Mastering Audience Engagement: Strategies for Live, Hybrid, and Virtual Events

Event success can mostly be measured by one core metric: engagement. Creating an engaging event means that you’ve truly understood your attendees and their needs, and have humanised your event content in a way that’s tailored to your target audience. Whilst this may sound simple in principle, brands must be able to expertly apply innovative approaches in order to create an engaging live, hybrid or virtual event. 

In this blog, we’ll be taking a look at what audience engagement really means, breaking down various engagement techniques, and how they can be employed across your event strategy.

What is audience engagement and why is it important? 

Ultimately, engagement is how you hook your audience into the wider message around your event experience. This metric spans across a range of different forms of interaction, reflecting whether or not your event strategy has been successful in creating a sense of belonging within your brand.

Let’s take a look at the key things you need to focus on in order to master your audience engagement across live, virtual and hybrid event formats. 

Get clear on your event goals 

There are multiple different metrics that you can measure within audience engagement, but the key is to identify which ones best reflect your event success. In order to do this, you need clarity around your wider event strategy message and proposition, and how this translates into your event goals. Whether it’s related to how you want your audience to consume your event content, engage with other attendees, or engage with your brand, it’s difficult to master audience engagement without having a clarified definition of what this actually means for your event. 

Creating intuitive experiences 

In order to ensure that your attendees stay engaged with your event offering, your event experience needs to be as seamless and intuitive as possible. Particularly for live events, a well designed, intuitive event app can help boost attendee engagement. By supplying attendees with personalised, up to date information about their event experience, they can make the most of their time with your brand, and focus on the core messages and takeaway of your event. 

Keep it creative!

This might sound obvious, but no one wants to engage with a boring event format, message or offering. Creative events allow you to maintain your attendees’ attention and engagement, and show off your brand's understanding of your audience’s needs and interests. Using gamification is a great way to keep attendees engaged with your events, and is a creative event strategy that delivers results across hybrid, virtual and live event formats. Things like scavenger hunts are a great way to get your attendees to engage with every area of your event map, both physical and virtual. 

Let’s get personal

Nothing is more likely to disengage your attendees than an experience that feels generic and off the shelf. That’s why adding personalised elements to your event strategy is a great way to keep your attendees engaged with your event messages. This is where your event marketing can come into play and help master your audience engagement. During each attendee touchpoint, you can collect the relevant data that allows you to segment your audience, and offer a personalised, data driven experience to each attendee. 

Ready to master your audience engagement and drive event success? 

Get in touch with the team. 

Whether you need support with your event strategy, or the implementation of your engagement techniques, our team brings a collaborative approach that’s tailored to your brand, your strategy, and your attendees.