Before a healthcare professional has even signed up to your event, they’ll want to know whether it will be worth their while, so it is crucial to consider all possible ways to engage your audience, from the very beginning of your communication journey.

First, let’s cover the essentials:

GOAL 1: One of the main goals for an event organiser should be to guarantee that all attendees who have made the effort to attend are gaining value for both their time and money. This can be achieved in multiple ways, such as providing a well-considered and structured agenda, ensuring that the topics and speakers are current and relevant, and that there will be an opportunity for interaction, so that attendees feel involved. It’s important to see the event from both perspectives: event organisers vs delegates.

GOAL 2: Engagement with your audience should start from the beginning of the event planning stage, with relevant communications. Consistently supplying information at the right times can go a long way, not only capturing the target audience’s attention, but also holding it.

An event for event’s sake also won’t cut the mustard. What is your aim? Education about a therapy area, new treatment pathway, influencing prescribers? Being transparent with your delegates will ensure that they know what they’re getting and trust in you to deliver it.

The main groups of people we tend to recognise at events are your educators, delegates, and organisers. That said, we also know that delegates come with many different learning styles and personalities. Can you cater for everyone? Let’s find out.

How to captivate your audience?

Educators

Before you’ve even got in the room, consider how to help your speakers drive engagement with delegates. Do your research and collect delegates’ job titles on registration sign-up to ensure you can adapt event content to meet the target audience. Brief your speakers to cover the points most relevant to the people in the room.

During presentations or workshops, aside from sharing their knowledge or data, the main purpose for educators is to help as many people as possible understand the comprehension of that topic.

How can a presentation be more engaging? Interactivity. Consider digital polls and always plan ample time for a Q&A. If a delegate can get their specific concern answered, this will provide so much value.

Delegates

Your delegates are probably the most important people in the room and the ones you are working to captivate and engage. Have you put their needs at the heart of your event? As the organiser, it is likely that you will have a message you want to convey, perhaps about product information, a new treatment pathway, or training for a new device. But where your delegates will really see the value is lifting a load off their day-to-day. For example:

• Offer relevant and credible information to support patient health and treatment decisions
• Providing education to help HCPs stay updated on medical advancements and treatment options
• Ensure your event’s content is focused on driving the best health outcomes for patients, providing patient-facing information they can share

If your event is addressing the pain points of your HCPs, you are on the right path to fostering that engaged audience and giving value.

Organisers

Whether it’s an exhibition or organising a symposium, both are great ways to facilitate connection and should not be underestimated or positioned as a ‘nice to have’. As hosts, you can create engaging booth displays or activities that allow attendees to learn about your products and services in an interactive manner. It’s the perfect opportunity to spark conversation, interest, and build a long-lasting one-to-one relationship with your audience.

Let’s dive a layer deeper into delegates. As omnichannel marketeers, you’ll often here us at The Studio discuss ‘personas’. Remember, omnichannel doesn’t stop at digital but encompasses in-person interactivity as well. We know that people learn in different ways. We have the visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic learners.

Observers: To captivate the visual and auditory learners in our society, care needs to be taken both during and post event; allowing time and the means for note-taking during presentations, offering summary reports, a copy of the slides or a recording post event, appropriately signposting to further reading, reports, sites, or people to connect with afterwards for queries. Your education doesn’t need to stop as soon as they walk out the conference room. Make yourself and your information available beyond your event.

Networkers: Providing the opportunity for the ‘doers’ to chat and connect with each-other intermittently throughout the day can be a great driver for engagement at events. Include host ‘meet and greets’ with KOL speakers or VIPs, breakout workshops, or have a dedicated abstract exhibition where people can discuss their work and allow time for different groups of people to come together during coffee breaks.

Although this is a succinct overview, our team have a wealth of capability and decades of experience both in live events, and the pharma and healthcare industries. With expertise in customer engagement and in this new age of technology, there will always be new, exciting ways to draw in your audiences.

We’re constantly striving and committing to staying ahead of this curve, so that you, our clients, can make a difference and leave a lasting impression every time.

Want to explore how else to engage your stakeholders or need support with planning and delivering your next event? Get in touch today to put events at the top of your strategy this year.