Virtual Is The New Face-to-Face

Whether your event is happening soon or next year, COVID-19 has opened our eyes to the value of delivering a high-quality virtual conference experience. For those brands needing to reach developers, virtual events can be a great way to help developers stay informed and connected. In fact, hosting or promoting a virtual event can be one of the most helpful and useful actions a brand can take. Like any event, success depends on a strong promotion strategy. Here are the basics for promoting virtual conferences to developers.

Build Awareness

The good news: Developers are most likely to click on ads that promote events. To best promote a virtual conference, place information in the developer-to-developer (D2D) communities that programmers trust. Prioritize your spend with D2D communities that offer to promote events through their community websites and other community channels.

Here’s what to look for to make the best use of your advertising budget:

  • Event Calendar. Ideally, the D2D community you support offers a top upcoming event teaser on their homepage, backed up by a landing page with a full calendar of upcoming events.
  • Editorial Mentions in Newsletter Outreach. Developers trust the community managers that they’ve invited into their inbox. Your ad spend, ideally, will include a message from the community’s organizer, editor, or other perceived leader, to inform and educate the audience on the benefits of the virtual event.
  • Banner Ads Related to Content. Ideally, the community you are targeting will offer banner ads that promote the virtual event to members while they are reading an article about the topic of the virtual event.
  • Native Ad Units. Look for D2D communities that can offer promotion of your event  within topically relevant articles via native ad units (rich HTML).
  • Newsletter Ads. Repetition is important. An integrated promotion campaign for virtual events should include all of the above AND ads in the D2D community newsletter.
  • Full-Page Email Promotions.  Developers need time to mull over whether they want to attend an event. Virtual events are no different. What if they forget where to register? That’s why additional full-page email promotions to the D2D community mailing list is essential, even with newsletter ad placements.
  • Live Countdowns. The ideal D2D community virtual event promotion campaign includes a live countdown to the event to build excitement and interest within that D2D community.  (It also offers the opportunity for last-minute registration).
  • Live Streaming.  For a frictionless developer experience, choose a D2D advertising package that includes a live streaming option through the D2D community home page itself.

Create “Work From Home” Friendly Experiences

Our new “work-from-home” reality means that virtual is the new face-to-face. Virtual conferences and events have become the best way to connect with a developer audience in lieu of face-to-face conferences. Look for D2D community promotion strategies that take you from awareness to event delivery for a positive, integrated developer experience. For more details on how to create other successful advertising campaigns in D2D communities, check out our ebook, “D2D Marketing: An Advertising Guide.”