Patricia Baronowski-Schneider
Pristine Advisers
New York, NY
Patricia is CEO of Pristine Advisers, an IR/PR/Media Relations/Marketing firm with 33 years of experience working her way to starting her own Company a decade ago. She can be reached at pbaronowski@pristineadvisers.com
Investor events are critical to the financial success of a company. It is an effective platform to present your company’s strategy for growth, display your strengths and lay down the lucrative opportunities that the business is considering. A successful investor event will not only attract new investors but will also instill confidence in existing investors and shareholders about the business and get them excited about the company’s future.
However, the pandemic has made traditional events obsolete and companies are unable to strengthen the connection with the investor community. It has led to unprecedented challenges for businesses in communicating with their stakeholders. But it has also led to wonderful opportunities like hosting virtual events. They are effective and save time, effort and cost as well; this is why most businesses are hosting virtual investor events.
While these events are hugely successful in implementing a business’ IR/PR strategy, one must consider certain important aspects to execute a flawless virtual event for investors, like –
- How to effectively communicate with investors virtually?
- How to ensure investor engagement and retention throughout the event?
- Lastly, how to avoid technical glitches?
Finding answers to these questions is the key to a successful virtual investor event in these trying times of the pandemic. Here are some tips to help –
Planning is key to effective communication
Understand what the investors want to know, what is it that they are seeking and then plan your event accordingly. Be very clear on what it is that you want to convey to the viewers. You should be able to tell your message in one short sentence.
Meticulously plan each session to ensure that it is in line with the overall message of the event. It is important to make sure that the message is loud and clear. There should not be any contradictions across the numerous sessions on the event day.
Drive investor engagement with short, crisp and clear content
One of the major challenges in a virtual event is to retain the attention of viewers throughout the session. The only way to do so is to work on your messaging. Make it short, crisp and clear; there is no need to spend hours talking about something that can summed up within minutes.
Some other things you can do to engage viewers, include –
- Open up a Q&A session with investors, shareholders and other participants.
- Add videos and other interactive material to retain attention.
- Create content-rich, graphic driven presentations for each session
- These are just some of the ways in which you can drive up engagement at a virtual event.
Practice and pre-record to avoid technical glitches
Technology can play a make-or-break situation for your event. It is important to select a strong technology solution and to understand in detail its features, capabilities and limitations. Ensure that its features align with your event goals; you must know answers to questions such as – does it allow multi-speaker panels or does it allow viewers to participate in Q&A etc.
If possible, try and pre-record the important bits and pieces of the event; this will ensure no glitches during the live session. Practice and rehearse the entire program at least once on the hosting platform. It will help speakers get familiarized with the platform and also help you understand the kind of problems to expect on the day of the event.
We hope these small yet significant points will help you execute your virtual investor event and make it a huge success for the business.
Wishing you health and success in these chaotic times.