Promoting your event starts from the very beginning of your event planning journey, and an event video is a great way to get the ball rolling. A study by Wyzowl says that as many as 91% of consumers want to see more video content. As the demand for video keeps increasing, it is high time to pivot your event marketing plan to a more video-centric approach.
You can create different types of promotional videos for different stages of your event marketing. In this quick guide, we will cover what an event video is and its various types, along with some great event video examples and tips to stand out.
What is an Event Video?
An event video can be anything from a pre-event video promo, a teaser, or a post-event highlight. They are great ways to increase engagement with your event through social media or other mediums. You can also use event videos to increase event ticket sales, create a buzz, or give out information to your potential audience.
Event Video Ideas & Types with Examples
An event video will mostly take the form of a teaser or a promotional video, however, there are many other types as well. All these video types can serve different purposes for your event depending on where you are in the process. It is crucial that you take into consideration all these types and incorporate event videos in one way or another in your marketing strategy.
Let’s talk about each promo video type separately and look closer at examples of these that stand out.
1. Event Awareness Videos
You may not be ready to post a full promotional video for your event yet, and that’s understandable. If you plan on doing something different, it can be best to create a few awareness videos to educate your audience about the topic of your event before you start promoting it.
Virtual Recruitment Awareness Video
Thought leadership videos can be one of the best ways to pique audience interest and educate your audience. Here’s an example:
Why it Works: The above video only creates hype about virtual recruitment events and that’s it. The presenter is someone that belongs to the same industry and can offer the right insights giving strength to the claims in the video. This type of video can work well in the very early stages of inception where you are testing the waters and educating your audience. It will subconsciously prepare them and lay the groundwork for when you start promoting the actual recruitment event!
2. Event Video Promo
The most common and obvious type of event video is a promotional video. These are meant to be pre-event videos that will create hype around your event right through the earlier days of planning. Using a video as another piece of marketing collateral for your event can also increase audience attention and engagement with your event.
Video promo can be the single most versatile piece of collateral you have. You can post it on your website’s landing page, send it to your audience in an email, or share it through your social media accounts. The more people that watch the video, the more chances there are of them signing up for your event.
Now, let’s take a look at an example that you can use as an inspiration for yours.
vFairs Eventeer Awards Promo
vFairs hosts the Eventeer Awards annually to highlight the most creative and innovative events that customers have hosted with us. For the second Eventeer Awards in 2023, we created a promotional video that created excitement and set the tone.
Why it Works: The video covered so much in under a minute. The promo video had highlights from the past event and a testimonial from one of the winners from the previous awards as well. This not only made viewers more excited for what was to come but also convinced them to attend through social proof.
3. Event Training Videos
These can be great tools to help event attendees, exhibitors, or speakers easily navigate through and make the most of your event. While training videos may be ideal for virtual or hybrid events with an online platform, they can be a great value add for physical events too.
You can use them to guide physical attendees to the venue, tell them about important sessions at your event, or set them up with a walkthrough of the venue floor plan. For virtual attendees, training videos can include instructions for logging in to the event, navigation guidelines, and general know-how of what to expect when they’re in the virtual environment.
vFairs Platform Training Videos
vFairs created training videos for attendees, speakers, and exhibitors to help them navigate through the virtual event platform. Any event organizer that powers their events through the vFairs platform can use these videos as basic walkthrough training for event participants.
The exhibitor training video helps event planners train organization reps exhibiting at their events with ease. It is a detailed walkthrough for setting up and customizing their virtual booths, adding necessary resources, accessing the e-commerce and reporting features, and much more!
The attendee training video helps attendees visualize how the event may look like. They can see where each item of interest might be, how to attend sessions and book meetings, etc. It can be a great tool to empower your attendees so they can make the most of their event experience.
Speaker training videos can be a fantastic addition to virtual or hybrid conferences or summits with various scheduled webinars. Guest speakers use these videos to understand how their live sessions will look to the audience. Speakers also get the awareness of the types of streaming options the platform has through the video.
Why it works: Training videos are a great value add for any event. They can be used to train event attendees, speakers, exhibitors, and other participants at scale. You can create such videos to train all participants well before the event.
4. Post-Event Recap
Another great event video you can make is a post-event recap. It can be a great way to make sure your event stays memorable. Moreover, it is also a great excuse to reuse the content at your event. Recap videos are ideal for in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. They can jog the memory and set the tone for any upcoming events as well.
