Is your annual conference meeting attendee count declining? Virtual access to your meetings may be exactly what your conference needs to boost your dwindling revenue stream.
Now before you say what many association leaders say… “Are you crazy? Why would we further cannibalize our meeting by making it easier for our members not to come?” Hear us out. A big chunk of the members who are not attending your meetings may never go to a meeting, so why miss out an opportunity to engage with them?
This is the same mentality the cable television industry has had with the advent of DVRs and streaming services. The average consumer is watching fewer hours of live television every year. Instead, they are recording it and watching at a time that is convenient for them, or they are choosing to binge-watch on-demand later. Advertisers grappled with declining ratings, even though research in the past few years has shown that viewership isn’t necessarily going anywhere, it’s just changing. In fact, for some of television’s most popular shows, viewership is at all-time highs!
In our client engagements, when asked to help explain declines in meeting attendance, we frequently ask members to first describe why they belong to the organization. “Needs-based” segmentation illustrates that for large percentages of the membership, their reason for belonging does not align with attending a meeting on a regular basis. Rarely will a change in format, content, or location, motivate them to attend.
Then, we look at how members prefer to learn. Are they meeting attenders? If so, do they prefer national/international, regional, or local? Are they virtual learners? Do they find live or recorded meeting content appealing? Once again, by filtering out those who do not and will not attend meetings in person, you’ve identified both your target meetings audience, but now also a group that you may be able to engage with the same relevant, valuable meeting content, just on a different platform. Your “DVR segment”!
It’s a risky proposition to move valuable content to digital because there is a belief that by offering that, it cannibalizes those that are currently coming to in-person events. The reality is that those that are currently attending on a regular basis likely see something unique in your conference. It is a way in which they prefer to learn, it is a level of connecting and collaborating that they find valuable, and/or it’s a “mini-vacation,” a chance to get away from the office for a few days.
This doesn’t mean you can’t still charge a premium price for your virtual content. By saving the time and financial expense of travel, members may be more willing to pay the same price to have access to live and recorded content. Allow questions from virtual attendees in your keynote sessions. Create collaboration forums tied to the content that enables in-person and virtual attendees to ask questions and respond both in real-time as well as at their convenience in the future.
When we talk about the idea of relevance, it’s offering members what they want, when they want, and how they want to consume it. That’s not being all things to all people. If you want to engage them, you must make it easy and cost-effective for them to engage. It’s not to say that the annual conferences of days past can’t be successful today. We are saying however, that they can coexist with a strong virtual platform to create an even stronger level of engagement with members who are not able to be with you in person. This shows your members you understand and care about their needs, and in return they will repay you. “Viewership” is not gone, it has just changed!