In performance marketing and a highly competitive environment, event sponsors are pressured to adopt a money-centric mentality. Virtual event sponsors are playing a longer game to get their financial goals met. This is rooted in authentic attendee engagement with meaningful value for all.

If we focus on our perspective, the world of virtual expo booths and sponsor activations is bubbling with untapped potential for event organizers and sponsors. 

Rethink and reimagine the virtual booth experience; you will have the perfect beehive of interested attendees.

So, how do you design expo areas that engage attendees and authentically provide measurable results to sponsors?

Here are some amazing virtual booth ideas and enticing event sponsorship tips. Don’t lock your focus on them; look above and beyond them to achieve greatness.

Virtual Booth Gamification 

Gamify the virtual booth by including fun games and friendly competitions. These are a few things that attendees absolutely love and can engage with instantly. Encourage your sponsors and exhibitors to use digital gamification techniques to pique audience interest, invoke the feeling of excitement, and incentivize the expo booth. This is especially important in a Virtual trade show.

With the help of an advanced virtual event platform, you can integrate interactivity and place child-like fun around the virtual booth experience. 

Playing games will never go out of fashion!

As an organizer, you can elevate the exhibition hall engagement by hosting virtual trivia where attendees can actively participate. Further incorporating leaderboards motivates attendees to engage with sponsors and rewards their participation with the chance to win a prize or goodies.

Interactive Virtual booth

Games and other forms of interactivity at your booth can greatly get people interested in your business.  In addition, they facilitate meaningful interactions between presenters, sponsors, and visitors. Offering raffles, giveaways, and contests at virtual booths. A Companion Event App can amplify the impact. This increases your brand’s likeability in their thought process.

Your sponsors can provide:

• Social media contests
• Prize roulette
• Lottery-based giveaways
• Social walls

Tying reward-based activities back to their goals is necessary to drive high engagement and critical outcomes.

Bingo: Employ the classic Bingo game with a twist. Booth attendees can fill out their Bingo cards when they find strategically placed keywords and other vital expo booth area information. 

You can give winners small prizes or invite them to enter for the chance to win an enormous reward. Tie this more extensive reward program with marketing and ask the attendees to submit screenshots or photos of their completed Bingo cards. 

All games should be weaved with the sponsors’ objectives and the purpose of educating the audiences.

Scavenger hunt: Strategically place specific texts or images at different locations and encourage your attendees to interact with sponsors and exhibitors to find these items and complete the tasks mentioned in the virtual booths.

Some of these tasks can include connecting with a sponsor by chat or video, snapping a photo of an expo booth visit, finding sponsors’ keywords or content, sharing these photos and keywords on social media, and participating in an expo session hosted by your sponsor, watching in-booth video demonstrations, registering or filling out details at another virtual event booth, or scheduling meetings with an exhibitor.

Showcase the fun games and activities your sponsors host for them to experience success.

Touch on the Aspect of Virality

The terms ‘viral’ and ‘social media’ go hand-in-hand. Turn your energy and attention to social media for an unexpected boost.

Your sponsors should show up across channel feeds. Use the emotion of FOMO from your audience. Plan social media activities intended to attract event attendees to virtual sponsor expo areas.

For starters, suggest your sponsors use an event hashtag with an event platform social media integration. In this way, sponsors and exhibitors can have the ability to embed attendee social posts directly into their booths.

A little Mystery Never Fails to Attract

Are we talking about a mysterious virtual booth? That would defeat the purpose of attendee engagement, wouldn’t it?

Instead, provide early access to new products and drive interest, directly boosting engagement. This can give your attendees a feeling of VIP treatment when they have first dibs on new sponsor offerings.

There are two critical benefits tied with this approach for the sponsors. First, it drives traffic to the virtual booths, and secondly, it gives the sponsors a chance to collect product feedback and insights.

Additionally, creating a sense of urgency among attendees also plays an important role here. It makes them feel compelled to engage with sponsors in the spur of the moment. 

This can be done by advertising exclusive, time-bound experiences that are happening in their virtual booths to attract and motivate participants.

Virtual Photo Booth

Make their virtual booths memorable and timeless by adding a photo booth to their online exhibits. Visitors will capture the moment and create a branded photo keepsake this way.

The sponsor-branded mementos will remind attendees of the connections they forged in a virtual booth.

Close to 93% of marketers say that people trust user-generated content more than branded content. Hence, potential brand exposure is often on the table when attendees share their photos.

Strengthen the brand and customer relationship and foster a sense of community by adding a personal shout-out reply to an attendee.

Environment for Meaningful Connection

Unlocking authentic relationships is more important than anyone can fathom. And this process can happen only and only without the presence of a conscious effort.

One cannot intervene and create an authentic connection between two attendees. It has to happen organically, unconsciously.

As an organizer, you need to create an environment that fosters and drives the process of authentic conversations between two individuals. 

Transform the virtual booth into a space where attendees can engage with one another and learn about the sponsor’s brand and products together.

Create an interactive lounge for your guests where intellectuals can connect and exchange creative ideas. 

You engage with your event audience meaningfully when you provide interactive experiences and valuable content that directly resonates with the attendees.

For example, your attendees can collaborate and interact with one another in real-time using a virtual whiteboard platform. Meaningful engagement is the common denominator in sponsors’ virtual exhibition booths.

Virtual Booth as a Platform for Gaining Knowledge

A few attendees would want to level up their personal or professional skills, and such individuals never miss this kind of opportunity when presented with one. Include workshops and other educational sessions in virtual sponsor booths.

Setup virtual exhibition with pre-recorded videos and live demonstrations of engaging activities and experiments.

Sponsors being an equal part of the event community, can genuinely enrich attendees’ educational experience with well-designed virtual booths. Make your sponsors understand how this approach makes them stand out and shine.

You can proceed with this by placing your community first and bringing sponsors into your planning process eventually. This way, their virtual booths, and activations will become a natural part of your event.

This creates a cohesive event experience that largely benefits you as an organizer.  (Also read, 72 Essential Event tools that can help you get this cohesive event experience)

Conclusion

Event technology has become an important node of the martech industry. And events have always been a vital vein in the network of sales and marketing efforts for a company. An event organized at the right place and at the right time brings the right kind of audience together.