What's the secret behind incredible virtual event? Fostering FOMO

The world has clearly recognized the advantages of online events, and marketers everywhere are hopping on the bandwagon. But, it's much more challenging than ever to make your personal events to stand out in the sea of invitations.

     How do you make your online event stand out among today's crowded event space?    

Numerous event organizations will try to convince you that the answer is in securing famous celebrity speakers or throwing flashy giveaways. However, after running events for over 17 years for companies like , the American Red Cross, HubSpot and Bizzabo I believe it is much more straightforward and less expensive than that.

The key to running effective, memorable events in the present regardless of what your competitors are doing It is in fostering an underlying fear of being left out (FOMO) in potential attendees. In this article, we'll explore the reason FOMO works in event marketing and some ways you can leverage it before, during, and afterwards to improve registrations, boost anticipation, as well as increase the event's ROE.

What we'll cover

1.    Help to create a sense community
2.    Position your event as current, exclusive, and limited
3.    Let the significance of your event crystal-clear
4.    Stoke attendees' competitive spirits
5.    The wrap up
6.    Explore's Virtual Event platform.

Facilitating FOMO in order to boost registrations for events

Event-related events -- whether virtual and in person -- provide a great opportunity to create the sense of community. However, let's face it: the act of encouraging FOMO does not mean you're creating a feeling of excludedfrom events or programming.Instead, FOMO in your event marketing is based on a three-part strategy, in which you:

• Make your event appear exclusive, timely, and limited
• The value of your event crystal clear
• Stoke attendees' competitive spirits

Let's explore why each of the actions works and what you can do to apply them practically for your next event.

Build a sense of belonging to a

If the artist you love was performing in town but you weren't able to get tickets You might experience a feeling of FOMO.

However, what if the artist you love was coming to town, you didn't have tickets, and all of your friends did? Then that FOMO could reach hyper-speed.

In the same way, the most successful business-to-business (B2B) occasions don't happen in isolation -- in fact, they are event tentpoles that connect already established and existing communities. When potential attendees hear about your occasion, they must consider it an opportunity to interact in real-time with the individuals they think they have in common (even when they've not actually had the pleasure of meeting).

How do you accomplish this? It's called the FOMO funnel:

• Level 1.On your page's landing pages, social media content as well as email sequences, add social proof as well as emphasize brands you'll have at the event. This establishes your event as credible and relevant to potential guests.
• Level 2: Show off unique people as well as real people coming to your occasion. With attendee spotlights, you'll create a sense of excitement about "Who's coming? What are their problem areas? What lessons can you take from them after you've been in the same space?"

Fortune is a good instance of this. A well-established business magazine, Fortune also hosts more than 50 events a year. However, Fortune does not promote these events to a fresh audience each time -- since they've already cultivated their ideal target audience by forming part of the Fortune Connect community.

Within the Fortune Connect app, members can access exclusive news and join livestreams routinely hosted by business leaders, message and interact with fellow members, as well as take part in the learning sprints.

The members say that they feel like they are " part of [the] group" and have the ability to " establish real connections" among their fellow members in Connect. For these community members, Fortune's events don't only provide an opportunity to gain knowledge and take a break from their work for a couple of days -- they act as a chance to solidify the connection to a community of fellow members.

Of course, creating an atmosphere of community does not mean you have to build your own trademarked app. Instead, you can:

• Create a Slack group specifically for people in your field (like Superpath's group for Content marketers)
• Engage with product users in an Facebook or Reddit group (like OpenPhone does with its customers)
• Community forums are created to facilitate interaction between users (like Atlassian's community for product users)
• Organise invite-only meetings, discussions, and roundtables (like Superside does for its community of marketers and design professionals)

Position your event as timely, exclusive, and limited

In the past "Register now" could have been a valid invitation to action for event marketingHowever, it's no more the case.

Thanks to the abundance of events available and a growing number of educated buyers are buying only after they're well-informed and committed to buying. Before registering for an event, they're asking:

• Do you think this is worth the money?
• How much time will I need to invest?
• Will I advocate for my company to allow me to participate in this course?
• Are you in a hurry?

In order to get attendees to say "yes" to those concerns, it is important to make your event appear to be one that is timely, exclusive and limited-time event. You can do this by:

• Limiting the number of available tickets, to create a feeling of scarcity
• Potential attendees should join the waitlist or giveaway with limited entry prior to opening up tickets for sale
• Add a countdown timer to your registration form, so that potential attendees know that they'll lose their spot in the line (and their tickets) should they not finish their purchase in a timely manner.
• A limited VIP level ticket which grants access to special offerings during the evening

If you're looking for inspiration, look no further than Web Summit's roundtables and roundtables, which demand attendees to register for a limited number of seats, which are filled according to an "first come, first serve" basis. Web Summit asks participants if they'd like to "make it to the best table during Web Summit" and warn that attendees should make your roundtables carefully, as they can only attend a maximum of three.

