Digital events, by force, have become the go to medium for holding business 2 business events and sharing thought leadership in 2020. What happens when everything goes back to ‘normal’, if things will ever be ‘normal’?
The past
We are pondering the question: Why didn’t digital events play a bigger role before this crisis and why weren’t they that popular? They make a lot of sense in terms of audience reach, evergreen content, cost savings, meeting new contacts and who you can get to participate as speakers to name a few. Of course it cannot compete with a physical event in terms of face to face interaction and very importantly socialising via all the networking functions.
The present
Digital events are growing exponentially and the amount of content (noise) being produced is astonishing. Companies like Zoom, Hopin, Run the World (no not the Beyoncé song), HeySummit and many more platforms are booming as companies need to stay connected with their markets and industries. Emails with ‘webinar’ or ‘digital summit’ in the subject line are bombarding every inbox.
The future
At some point in time physical conferences and business 2 business events will start to continue. Will we simply go back to how things were before the pandemic? Our bet is that it will not, it can not! Digital transformation in the way we hold events will continue to play an important role in our new future. While companies had budgets to participate in physical events, in the future part of this budget will go towards participating in digital events.
In the future digital events will play an integral role in learning, networking and communicating important messages leading up to a physical event. Digital and physical will go hand in hand and companies will plan to incorporate both.
Now that all has been revealed, digital benefits are far too great to ignore.