Entrepreneurs are facing countless challenges, with thousands of small businesses collapsing due to the COVID-19 crisis. However, virtual events may be a key factor for recovery.
New startups are struggling even more than more established businesses. They face growing challenges as they strive to maintain cash flow and seek necessary funding. They generally don’t have the same cash reserves as their larger competitors. Many financial institutions have also been reluctant to issue loans to companies without multiple years of financial statements. Therefore, new companies have to be as fiscally cautious as possible. They need to find innovative ways to keep costs down to maintain a good financial presence.
One option that they should consider is using virtual events, rather than hosting traditional ones. You may want to host virtual events with Vconference. There are a number of reasons that this is going to be a more cost-effective solution.
What are the financial benefits for shoestring businesses using virtual events?
Many entrepreneurs are still stuck in the old way of doing things. They tend to prefer to get everybody in the same room together when they are hosting an event. Although this might still seem appealing, there are reasons that business owners should reconsider and be open to the benefits of hosting events virtually instead.
Some of the cost saving opportunities with virtual events are listed below.
Minimize travel costs for your employees
If you are running an entirely local business, then your employees are all in close proximity to you. You don’t have to worry a lot about travel expenditures.
The same thing cannot be said about most other types of businesses. If you are a company that operates across different regions, then your employees are probably going to be scattered all over the country or even all over the world. This is one of the few drawbacks of remote work. In this case, you are going to face a lot more challenges trying to host a meeting in-person. But even in this case technology can help you out. For example, if you are organizing an in-person conference or a meeting, and a lot of your employees are remote, you could just use a hybrid conference platform.
Cost would be the biggest problem if you are trying to accommodate meeting attendees from other areas. You can’t expect employees to pay for their own airfare or hotel fees. You would need to subsidize these travel costs, which can be very expensive.
The average cost of a domestic airline flight in the United States is $359. If you are getting an employee from another country to visit, then the average cost will be nearly $1,400. Meanwhile, the cost of an average hotel room is around $180 a day. Without taking various nuances into account, you could expect to spend almost $800 for every US based employee and nearly $2000 for every international employee that has to travel to join your meeting.
You will be able to save a considerable amount of money on travel costs by holding your meetings virtually. This is a huge incentive if you have a lot of employees that we need to travel.
Cut costs on international phone calls
Before online technology was readily available to businesses all over the world, they had to rely on phones to host remote meetings. Although this was still usually a cheaper option then flying people from all over the world, it could still be costly.
New technology has considerably reduced these costs. You can host meetings and communicate effectively with VoIP technology at a fraction of the cost that you would pay for international calls from multiple participants in different parts of the world. You can often hold these meetings entirely for free.
Avoid paying for niceties
There are a lot of unspoken expectations when you are hosting an event. You are often expected to provide lots of hors d’oeuvres and other amenities to your guests. Although these costs are small compared to the cost of traveling, they still add to the overall price tag of a regular event.
This is yet another benefit of hosting your events online. You don’t have to pay for these types of comforts.
VoIP technology could be a good idea if you are a cash strapped business that must host events
You are going to need to find ways to reduce your cost structure as a startup, especially in 2020. There are a lot of ways that you could accomplish this. One option is to use remote technology to host virtual events, since they are a lot cheaper than holding events in person.
