Virtual Event Budget Template and Guide for Virtual Event

In addition Event planners must contend with rapidly-evolving expectations: they must compete for attention spans, while working on shrinking budgets. Also, they must prove that they've earned a return on investment (ROI) of the events they host, and are typically expected to create exactly the same kind of participation like you'd experience at events that are held in person.

We'll go over how to budget for your virtual event, which are the line items that you can eliminate out of your spreadsheet, and how you can track the results of your event -- in order to get more substantial budget for the following one!

Make a copy of our free budgeting templates for events.

In this article

1.    The reason you should have an budget for events (especially in hybrid and virtual occasions)
2.    Cost of hosting an event online
3.    Cost breakdown of virtual occasions
4.    What do you require for an event that is successful online
5.    What is the best way to gauge the success of your virtual event
6.    Add human touchpoints to make your virtual experience seem real
7.    FAQs about budgeting for an event that is virtual
8.    It's time to start event planning

What are the reasons to have an expense budget for your event (especially for virtual and hybrid events)

In many ways, online occasions can be much less expensive to hold than live occasions. There's also no need to lease chairs or space at an event and printing equipment. You can also sort accommodation, or even set up boards of charcuterie.

But, establishing an appropriate budget will allow you to take a strategic approach to the event that you're planning online -- from how you can cut expenses to locating possible sources of sponsorship as well as cash flow.

When you budget for your event ahead of time You can determine what line items are essential, and which ones can be reduced, and how you can get creative in engaging and delighting guests.

Cost of hosting an average virtual event

The cost for hosting a virtual conference is dependent on several factors including the duration of the event and the amount of people who will be speaking and the number of attendees.

In the next article, we'll break down the different costs involved in hosting a virtual event, so you can more closely assess the expense of hosting your own party. But for now, here's what you can expect in terms of the approximate cost for hosting a virtual event

• For a shorter webinar with as many as 500 people typically, anticipate paying between $2000 or $10,000.
• A single day virtual conference with sessions and virtual breakout rooms, anticipate prices to vary from $4,000 to $25,000..
• To host a conference for multiple days with multiple sessions, breakout rooms, discussions, and recordings, you can expect to pay between $50,000 between $50,000 and 150,000.

You can see, that's a pretty significant range.

We'll look into the many aspects to take into consideration in planning your budget for your virtual gathering, to help you estimate the costs more accurately.

Cost breakdown of virtual events

Examples of cost breakdowns to plan a virtual event

How do you make a virtual event

Technically, you could organize a virtual meeting by using a simple online meeting room, a camera, and a microphone. But, if you're trying to provide an seamless, successful virtual experience, there are several expenses could be worth investing in.

Gear

It's not a lot of equipment to make online speakers appear polished and professionalHowever, it will take some.

Instead, have presenters set in advance, preparing the followingitems:

• Microphones so that your audience can hear each word ( prices start at $40)
• Crisp video cameras ( prices start at $24)
• Ring lights are used to regulate any lighting issues ( prices start at $30)
• If required, green screens are available ( prices start at $18)

If you're running an event that is more limited in budget it's possible to avoid one or two of these items Make sure to check speakers' pre-existing setups ahead of time and instructing their staff on ways to maximize their lighting as well as volume of background sound during the event.

Find out more about gear

Virtual Event Hosting Software

It is possible to think of the an event-hosting software program as the venue virtual in the event that will take place. Similar to physical venues the various platforms can provide you with various features.

According to Markletic Here's the amount you could expect to spend in virtual event platform costs per month:

• Between $50 and $250 to organize small virtual conference that can accommodate up to 100 participants each.
• Between $625 and $8,000 to organize larger virtual events, with 500-2,500 guests.
• Between $25,000 to $40,000 is the minimum amount needed to host larger events with over 3000 attendees.

The majority of virtual event platforms cost per user and have different pricing levels dependent on the virtual event needs. (Think the number of guests or marketing and promotion options as well as security features to name a few examples.)

Be aware of the features that your platform for events comes with. Although some platforms might seem, at a superficial scale -- appear to be to be more costly than others however, they might have extra features that actually help them be more affordable over the long term.

