How to Run a Virtual Exhibition – Don’t hesitate to run your own online exhibition by following the steps! During this global pandemic, people are required to limit themselves to gather in a specific place. Therefore, the popularity of virtual event increases due to the desire of people in experiencing physical event. Online exhibition is a shortcut for people to overcome the urgency of entertainment needs.
Without gathering in a specific place, people are still able to enjoy what it feels like to be in a physical exhibition through online exhibition. As the data mentioned by Newstatesman, the audience of some exhibitions such as British Museum’s Online Collection Page and Hauser & Wirth increase around 150.000 – 200.000 attendees by holding an online exhibition. What an amazing number!
If you are planning to host a virtual event, you need to experiment with online exhibition to attract people in attending your event. You also need to make it fun, interesting, and interactive due to the raising number of virtual event during this pandemic. The competition to win audience’s heart is inevitable. Though, there are a lot of online exhibitions out there, you can follow these 8 steps to help you to run your online exhibition successfully.
Choose the Right Theme
Theme is a crucial thing in running an online exhibition. Theme determines what will your exhibition looks like. To choose the right theme for your exhibition, you need to do research on what things people are most interested about at this time. You can see through social media platform such as Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook to know what things are happening in the society. Note that your theme must lead to either entertaining or educating exhibition.
Choose the Audience and Exhibitor
After you have your theme, the next thing to do is choosing the suitable audience for your exhibition whether it is for general or specific audience. For example, if you run an educational exhibition, the audiences that will suit your event are student and their parent. The right combination of audience and theme of exhibition will optimize the function and increase the attendee of your online exhibition.
Choosing the exhibitors also necessary to do. Besides the theme of the event, the first thing audience will see from your exhibition is the exhibitor itself. You better cooperate with well-known and capable exhibitor to attract people’s attention.
Add Interactive and Interesting Features
Visiting an online exhibition, sometimes could be boring due to the one-way interaction. Therefore, you should avoid this kind of interaction if you want your online exhibition run successfully. Create features that allow audience to interact with the exhibitors. A question-answer section, a discussion forum, or a simple chat box can make your exhibition more interactive. You can also add game section and 3D effect to improve your online exhibition in entertaining the audience.
Prepare Your Online Exhibition Schedule
At this point, you should have everything you need from the theme, list of audience and exhibitor, and your amazing feature. The next thing to do is preparing the schedule of your online exhibition. Preparing schedule is necessary to make the exhibition runs smoothly as scheduled. It will explain in detail what will happen in your exhibition. After you arrange the schedule, you should communicate it with your audience and exhibitor before the due day. It is important to remember that, a clear explanation of your schedule will bring a professional impression. It also avoid you from messing up the event.
Budgeting
Money cannot be separated from the running of an event. Therefore, before you launch your online exhibition, you are obligated to prepare your money. Budgeting is used to know what things you should spend your money on. It also give detail information of your income and expense so that you can evaluate your event. And the most important thing is budgeting can control your expenses. Don’t forget to ensure a save payment option both for your audience and exhibitor.
Offer Discount or Gift
Offering ticket discount or gift to your audience and exhibitor will attract more attention. Who doesn’t love discount and free gift during this pandemic? It is a marketing trick that can be done to gain more audiences and exhibitors to participate in your online exhibitor. This will add a plus to your online exhibition. People will consider to visit your online exhibition if they found discount and gift sign in your advertising. If you want to consider gift as your support feature, make sure you have your interesting virtual gifts to win your audience’s heart.
Promote your Online Exhibition
If your online exhibition is about ready to be launched, you should promote your event to gain audience before the due day. A report from Content Marketing Institute showed that 75% of content marketers experienced an effective marketing strategy through the physical event. Therefore, you can advertise your online exhibition through in-person event. But, make sure that you must consider the health protocol carefully. Social media also be an effective way to advertise your online exhibition during this pandemic. You can reach a wider range of your audience and it is more cost-effective promotion to choose. Make sure you give 3 – 4 weeks space between the promotion and the date of the event.
Launch your Online Exhibition!
Finally, it’s time to launch your amazing online exhibition. To make your online exhibition online, you need to choose the right provider to facilitate your event. These are some online exhibition platforms that you can choose. The first is Hexafair. This platform will provide you with various benefits such as event manager and event operation service, digital marketing, live event and post-event support.
Another platform that can help you to launch your online exhibition is iVent. With an experienced team both in physical and virtual event, iVent is ready to provide you with customizable event, mobile & tablet compatible, global access, and free support features. Don’t worry if you want to create free virtual exhibition Open Exhibits, Pachyderm, and Omeka platforms are the best choice you can have.
Now you know how to run your own successful online exhibition after reading this article. Take a note that people will love an interactive, innovative, and educative exhibition. So be ready to prepare your best online exhibition and let people experience your marvelous event!
