7 Trends That Will Shape Events In 2022
The events industry has gone through some dramatic changes in the past two years, with global adjustments completely re-shaping how the industry functions. Although the changes have come with some major challenges and obstacles they have also opened up tremendous innovation and brand-new opportunities that have seen the industry change the way it works forever. With that in mind, we have had a look ahead into 2022 and have 7 trends that we think will shape events this year.
1. Every Format Will Have A Purpose & Opportunity: In-person, Virtual, and Hybrid
The introduction of virtual and hybrid events has provided an opportunity in the form of a multi-audience, multiformat events plan that has allowed businesses to engage with their audiences at every level of the marketing funnel. It also allowed event planners to begin strategically utilising the three event formats in a way to capture and convert leads and build out a community around your brand. As virtual events help quickly expand outreach to new prospects, we have noticed that event planners/marketers now have the opportunity to leverage them as top of the funnel leads and build brand awareness. Similarly, the possibility to leverage in-person or hybrid events for the middle of the funnel communications to engage their customers with meaningful content that increases leads and conversions needs to be considered.
Technology has also advanced to allow for deeper and more extended engagement with different audiences. The interactivity and immersion that’s now available via on-demand content has allowed planners and marketers to greatly extend their engagement cycle with their audience. By leveraging each of the three-event formats and their respective advantages, you no longer need to trade reach for engagement.
2. Sustainability Is No Longer Optional
It is becoming increasingly clear that businesses are looking at partnering with other businesses that align with their sustainability goals. They want to know information about other companies sustainability credentials and a recent study by Deloitte has found that nearly one in three Brits claimed to have stopped purchasing certain brands or products due to ethical and sustainable concerns.
This year we are expecting most event agencies to evolve their messaging and practices in the face of these changes as it becomes important for events to become more sustainable. We are expecting to see sustainability be included as a line item in budgets, and account for costs such as tools that measure carbon emissions, and sustainability strategy development that’s tailored to each individual experience.
3. The Opportunity To Extend Engagement
Historically for our clients, in-person events were considered extremely effective at engaging audiences during a particular day and time. For traditional B2B marketers, seeing all that great content, effort, and engagement limited to a single time use was distressing. Where was the opportunity to reuse all that great content and extend the life of an in-person event?
It was a challenge to determine what content was most loved by and resonated with their audiences; what they would like to see more of; and how to guide the next-best sales offer. To make these determinations, they needed more ways to extend the event experience further into the buyer’s journey.
With omnichannel as a hot topic for 2022, marketers and planners must focus on creating virtual events that can deliver content that isn’t bound by time or an offline boundary. This new wealth of data that can be later extended to newer audiences will be extremely powerful in gathering unique insights and impacting the conversion funnel.
4. Challenges with engaging senior decision makers
Towards the end of last year we were getting approached by our clients with the question of “how do we engage our senior leaders/stakeholders/decision makers”? Not only had Zoom fatigue set in but diaries were starting to get full with meetings as life resumed back to a new normal.
Our suggestion of creating a series of smaller, intimate meetings and private dinners or breakfasts instead of large-scale conferences has begun a trend! We are seeing more and more clients approach their events strategy by targeting those senior decision makers in a smaller, but more regular style of events.
5. Safety, security and flexibility will be important
If 2021 has taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen. Event-goers may be nervous and tentative about coming to your event, in case they’re not able to attend or the event ends up getting cancelled, event organisers must try to quell nerves and communicate effectively.
While nothing can fully mitigate the risk of attending events, we have set up steps for our clients and ourselves as an agency to plan for to ensure an event is safe for attendees. It will be up to event organisers to implement the COVID-safe training to provide an environment safe to gather in. This can be easily achieved by working closely with event agencies such as Sleek which have planners that have undergone a course such as the Safe Events Organiser to ensure all attendees are kept safe at events.
A tip that our team has used to help ease concerns is to make sure all safety measures, additional considerations and attendee expectations are listed clearly on an event website and any booking confirmations. This will help attendees understand more about what to expect, what precautions have been put in place for their safety, which will build their confidence.
6. Content will be key!
Video content is continuing to grow in popularity among event planners and marketers as it consistently delivers strong ROI. A study by Wyzowl showed that 84% of respondents say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand video. With the events industry increasingly relying on video as events turn virtual, people now expect high-quality content (and more of it) to be incorporated into their experiences, regardless of the format being virtual or in-person.
Content will need to leverage the latest in motion graphics and animation and be used across all stages of an event lifecycle. Our most successful virtual events for clients have included bite-sized social media to drive awareness pre-event and use vibrant opening intro’s to speakers and sessions to build excitement.
7. The Breaking Down Of Silos
The trend before the pandemic was a breakdown of planning and marketing silos within organisations, and that trend has only accelerated since. Many companies are reorganising to bring their marketing, sales and planning teams together, especially as the event channel and the event programs become more inherently digital.
Last year we wrote about the benefits of sales and marketing teams working together but this year we believe that now more than ever that team will become more aligned and break out of their silos to foster better engagement, deeper insights, and have a larger impact on their community.
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