All other software requires

If you choose to go with one which doesn't offer these functions However, ensure that you add the following charges within your budget to cover the following:

• Hosting of landing pages:starting at 39$ per month for a landing page with the domain of your choice. Enterprise plans, for companies who host multiple large-scale events may cost you up to $469 per month.
• Registration forms for events: free for free occasions, but otherwise you will be charged an ticketing fee (for example, $0.99 and 2% of the ticket cost) per ticket or a monthly subscription starting from 39 dollars per month.
• Software for managing emails: beginning at $3 per month to deliver 500 email messages per month. Premium and enterprise plans generally cost between $36 - 150 for each user, per month.
• Audience engagement software: beginning from $8/month for audiences between 50 and. The pricing for Enterprise plans is ranging from $199/month all the way to 1,000 per month.

Speakers

Since virtual events require less time and travel than traditional events, the majority of keynote speakers charge around 50percent of their live fee for virtual events. Exactly how much an individual speaker can charge but it will typically be based on their expertise and their popularity.

According to Big Speak, you can expect to payfor:

• $2,500 to $5,000 for an expert who is relatively new in this field
• Seven,500-$10,000 for an established keynote or keynote speaker
• A $10,000-$30,000 price range to a thought-leader with a large following or book published
• From $20,000 to $75,000 for famous people
• From $100,000 to $200,000 to well-known celebrities

Content

If you're pre-recording any content for the occasion, it's important include production costs in your budget.

To record at a studio, anticipate to pay anywhere from 375-$500 an hour to record. If you're pre-recording from a remote location the cost will drop to $125 to $200 an hour.

Either way, warns Zephan Blaxberg, the CEO of video production studio ZMBMedia Be prepared for that your costs for production will be about three times higher than you initially anticipated. When it comes to editing post-production plan for $100 to $200 per hour.

"Keep an eye on a 1:3 ratio of pre-event recordings: for every minute of recording, there will be around three times the time being billed. Although your presenter may be speaking for a mere 60 minutes, your livestream engineer will arrive an hour earlier to prepare the studio and begin preparing. The technician will stay for at least an hour following the recording has been completed to back up footage and begin the editing process."

Advertising and marketing

Do you ask you (and members of your group! ):

• What amount of time does our marketing team plan to spend on the event?
• How will we promote this event to potential attendees?
• How much will we invest in promotions on social media?
• What will our email marketing appear to be?
• We will work with influential people to get the word out on the event?
• What is our post-event advertising strategy? take on?

Be aware that marketing and promotion are among the costliest portions of hosting a virtual event.

"The most significant expenditure we can make is advertising, as well as experts or thought leaders that we bring on as speakers," says Miles DePaul director for Demand Generation at Superside. "This is the point where the value of the Superside brand is realized. As people become more familiar with our brand and learn from our content the participation rate increases and event costs can start to regress. It is cheaper to advertise because the cost per click decreases with better brand awareness, as well as more organic promotions pay off. Speaker fees are reduced because great speakers want to partner with us or will offer discounts."

When you've made your plan, you'll be able to know better how you can make use of the resources you already have (such as your marketing team and the existing software for email marketing), and the areas where you might need to spend extra (for example, collaborations with influencers or landing page hosting).

Swag or gift cards

• Notepads with a branded design to take notes ( $4.66)
• A pair of custom socks ( $9.78)
• A custom tote bag ($3.99)
• A plain mailer bag ($0.87)

While shipping will vary greatly depending on the location of attendees and the contents inside, the swag bags are priced at $19.30 that's less than $20.

Partnerships and sponsors

Fortunately, this is an aspect where you are able to reduce the costs of your virtual event budget. (We are always interested to hear about it.)

Sponsorship opportunities might look different for virtual events than they would be for events that take place in person, but they absolutely exist. Before the event, the sponsors will be featured on every aspect of your marketing prior to the event such as your event's web page, social media posts as well as your company's newsletter and reminder emails. It is also possible to send attendees emails detailing any special offers by sponsors or partners.

