The pandemic has been hard on everyone. On a business level, the impact has been felt across industries but emerging technologies have set things in perspective. SMEs in particular have learned to adapt to the new normal and leveraged hybrid events to not only fortify their business continuity models but also make growth sustainable.
What is a hybrid event?
A hybrid event is a combination of virtual event and in-person event. While a hybrid event has a traditional event flow, virtual component is added for more immersive audience experience. In a typical hybrid setting the actual physical sessions happen in front of a small percentage of Live audience, while the most of the audience is connected remotely. The blend of this physical aspect and remote aspect happens through a virtual platform.
Role of Hybrid events in reviving SMEs
When almost all businesses are struggling with their reduced marketing budgets, ensuring maximum return always seems challenging. With new event tech, especially hybrid, SMEs have been able to bookmore ROI by spending way lesser.
This is mainly due to the fact that a hybrid event cuts-down a lot of operational bottlenecks and wastage associated with physical events and engagements. While launching a product, hosting a customer meet or an industry event on a virtual event platform, SMEs don’t have to think about costs associated with delegate flight bookings, hotel stays or refreshments. They can instead focus on more engaging ways to connect with the audience and creating more relevant and value-added content.
Apart from this, many SMEs have opted for hybrid events to make their overall marketing engagement more intuitive. The virtual component forms the basis of a good hybrid event and an AI enabled platform increases the engagement quotient manifold. In a hybrid event attendee are diverse, some are attending in-person while a large number of audiences attending remotely. In this scenario doing justice to everyone’s preferences is often a challenge. But an AI enabled platform makes it really easy to drive insights which makes a hybrid event more targeted and engaging.
Hybrid events also proved to be an effective marketing tool when SMEs wanted to follow a more personalized approach. While the primary task of hybrid event is to blend the offline and online elements, offering flexible preference-based options to audiences actually make the difference. This is important because in hybrid events the audience is attending from diverse locations and devices, so everyone wants the best experience wherever they are. Personalization is also important in a hybrid event to create a platform for effective networking, a reason for which most people register.
Here are somemore specific roles played by hybrid events in reviving SMEs during the new normal
Better Outreach – Reaching out to potential customers and the target market has always been major challenges for SMEs. These factors are the two major foundations to ensure a sustainable future. As due to the pandemic marketing and outreach efforts have taken a direct hit, hybrid eventsproved to be a viable alternative to reach-out to a global audience faster and cost effectively.
Product & Service Showcase – SMEs who are in the retail space benefited a lot from hybrid events. They combined some elements of the in-person aspects to create hybrid retail stores where products can be showcased by creating 3D realistic models of the actual products. This proved to be a great alternative amidst the active social distancing norms.
Internal & External Collaboration – In the wake of the pandemic, remote working has become the new normal. As SMEs have to extensively collaborate with a diverse team, present across multiple locations across the globe, hybrid imperatives offered a simple, effective and integrated solution while connecting and keeping a business up and running.
Customer Centric Engagements – Event marketing and customer facing engagements & activations have always played a key role in ensuring long-term profitability for the SMEs. But due to pandemic and strict social distancing norms the SMEs were losing out opportunities to interact directly with their TG. But hybridization has solved this problem. The SMEs created targeted customer centric engagements like exhibitions, conferences, virtual meets etc and offer value added experiences more effectively.
Insight Based Decision Making – Unlike physical engagements, it is far quicker and more effective to drive insights through hybrid engagements. Most virtual platforms have AI capabilities which makes it easy to gain in-depth insights about customer behaviour, and preferences – a must for SMEs to constantly upgrade their products and services.
The visionary efforts of the Indian government, especially the ‘Make in India’ initiative is a right step towards the direction. With this as a backdrop the SMEs can now actively adapt emerging technologies and create sustainable solutions for the future. A lot of government funded incubators and schemes are empowering the SMEs for that. The fast-evolving start-up ecosystem in India is prompting the government to create favourable platforms through which these new age businesses can attract investments and market their products and services on a global scale. Another key step which the government is actively taking to empower the SMEs is partnership with global tech giants. Through various innovative programs, tech challenges and virtual hackathons, the government is offering a platform to these SMEs to present their ideas and create an actionable roadmap to implement those ideas.
In a nutshell, emerging technologies and hybridization has become a great leveller and enabler for the SMEs. From helping them in keeping the wheels the running, to breaking barriers of boundaries, technology is helping the SMEs to build an inclusive, innovative and futuristic ecosystem. Earlier the SMEs had the challenge to expand their businesses globally, but hybrid events have opened new doors for the SMEs to not only reach-out to a larger global audience, but also create impactful and cost-effective programs to promote their products and services. As we move forward, hybrid engagements will be more mainstream and SMEs can leverage that to not only scale-up their existing models but also create an atmosphere of sustainable growth.
Authored by,
Piyush Gupta, President, Kestone
