Want to deliver a medical marvel to your delegates virtually?

There are a handful of virtual medical conferences which are meticulously designed and implemented. With the era of digitalization and the current Coronavirus pandemic, hosting your medical conferences virtually will be a great idea to capitalize on what’s coming your way.

I’m going to list down 10 great tips in detail to host your next virtual medical conference that could trigger you to think differently and deliver a medical marvel to your virtual delegates.

But before that -
Few problems/challenges need addressing: 

- Dismally organized presentations
- Bad organizing
- New ideas in old shape
- Lack of attendee engagement

Get the latest research from Forrester Consulting and Hubilo on the Top 5 Challenges Marketers Face with Webinars

What you got?

You have innovative technologies in the form of virtual event platforms/tools. Starting for registration to event engagement and networking - it’s become easy for you to implement your technological approach to your virtual medical event.  

Do not be presumptuous that when you have a virtual event platform in place, you don’t have to work on your strategies. Whatever tech you use, you should envision and develop strategies for all different steps of your online conference execution. Moreover, choosing the right virtual event platform provider will make your life much easier. 

Which is better to build an online community? Hubilo or Bevy? Read to find out.

You do not need a great plan, but a good plan that gets done with optimal quality. Strategies must be developed around online registración, marketing, papers call-out and submission speakers line up, presentations, nominations, engagement, networking and experience. This will help you create a roadman and goals to achieve and push forward to success.

Good to plan ahead: 

- Breaking up your execution plan in small-average actionable tasks. 
- Having the visibility into the abilities and skills of your team members.
- Holding them accountable for their actions and outcomes.
- Tracking all activities and their progress.
- Timely resolution to a problem.
- Smart budget allocating.
- Having an actionable plan to introduce your new ideas in new ways.

Let’s evaluate 10 tips to host your next virtual medical conference.

1. Considering e-patient and patient audience for the conference

Your e-patients are those who use online channels to gather information and understand about their health improvement, new changes to the medical arena, effective ways to stay healthy, new methods of treatment, etc. 

They like to be on top of their health related information. They want to avail more insights on how and what affect their health.  They use different platforms and connect with their fellow members/ friends.

You can’t afford to leave them out from your conference planning. They’re your distinct audiences to target and serve.

Do research on where they are, what they want, what kinds of health problems they face. 

Make a strategy to invite, ask and engage them.

The bright future of any medicine depends on putting your patients in the center of discussion – how can we talk about any medical subject without involving them?

2. Promote attendee participation through social media 

Social media is one of the best ways to promote and increase attendee participation for the event. 

Creative virtual conferences should still stay digital after the event is over. Your attendees talk about their interests, learning, insights, etc. on social media. The use of hashtags will be a fantastic way to enhance your event brand online 

If you can have them sharing their experiences with their communities online, it will clinch enormous benefits in terms of reaching out to your new, potential audience without having to work for it. It works like a testimonial - word of mouth. Twitter can plan a big role. 

Hashtags are to be used strategically to put forward an navigate the relevant information

Make your virtual sessions go live on Facebook and YouTube. A good virtual event management software enables you to take your sessions out of the virtual platform to social media too. So that others can watch it. Live streaming content is the best way to captivate your audience and do insane marketing for your future conferences. 

Motivation and encouragement is the key. 

Read and Learn: How to Add Energy, Impact, and Results at Every Stage of Your Webinar

Create groups on Facebook and LinkedIn for your virtual medical conferences. Market those groups and share educational content through those groups. Have them interact with each other and post their content on the groups. This way you will obtain your user generated content. 

Remember - We need to first make deposits and then ask for withdrawals from your audience. 

Give them something valuable for free and then they will be able to realize what they will get if they pay money for your conference. It’s huge. 

Withdrawals ruin credibility,  while deposits build it. 

Social media is not just for marketing your conference tickets, but it is an entertainment and educational tool. Let them know you want to serve them and are not expecting anything in return. If you do it the right way, you will notice that your branding and credibility will go tremendously high.

Keep unlimited participation for your attendees through social media. Keep the discussions and interactions going on your various social media channels long after your conference has ended.

Utilize the arsenal of social media to the fullest extent to engage your delegates.

3. Engaging your attendees in a more entertaining and thrilling way

Ensure that your next virtual medical conference is not just a conference, but it’s an emotional attachment between you and your delegates.

Interact with your attendees before, during and after your conference. This is where you advanced engagement strategies come in picture.

Involve your attendees in possible meeting topics and questions for the speakers.

Run quizzes, polls and Q&A before your event starts online. 

Embrace a gifts give-away strategy - announce that the winners will get something as a token of appreciation for their participation. You can keep any kind of gifts - vouchers, access to special content, e-meeting with speakers, etc. Make your event a sheer entertaining tool for all your participants. 

4. Collecting research papers and inviting extract from the speakers in advance

Ohh, Yes! 

This is quite technical stuff that you need to do and this will also add up to your overall conference planning and management (unless you don’t have to call for papers, which is unlikely in medical conferences).

Most of the medical conference planners and managers seem to face a challenge with this particular task as this has to be done extremely carefully and reviewed for the selection and nomination process. 

When you invite your speakers to speak at your event virtually, in a medical conference, your speakers are technically from the same medical background. And you want to onboard some of the best speakers, presenters to present. Thus they will need to submit their research papers and extract for you to review and qualify them. This process is also known as nomination.

When you organize your medical conference online, all is digital. You will take advantage of the new technology to perform this activity too and facilitate a smooth process for you and for your speakers.

