What is Event Planning?
Event planning is a pre-event planning process within overall
event management activities that includes budgeting, establishing
timelines, selecting and reserving the event sites, acquiring
permits, planning food, coordinating transportation, developing a
theme, arranging for activities, selecting speakers and keynotes,
arranging for equipment and facilities, managing risk, and
developing contingency plans.
What is Event Management?
Event management, within the scope of MICE events, is a
process of organizing and executing meetings with a planned
agenda where people or professionals interact with each other and
successfully exchange, knowledge, experience or a solution for any
particular challenge.
Let’s first understand what is it to plan an event?
1. Decide Event Theme & Objective:
This is the heart of your event, event profs cannot afford a lack of
clarity on this. To get this started event marketers or event
organizers must try this. Take a pen & paper and write down
answers to the questions below.
- Who is this event for?
- What is/ are objective/s of this event?
- How much investment is needed for successfully conducting the
event?
- What will be the form of this investment? Time, money, talent or
others.
- What KPI will you track for measuring the event’s RoI?
2. Plan & allocate budget:
Different events have different needs and hence budget allocation
is a function of the type/purpose of your event. Planning this is the
second big step.
However, if you still need to generalize this for most event types,
one must consider these areas to set aside a certain amount.
Venue Cost
Software & Tech
Catering & Food budget
Transportation & Logistics
Marketing budget
A/V budget
Production costs
3. Set Timelines:
Plan the timing of your event is imperative. A simple analogy
would be that of releasing a feature film. Any delay in the process
could cost a bomb.
Try to get answers to these questions to keep it simple.
When should the event be held? (You don’t want to coincide
it with a major festival or other significant events to divide your
visitorship)
When should you start your marketing campaigns? ( Too
early or too late both will result in more spends and fewer
returns)
When should your registration start and when should it end?
What should be your vendor delivery timelines and SLAs?
A lapse in timing can lead to a significant impact on the success
of your event.
4. Finding event sponsors & partners
Sponsors and partners are important to plan, most events where
the goal of the event and that of sponsors find strong synergy are
instantly funded, additionally, they have a strong association
demand.
The next step is to manage the six aspects of an event; awareness,
promotion, ground operations, attendee management,
engagement & experience and finally the event success
parameters.
Managing an Event:
Let us take a look at the six core aspects of managing every
conference, business meet or any other.
Event Awareness
We have an event coming up, come join us. Well, not exactly how
you’d spread awareness about your event.
We all know that the world is now more active online, so having an
SEO optimized event website is a no brainer.
A good event website works as a trailer to your actual events, with
feature videos, image gallery, session information, attendee
profile, and speaker list. In an event website, you have a medium
to showcase the value your event has to offer.
Take inspiration from these amazing event websites if you are
working on one.
Next comes, working on your Event SEO. Yes, if you want Google
to rank your event at the top and let people know about it, you
need to work on optimizing the event website for better search
results. Here is a comprehensive article explaining how to
execute event SEO, by SEJ.
Promotion & Marketing
You need a full house and for that, you must market your event’s
value and sell out all the seats and so, this is exactly how you must
work your marketing & promotions game.
To Market, your Event’s value, work on:
a. Communication: In-line with the event’s objective, clear Call-
to-Actions (Register, Refer, Buy, Book or RSVP).
b. Choose Marketing Channels as per your attendees’
demographics.
Example:
LinkedIn Ads might be a better option to promote a technology
conference than Instagram Ads.
Having Billboard and Newspaper ads might just suit the best when
you expect most of your audience to be from the same city or
region.
c. Ticketing & Registration strategy: Ever bought those
tickets that are on an “early bird” sale? Well, that is the best
example of a promotional strategy. There are a plethora of
schemes that one might plan to sell out their event tickets. Some
trending promotional ideas are Group discounts, Coupons
vouchers, affiliation discounts, and membership privileges, etc.
Executing this could at times seem intimidating but there are tech
solutions available in the market that does this for you. Hubilo’s
Event ticketing & registrations do this for some of the world’s
biggest events.
d. Get your event listed:
Portals like 10times allow event lists for free and have one of the
largest subscribers bases. Listing events on such a global or
regional portal works best for any open event as they provide
larger visibility to the event.
e. Email & SMS:
Email and SMS are perhaps the oldest promotional tactic, yet
most effective unless underused. Here is how event professionals
must use Email & SMS for event management.
– Set-up Promotional Emails & SMS campaign
– Make separate marketing campaigns by attendee categories
– Draft multiple email copies. Keep your message crisp and clear
1. Email & SMS with event information and why to buy tickets
2. Email & SMS about the previous event experience
3. Email on visitors & speaker profile
4. An email with special promotional offers, if any
f. Keep your attendees well informed about the venue, how to
reach, reporting time & schedule, etc.
