Why B2B events should embrace hybrid.

Weekly insights on all things brand strategy, audience marketing, and experiences.

For a rollercoaster year in 2021, I was the CMO of a company called Hopin.

Yes, the same Hopin that raised $1B in venture capital only to sell its assets to RingCentral for $15M.

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” right?

But beyond the painful reality of the Hopin outcome, that experience was full of incredible learnings on the future of events, emerging formats, the creator economy, and so much more.

It was clear towards the end of my tenure that virtual events – as important as they were during the pandemic — were not going to survive as a standalone software category. Frankly, the software became commoditized and the switching costs were just so low. Any vendor selling a similar experience for one dollar cheaper became a competitive threat. 

We turned our M&A focus towards acquiring in-person event tech: badge scanning, mobile apps, registration services. The intention wasn’t necessarily to focus our GTM efforts explicitly on in-person events (even though we certainly would be happy to sell them some Hopin).

Our intention was to champion a new emerging event format that offered the inclusivity and access of the virtual event experience, with the real human connection and community of being in-person.

Hybrid.

The idea of hybrid events made so much sense. Our marketing team started the work to reposition Hopin from a virtual events platform to an “any kind of event” platform — in-person, virtual, or hybrid. We even executed an international brand campaign to amplify the repositioning.

Because you know, $1B.

But despite the clever OOH and significant marketing investment, hybrid events never caught on. And as the saying goes – the rest is history.

Why Hybrid Events Didn’t Work Then

Part of the challenge with hybrid events — despite our best attempts at Hopin — was the reaction from the industry of event professionals.

Remember, this was a group who’s entire livelihood was upended by the pandemic. Many exited the profession altogether, while others up-skilled into digital events as a means of survival.

So as the world started opening up again, hybrid represented an exciting future that returned event professionals to their roots as experience creators, while also integrating the new digital skill sets that were learned.

In practice, however, it was a different story altogether:

• Live-streaming an in-person event, complete with back-to-back 45-minute panels, didn’t translate well to the digital viewer. Would you spend a half-day at your desk watching panels on your laptop?

• Having an outside speaker dial-into a keynote or fireside chat didn’t exactly come across as a great experience for onsite attendees. Would you fly across the country to watch a screen at an event?

• The conclusion drawn was that in order to make hybrid events a viable format, and create a great experience for the digital and in-person attendee, you would have to effectively plan and host two events at the same time.

Two events at the same time!?

Wait, didn’t I just say that the event community had been massively disrupted by COVID? Now you want us to plan two events at the same time? Isn’t one event hard enough? Not to mention the operating budget for the program would effectively need to double.

For all these reasons, and much to the chagrin of our Hopin marketing team, hybrid events flamed out after their fifteen seconds of fame in 2021.

But 3-4 years later, there’s evidence of a come back.

Why Hybrid Events Will Work Now

Since the days of the pandemic, and ZIRP-era budgets that followed those days, the marketing industry has changed forever.

The punch-line of the problem is this — the marketing playbooks that we as a collective have been executing for years are no longer effective in driving pipeline.

Our industry is, frankly, scrambling to figure out what programs, channels, and tactics can work in a world where budgets are tight and expectations are high.

Meanwhile, the events industry continued to evolve:

• The cost to produce digital content (across hardware and software) has become much cheaper. This isn’t just true for individual creators or even businesses creating content, but event production teams have brought the cost of their streaming services down as well.

• The creator economy has made live content and interactions effectively an expectation from their audiences. If brands want to build authentic relationships with their audiences, they would have to do the same — and webinars don’t cut it.

• Event and demand marketers can’t drive the in-person registration numbers that they used to. Consumer behavior around IRL event attendance has changed dramatically as a result of the pandemic, and the relative ease of pulling big numbers for virtual events remains attractive despite the dying art of the format.

These trends make hybrid events an interesting option to reconsider for B2B marketing teams.

3 Ideas for Hosting a Hybrid Event

If you are interested in hosting a hybrid event in 2025, or converting your existing in-person event into a hybrid program, here are three ideas for you to consider:

1. Host a time-limited digital broadcast of your event online. Don’t bother creating a digital agenda longer than 3-4 hours as keeping the attention of your digital audience any longer might be an impossibility. This also lightens the planning load for your team, making the operations of your digital event much easier to stomach.

2. Activate in-person speakers and attendees as guests. Build your programming around the people who are already planning to be onsite for the in-person event. This becomes added value to the digital viewer beyond simply streaming main stage keynotes.

3. Broadcast to LinkedIn rather than a virtual events platform. By pushing your broadcast onto public networks like LinkedIn or others, you’re able to cast a wide net of viewership, benefit from the viral network effects of those platforms, and ultimately create a sense of FOMO for next year’s event. If the audience value is high enough, the conversions into your database of subscribers will ultimately come.

Are you planning a hybrid event in 2025? Let me know in the replies!

You can always reach me directly by emailing [email protected] or simply by replying to this email.

I’d love to hear your questions, thoughts, or any ideas you might have. Thanks again for subscribing! I’m thrilled to see where this journey will take us.