SparkToro also does an excellent job of encouraging FOMO by hosting the SparkTogether Summit. In contrast to other virtual events, SparkTogether sessions aren't recorded for later sharing since the presentations of speakers are classified as private outside of the conference itself.

  If people don't sign up for the event live, then they'll never know the juicy and unfiltered information revealed by the speakers. Attend it or lose it.

Let the significance of your occasion crystal-clear

"Make your event's value proposition crystal clear" could seem like the most obvious advice around However, you'll be surprised at how often event organizers will concentrate on the particulars of their events when they create marketing materials, rather than highlighting the benefit of the benefit to the attendees.

One way that you can get rid of this routine is to make sure that your advertising materials are consistent with the following question: "Who will attendees become when they participate in this particular event?"

Collision is a conference lasting four days that covers 20 diverse technical content tracks. But on their homepage, rather than focus on what topics the sessions will cover the conference focuses on describing the journey of the person you'll become after attending Collision.

In addition, Collision promise attendees that they'll be part of the "people and businesses that are redefining technology industry globally," but they also provide a list of notable previous attendees. They also make easy to understand what you'll gain out of the conference -- namely, networking, learning leads, learning, and exposure.

Show and tell attendees exactly what your event is going to do for the lives of attendees. You can do this by:

• With glowing reviews from previous attendees
• Industry influencers are invited to join as speakers, attendees, or even media
• The bundle of event tickets and limited-time discounts, like the ability to access a course or resource, to increase the worth of the event for participants
• Making sure your session titles concentrate on what the attendees will be able to learn from your sessions.
• Answer the question: "Who are you going to become after attending this particular event?" Share the hard or soft abilities they expect to strengthen, learn or improve
• If you have a post-event survey, ask folks what they upskilled on due to the fact that they were at your event.

If you're looking for social proof, make sure that you're highlighting reviews from two different types of participants: those who are relatable to your audience (and have similar job titles, titles as well as company size in common with them) as well as those who have the highest aspirational, admired and influential to their audience. So, your attendees feel like they are attending with their others, and also see themselves transforming into the influencers they admire and strive to be.

The concept of FOMO at events is to take a "you must be there"approach, one that emphasizes the quality of connections made when in community with one another. This is why we teamed up in partnership with The Vendry to create an intimate dinner club that caters to global event leaders who work in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

We are event experience experts, but we rarely invest in our own development. We're responsible for our customers and hosting stellar events, however, we're in need of a community of like-minded people who are able to validate strategies, measurement, and experience design. We've created a place for people to engage in authentic and intimate conversations with other event professionals regarding the upcoming trends in the industry of events.

Stoke attendees' competitive spirits

Most events' attendees expect to mainly be consumers of media: they participate in talks, watch speakers and get swag bags. Sure, they network however, they might also ask a speaker a question or two during a designated Q&A time. They don't usually think of themselves as contributing participants to an event.

Engaging attendees, however this can boost participants' enthusiasm for the occasion. Highlighting attendees with awards or praise from peers can also bring an exciting and lively approach to your gathering.

What could this look like? Each each year Webflow organizes its Webflow Conf in which Webflow users come together to discover new features, share their expertise among themselves, and build a network. Webflow does not focus on just sharing information about their new features and keeps attendees engaged and participating by presenting Webflow Awards and Speed Build Challenges. Webflow Awards and their annually held Speed Build Challenge during the event.

The Speed Build Challenge also builds anticipation for the conference about a month before it starts and 16 contestants competing for a virtual qualification round through YouTube. Four finalist are flown out to the conference for the last competition, which takes place in real time.

And of course, Webflow highlights attendees' enthusiasm for the challenges front and center in their conference testimonials:

To tap into the competitive spirit of attendees Get them to participate by:

• A challenge to host during the day
• The conference asks attendees to nominate a colleague or industry leader for a prize, which will be presented at the conference.

Create FOMO throughout the marketing cycle

Finally, keep in mind the fact that boosting attendees' FOMO isn't something that happens only when your event begins. It's a crucial element of the marketing cycle and you should be finding innovative ways to boost the attendees' excitement prior to, during, and following the event -- because this will build anticipation to attend the future event.

During your event, develop FOMO at any time through:

• Letting them see the extra benefits that VIP or higher-tier attendees got, which will make they want to spring for an even more luxurious pass next year
• Sharing live video of the event via social media

The process of creating FOMO for your next event needs to occur immediately after the event wraps. Do not wait until 6 months after your end of the event to begin the marketing cycle of the next occasion. Get them involved immediately and keep your event at the top of their minds with:

• Offer your guests early registration for your next event (you might even provide them with some exclusive benefits like a mentorship or matchmaking session, if they sign up early)
• Sending out additional resources, toolkits, and event events' highlights after the event.
• Trying to determine your next conference's speakers, sessions and offerings over time

The wrap-up

Are you ready to begin planning your next FOMO-packed virtual event?  The virtual event platform from's allows you to easily create custom landing pages, registration forms and reminder emails for your event for maximum FOMO and attendance enthusiasm prior to the event.