’s best to assess what you have and what you know, use those facts as anchor points, then design for your engagement’s goal. You can’t attract people to your engagement with fluff; you have to provide value to them. To do that, it’s imperative to ask a series of questions. Like Simon Sinek said, “start with why.”
Step 1. Have a firm grasp on the engagement’s purpose and clearly document it.
Why does this engagement exist? What would happen if this engagement didn’t take place? What problem does it solve? Those might sound like lofty questions; but, it’s best to start broad then narrow your focus the more information you acquire. Why are we here? Why do this? You can’t make a plan unless you’re clear on why. Your audience won’t believe your engagement’s worth giving any attention to unless you can give them a genuine reason to care. Begin building your value proposition when you start with why.
Step 2. Identify your target audience and write out everything you know about them.
Who do you need to recruit? What do you want them to do? I always talk to my clients about who they want in attendance. We may start with demographics - especially with regard to job titles and industry affiliations - as an anchor point, then start to contextualize our ideal recruit even further. What do they know about my brand, and how and when do they interact with it? What do they expect from my organization? Is there something they need they’re not getting from anyone else? Why is that important? It takes a robust research plan to truly understand an audience’s motivation(s), but you can start by examining the contacts you have. Consider crafting a short questionnaire to learn more about them. In-depth interviews and focus groups can help educate you while building relationships at the same time.
Step 3. Determine the benefits of participation in your virtual engagement - and the challenges.
Why should your target audience participate? What’s in it for them? Chances are, they have to spend money, take off work, skip lunch, or otherwise adjust their lives to join your engagement, so what’s the real benefit they get from doing that? Know the opportunity costs and remember them when crafting your message. Part of your promise is what stakeholders “get” when they choose to spend time and attention on your brand. Communicating this value is essential.
Another way to position benefits is to think about what happens if your audience doesn’t take the desired action. Put simply, identify the stakes. If your stakeholders don’t participate, they’ll be missing an opportunity. They may not have a voice. They’ll have to wait to have the latest information. They may miss the chance to get funding, win an award, or meet a potential partner. Weave this into your story to emphasize your engagement’s purpose and create a sense of urgency. Benefits look even more attractive when you know what’s at stake.
Step 4. Craft a brand script.
Storytelling is an underutilized tool. Yet humans are triggered emotionally and psychologically by stories of heroism. Donald Miller, author of Building a StoryBrand, says your customer is the hero (because we’re all the heroes in our own lives). Therefore, it’s best to position your brand, program, or virtual engagement as helpful to the hero. Consider how your stakeholder’s job or life is improved as a result of attending your event. Think realistically and creatively.
Step 5. Create your communications plan.
I recently crafted a campaign with this simple goal: to inspire participation in [virtual engagement 2020]. Thinking of what our target audience knows about us and what we’re asking them to do, I break down the overarching goal into phases. If the engagement is new - or the stakeholders are new to my brand - I’m going to need to educate before I can convince them to do anything. You can look at different marketing and user journey models to get a sense of which steps to account for in your plan.
I won’t go into it here but I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to build KPIs into your plan. My colleague’s blog post next week will cover how to measure the effectiveness of your virtual engagement. Don’t save this part for last! Build it into your plan at the forefront.
Part 2: Identify the Resources You Have to Aid in Reaching Your Goal
So you have your goal, know your audience, have written your story, and crafted a plan. Now what? You need to bring this story to life to recruit attendees and prompt participation. The two key points in this section are: 1) Identify your outreach resources and potential partners and 2) Create relevant, actionable assets tailored to your audiences. Let’s review each below.
Identify your outreach resources and potential partners
Assuming paid media is not an option, identify your owned, borrowed, and earned media options. For owned media, examine the tools, talents, and outlets you have to promote and share your message. Below are some of the ingredients I’m currently cooking with:
Tools
MarketingCloud
A brand style guide
A streaming video conferencing service
The Adobe Creative Suite
Talents
A brand, marketing, or communications strategist
A writer/editor
A video editor
A graphic designer
Outlets
A website and blog
Social media
A “customer” mailing list
For borrowed and earned media opportunities, there are two important types of partners to engage: 1) complementary organizations with similar / related audience constituencies and 2) Influencers in your industry - ideally, those who are champions of your brand. In identifying the first group, study businesses and institutions with stakeholders or members similar to yours. Determine the benefits - what they “get” - when they engage with your brand. It’s likely you can develop a partnership around your complementary missions.
For the second group, ask yourself a series of questions: Who are the people interacting with your content? Attending your events? Reaching out via your website or CRM software? If you have this data available, start here. It’s likely they believe in your mission and find value in your promise. Build and maintain relationships with these people. They may be your most influential stakeholders; regularly check in and invite feedback.
Create relevant, actionable assets tailored to your audiences
Give people the digestible, engaging assets they want using your owned and borrowed communications channels. Infuse your message throughout clearly and simply. Understand the best practices per each platform and marry them to your audiences’ behaviors and preferences. Align on how your target audience uses different media platforms and craft assets tailored to their behaviors, beliefs, and expectations. Tell your story in a way that resonates and prompts desired action. Measure. Measure. Measure.
At Corner Alliance, we use the trusted APIC model - Assess, Plan, Implement, Create Results - for maximizing virtual engagement attendance and participation. Admittedly, this blog is about doubling down on assessment and planning to achieve your desired results (and make implementation as turnkey as possible). But we’ve only just scratched the surface in this blog. You can dive deeper with our free Virtual Engagement Assessment Tool. Download it at the form above.
We’ve witnessed the how-tos in this model inform and deliver virtual engagements with attendance and participation that far exceeds in-person events. If you need to convene stakeholders successfully - especially if you’re pivoting from in-person to virtual - reach out to our sales team to learn more about how we can help.
Author
Stacey Trunnell was formerly a Corner Alliance Consultant specializing in communications and outreach. She has supported PSCR since March 2018, where her mission has been to energize the program and its people through the implementation of a strategic communications plan. Prior to joining Corner Alliance, Stacey worked inside some of the most awarded advertising agencies and branding firms in North America and the world. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in American Studies from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a Master’s in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin.