5 Questions to Ask When Choosing a Virtual Event Solution

The global shift from on-site to online events has many marketing and production teams scouting new solutions to connect with large audiences. As a collaborative video platform, BlueJeans has engaged with many new customers that aren’t interested in settling for second-rate software. Ultimately, organizations want more out of their webinars — to elevate experiences, strengthen community, and virtualize field venues.

Rather than scanning a mess of published pieces on the subject — and believe us, there are thousands — we’ve compressed the content into an easy-to-read buyer’s guide:

These considerations come directly from our knowledge of this ever-competitive market. The finer details reveal how modern virtual event products generate the opportunities that old-school webinars never could. The biggest takeaways? Flexibility, scalability, manageability, and interactivity are the technology table stakes for an upgraded webinar solution.

Check out the chapter summaries below!

Much like opening the doors of a concert hall, your virtual events need the same easy access for all attendees and presenters. This means the solution needs to support any operating system, mobile device, desktop, or conference room system to ensure participants can join as they please. Additionally, the download days are over — meaning, your guests shouldn’t have to ‘pay’ an extra tax on time. They’ve already registered for your event, so allow them to watch from the browser of their choice.

Since marketing webinars and customer engagement events are often an alternative or a compliment to in-person presentations, organizers should make the experience as close to a physical gathering as possible. Give your audience the ability to chat, ask questions, answer polls, and raise their hand if they’d like to appear on camera to contribute to the conversation. One-way webinars are modeled after 20th century newscasts, whereas 21st century virtual events share the stage to inspire valuable dialogue.

Some webinar tools only offer limited capacity for organizations to connect with their prospects and customers. Choose a solution with a higher ceiling to hold your biggest crowd. We recommend products that scale for up to 50,000 participants. Although not every presentation will require this much virtual space, you’ll have the power to accommodate every attendee for your largest events of the year. Other important aspects of scale include marketing and event management integrations. While many solutions offer branding and customization options for email promotion, it’s important to also leverage your existing CRM and marketing automation systems for optimizing invitations and follow up.

Many vendors have designed their webinar software as an extension of their small-scale meetings product. In other words, features have been duct taped onto a video conferencing tool instead of begin architected independently. This limits the ability for multiple roles to exist on a given webinar — there’s a panelist role and an attendee role, but that’s it. For an exceptional virtual event experience, moderator roles are needed, as well as attendee and presenter roles, to monitor all communication and logistics. Not only does this provide an extra layer of control over live events, it allows presenters to remove themselves from technical components of the webinar so they can focus on their talk track.

Harder to articulate, although equally essential, find a software with the extra sparkle and splash that consumers have come to expect. By matching the expectations of your audience with a clean, modern interface, you’re more likely to capture their attention and establish better human-to-human chemistry. Often the primary objective of building brand trust and advocacy.

BlueJeans Events, a globally trusted live video streaming solution, is an easy-to-use virtual event platform for engagement marketing, customer activation, and demand generation. Want to see for yourself? Try for free today!