Attending a medical conference is a great opportunity to network, spread the message of the great work your company’s doing, and win new business all at the same time.
But your company may have sponsored a hefty registration fee along with your travel and hotel arrangements. Medical conferences cost money, and it makes sense that organizations look to get the most bang for their buck. After all, they want to get more in return than just a few business cards.
With video marketing, you can maximize the value you get out of a medical conference in a number of ways that can benefit you, your organization, and the event itself.
Testimonials and Interviews
When you attend a conference, there are two groups of people your audience will want to hear from following the event. These groups are your satisfied customers and the experts you encountered at the conference. You can use video to expose your audience to both.
User testimonials
Prospective customers visiting your website or social media channels want to hear about what you have to offer, but that’s not all. They also want to know that your products or services work. There’s no better way to show them that than through the words of your happy customers in a user testimonial. When you encounter customers at your medical conference — or perhaps attract new ones — this is a great time to record a video of them singing your praises.
Interviewing subject matter experts or key opinion leaders
Medical conferences are a great time to expose yourself to a diverse array of opinions and expertise. Why not use this gained knowledge and spread it to your audience?
Conducting interviews with experts will allow you to create video content for your website, blog, or social networks. It allows you to position yourself as an authority in your field by associating yourself with other trusted voices on a topic. If the experts you interview have an audience or following online, you can also leverage that audience by asking them to share the video you post with their followers.
Share, Share, Share
Video is a great way to amplify your presence at an event. But, you need to make sure you’re spreading your message. The way to do this is by sharing the content.
Use video to boost sponsored educational events
Let’s say you’re hosting a demonstration or a talk during the event. You can record a video of this educational event and post it to your followers online. Or you can create a short video prior to the event of your speaker promoting it to increase attendance during the event itself. You can raise awareness by incorporating event hashtags and posting them to the right social media channels like Twitter or LinkedIn.
Create videos for your booth or exhibit
If you have a booth at a medical conference, having a video playing in the background of your exhibit can be a great way to increase participation. By having multimedia — interactive components available for your booth presentation — you can engage with attendees in a format beyond one-on-one conversations. While having plenty of posters and graphics is great, videos give passersby something different and creative to look at.
Pro-Tips That Will Drive Success
Just creating videos isn’t quite enough to guarantee a successful trip to a medical conference. They have to be of high quality. Here are production tips you can use to make the videos even more powerful and engaging.
Mix-up your interviews with B-roll footage
You’ve just finished interviewing one of your industry’s top minds. You can’t wait to share it. But the footage itself isn’t too exciting. It’s quite literally just a person talking for 5-10 minutes. While the information they share is good, you want to make it a bit more compelling to watch.
Even the best interview can tend to be visually boring to look at if it’s just a continuous shot of a person talking. That’s why you should incorporate B Roll footage. B Roll allows you to intersperse clips of the busy conference floor or a keynote speaker to give your viewer a break from looking at the same person. It makes the video more eye-catching and leaves your viewer more likely to retain the message.
Optimize your interviews
Scoring a great interview can be exciting. You’ve just landed a one-on-one opportunity with one of the event’s keynote speakers and want to record it ASAP. Before you do that, however, make sure the conditions are just right to create the perfect video.
Conduct interviews in quiet, well-lit places as opposed to a crowded exhibition hall. Attempt to find a conference room within the convention center or in the hotel next door. Think about renting a suite with the express purpose of using it to conduct interviews.
You’ll also want to plan ahead for all interviews. Whether you’re talking to a customer or a key opinion leader, have your questions written out well in advance. You want to make sure you don’t waste their time. If the interview is particularly detailed, schedule a call with the subject ahead of time to walk through the questions.
Become an Information Resource for the Event
Once you’ve made your great videos involving the event, don’t forget to thank the event organizers and share the videos with them. Give them full usage rights.
Create a conference highlight video following the event
Once your time at a medical conference is complete, you can still gain value from it going forward. Create a two to three-minute video highlight package including shots of the event space, clips from any presentations your organization made, and snippets of interviews you conducted. This is essentially a “best-of” compilation without going too far into detail on any of the specific aspects of your conference experience. You can send this to any of your booth visitors or even current and prospective customers who were unable to attend the conference.
You can also share it with the event organizers. They can highlight it on their website or social networks to show the value of attending their event. In turn, this could help you get increased access to future conferences and may lead to keynote presentation opportunities. It’s a win-win.
Summary
Attending a medical conference can be a great way to increase exposure for the great work you’re doing. There’s no better way to optimize your conference experience than by using video.
If you are interested in maximizing your conference marketing opportunities, consider hiring a digital marketing firm that knows the ins and outs of all things conference related. Your best option is Digivid360. For more on the many ways that we can help, contact us today!
