Ashanti Bentil-Dhue is the founder of Event Mind, helping companies launch and promote virtual events. As part of our Navigating COVID-19 series, she showed us how small businesses can pivot their events strategy for the current circumstances, as well as create lasting value and community in all future events they hold.
Tell us about what you do.
Event Mind helps companies with their virtual visibility and profit. We’re all about how people can make money online by bringing people together.
This is a new business but events have always been a part of my career, from when I was working in banking to when I ran Benhue, a coffee shop and workspace. Events were always one of the main ways we built community and visibility. I recently closed down Benhue and decided to evolve my events experience into specialising in virtual events, which is very handy right now – this wasn’t a COVID-19 pivot!
Why are events important and how should they fit into wider business strategy?
For some companies, their entire business model is events, such as venue spaces or conference organisers. For others, like membership communities, events are a way of generating leads and bringing people together. The best way to describe event marketing is via a framework of four key pillars:
- Content
- Community
- Collaboration
- Creativity
We tend to find that people do one or two of these but not all them, and when you are trying to promote your event or get people to sign up or visit – whether it’s in person or online – these are essential.
Once you align yourself with these pillars, you should use your offline network, social media and email marketing to sign people up.
Tell about virtual events: how can small business owners organise them and make them work for their brand?
Virtual events are not a replacement for in-person events. They are a completely new and additional offering. You cannot replace face-to-face human contact but you can create the essence of that in a virtual setting.
Anything can be a virtual event, whether it’s Instagram Live, webinars, meetings, conferences or job fairs. Anything offline can be moved to a virtual setting.
Are there any businesses that are doing online events really well?
When I look at Joe Wicks [a fitness coach who quickly pivoted to livestreaming PE classes for children during lockdown], I think that was preparation meeting opportunity. He’s been able to build the largest, most connected audience that he’d never had access to before. From a marketing standpoint that’s superb, and even though these are free sessions the rest of his business has probably seen an uplift. The ‘freemium’ model (i.e. a pricing strategy by which some parts of your product and service are offered for free) can definitely work if you’re in lifestyle or social-type products and services. That’s how your community comes together.
Similarly, Just Geen founder Gina Obeng (@just_geen) has been conducting personal training sessions and classes via Zoom, pivoting quickly into offering new services online.
No one believed me when I first wrote an article about this one, but Love Island is one of the UK’s best examples of a good and profitable virtual event. This is in the sense that some people only watch the Twitter feed, not the actual show! ITV designed and engineered all of the social media and sponsorship participation like a well-oiled machine, so that before, during and after the show aired at 9pm all associated brands were already interacting only with memes, gifs, discount codes, throwback clips and the like. They were ready and armed.
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What platforms are there to facilitate virtual events?
Different platforms are better for different things and you only know what platform is appropriate once you know what your objectives are. There are no ‘all-encompassing’ platforms at the moment.
If you want a ‘freemium’ model (live streaming free entertainment activities), use social media channels like Instagram and Facebook. However, you can’t control who turns up and how they interact with you – there are no barriers to entry. You also have to be prepared for saving the content for later.
For membership communities and networks, Zoom allows you to have closed-meeting meet-ups, invite people and record sessions. They also now have breakout rooms, which are great for conference companies. During this pandemic Zoom is being used by about 300 million users a day. There are various tiers of pricing.
For more immersive events there are Hopin and HeySummit. These have great capabilities and functions for exhibitor booths, backstage and main speaker sessions, and even a virtual waiting room.
How do you suggest building community for your event?
Ideally you’re already creating your community before you’re thinking about holding events, as then you have a base network to share events with.
My advice is to create hubs – groups like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. However, ownership is really important here, and being able to control the narrative of your community is made harder when it is made up of likes and follows. These are not real people that you own the access to. An email subscriber list is very important to have as you can communicate with them directly at any time of the day.
Create a lead magnet or landing page – encourage people to sign up, then send email marketing to nurture them. Also leverage any Whatsapp groups or Google lists you’re a part of.
You may not own or be a leader of a network but leverage ones you’re already a part of. List all of them, whether they’re online or offline, and identify which of those would be interested in your event. Create bespoke invitations, approach them through the proper channels and attract people to your own base. It’s great to have a network you can have ownership over, because look at the current COVID-19 crisis: people who didn’t own anything in terms of their platforms and surroundings are now having to regroup and pivot by building new networks from the ground up. Never rely on even adjacent networks. Create your own content and influence within your own.
One example of a business creating community well is Black Ballad [a media outlet for black women]. They have a consistent, clear, unapologetic mission, and their editor leverages her newsletter weekly straight to her readers’ inbox.
Do you have any tips for running a great virtual event?
During the current lockdown, if you are having to run virtual events with a performance or activity, make sure you have a team. You need people to moderate and field comments, post pre-purposed tweets and links to resources and to your payment page. There’s one American DJ who recently did a charity live stream with P Diddy. They created a pinned tweet for donations but had someone clearly interacting with viewers on the feed. You, as one person, cannot host, facilitate and moderate. You need a team to help you keep people engaged, answer questions and direct them with clear calls to action.
Also, during the event you want to create intensity and urgency. Offer bundles and discounts during the stream with a deadline, which will encourage an uplift of sales during the live. Afterwards, use email marketing or retarget the people on your stream with the same deal or an additional offer.
If you’re conducting meetings or conferences, also have a moderator here. Make sure your attendees know what’s going on and that they have access to the sources, links and resources they need.
Are there any virtual event ideas that some small businesses can use to boost sales during the coronavirus pandemic?
Absolutely, and one brand I see doing this really well is Wagamama. They pivoted and started doing live cooking sessions. They surveyed their audience about what Wagamama recipes they wanted to learn how to cook and now they live stream well-known chefs making them. As a result, their social channels are growing and if they have recipe kits those surely will have seen a sales boost. They are producing immersive content in a virtual way.
Similarly, cooking influencers are now doing collaborations with a popular olive oil brand you can buy in the supermarket, and they’re cooking Italian dishes with it. Remember that collaboration is one of the four pillars of the events framework. Find ways to collaborate with adjacent brands to create content and sell more.
In life after lockdown, what tip do you have for running a physical event?
More than likely, as we move forward we’re going to see that the base model is hybrid: we’ll now see in-person events with additional virtual experiences and offerings to cater to all needs. A lot of meetings that used to happen in business and industry were pointless and a waste of time, and these will now become virtual as a standard.
Consider the vegan food market: five years ago, anything that had ‘vegan’ on it was winning. Now, as the palate of the average consumer (and of investors) has matured, quality and taste matters, and you can’t just put any ingredient into a dish, call it vegan and expect people to buy it!
If you’re running business-related events, think about recording the sessions, reselling them, reproducing in multiple languages, automating, recycling and reusing them. Think of any way you can repackage your offering so it lasts longer.
If you want to run an in-person event, you’ll have to make it good. The main reasons people go to in-person events are newness, innovation and the human connection. You’ll need to make sure your content is new and innovative, the structure of the event meets different learning needs, and that your engagement with your audience is niche and bespoke.
I personally don’t think generic events will last very long. Inevitably, there will be a period of adjustment, as people will be wary about meeting in large groups for a while. That’s why it’s important to think about providing virtual events in the interim.
Find out more about Event Mind by heading to Ashanti’s LinkedIn here