The ABC’s To Follow When Planning Your Event
The ABC’s of Event Planning
Ensuring you have remembered every little detail for your event can be hard. This A-Z checklist will help you survive the stresses of event planning and ensure everything is in check for the big day!
AUDIENCE: It is vital that you have established who your audience is so that when it comes to event promotion and invites to attract customers, you know how to correctly target them. If you assume that all people will react to marketing material in the wrong way, then you’re being naive. You need to make sure you attract the RIGHT audience. After all, you don’t want to attract the wrong people to the event because they won’t be right for the products/services you’re trying to sell.
BADGING AND CHECK-IN: First impressions are everything. If the first thing your customers experience when they arrive is a long queue, slow check-in or even staff members that cannot find their ticket order, you’re asking for moody customers. Make sure you have an efficient check-in process to ensure you and your customers do not feel stressed.
CONTENT: The content of your event is the very reason customers signed up to attend in the first place. You sold them an event that will educate them, develop their skills or even give them some new connections. Not following through with these content promises will ensure a negative opinion about your company and your events. Make sure that your content aligns with attendee expectations, your capabilities and speakers with the right experience to match the theme of the event.
DELEGATION OF ROLES: Planning an event from the start to finish is always stressful. Make sure you get to know your whole team. Delegating your work to someone else may seem scary at first because you know exactly how you want everything to be, however, in the long run, it will allow you to focus your efforts somewhere else and make the planning and execution a lot more efficient and effective.
ENTERTAINMENT: A lot of companies tend to push this to the bottom of their list of priorities. Perhaps they don’t see the correlation between mixing a business event with live music or perhaps they don’t think they have the budget for it. The important thing to remember is that nobody expects Rihanna to turn up to a business conference all about personal branding, but some light entertainment from local Bolivian dancers or a local band is always a massive hit with guests. It allows them to let their brains relax from all the hardcore presentations they’ve just sat through for the last 4 hours! If you’re willing to put the effort to find some low-priced entertainment you can expect to satisfy guests and reignite their motivation to sit through 4 more hours of presentations!
FIND SPEAKERS: Speakers add credibility to your event. Having a name to add to your event description or your sales pitch makes people more interested. Not only will customers be able to meet some great people that suit their current career or where they’re trying to go, but it offers customers real experience and knowledge from those who are experts in their field. It is important to make sure your speakers are relevant to the event theme. For example, you wouldn’t invite a social media influencer to an event about accounting. Don’t just invite big names because you can, invite big names that coincide with your event.
GOAL: Establish a clear goal for your event before you start planning. This way you can plan your event in such a way that ensures you will achieve what you want. Deciding on a goal half-way through will lead to lots of unnecessary stress.
HOSPITALITY: Venue, coffee, lunch etc. Set time aside to create a budget for your event and relate it to how many attendees you expect. If you’re on a budget for 5k and it needs to include venue, a coffee break and lunch for 150 guests, you shouldn’t waste time looking at venues that charge £100ppp. Make cost and time-efficient decisions to tackle the hospitality for your event.
INVITATIONS: You have finally narrowed it down to one theme for your event, finalised a venue, booked your caterer and organised your entertainment, it’s now time to let everyone know about the fantastic event you have been tediously planning! You can use your website and social media channels to reach large audiences. Email campaigns are also very effective but it is important to make a plan of when you will start/finish your campaign in line with the date of your event.
JUST STAY CALM: No event planner can say that nothing has gone wrong in the planning process. A speaker cancels, the caterer got the flu, the venue caught fire… Somewhere along the road, you will hit some bumps. As long as you’re able to stay calm and work slightly longer hours to sort the problem, you don’t even need to stress.