During the celebration, you could display sponsor branding on transition slides, conduct sponsored polls for them or host a panel discussion with your sponsors, or showcase their short-form video. If they'd like to send items from their sponsors to the attendees they can be included as swag items in your bags.

Finally, don't forget to mention sponsors on your post-event material which includes on-demand video as well as post-event emails, social media postsas well as videos snippets. This way, you're actually giving worth to sponsors since they continue to receive time on the air long after the event has been concluded.

Additional event-related information and resources

How do you measure the impact of your virtual event

As you can probably tell from the above, there's many expenses involved in hosting an amazing virtual event. In order to prove the value of your event and secure financing for future events it's critical to track and demonstrate the effectiveness of your event.

A few metrics you might consider tracking include:

• Awareness of brand: measured through event registrations, website traffic events, impressions of the event, and social media engagements.
• Customers and leads generated are tracked by registration for events, responses to event surveys or any other actions performed by new leads (such like announcing a trial trial).
• Audience education is measured by the amount of time attended by guests and the level of attendee engagement during discussions, Q&As and chats.

"Our event strategy works at its best when it delivers benefits across the entire funnel that enables buyers to become aware of issues and aware, but also influence interactions with sales and ultimately the revenue" says DePaul.

Then he adds:

"The key metrics we look at for any event, no matter if it's virtual or on-site, comprise (1) the total amount of registrants from the ideal profile of our customers (ICP), (2) the number of people who attended that we have in the ICP, (3) opportunities generated by accounts following engagement at an event, and (4) revenue generated from accounts that have been engaged at an event.
 
  Some of the down funnel metrics, like the design subscriptions will, typically will take a while, and it's only just one aspect of an ROI calculation. One of the most important indicators is whether or not we can bring visitors back to our website and consume more of our content and take the bottom-of-funnel actions such as visiting our pricing pages or asking for an demo."

Include human touches to make your virtual experience feel IRL

When hosting an event online, it can be easy to forget that real people are sitting behind their screens in the crowd and it's easy for guests to lose focus or get disoriented.

DePaul and Superside and the Superside team are aware of the significance of thoughtful, personal elements as they plan their virtual events. "Throughout the entire process, we increasingly try to incorporate a personal touch via things like gifts, direct mail and user-generated content or video," he says.

There are several ways to help your audience be more engaged with the program, the other attendees as well as your speaker:

• Utilize tools for engagement with the audience -- like a online chat or interactive survey as well as Q&A segments -- to make sure the event has an open dialogue, rather than a monologue.
• Allow attendees to get together and chat in breakout rooms. Also, create a LinkedIn group so attendees are able to connect to one another after the conference. This will add a networking component (and additional value!) for your online event.
• Distribute swag bags and use a giveaway for participation. Small things like this can create excitement for attendees and keep active throughout the event.

DePaul's continues:

"For instance, our biggest event in 2022 called Momentum Summit is heavily advertised using short video selfies from our speakers. We utilized in our ads as well as personalized one-to-one emails. As visitors arrive on the page for landing, we'd have videos from the speakers as well as from our team discussing issues we'd like to address during the summit rather than a static text-heavy landing page.

We encourage some of our VIP attendees to come along and invite colleagues to join them using things such as snack boxes, or offer to buy their lunch at the time of the event. The day of the event, we prioritize peer-to-peer connections by engaging in a discussion chatroom, roundtables for executives with smaller groups, or inviting them to the Superside Communities in which conversations go on throughout the duration of the event."

Questions about budgeting for virtual events.

Are you still unsure about budgeting for the next virtual event? We'll answer some frequently asked questions and link you to additional resources to assist with your planning.

What's the average budget for a virtual conference?

According to Statista 34% of marketers claim they spend between $500 and $1,000 for each participant in a virtual event.

How can you plan your budget for a virtual event?

What is the best way to host virtual events? generate income?

What are the most important things to look for in a virtual events platform?

It's time to start planning your event

Planning a virtual event could be a lot of work however, it offers unique opportunities to grow your following, work with creative sponsors and speakers, and delight attendees. Apart from hosting, the platform makes it easy to design a beautiful landing page, automate email reminders for events, connect with your audience, integrate with your marketing platform as well as analyze event after-event data.