Post-event recap videos can be a collection of all the exciting things that happened at your event in the form of a highlight video, a keynote session recording, or a sizzle reel from one of the main sessions. The choice is yours!
Epic Events Webcast Sizzle Reel
Epic Events is a weekly webcast from vFairs where we invite event professionals and experts from the industry to share insights. The webcast is often promoted by sharing sizzle reels or teasers from past episodes. Here’s an example of one of the post-event teasers from the webcast:
Why it works: The video gets straight to the point and shares a key moment from the webcast. It intrigues the audience just enough for them to watch the entire episode. And even if they don’t they still get some value out of the sizzle reel itself!
Discover Next 2022 Full Recap
Discover Next is an annual thought leadership event hosted by vFairs. Event professionals come together to hear about the latest news and trends in the industry. This keynote session from vFairs CEO Muhammad Younas offered curated insights and an inside scoop into the future of events. The recap video is his entire keynote session for anyone who missed out on it in real time.
Why it works: These kinds of videos add value for people who may have missed the actual event. If they like what they see, they will make it a point to keep an eye out for upcoming events. Moreover, they also serve as an evergreen resource for attendees as they can refer to it later on.
9 Best Practices for Creating an Event Video that Stands Out
If you plan to place event videos at the center of your event marketing and promotional plans then they need to stand out. The challenge is to create videos that will add value to the viewer’s experience while keeping them fresh and engaging. Here are some best practices to get you started:
1. Define a Clear Objective
With so many different types of event videos, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve from each video you make. Decide whether you want to create awareness, recap past events, or promote your upcoming event. Then, based on your goals, you can choose what event video type will be most suitable for you.
2. Distribute Your Videos Widely
After you have a video created and ready to go, the next step is to distribute it across various mediums. Knowing where and when to post your event videos can be crucial in getting more engagement with your content. Some of the ways that you can use an event video are by posting it on your event landing page, creating an email campaign out of it, sharing it on social media, or within the actual event platform. However, it is ideal to use channels that are popular amongst your target audience to get your promos to the right people.
3. Know Your Audience
It is pertinent to deeply understand who your target audience is, where they’re coming from, and what they want to see in a video promo. If you don’t understand the key demographics or interests of your audience you will likely miss the mark on messaging. Research customer personas and their pain points and then address them in your promotional videos. Make sure you align your goals with that of your target audience and speak in a tone that resonates with them the most.
4. Create a List of Must-Have Shots
If you plan to shoot an event highlight video for an in-person event, you will need to plan ahead. It is always great to create a storyboard before the event starts and make a list of all important events happening throughout the day. Clear your schedule so you don’t miss filming any important event like a keynote session, opening or closing remarks, etc.
5. Add Captions and Subtitles
During the post-processing stages of your footage, it is important to optimize it for online viewing and a global reach. You need to add accessibility elements to each of your videos to make them more inclusive for all your audiences. This can mean anything from translations, closed captions, transcriptions, or subtitles.
6. Capture B-Roll
A B-roll is any extra footage that you will shoot during the event. This can include shots of audience members, speaker session candids, recordings of activities, or more. It doesn’t have to make sense at the time, but you will thank yourself later by recording everything that you can. The more footage you have, the more content you can later create from it. Moreover, it will be much easier for a video editor to create an impressive highlight reel from the extended footage.
7. Leverage the Power of AI
AI-powered event marketing tools like ChatGPT can reduce the time and effort it takes to create video scripts and storyboards. By reducing time-to-market for each video, you can create more promotional materials as well. If you are hosting on vFairs, you can benefit from our AI assistant to create promotional content within the event platform and push out more videos faster.
8. Use SEO Best Practices for Titles & Descriptions
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can play a key role in getting your videos more views when you post them on social media channels like YouTube. Keyword research through tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Google Trends can help you get started. Using the right search terms in the script, video title, and description will help you rank higher, thus, giving you more organic traffic for your video. You can read our complete SEO guide to get more tips on ranking your videos.
9. Keep an Eye on Analytics
Posting a video doesn’t mean that it is the end of the road for you. You need to keep an eye on how it’s doing in the short and long term as well. If there is no engagement with the video, you may need to rethink your strategy and make some enhancements.
Key Takeaways
Video content is the most popular type of content posted online and your event marketing and planning strategy is incomplete without adding videos. Each type of event video can serve a completely different purpose for you during the planning or execution phases of your event. Your first video probably won’t be perfect but the increased engagement as a result of your efforts is worth it. Check out our event marketing guide to get more amazing ideas to boost event engagement.
