8 Ways to Fill the Seats of Your Next Big Virtual Event

Name your best tip for marketing a large-scale virtual event successfully.

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC recently published #FixYoungAmerica: How to Rebuild Our Economy and Put Young Americans Back to Work (for Good), a book of 30+ proven solutions to help end youth unemployment.

1. Where to Land?

The landing page for virtual events is usually what convinces me whether to attend or not. It’s important to make it look official, have a beautiful design and make it easy to share.
– Ben Lang, EpicLaunch

2. Partner Up

Find other people who are already marketing to your target market and create a joint venture with them. You’ll easily get in front of their customers with their recommendation, and earn new customers without much of the work needed if you were to find them cold. Get busy and contact those who have a database of you want.
– Louis Lautman, Young Entrepreneur Society

3. Keep the Title Short

When marketing your virtual event, you’ll aim for rapid, vast and viral promotion across social networks as those channels are important for increased attendance. However, due to character limits on Twitter especially, it’s likely to get truncated or lost if the title of your event is too long. Keep that in mind when naming your event; catchy, short titles are always most memorable and share-able.
– Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.

4. Find the Influencers

Find the top 10-15 people who influence others in the market. For example, we put on a continuing legal education course for attorneys in our business. We found the top 10 attorneys who we knew would blog and tweet about what we were doing, and made sure they were attending. Their attendance generated many more sign-ups.
– Nathan Lustig, Entrustet

5. Get Big Names on Board Early

If you want attendees, you need the people who can bring them to you. Make sure your event is actually interesting to the bloggers and other online personalities you’re considering approaching, and then go to them. What’s interesting to one person may not be interesting to another, so do as much research as is humanly possible before pitching your event.
– Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

6. Plan, Plan, Plan Ahead

You’ll need enough lead time to get the word out about the event, to have partners and speakers share it with their audience (within their own marketing schedules) and to make sure everything is in top shape as the date approaches. The more lead time you have, the more successful your event and the marketing behind it will be — not to mention the less stress all around!
– Nathalie Lussier, Nathalie Lussier Media

7. Utilize Your Social Media

Virtual events are a great way to effectively reach a mass audience and to communicate with people all over the world. Promote it for free via social media sites to reach your already targeted follower base.
– John Hall, Digital Talent Agents

8. Take Advantage of LinkedIn

Send personal messages to people you’re connected with on LinkedIn. It hits their email and it stays with them on the social network until they dismiss it.
– Brent Beshore, AdVentures