37% of event planners cite hybrid event budgeting as their greatest financial challenge right now. One of the biggest considerations of budgeting for such an event, is how to broadcast it to more people.
Therefore, if you’re an event planner and you need to consider the budget of your event, this article will compare two roads that you can go down when it comes to streaming your event to an online audience: an in-house streaming/broadcast team, or hiring a third party livestreaming supplier.
In-House Livestreamer
Your organisation might wish to broadcast your next event independently, without the help of a third party team. There are definitely valid reasons why an organisation might wish to do this: Your in-house team are already familiar with what your goals are, and how your events usually go, so communication may be slightly easier. You don’t have to go to all the effort of allocating time to meet with an external team to ensure all your goals are aligned.
This may be true in the short term, but if you have a long-term events programme, and you use the same external supplier every time, that supplier could become very familiar with your goals. If the communication is done well, it’ll become progressively easier to use that supplier again rather than needing to go back to relying on what you have in-house.
For instance, if you hire CPD Online for one of your events, we’re very willing to be your long-term partner. We’ll put the work in to get to know your organisation and how you like your events to be broadcasted, so you can call on us at any point on short notice if you have another event anywhere in the UK that you’d like us to broadcast.
So, if you find a good external supplier whose goals (e.g. knowledge dissemination via events) are aligned with yours, it may be worth contacting them. However, in the short-term it may work for you to use what you have at your disposal.
On the other hand, there are some disadvantages of relying on your own in-house team to livestream your events.
We know that, as event planners, one of the key concerns you have is budget planning. You have to justify the cost of your event to the higher-ups in your organisation. And believe it or not, but getting your own internal team to livestream your events can actually be more expensive than hiring a new team. After speaking to multiple organisations about the prices they’ve already been offered by their own teams, we’ve seen a consistent pattern. Your in-house team already know that you will be relying on them for your events, and that they may be your go-to – so they will be more inclined to hike up their prices, compared to an independent livestreaming crew that want to attract you as a new customer.
However, you may remember what we said earlier about getting a livestreaming team to become your partner. You need to strike a balance between getting a team that wants to be loyal to your organisation, but will still lower their prices to appeal to you. This can make it more difficult to find an external supplier, and therefore increases the ease of simply using your own people.
But in terms of more disadvantages of broadcasting your events in-house, it can be quite difficult to decide on which platform you’re streaming to and what equipment you are using. For instance, you might wish to use a certain video streaming platform and/or camera setup, but the higher-ups in your organisation may not be happy with too much of your budget being devoted to this. And even if you do, there is added pressure on your shoulders. If you are unable to use this platform or equipment effectively as your team is not used to utilising it, this will be stressful. It may also be a waste of money if the streaming facilities at your disposal cannot handle the size of your audience. You have to dedicate a lot of your hybrid event budget to livestreaming your event to these people, so it would be a disaster if your reach doesn’t succeed.
This is where hiring a third party external livestreamer can come in handy.
Third Party Livestreaming Supplier
An external livestreamer can be a very convenient service if you’re just starting to take your online events beyond Zoom. For instance, CPD Online can recommend which livestreaming platform is best for your budget, including which gives you effective analytics to show your events’ cost-effectiveness, so you don’t waste money on the wrong platform and so that you know which events are giving you better profit margins. We can also develop an external platform for you. Our prices also include the cost of our camera equipment, so you don’t have to worry about surprise overheads.
However, hiring an external team does not always make life easier in every way. You have to take into account that you need to ensure this independent team, who may have lots of other clients, is available on the day of your event, and are able to get to your event’s venue. They’re not a part of your organisation, but they may need to be present for event rehearsals. Also, if they’re travelling separately to your internal events team, you need to take note of what their travel costs are.
For CPD Online, our transport costs, etc., are all included in the overall costs of hiring us for your event, and we can get anywhere in the UK on short notice, so you don’t have to worry about coordinating where we are in terms of your event – but you need to check if this is still the case if you use a different supplier.
In terms of costs, we stated above that using a third party livestreaming supplier tends to be the cheaper option. We know your custom isn’t guaranteed, so we’re more likely to negotiate with you to offer a tailored quote that fits your specification and doesn’t include any unnecessary expenses. Furthermore, our quote will include all our equipment costs so you don’t have to get your own fully-featured livestreaming camera to ensure a professional-grade streaming experience.
But what do these livestreaming costs look like?
If you subscribe to CPD Online’s mailing list (simply scroll to the bottom of this page and fill out the form), and we’ll send you a copy of our pricing list. It breaks down the different prices we can offer for single lectures, half-day events and full-day events, as well as how much extra equipment and extra camera operators would typically cost.
Overall
Hopefully, the above points have given you some more considerations that you can look over when deciding how you will broadcast your next event to an online audience. If you have any more questions about the cost of livestreaming, or how to run a hybrid event, feel free to email us at info@cpdonline.tv, call 07800 996 749, or fill out our form here.