“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
– Charles Dickens
That’s one of the most famous openings of all time…And even though a Tale of Two Cities was written over 160 years ago, Dickens could have been describing 2020. For many business owners, this was the worst year and for many others it was the absolute best. So what was the difference between those who struggled and those who had a breakthrough year? At the end of every year I blog about how I see the State of the Internet…What are the trends that are redefining the way online business and internet marketing are being done? Where are the landmines and where are the goldmine.
Let’s start with Trend #1: The Golden Age of Virtual Events.
In 2020, the video conferencing platform Zoom became more valuable than the world’s top 7 airlines combined… as the world was forced to replace in-person connection points with virtuals? Industries that were still largely offline — such as work, medicine, education, hospitality and entertainment — went largely online. Take Airbnb’s Online Experiences — a new, 100% virtual travel platform that connects “travellers” with local experts. Pedro, a Lisbon-based drag queen, began as an Airbnb host, then started doing in-person cooking classes with Airbnb Experiences. Then once Corona hit, Pedro migrated his classes to live virtual experiences and earned over $130,000 in a single month with their wildly popular new show, “Sangria and Secrets with Drag Queens.”
In his words, “In the beginning I was scared. As the airports closed, my world was kind of devastated and the bank account was getting low. I told my entire team that I was not going to fire anyone and together we were going to find a solution. Everyone brainstormed, and we made it. We truly believe in what we were trying to achieve. Together as a family and a team, we recreated our entire business and today we are the biggest in the world doing it. I never imagined I would be able to raise everyone’s salaries in a time like this.”
Why limit your experiences to a local in-person audience when you can reach the entire world? Tony Robbins took the same approach with his legendary Unleash the Power Within event that he does each year in giant stadiums… the result? On July 16-19, a record 22,500 people participated from 143 countries. And I’ve watched many of my colleagues host record-breaking multi-day events both in terms of size and profit… as more people are attending events that they didn’t just have access to before. Now you may be asking, is the experience of attending a virtual event comparable to a live event? And the answer is “yes and”. We’ve taken all of our Momentum retreats virtual and many of our students are actually preferring the virtual format to live in person. Done right, you can create experiences for virtual connection that are even deeper than what you can achieve live. Like this special moment from our December Momentum retreat…
However, you can’t do a virtual event in the same way that you do a live event. People aren’t able to sit passively through hours and hours of content like they are in person. You have to optimize virtual events for engagement to keep participants tuned in to their screens, because it’s a lot easier to lose your audience virtually. The good news is that this has created a TON of innovation in the virtual event space and I genuinely believe that we’re seeing The Golden Age of Virtual Events… and I’m not just talking about short-form webinars where, but multi-day workshops and immersions.
Based on the response I’m seeing, I believe that long-form virtual events are here to stay… and they’re just going to keep getting better and better! Because people are aching for experiences and connection — even if they’re virtual.
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