WorkMatters has a goal of reaching one million leaders in 10,000 companies over the next five years. What started as a local event turned regional, and now national, with the help of streaming.
It’s rare to see an organization put so much effort and excellence into an event. Truly, nearly every minute of this full-day conference was perfect. The conference is only a few years old. The very first year, WorkMatters brought their absolute best with an incredible lineup. Their team culture drives excellence, and each year since has improved. The event was nearly perfect, but, all that work was for a limited audience.
So, the first step was recording the event. By recording each presenter, their team gained incredible content to leverage. Their marketing efforts ramped up. Now, they could reuse those presentations as full-length content pieces for their growing online audience. We provided multiple cameras to give different angles, making the content have more sizzle for sharing in highlight reels. They marketed the event, and it grew. From a few hundred to nearly a thousand over just a few short years.
With those ticket sales came the ability to bring in even better content. Upgrading from local presenters to regional speakers and beyond. At the point where they were bringing in national presenters, world-famous CEOs, best-selling authors, they began to realize all that effort was hitting a limited capacity. Their reach was capped, impacting roughly a thousand guests in the room.
This was an important decision point for their team. Outgrow the venue, or reach outside the walls? We were there to help. They could take us with them to a larger venue. We have more equipment and more team, we could fill an arena if they liked. However, better than taking us to a larger venue was us taking them online.
Streaming allowed them to double their audience size, without doubling their budget. This is a huge pivotal point that successful events reach in their growth. Larger audiences demand larger venues, with come with increased cost. The diminishing returns begin to be evident as revenue doubles but profit percentages stay the same.
Anyone can touch a button and go live online. However, quality and professionalism separate amateur live video from professional broadcasts. When competing for attention in a room, the audience is captive. However, competing online, you’re a swipe away from losing them to something more interesting. We shifted our focus from adding more lighting and flash in the room, to capturing more angles to keep the energy up on the live feed.
Going live on public platforms doesn’t generate revenue for organizations. In fact, if you’re selling a ticket price to attend but then stream it live on these public platforms for free, you’ve diluted your value and can expect a dip in sales to match.
We help our clients monetize their event by connecting them with world-class technology partners. Our favorite feature used on this event was geofencing. WorkMatters didn’t want to experience a half-empty room from local audiences choosing to stay home. With geofencing, they were able to only allow streaming tickets to be purchased by guests outside a defined mileage radius of the live venue location.
Another layer of complexity for this client was breakouts. Their live audience begins and ends their day in a general session, however, they spend part of the day in one of four breakouts. And then the breakouts rotate. The problem was clear: how do you make the main general session AND four breakouts all able to be experienced by the remote audience? We deployed cameras into each breakout room making the entire venue live and in sync. Viewers at home could select one of four breakouts to tune into. When attendees rotated in the venue, live stream guests chose a second feed, and experienced the second round of breakout rotations from home.
All of this had to be done flawlessly. It also had to scale economically. We were proud to deliver value for their organization as they grew. We’re honored to return year after year, because it validates our objectives. Flawless, and economically profitable value, for their event.
If your event is ready to scale from regional to national, we’d love to help through our streaming services.