Ensure you provide and give out information and updates to them in a timely fashion. 

- Mention your dates and criteria clearly.
- Provide a clear description of how you want them to present to the audience online. 
- Roll out a flawless selection and nomination process.
- Take help from experts on selecting the right speakers through submission and review. 
- Establish crystal clear communication with your speakers for the next steps.

5. Having all speakers present their subjects in an exciting and easy way. 

Presenting using old PPTs methods 10-15 years ago will not help anyone with anything. They used to be boring and a monologue.

Draft out how you want your speakers to present themselves. Have them use infographics, good background, easy-to-digest statistics, engaging your online guests, etc. 

Encourage your speakers for a fascinating dialog. It’s more than a presentation - it’s a synergetic interaction between your presenters and audience.

Acknowledge the presence of your virtual attendees. It’s especially important when you run Live Q&A sessions with the speakers. 

Moderation is a critical part here. You will need to filter out the best possible questions to be answered by your speakers. This way, you will keep your guests engaged and captivated during the sessions. 

6. Making new ideas fascinating and acceptable  

I have lots of new ideas - you may have them too!

But - how do we make them shape out to be fascinating, especially when you do your medical conferences?

SHOWMANSHIP with Illustrations. Yes - this is what you need to have to present your ideas effectively and convincingly.

The degree of your showmanship depends on its magnitude of significance and deliverance of your new ideas. 

Whatever new ideas you have, they must be moderate, actionable, controlled and in fine taste to make your audiences inclined to them - and later, sail through the boat. 

Whether you as an organizer interact with your virtual attendees and introduce new ideas or your presenters, ensure that they are not over soaked. People should be able and in a position to comprehend, accept and action them. 

The best way to do it is to deploy an approach that is flexible and mouldable as per your audience needs and interests.

7. Embracing the use of Virtual Reality

While consumer adoption of virtual reality is slower than expected for entertainment and gaming, conference managers are better off realizing its potential quickly.

And yes, this is a tough topic to talk about and see through it. But this will pay you dividends. 

Virtual reality could be your great tool for building your online audience and business activities. 

For sure - not all will be able to match up the standard of it. It needs rigid planning, technology, and brilliant outcomes mapping. 

As you want to show your guests more than just mere slide decks. Shared VR by speakers/presenters can deliver excellent results and establish a strong foundation of understanding for the attendees.

You should try to eliminate the same old fashioned conference feeling for your audience. And instead, do something that will make them feel entertained and engaged. 

- Talk with you presenters about it.
- How you want your presenters to set up the background and overall ambience.
- Determine what you want to show at the backside of your speakers while they present.
- The idea is you want to ensure that your online visitors should not get a feeling of a general webinar.
- VR will enable them to feel the same way as they would feel when they are at the event venue
- Class ambience.

8. Focusing more on valuable content

Medical conferences are technical conferences unlike business management, sales, marketing conferences. 

You want to make sure that your attendees are able to achieve maximum ROI with what they paid to buy your tickets. 

The easiest process to ensure you do it right is to try to make your conference/event content more digestible and understandable by using illustrations, graphics videos, and stories.

- Avoid major medical jargons.
- Use more personalization to delight them.
- Create categories of your attendee types.
- Serve them content relevant to their background, interest and consumption.
- Create your event materials for separate groups.
- Ensure you’re not using the same method of handling with different types of attendees.
- Present concepts, stats and data in such way that they don’t get confused or find it difficult to relate and understand.

9. Directing your marketing efforts strategically

Nothing to worry about. 

Marketing is everywhere because it gives you the opportunity to  reach out to pools of varied potential attendees.

Let’s embrace and develop audience specific marketing strategies to invite and engage them.

For your medical conferences, you will have many segments of your target guests - customers who buy your tickets. 

- Medical experts
- Health professionals 
- Working people who do their jobs at different hospitals, health institute and organizations
- Scientists
- Researchers
- Caretakers
- E-patients
- Special groups of people, healthcare and medical journalists.

All these groups consume different kinds of content. They are active on different platforms. They’re in different groups and networks. They have different levels of interests.

Hence you ought to make different marketing strategies to reach out to them in a unique way. 

Understand what they consume the most, where they hang out, and where they participate.

Try to get the data/information of your attendees and base your decisions around marketing on that.

10. Collecting feedback for improving your next conferences   

I love this topic because this is a straightforward way to find out about  how your event went. Always be receptive to feedback that will be shared by your delegates and presenters.

When you have constructive feedback given by them, you will get a clear idea as to what you could have/should have done better to live up to their expectations.

You don’t have to achieve milestones with your conference, but your conference should be at least acceptable, entertaining and professional for them. If you achieve grand success, it will be great news to spread. 

However, delivering delegate experience and awesome content is the most critical deliverable of your event.

Create a rigorous feedback collection process and improvement plans.

Do follow ups with your delegates after the event is over.

Let them know through various mediums including social media that you listen to their feedback and opinions and take their voice seriously for your next event improvement. 

This way you can also make them feel important and good - ultimately, they will end up coming back to you for your new event tickets. 

Wrap-up

Know the possibilities and potential opportunities you can grab with technologies. Draw a bulletproof plan for your entire conference. List down everything and provide direction to your teammates who need your help.

Unless you step up and get ready to deliver, nothing will be achieved. No big problems were ever solved by moving away from them, but facing them with the right approach and resilience.

Are you ready for laurels of achievements?
Try Hubilo virtual event platform and see how it brings life to your next online medical event.