An attentive audience is the first indicator of a successful event. The engaged audience will listen to what the speaker has to say, actively participate more, and leave the event happy with the feeling of wanting more.

Why Should You Improve Audience Engagement At Events?

Capturing the audience’s attention and keeping them interested and engaged isn’t easy. To achieve this goal, you must find the best marketing tool currently available for video content. Today, let’s explore effective ways to use video at events to improve audience engagement.

Marketing experts often use the word “engage.” Additionally, they consider engagement a primary goal for both online and offline events.

Engagement means involvement in a process or encouraging the attendees to perform an action or actions that form part of the overall objective of conducting an event.

So, gathering everyone at a place for the event doesn’t automatically guarantee engagement.

Audience engagement is a measurable metric. It’s also one of the important KPIs to gauge an event’s success.

For any event, you can measure engagement through social media activity, questions asked, time spent at the event, actions taken, and more.

Engagement is also a good metric to measure the success of the event.

Why Use Videos at Events?

There seems to be a realization among businesses and marketers that videos can do more to marketing efforts than other types of content.

A short video created using Premiere Pro templates and a strong marketing message has more impact than texts or images.

The following three reasons show why using video content at events is a good idea.

Watching Videos Is Now a Daily Experience

People naturally gravitate toward video content because of its audio and visual components.

Nowadays, we search for videos for everything, from entertainment to health, from product videos to how-to videos.

Our interest in videos has also given rise to new forms of video content such as 360-degree, live videos, videos while holding a webinar, etc.

People Love Video Content

Are you wondering how, why, and when video content became part of our daily lives?

First, our voracious demand for video has led to an increase in video production. Educational and product-related videos generate 1 billion views on YouTube daily.

A marketing survey found that 68% of people learn about a new product from videos. Plus, videos have emerged as the most desirable type of content.

Video Content Is the Best Engagement Tool

At events, video content isn’t an option; it has now become a necessity.

It’s widely agreed that video content is the best audience engagement tool because of the three Es.

✔️ Engaging: For thousands of years, stories were used to convey ideas, morals, facts, and stats. We are drawn to videos precisely because storytelling is part of the process.

✔️ Emotional: The visuals and voice used in videos, even short videos, are enough to activate the brain’s emotional centers.

✔️ Educational: Our brains seem better at processing and storing visual content than texts. Research shows that people can remember and recall video ads even after a month.

Tips to Improve Audience Engagement with Video Content

1. Create Personalized Videos

Personalized video is a powerful marketing tool to boost event participation and engagement.

Every person wants to feel special, needed, and appreciated. A small gesture from your side can greatly improve their involvement in the event.

You can use video personalization at different stages of the event marketing plan. For example, you can use personalized invite videos to increase attendance at an event.

Start by creating an attendee persona by researching your audience. You can use the attendee persona to produce a captivating invite video.

Your target audience is bombarded with innumerable marketing messages every day.

Treating and addressing the attendees as individuals and not as a group will appeal to their desire to be acknowledged.

According to a study, 58% of people felt that personalized experience is vital while making a purchasing decision.

Personalized videos have a positive impact on other marketing channels such as email marketing.

The company sent personalized video invites to all the Marketo Summit attendees.

Unlike other email invites, personalized invites saw a higher Open Rate (an increase of 36%), CTR (up by 144%), and attendance.

In addition, when you hold virtual events, you can include how-to videos with customers or attendees to demonstrate a product, service, or features.

2. Start with a Kickoff Video

You manage to create a buzz around the impending event and gather all the attendees at a place (online or offline).

There is no better way to grab their attention and direct their focus on the event than beginning the event with a Kickoff Video.

The kickoff video could take many forms. A brief video that showcases your brand identity would be a great start to a company event.

You could also present a video that discusses the customers’ pain points and why the issues need a speedy resolution.

Any content that would appeal to the audience, make the attendees shrug off their reluctance, and help them focus on the session ahead can be used as a kickoff video.

In the case of events that would last for hours, you could create a fun and exciting video that informs the audience of the itinerary of the day.

3. Rely on Thought Leadership Videos

An event is an excellent place to share thought leadership videos. Whatever the message you want to convey, such videos offer an educational perspective that will engage the audience.

An authority on a subject or leader of an industry as your speaker can effectively guide the attendees. This will not only inspire the audience but also boost engagement and conversions.

Thought leadership videos are quite popular on social media virtual events.

Thought leadership videos come in many forms.

You can record a whiteboard video, interview an industry leader, etc., and present them at the next event.

A full-length panel discussion or even an abridged version could greatly increase the event’s appeal to the audience.

You can repurpose these pre-recorded videos into slideshows, blogs, short teasers (to be used in event promotions), and more.

4. Use Customer Testimonial Videos as Case Studies

Could there be a greater attraction than a testimonial video at an event? It would be a wonderful idea to get attendees to talk about their participation in the event.

Events present a golden opportunity for brands to showcase customer testimonial videos to generate trust among the audience.

People in your event will be all ears if the actual person who benefited from the product or service is part of the presentation at the event.

This will result in better participation, engagement, and conversion.

Customer testimonials could be recorded at the event itself. In this case, you could use the same in after-event marketing and drive up registration for future events.

You could request customers to send a recorded testimonial video. Content not used during the event can be promoted on social media platforms.

5. Live Stream the Event

Live-streaming the event can increase your reach and boost engagement with your target audience.

There are enough statistics to prove this claim, and many online engaging events tools can host events.

According to a study, around 50% of registered people do not attend the event for various reasons. Live-streaming is a great tool to ensure the participation of these dormant members.

Pick a curious topic, use online marketing tools to promote the event, and get ready to increase your interaction with the audience.

Streaming your event live on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, etc., can draw in new viewers; they might be people who may not be part of your target audience previously.

Final thoughts

When you host a webinar or other event, you want the audience to show interest and participate.

Of the tools available at your disposal, video content is by far the best to improve audience engagement and induce participation.

In this blog, we have shared the most effective ways to use videos to engage the audience. We hope the five tips will make your future events a grand success.